The Sean McDowell Show - Is Christmas a Pagan Rip-Off? Interview with Louis Markos.

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Is Christmas pagan? Was Christianity based on pagan celebrations on December 25? In this interview, I talk with Dr. Louis Markos, expert on Greek and Roman mythology. READ: The Myth Made Fact: (https://amzn.to/3kNMlcT) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/

Is Christmas rooted in pagan ideas? Was the virgin birth of Jesus copied from ancient Greco-Roman stories? You have undoubtedly heard these claims and today that's we're going to talk about. But before we jump in, the reason this is so important to me is I grew up in a Christian home. Many of you watching this will recognize my father as an influential apologist. I heard the evidences for the faith growing up. But in the 90s when I was in college, I was surfing on the internet and came across the claim for the first time that Christianity was borrowed from these ancient pagan mystery religions and Jesus maybe didn't

even exist. And it rocked me. Now we're going to unpack that today because I have with me a friend who's written a fascinating new book. It's called The Myth Made Fact. His name is Dr. Lou Marcos and he teaches at Houston Baptist University, which is a, you might say a brother or sister school to Biola, have a wonderful apologetics program, but he teaches in the humanities. And although he works in the area of apologetics, brings a real kind of English literature approach to this that I think is going to really help us unpack some of these ideas. So, Lou, really appreciate you being with us. Hey, thanks for having me on, Sean. It's great. Yeah, my pleasure. So, let's just jump in right away. You've written this recent book. It's

called The Myth Made Fact, where you take 50 different ancient Greco-Roman stories and just tell them briefly. Some stories people have heard give lessons to it, but I want to know before we jump into some of the particulars and specifically focus on some of the claims about Christmas and Christianity being borrowed from these pagan mystery religions, why are you interested in Greek mythology in the first place? Well, I'll tell you, Sean, I've got a double reason to love Greek mythology. First, I am a man of the West, a man of the great books of the Western intellectual tradition. And so the Greek myths are part of my tradition as a Westerner. But I also happen to be a Greek.

All four of my grandparents were born in Greece. They all came to America about 1930. My parents were born here. I was born here. And so these are also my stories because I am a Greek American. And so I grew up reading Greek mythology as mother's milk. And as I grew and became an English teacher, English major, English professor, more and more, I realized how essential these myths were. They underlie so much of what we do. About 12 years ago, I published a book with InterVarsity called From Achilles to Christ, Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics. And I focused on the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and the Greek tragedies. But in this book, I wanted to go behind even the great epics and tragedies to the real raw material. These are the original stories, the Ur stories, in which we see people wrestling in the raw with the big

questions. Who am I? What am I here? What is my purpose? How do I know my value? What is my beginning? What is my ending? And so if you really want to get to the root, then Greek mythology is the place to look for what it means to be human. That makes a lot of sense. And we're going to look at some of these particular stories and see if the Christian story is ripped off from these. But you're also a C.S. Lewis scholar. And that's fascinating because you've studied myth. And of course, these ancient stories have myths. So there's such a powerful crossover. But one of the things that fascinated me as I was reading the introduction to your book is you talked about how what held Lewis back originally from becoming a theist or a Christian was his knowledge of mythology. That it was these Greco-Roman stories that prevented him from coming to faith. But then eventually that shifted.

So tell me why and the story that drove that change in Lewis. This is a great story, and there wouldn't be my book if it wasn't for this story. Now, most of your listeners, I'm sure they're aware that Lewis was an atheist before he became a Christian. But most people think that he went directly from atheism to Christianity, which is the story of Chuck Colson, Lee Strobel, and your own father, Josh McDowell, right? Tried to disprove the resurrection, ended up believing it, right? That's not exactly Lewis's story. He didn't go directly

to Christianity. First, he became a theist, a believer in God, and he remained there about a year and a half, but he couldn't quite cross over into believing that Jesus is the Son of God. What was holding him back? Well, one of the things holding him back was Lewis, like myself, an English professor who loved mythology and knew it inside and out. He was also a fan of a book called The Golden Bough by Sir Jameszier. Now, he's less known today, but Frazier is the Joseph Campbell of the 19th century, someone who was a sort of cultural anthropologist or comparative mythologist. He looked at the myths of all the ancient people and tried to compare. And I love that stuff, right? Joseph Campbell wasn't a believer, but I've learned so many, just like I've learned a lot from Jung, right? One of the reasons Jordan Peterson, though he's not a believer,

is so close to a lot of the things we're saying is because he was influenced by the archetypes of people like Jung. Well, the golden bow searches for archetypes. What's an archetype? It's a certain character type or story or theme that is recognizable across cultures. Most people will know that George Lucas was reading Joseph Campbell and that helped him make it. And that's why Star Wars has the type of Obi-Wan Kenobi. That's the type of the old man, the wise old man that trains the youth, right? That's the type of Luke Skywalker, who's the foundling, the son of a prince who's raised as a carpenter only to realize who he is, right? There's Darth Vader, the guy who sells his soul for forbidden wisdom and goes to the

dark side, right? But James Frazier in this book, The Golden Bough, identified something that today we call the corn king. Now, what is the corn king? First of all, you need to realize that when a British person says corn king, so it's the wheat king, although the wonderful novel Children of the Corn actually plays on the misunderstanding of that word. The Corn King, it's kind of funny, because the Corn King is linked to the cycle, the week, the seasonal cycle of life and death and rebirth. And all across the ancient world, there's a tale of a god or a demigod, a hero, who comes to Earth, who dies, usually a violent death, and then returns. Now, it's not a literal resurrection. It's more like a seasonal return. Again, life, death, and rebirth, right? So if

you're an Egyptian, your corn king is named Osiris. If you're a Greek, you call him Adonis or Bacchus. If you're a Babylonian, you call him Tammuz. If you're a Persian, you call him Mithras. If you're a Norseman, you call him Balder. It's the same basic story across cultures that didn't know each other. Now, for a long time, Lewis said, well, obviously Jesus is just the Hebrew version of the same corn king myth. How can I believe it? And that's what a lot of atheists are still pushing on their websites to this day. Jesus is only a myth and nothing more. And Lewis was stuck there until one night when Lewis was 32 years old, he was having a long walk with his good friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, very committed Catholic,

and they were walking around Magdalen College. There's this beautiful tree-lined walk called Addison's Walk. And then there's a third person too. As they walked around and around Addison's Walk late into the night, they were discussing this very issue. And that's when Tolkien said to Lewis, Lewis, did you ever think maybe the reason that Jesus sounds like a myth is that he's the myth that became fact or the myth that became true? As G.K. Chesterton said, Jesus is the true myth. Now, what are we talking about here, Sean? OK, there is a difference between data and the interpretation of data? Let me explain with an easy answer.

Did you go to secular school, Sean, or no? I went to – for high school, but Biola and grad school was in Christian University. Okay, but when you were a kid, right? So middle school, you probably had a class in social studies because nobody teaches history in Houston and in America anymore. But you took a class in social studies. You probably read the Epic of Gilgamesh like I did. And if you read that, you read this wonderful flood story. Very exciting.

And if you had the typical teacher, she said, now, children, we now know that every ancient culture has a global flood story. And that just proves the Bible's just a myth. And I remember saying, wait a minute, there's another way to read that data. If every single culture has a universal flood story, maybe that means that there was an actual flood, and whereas in all the other cultures it only retained a mythic value, only amongst the Jews did it have a historical value. Another example, the evolutionists always show us that picture. It's called homology. So the elbow of a man and the dorsal fin of a face and the wing of a bat, they're all similar. And they say proof of

evolution. I say proof of a common designer who doesn't keep reinventing the wheel. Okay, so you need to understand that the data is what the data is, but how do you interpret it? Now, when I see the same story and let me say the same yearning, the same desire in different cultures all around the world, I say, where does that universal desire come from? Jung would say it comes from the collective unconscious. Well, where does the collective unconscious come from? Jung would say it comes from the collective unconscious. Well, where did the collective unconscious come from? That's no answer. That's like saying our DNA was seeded by aliens. Well, where did the alien DNA come from? Okay, so when I look at that, I say, look, if the Bible's

true and God created all people, right, he put in all of us that same yearning, as Paul says at the Areopagus, right, He set the times that we might reach after him and grope after him. It makes sense that we all have that desire. And so when God actually works out his salvation in human history, doesn't it make sense, Sean, that he would do it in a way that not only fulfills the Old Testament law and prophets, but fulfills the highest yearnings of the pagans. I don't know if this ever bothered you, but did it bother you when you were a kid? Are you saying that before Jesus came, God ignored 99% of humanity and only talked to the Jews? Well, I believe that only to the Jews did he speak directly what

theologians call special revelation. Only to them is it the word of God. But he didn't ignore the rest of us. He spoke through what's called general revelation. He spoke through creation. He spoke through our conscience. He spoke through our reason. And to use a C.S. Lewis phrase, he spoke through the good dreams of the pagans. I love that. I love that. We see the yearning. Right. But it's still general revel. It is seen through a glass, darkly, dimly as in a mirror. And that's why most of those stories are actually kind of frightening. They're often very bloody and all sorts of things. Yeah. We see the authentic yearning.

Okay, Sean, I often teach my students that amongst the ancient Greeks, you can't really have an idea of sin. Why? Because the only way you can understand sin is if you have a holy God to measure it against. Right. Well, they didn't have a holy God to measure it against. Right. Well, they didn't have a holy God, but all of those ancient people understood a word we still use today, taboo. There were certain taboo crimes that bring ritual impurity on the people, the tribe, the nation. And most of these corn king stories linked to the seasonal cycle are also linked to the ritual need for a scapegoat to atone for sin.

All summed up in the Oedipus story. Oedipus, who did the two worst taboos, incest and patricide. And that whole story is a scapegoat story. Maybe you've read René Girard on scapegoating. It's a very popular book. He was a strong Catholic, but it's read by secular people as well. We understand and we see it in politics today, the need to find a scapegoat for our sins. I'm not going to get political, but we understand that.

So, again, this argument that's used against Christianity, that Jesus is just a myth? I say no. I say that if Jesus came into the world and his coming, his incarnation, his crucifixion, his resurrection, if all of those events were absolutely meaningless to the 99% of the Gentile pagans of the world, then it would look like we had been invaded by a foreign god but in fact the truth is that he is the savior of the world he is the true bacchus the true adonis the true osiris the true myth that came into the world and affected salvation i love it that's beautiful now look let me let me finish out c.s lewis's story because he's on this walk with Tolkien, and then he suggests maybe God has planted this on the hearts of people throughout history so when it actually happens, they would recognize it. Did that turn Lewis immediately? Did he then look at the evidence? Why did he conclude that the Christian myth, so to speak, was true and not any other myth. It did. And it was about a week later, a week to 10 days later, he was driving to the zoo. His brother was driving the motorcycle and he was in one of those old fashioned sidecars. And Lewis explains, surprised by joy, is his

autobiography. He explains that when I left for the zoo, I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God. By the time I got there, I believed it. Somehow, it just suddenly snapped. But it all began with that long conversation with Tolkien, which actually moved into their rooms later on, went late into the night in Lewis's rooms at Magdalen College. And what Lewis realized is that all those other stories are mythic. They take place in nowhere land. And you know what? It doesn't even make a difference if they're true or not. For the pagans, it was the idea of the story that was important. But Lewis understood that there was something different about Jesus. It happened in a real time and a real place. It's all in order, he says, under Pontius Pilate. This really happened in time

and space where everywhere else it's mythic, it's legendary. It doesn't even make a difference if it's literally true. It's sort of the way more and more liberal theologians think about Christianity. It's only, well, no, because either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn't. That was the issue that brought your father to faith. Like it's the resurrection. This happened in real time and real space, and everything's different from now on. Okay, so for those just joining us, we are moving towards talking about whether Christianity is ripped off from these pagan mystery religions, and we're going to talk about some since it's roughly Christmas time about the virgin birth of Christ, etc., but we're doing some background work to understand the connection birth of Christ, etc. But we're doing some background work to

understand the connection between mythology and between Christianity. Now, when C.S. Lewis became a Christian, he said that we shouldn't throw out these myths and that we still need them. Why did he think these myths were still important? I love it. The phrase Lewis uses, and I think it's the title of my preface, more than Balder, not less. What does he mean by that? It is very important to understand that Jesus is more than Balder, Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus, etc. He's more because he actually is true. It happened in historical time and space, and our salvation was won. So he's obviously more, but he's not less than because Jesus does save us in, if you will, the literal historical world. But that does not stop Jesus from speaking to the pagan inside of us.

I don't mean the guy that joins a college fraternity. I mean the person that yearns to be part of a story, to be part of something that is even epic. Right. And so we need to understand that Jesus. OK, the Garden of Eden, I believe it's a literal story. There was a literal Adam and Eve. But it is also a myth because a myth is a story that answers questions about origins or destinations about who we are. It's a story that we participate in. And we need to understand that Jesus, the incarnate and crucified and risen Christ, should not only speak to our mind and our logic. It's not just evidence

that demands a verdict. It also speaks to the imagination, to the heart. And remember, when people say the heart, they ultimately mean the will. And a lot of time, what drives our will is not just our head. It's our heart as well. If all you have is the head, it's not going to do anything. You need the heart. You need an engagement of the imagination. You need to be part of a story. Here's an ironic thing. A lot of people don't realize that a lot of the words that we as Christian apologists use, like anthropic principle, those were actually invented by secular humanists to argue against it. But we've accepted because it's true.

Everything in this finely tuned universe points towards us, towards man. Okay, in the same way, a favorite word of Christian apologists and a good word is metanarrative. But that was also invented by the postmodern secular humanists to say that there is no metanarrative. Meta means like metaphysics above. The metanarrative is the larger, overarching story to which all other stories fit. Now, they called it the metanarrative, but they don't believe that there is a metanarrative. We believe there is a metanarrative. There's a greater story of creation, fall, redemption, reconciliation, and glorification.

And we are part of that story. Christ affected that story. And all other stories feed into that. They're either intimations of it, right? They're glimpses that point forward, like what we're talking about, or they're reflections of it, like almost every Marvel comic movie that we see on the screen nowadays. Those are all still replaying of the same story or for that matter lord of the rings or chronicles of normian so that's great that's a question i want to ask i wore my marvel superhero

which oh you just could people who know me know that i wear one almost all the time anyways but i uh i did a post recently i've done a bunch of things on social media, how Infinity War and Endgame is about the question of the value of human life and what a hero really is. And you have this idea that there's 14 million possibilities and only one will lead to the saving of half of the universe. And it's Iron Man willingly laying down his life as a sacrifice. I saw it. I was was like are you kidding me here's 10 years hundreds of millions of dollars if not more to make this and they climax with a christ type story now that doesn't prove christianity is true but what what does that tell us when you see it movies like this you see movies like avatar where where you have Jake Sully taking on the flesh of the blue people, dying for them. You see it, Big Hero 6 at the end.

This hero sacrifices his life for the boy. Like it's all over modern-day stories, not just these ancient Greco-Roman stories. What does this tell us? It tells us that that yearning and desire is hardwired into us. And how can it be hardwired to all people around the globe unless it was put in there by the creator who created us all? We realize, you know, even like an ultimately silly movie like Independence Day, right? Who does not cheer when – what's the actor's name? The drunk guy. The two brothers. But when he drives his spaceship right into the spaceship and blows it up and sacrifices himself, right?

Who doesn't cheer? Because we understand how important – greater love has no man this than he lays down his life for a friend. We understand that story and that there is a need for a sacrifice. And we also learned something else. I still can't believe it when I watched Endgame. The bad guy, Thanos, is absolutely a modern secular humanist who would completely agree with Paul Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, who thinks people, these are the extreme greenhouse people who think really, they're not stewards of nature like we are. They are people who think nature's good and man is bad. And I suddenly realized the bad guy here are the secular liberals who want to kill half the population. It's unbelievable that they did that. Did they realize they were doing that? Let me explain to you how powerful the true myths are. OK, remember the episode one, two to be sort of very secular humanist and postmodern where he has this part where the good guy says you're either where the bad guy says you're either for us or against us.

Right. Right. And they try to make us believe that the people who believe in absolute truth and absolute ideas are the bad guys. But later on, we discovered that it's the evil emperor who says, well, truth is a slippery concept. What I'm getting at is even when George Lucas tries to go sort of liberal, he can't do it because the true myth will not allow him to do that. It is the good guys who believe in absolute goodness, truth, and beauty. And it's the bad guys who are complete relativists and think there is no truth. So you almost can't. They keep trying to make postmodern fables, but somehow it doesn't work. Even Shrek ends up having redemptive ideas.

It does. It tries to deconstruct every single myth that we hold sacred, but it can't help itself but fall into this story that is hard wired into us and that we are part of. Sean, I say something. Go ahead. Good. There's something that I bring up a lot. It's a little bit of a tangent, but it's very important. OK, now. Now, again, I'm sorry, but if you don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve, I think there's a problem with you, okay? But I do accept that a real Bible-believing Christian who believes the Bible is the Word of God could interpret Genesis 1 more figuratively to be longer days, okay? And I want to say so because it's very important, okay? Whether you believe our Earth is 6,000 years old or 6 million or 6 billion, okay? The fact is that when you read the Bible, God's redemptive plan in human history, although we need to understand creation and fall,

we need to understand the flood, we need to understand Babel, when we look at the Bible and look at the actual redemptive plan that God is doing in human history, it really begins with Abraham. And I don't know when exactly the flood happened, but Abraham is only 4,000 years ago. He's about 2000 BC. So you need to understand that the very narrow specific work that God is doing in human history is 4,000 years old, with Jesus exactly at the center. If, Sean, you live to the age of 80, your lifespan will make up 2% of that 4,000 years. That is pretty darn significant, right? Even if you die at 40, it'll make up 1%. You and I have made it past that. If you die at 40, it would still make up 1% of that, okay? Because so many Christians think, oh my God, if the earth is 6 billion years old, then my life is meaningless.

No, it's not. We are very much apart. I mean, even in terms of days, we are part of the work that God is doing in human history. We're part of that. Jesus is the hinge of history. These nonsense people that use BCE and CE. Look, Jesus is the hinge of history, okay people that use BCE and CE look Jesus the hinge of history okay got a full after he is the hinge of history and everything changes after that and there are stories one of them told by Plutarch who was not a

believer that about the time that Christ came all of the Oracle's and Sybil's stopped prophesying and pan the god of the woods ran off and disappeared it was almost and milton wrote a poem partly about this that everything changed when the myth became fact and changed the world i i love this this is what convinced lewis that it's not myth in the sense of an invented story but a beautiful story that explains reality. And we see it in ancient Greco-Roman stories. We see it today in the Marvel movies. And yet the argument is that we saw it uniquely happen in history because God has placed this on our hearts. tagged you on Twitter today about this discussion. Instantly, an atheist posted this link that showed

these similarities to Mithras and Osiris as if these similarities themselves just prove that Christianity borrowed these pagan myths. Now, before we specifically respond to that, one of the claims is that when we see, for example, early Christian art, the early Christian art is imitating certain pagan symbols. So, for example, early Christian art, the early Christian art is imitating certain pagan symbols. So, for example, you even mention in your book that the 5th century church, Santa Maria Maggiore, and I apologize if I did not say that correctly. The baby Jesus sits on a throne and is flanked by an entourage of angels as if he were a Roman emperor surrounded by his court. So what is going on here? Because the assumption is that the Christians just borrowed these pagan ideas, but you're saying if we actually get into the literature that time, that is not what the Christians were doing.

Let's step back here and say something, because I'm sure I'm speaking to a lot of my fellow evangelicals, conservative thinkers, good Bible thinkers. We need to stop saying the Bible is only the word of God in the original Greek and Hebrew. Okay. That's Muslims who say that. Okay. Muslims only consider the Quran, the Quran in classical Arabic, and they don't accept. That's why all those Indonesians are still saying their prayers in Arabic. They have no idea what they're saying. Okay. And there's more Muslims in Indonesia than all the Arabs put together. Right. I mean, it's kind of great. No, I mean, yes, if you can learn Greek and Hebrew, that's a wonderful thing to do, okay? But look, first of all, the New Testament was written in Greek, but Jesus preached in Aramaic. So when you're reading the words of

Jesus in Greek, there's already a translation. And guess what? That is okay. Our religion is an incarnational religion. Our religion, we worship an incarnational God. That's why I love people like the Wycliffe Bible Translators or the Jesus Film Project, who are trying to take the story, the gospel, and incarnate it in other languages and other cultures. That is what we're about. That is not watering down doctrine. That is taking the truth and rebirthing it in that culture so they can understand. Can you imagine going to the Eskimos and saying Jesus is the lamb of God when they have no idea what a lamb is? That's a great example. We need to find what Don Richardson of the Peace Child called redemptive analogies. We need to find, because look, if God really is the creator of the universe and Jesus is really the savior of the world, then we're going to need to find in every culture some kind of seed pointing to Christ.

If we don't find it, that's a problem. Again, if Jesus didn't sound like any of the myths, that would be a problem, Lewis says, right? The fact that he fulfills their greatest yearnings and desires captured and embodied in their myths gives further proof that Jesus is the Savior of the world. And so what they were doing, they weren't watering down the faith. And, you know, good evangelicals were like, oh, there go those Catholics again't watering down the faith. And, you know, good evangelicals were like, oh, there go those Catholics again watering down the faith. No, no. That's not what they're doing.

They are trying to take the true gospel and incarnate it in that culture, trying to find bridges that we can reach out. Now, they didn't – it wasn't anything goes. Notice they didn't use the name Zeus to refer to Jesus. That name is already too corrupted. But they used the words logos or logos and theos. Those were Greek philosophy words, but they used them because those words could be redeemed and used. I'll give you something that actually comes from Eternity in Their Hearts by Don Richardson. He distinguishes between the Sodom effect and the Melchizedek effect. Okay, what did he mean by that? Okay, you remember that before the destruction

of Sodom and Gomorrah, there was a war where Abraham had to go in and rescue his nephew Lot, right? And after it was over and he could defeat the many tribes of Sodom and Gomorrah, they came to him and tried to offer him things, and Abraham rejected it. I will not take anything from these bad pagans of whom there is nothing to redeem. But then this shadowy figure called Melchizedek appears out of nowhere, a man of no origin, a king of peace from Jerusalem. And what does Abraham do? He offers him 10%. He offers him bread and wine because in Melchizedek, and Melchizedek says that he worships El Elyon, God on high. That's not a Hebrew name for God, but Abraham adopts it and accepts it. And apparently some of the missionaries that went to China and Korea had more success because they took the Chinese name for God that meant God of the heavens and used it.

Now, they didn't take some pagan name. They didn't call Jesus the incarnation of Buddha. God forbid. That would be wrong. Older name for God that that that touched on the reality that hadn't been corrupted yet and they could make that connection. That's what they're doing. They're showing that. Look, I believe Jesus did this himself in John chapter 12. This is Jesus's last public discourse.

And it's during the Passover. And there are a group of Greeks who have come to the Passover to meet Jesus. And they go to Philip, the disciple Philip, who, by the way, is a Greek king, and says, we would like to see Jesus. And Philip goes to Jesus and says, there are some Greeks who want to meet you. And Jesus' answer is, the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, and then he says, except a grain of wheat, of corn, die and be buried, it will remain a single seed. But if it is buried, it will produce much fruit. Now, if you look through the whole Old Testament, that metaphor, that analogy is not a Jewish one. They talk about sowing the seed, but the idea that the seed must die and be reborn is not a

Jewish metaphor, but it is a Greek metaphor. Now, we don't know exactly who these Greeks are, but the fact that they're interested in Hebrew rituals and cultic practices suggests to me that they might have been members of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most ancient cult in the Greco-Roman world, that worshipped, well, they worshipped Persephone, the one who dies and is reborn each year for which the seasons come, according to the Greeks. They also worshipped Bacchus, the grape. On their temple was a ripe ear of corn or wheat, and they clearly worshipped the cycle, the seasonal cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Now, if these Greeks were part of that mystery, then it's as if Jesus is reaching out a hand and saying, all these years you have worshipped the seed that dies and is reborn.

I am that seed. Come and finish your journey. Christ over culture. I like to say Christianity is not the only truth, but it is the only complete truth. If we say Christianity is the only truth, we're throwing everything out. We're dropping a wall. But no, in every culture, in every religion, there are bits and pieces of truth. But only in Christianity, only in Christ himself, does truth reach its full and complete form. And that's what they're doing in that early church. They're reaching out a hand and saying, come, we will show you the true Saturnalia, the true soul invictus, the true unconquerable son, the real Bacchus who doesn't.

The real Bacchus is unbelievably violent and destructive and vindictive, but there's a seed of truth that finds its fulfillment in Christ. That's beautiful. Tell me if this fits, and if it doesn't, feel free to say, McDowell, you missed it. But I was at a church. It's been a few years. We were visiting the church, and to start off, the first worship song they played was the 80s song by Cyndi Lauper, Time After Time. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. And it's a beautiful song.

And it's kind of like basically whenever you turn around and come back, I'll be there for you. And they were singing this song as if it's about a human relationship but actually, there's a God that is here for you in this way, what you think is experienced on a human level, there's actually a divine element to it. So it's almost like they were taking a secular song and infusing it with a deeper purpose about God as a whole in our relationship with us. Is that a kind of modern day example of how we do the same thing? We all have a God-shaped vacuum and let's reach out and find, we're about the same age,

I think, do you remember that song, You Light Up My Life? You light up my life. Debbie Boone, I think her name was Debbie Boone. Now I think she was a Christian. I think in her head, she was actually singing to Jesus, but it was a romantic song.

And I remember there was all sorts of talk about that when I was growing up, right, whether that was okay or not. And again, we can reduce it. We can reduce it to basically, you know, boy bands singing about their girlfriend, Jesus, my girlfriend. I mean, it can be bastardized. Yes. But again, there's an old Latin. I can't remember the exact Latin, but both Lewis and Tolkien quoted the Latin phrase means the misuse of something does not cancel out the proper use of it. If it did, then we better stop reading the Bible since almost every heresy and cult came out of a misreading of Scripture.

So we better be careful, OK, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Again, we need to find what it is that people are desiring when they go to a Marvel movie and try to take them by the hand and direct them to say, look, it's good. I can't remember who wrote this apologetics book, but he said what young people are looking for is not so much a preacher. They're looking for a Gandalf figure who will lead them along the way. That's what they're looking for. Well, hey, we've got the true Gandalf and the true Dumbledore. We've got the real one here who will lead you the rest of the journey. My metaphor is that the mythology and even these

songs are like candles. Jesus is the sun, right? And let's lead them from the candle to the sun. But once we get to the sun, we don't need to turn around and excoriate the candle and scream at it. Let's be thankful that that candle gave us a little bit of a light that led us to the fuller light that's kind of what we're talking about here this is great and really helpful by the way in the comments some people are anticipating the challenges that will come like is this a deceptive way to sneak pagan practices into the church what about christmas trees december 25th we're going to get to some of those particulars but I have a couple questions for you first what what story in your in your book

again I'm referring to your book the myth made fact and you have 50 of these ancient Greco-Roman stories and then you give kind of commentary about how to think and interact with them as Christians which of these stories if any most mirrors the Christian story as a whole of a God coming down, being a teacher, dying and resurrected? Which of the stories you think, if you had to pick one out, has at least the most similarities with Christianity? I think one of them and everybody's favorite hero to this day is Hercules, right? And Hercules is the son of Zeus, right? Now, the story they made up for the Disney Hercules is not true to the myth, but I'm not mad at Disney. Do you want kids to know

that it's Zeus basically raping a mortal woman? I mean, come on. I thought they came up with a really good idea. And actually, they increased the whole incarnational aspect of it, where he loses his power and becomes a human child. So I think Disney actually made it even more Christian than perhaps it was. But again, Hercules is the son of Zeus, right? And he is a demigod, right? And he actually dies and resurrects. What happened was his own lust did him in, and he ends up putting on a shirt that consumes his flesh. And he finally, all he can do to stop the burning is throw himself into a fire, and he burns apart and dies. But then the gods take him up to Mount Olympus. There is a death and resurrection. Hercules because one of my favorite stories that's lesser known because it really appears

in Xenophon is the story of Hercules at the crossroads. And I tell the story in my book. When he was still a young man, he came to a place where three roads come together. And there at the crossroads, the young Hercules, the young hero in training, was met by two women, one woman in white and a woman in red. And the woman in white went up to him and said, Hercules, follow me and I will show you the path of virtue. It will not always be an easy path. There will be suffering. But if you persevere, you shall be a true hero of virtue. You shall change the world world and then the scarlet woman said don't listen to her follow me and your life will be easy you will have all that your lust desire there's no reason to suffer this is what we today see as the angel and devil on our shoulder right

it's the ultimate thing and in the end hercules takes up his club and clubs the scarlet woman. Now, what I love about this, this is Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, the true son of God at a crossroads, knowing he needs to do something, but not wanting to. Lord, if any way, Father, that this cup can pass, let it pass. And he was terribly tempted, and he was in such agony, he sweated blood, right? And by the way, the beginning and ending of Jesus's ministry is the same thing. It is Satan giving him the three temptations in the wilderness, and it is, I'm not sure if it was actually Satan there, but it is at least Jesus struggling with what he knows he needs to do, but doesn't want to do, because he was a full human as well as fully God, right? And in the end, he chose the harder way

and sacrificed himself. So there is a lot of parallels between these two. But again, all of those heroes, Hercules, Perseus, Jason, who's the other one, Theseus, they're all flawed heroes. Samson, for that matter. Samson belongs in a Greek myth. He even dies by suicide, so to speak.

And what does he do? Samson kills more people in his death than he did in his life. And you know what? Jesus saved more people in his death than he did in his life. Isn't that wonderful? So a flawed hero like Samson can also be a archetype that points the way to Jesus. Now, virgin births, okay, not really. Usually it's more of a divine rape.

But there is one story that comes closest to that, and it's the story of Perseus. The mother of Danae, or Danae, she was locked up in a tower, and Zeus came to her as a shower of gold, right? This is not like when he comes as a swan and rapes Leda to give birth to Helen of Troy or comes as a bull as he does to Europa and gives birth to King Minos. This, they never explain the biology of it. But a shower of gold doesn't exactly seem like normal sexual relationships. It's much closer to a virgin birth, and Perseus is the one who killed Medusa, the one whose look turns you to stone, right? Interesting.

A perfect Satan figure. And it is Perseus who is gifted by the gods with all these gifts and saves us from the Gorgon. It's like one of the Harry Potter movies where the basilisk, who also turns you to stone with his eyes, a perfect Satan figure, is blinded by who? By the griffin. I'm sorry, by the phoenix, the one who dies and is reborn the ultimate christ figure of all mythical beasts so uh you know a lot of people were really angry about the harry potter books but i believe that jk rowling is coming out of a christian tradition she's probably very very liberal that's right she is coming out of a christian tradition clearly and she is working

out a medieval allegory in which the tears of the phoenix, you know, bring healing and destroy the basilisk. So, I mean, all of those myths are there. We understand the nature of good and evil and the nature of goodness to give all that it has, even to the point of sacrifice. But that sacrifice releases a great energy that is salvific okay so let's talk about briefly before we myth move i want to talk about the december 25th claim but even this story with perseus and this kind of shower of gold that's not explained how is that story different from the biblical story of the virgin birth where do they part ways and what ways is the christian story unique ultimately in all of these stories with zeus even if it's a

shower of gold it's ultimately a divine rape okay that's ultimately what it is okay okay we might call it a seduction we might call but it is ultimately a kind of a rape, right? And that's the complete opposite with God, right? Where there is no divine rape. And in fact, Mary is given a choice. It seems pretty darn clear to me Mary could have said no. But what she said is, behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it to me as you have said. And she was willing, Mary is the first person, Mary's the first Christian in history who allowed Jesus to be born through her into the world, because that's the job of all of us, right? We're mirrors of Christ, and we want Christ to be born through us into the world, whether we're men or women. Okay,

so the differences, and of course the other difference is that it's historical. It actually happened, but it's not a divine rape. It is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and you know, there are a lot of, okay, I teach at Houston Baptist University, and in our statement of faith, which is about 50 years old, they go out of their way to say, we believe in the virgin birth, but they never mention the incarnation anywhere. Now, of course, we believe in the incarnation, but we should understand that there is a religion that does believe in the virgin birth, but completely rejects the incarnation. You know what that religion is called, Sean? That religion is called Islam, okay? Because religion that does believe in the virgin birth but completely rejects the incarnation you know

what that religion is called sean that religion is called islam okay because oh okay that's right in the virgin birth but muhammad absolutely rejects and excoriate the idea that jesus was god incarnate okay now of course we're not muslims over at hbu but the reason we put so much emphasis on the virgin birth is because if you remember back in the 60s, a lot of even Baptists were saying, oh, we're Christians, but we don't believe in the virgin birth, as if God can mess around with anything but sex. I mean, it's really a weird thing. As C.S. Lewis said, you know, I mean, all he did, I mean, the creation of Adam, right? It was done directly by God. God can do it direct, but people seem

embarrassed by that. And people still say the most absurd argument of all time is the idea that the only reason the early church believed in the virgin birth is that they didn't understand modern science and didn't have a sex ed class to tell sure sure this is absolutely ludicrous okay yes nobody in the ancient world knew about the egg it's microscopic they only sort of knew about the sperm they were really seeing semen uh and they and then the word sperm means seed they use the analogy of planting the seed in the earth and then it gives birth so okay they didn't understand embryology, but they did understand that a woman does not get pregnant

unless she has sex with a man, okay? And that's why Joseph was about to put aside his wife, okay? Joseph knew where babies come from. So let's get away from this nonsense that the only reason they advocated the virgin birth is that they didn't understand the laws of nature. Guess what? You can't even call something a miracle unless you understand the laws of nature.

If you don't know about the laws of nature, it's like fairyland. Anything can happen. But just because we understand that a woman only gives birth if she lies with a man, do we recognize that the virgin birth is a miracle? And again, in some ways, every time there's a divine coupling between Zeus and a mortal woman, it points towards the virgin birth. But instead of it being a divine rape by a callous and uncaring God, read the poem Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats to see the callousness of Zeus in raping Leda. But again, that's not what's happening here this is the true father making a new adam that that's that's really helpful distinction because one of the things that amazes me when you read the gospel story you know in matthew 2 and luke 2 is the absence of any sexual connotation in the virgin birth it's. She's just filled with the Holy Spirit because God is going to come through her

and the person of Jesus and be born. And yet you're saying in all of these ancient stories, there's at least some sexual connotation, if not rape. That's a massive difference between the two amongst others. And, you know, in fact, Leta and the Swan, where Helen of Troy came from, this is a bird raping a woman isn't it wonderful that the holy spirit came in the form of a dove right and you

know usually the way we depict in all the art of the enunciation the dove comes in so we got we got a bird but this is a divine bird okay not a a human divine bird that's raping right um so again the story and the same way, there is no such thing, you know, as the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a new thing. I mean, there's intimations of it in Hercules being taken up to Olympus and things like that, but there's nothing like that, and there's certainly nothing like the once-for-all sacrifice, because the pagans kept doing it over and over again. They would weep over and over again it was about the the seasonal death and rebirth it wasn't about a once for all death

and resurrection and all everything is different after this moment so they're that's they really they're similar in terms of yearning but they couldn't be more different in the actual historical details and of what they mean. That's great. Let's talk about the birth of Jesus on December 25th. I can't tell you how many times skeptics will say to me, we know he wasn't even born then, and there was the soul Invictus or the birth of Mithras on December 25th. And those facts alone in the minds of some people imply that therefore the birth of Jesus was a myth. How should we interpret this? It just doesn't follow. Okay. Under Constantine and then his successors, slowly the Roman empire is becoming Christian.

How do you build a bridge? How do you reach out to these pagan peoples? Again, they do not tell them that Jesus is the son of Zeus or Jupiter, right? Already around the winter solstice, the first day of winter. Now, to us, the first day of winter is December 21st. Back then it was December 25th. Okay, so it is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. And that's why that is the day of Sol Invictus. That's Latin for the unconquerable sun. That's the birthday of the sun because the shortest day of the year, it's like the sun is shriveling up. I didn't know that. And then it's reborn, right?

After the winter solstice, the days start getting longer and longer until they reach the vernal equinox when they're the same. And then you get to the autumnal equinox, the summer equinox when it're the same and then you get to the autumnal equinox the the summer equinox when it's the longest day and that's the cycle okay we don't have much of that cycle in houston where i'm talking to you from but they have another place and and probably not viola either but anyway we've heard about the seasons sean we've heard about we've heard about this stuff called snow right and god has dandruff you You know, we've heard about that, but it's a weird concept. But anyway, so during that time, they're already worshiping that. They're looking to it, but there's something else that happened. They are worshiping something called the Saturnalia. In Virgil's Aeneid, book eight, they talk about this belief. Okay, Saturn is known in Greek as

Kronos, and he is the king of the Titans, right? And the Titans were overthrown by the Olympian gods led by Zeus or Jupiter. But the Romans said that during the great war between the Olympians and the Titans, the Titans ran to Italy and were hidden away. As a friend of mine said, the first witness protection program, the Titan gods under Saturn went to Italy, and that's where they were hidden. They were latent. And according to Virgil, that's why the original name of Italy is Latium, because the gods were hidden. And during that period, when Saturn rolled Italy, it was the golden age when God and man were close, man and nature. Everything was wonderful.

But eventually that golden age gave way to the silver and the bronze and the iron age, and it was lost. But during the time of Jesus, Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, every year during that same time, around the time of Sol Invictus, they worshipped the Saturnalia. It was sort of a topsy-turvy, Mardi Gras kind of festival where everything was turned and the rich would dress as poor and poor would dress. People would cross-dress, not because they were trans. It had nothing to do with that. It's a time of topsy-turvy. It's a return to innocence, to a childlike wonder. Well, these two celebrations kind of come together at that time.

And what better time to celebrate the true birth of the Son of God, the true Saturnalia, the return. And, you know, Sean, I understand why they do it. But I don't like when you go to a good Baptist church and you have a Christmas celebration. They've always got to spend time talking about the crucifixion. Okay, now, the crucifixion is important. Okay, we need it for our salvation. But let's just stop and understand that Christmas, let's enjoy it for what it is. It is a momentary return of incense.

It's like Eden is reborn. Mary is the new Eve. Jesus is the new Adam. Everything is reborn. Mary's the new Eve. Jesus is the new Adam. Everything is reborn. And the pagans understood that, the need for a return to innocence. And so I think that Constantine and the early church were right. Let's put it at that time. They're already celebrating. Now, I just should say, just in fairness, that there are some Christian scholars who have made the argument that December 25th was actually an old church calendar. I'm not sure if I buy this, but let me just explain it because I think it's important. Now, most people would say they chose December 25th as Christmas, and then they just work nine months backward to March 25th, which is the

Annunciation. But there are some Christian theologians that have argued with some evidence that actually March 25th for the Annunciation is an ancient date, because a lot of times there was the belief that a saint, his birthday and his death day were the same day. So maybe Jesus was born, and we don't say birthday, but we say the incarnation, because that's the real beginning. It might make sense that the incarnation would be at the same, the Annunciation would be at the same time as Jesus's death. And there have been a few years where Good Friday fell on March 25th, where Good Friday, it happened just a few years ago, Good Friday fell on March 25th. It happened just a few years ago. Good Friday and Annunciation.

And it happened back in the 17th century because John Donne wrote a great poem about the Annunciation and Good Friday falling on the same day. So if they're right about that, then they originally chose March 25th through the Annunciation. And by the way, you know what else happened

on March 25th, Sean? The destruction of Mordor happened on March 25th through the Annunciation. And by the way, you know what else happened on March 25th, Sean? The destruction of Mordor happened on March 25th. Okay. That's purposely, you know, the very Catholic token. Interesting. That on the same day. Very interesting. So it's March 25th, even though that makes no sense, really, in terms of calendars, whatever.

But it's March 25th, according to Tolkien. That's fascinating. If that's true, then some people are arguing, they just counted nine months ahead to get December 25th. But I I'm skeptical. I mean, if December 20th, you know, it does get cold. It does get cold in the middle East too. And I just don't imagine the shepherds out on the Hill on December 25th. Um, but yeah, that's, that's an argument that I've, I've heard a number of scholars making that if the shepherds are out in the field this wasn't happening in December probably in spring when he was born bottom line is we don't know exactly when he was he was born but there's no reason to think that they were copying these

pagan traditions right just because it was on that day now let me ask you here's a great question uh by the way from stealth 797. I going to throw it up on the screen here. And he says, I guess the big question is, where do we draw the line when it comes to integrating pagan traditions into Christianity? Right. We have to use our discernment. We need to use the Bible. We have got to be careful. I mean, the best example of this is people even today that want to say Jesus was someone who achieved Buddha consciousness. OK, OK. These are people who want to do away with the incarnation. Jesus is not fully God and fully man. He is the son of God, but only in the sense that all of us can become the son of God through meditation and all that

sort of stuff. Right. You probably know this, that if you ask a Jew or a Muslim, was Jesus the son of God, they will say, God has no son, because God is absolutely transcendent, and they might even kill you, okay? That's right. But if you ask a Hindu or a Buddhist or a New Ager, was Jesus the son of God, they'll say, well, yeah, I believe Jesus was the son of God, but so was Buddha, so was Gandhi, so were all of us if we only know. So, again, we have to draw the line there. Jesus is, okay, with the exception of the modern day Muslims, Jews are the most radical monotheists of all time, right? So Jesus was either the son of

God or the worst blasphemer of all time. We can't play this game and turn Jesus into someone with the Buddha consciousness, right? Either he was the worst blasphemer who ever lived, right? A lot of people don't know, by the way, a lot of people don't know, Sean, that Jesus didn't use the phrase liar, lunatic, or Lord. Your dad did that because he's a good American. After Lewis did, certainly Lewis did, and others even before Lewis. Yeah. The concept of calling it liar, Lewis uses a different word,, and others even before Lewis. Yeah. The concept of calling it – Lewis uses different words, but it's the same argument. And it goes back to Chesterton and others as well.

Sure. You know, maybe a good way to put it is that in like Catholicism, we get Christianity with a few other things that will make links to the pagans. But in Islam, we get Christianity minus the incarnation, minus the Trinity, minus the atonement, and ultimately minus the resurrection. In other words, minus everything that is unique about Christian theology. So if what we're doing is watering down Christian theology until it no longer has the distinction of Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection, then we're watering down the gospel. But if we're finding a bridge that will present those things, the incarnation, the Trinity, as the ultimate fulfillment of pagan yearnings, then I think we're on the right track. That's fair. That makes a lot of sense. Let me ask you if you would put it this way.

There's a few comments on the side about Christmas trees and are they pagan and should Christians use Christmas trees trees i read an article on live science and i don't know for sure if live science got this right but i'd assume they're a pretty reliable source they said it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter now for me even if i that, it's not going to bother me to practice that as a Christian because we teach our kids and our family what Christianity is about. We're filtering all of these cultural practices through the lens of what the gospel is. of it and don't tell my kids, hey, Christmas is a pagan holiday, teach them what it is with discernment, then it wouldn't bother me any more than having non-Christian music, for example, or movies, but watching them with discernment and care. Is that how you think about it?

Or would you add or take anything away? I mean, there's something about Christmas that just hallows things. I mean, even the most secular Christmas song can still draw you into the spirit of Christmas. It's amazing, right? I mean, it's, you know, half of the secular songs were written by a guy named Johnny Marks, who was Jewish, secular Jewish, right? And he's the one that did all the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, all those songs tied to the Rudolph thing. And yet there's a magic to those songs because they're all pointing towards the greatest, what C.S. Lewis called the grand miracle, the incarnation. So, yes, I think it's right.

The Christmas tree ultimately comes from the German side. It was brought in by, you know, Victoria and Albert. Queen Victoria, Albert was from Germany. And it may even go back to the Druids. The idea of the Yule log is a very Druid idea as well. But it's okay, right? Some people even say that Easter, the name Easter comes from Istra, which is Istra or Isis, right? But it's okay as long as we understand that these pagan yearnings found their true and historical

fulfillment in the actual incarnate Christ who died and rose again. You know, look, Sean, I understand theoretically that if you teach your kids about Santa Claus, when they get older and realize there's no Santa Claus, then they'll say, you must have lied to me about Jesus, too. I understand that's theoretically possible. I've never met anybody that that happened to. Maybe you have. I mean, you know, it's first of all, if we're teaching about Santa Claus, the spirit of giving. Right.

And we're thinking about the Magi who gave gifts. We're thinking about God who gave the gift of his son. If we think about the historical St. Nicholas, who in one story gave all of his money to these girls to pay their dowry so they could become nuns and not be married off to people that to pagans they didn't want to marry i mean there there are you know even in santa claus there is a background that is very powerfully christian and so i don't think we need to be afraid of it we need to be more afraid that we as Christians are giving in to the materialism of Christmas. That's a fair concern. We're not guilty of giving in to the good paganism. We're more guilty of giving in to the modern.

It's almost like it's our American duty to spend more money than we have on Black Friday to save the economy and shower our kids with things they don't need. In other words, let's look for where the real trap is the real trap is in modern materialism not in the pagan elements that are there that's fair i appreciate that if you don't mind let me ask you this last question came from uh uh stealth 797 he's asking the question right and i'll give you a chance to kind of sum up what your response might be here and then we'll respect your time and wrap up. But he asked it, he says, so as long as Christian theology isn't watered down, it's okay to

integrate pagan tradition. Okay. It's, you know what a better way to talk about this is? Okay. You know what a better way to talk about this is? Okay, let's say you grew up in a Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist home. And then you become a Christian. I don't think you have to throw away absolutely everything of your cultural baggage that you grew up with. I think there are some things in your culture that have something of the divine to it may have even been that that led you to Christ I don't think we have to throw

that away I think we can reach on and latch on to the good stuff of our culture that again can be taken up in to, right? That's great. Like I said, if you're Chinese and become a Christian, the remembrance of the ancestors, I think that's a very Christian thing, first of all, because honor thy father and mother is the first commandment that comes with a promise, right? I don't think we have to throw that away, but we need to remember we do have a touchstone, a measuring rod. We do have scripture to tell us when we've gone too far and watered down the faith. But if we're taking something in our culture that's meaningful and that speaks to our desire for the God who became flesh, then I think it's okay, right? We can

have our imagination baptized, to use a C.S. Lewis phrase. I love that. That's awesome. I've got one more question for you about your book. Some people are asking, what's in your book? What's it about? How can they use it? So I want to come back to that, but want to remind everybody first, if you are new to the channel, make sure you hit subscribe because we have some other interviews coming up with people like J.P. Morelandland we'll be doing a behind the scenes interview on the people that have shaped his life the experiences the struggles that he's had you have michael behe coming on soon to talk about intelligent design and i have a christian and a mormon who will come on and we'll be discussing very soon what do mormons really believe about jesus and

the afterlife and the scriptures? So make sure you hit subscribe because this is brought to you by Biola Apologetics. Last question, people are asking Dr. Marcos about your book, which we've been talking about, The Myth Made Fact, and this isn't focused just on Christmas. Tell people who are interested in getting it what they could expect if they pick up your book. Okay, in this book, I retell 50 myths and then they're broken into all different categories. But for everyone, first, I retell the myth in my own words as if I'm a storyteller. Because you can't just go on Wikipedia. These are stories that need to be read out loud. Read them out loud to your kids. Read them out loud to yourself. Then I follow with a thorough sort of

interpretation of the meaning of the myth and the Christian meaning of the myth. Then I offer a whole bunch of study questions, but these are not simple yes-no questions. These are questions that are going to take you deep into these stories and get you to wrestle with them so that I hope a lot of people will read this book devotionally. One chapter, morning, nighttime, read it devotionally. Then I have all sorts of notes linking it to scripture verses, and filling in historical background. Now, who's this book is for? First of all, it's definitely for classical Christian schools and homeschoolers, but it's also for Sunday school classes, where you have a book, you want to discuss it, you read it together. I've got enough study questions for anybody from a child all the way to a professor, anybody, like a book study group,

just a regular book study group. It's a one-shop thing. So it's a book, but it's also a textbook that teachers can use. And classical academic press pulled out all the stops. They spent a lot of money on this to make a beautiful book with color photos on the side and hardcover. And it's just, it's beautiful. In fact, my original version of the book was only 60,000 words. They said, we want twice as much. Publishers never tell you that, Sean.

No, they don't. They wanted me to get all the study questions and all the Bible verses and all of that stuff. And the way I did it, how did I double my book? I thought back to all the interviews I've done and speeches I've given like this. And I thought about the Q&A sessions at the end of my speeches. And I kind of on that, I put all the kinds of questions that I remember people helping asking and how you can interact and all. So this is something for any age, really, from little kids all the way up to adults.

And it can be read to them or they can read it. And it's a way of bringing them back into the myths, bringing them back into the story to help us understand what it means to be part of God's story. Lou, I love it. There's two big compliments I want to give you because you remind me of my dad. Number one, you just got enthusiasm and energy, which I love.

And second, you dress sharp. My dad doesn't wear a bow tie, but unique and different. A whole bunch of comments are like, man, we just love the way this guy dresses. And they weren't talking about me. They were talking about you. So thanks so much for coming on.

Really appreciate it. Last thing I'll say while you're with us, this channel is actually sponsored by Biola Apologetics. If you have ever thought about coming and getting a graduate's green apologetics, and I know you guys do this at Houston Baptist in your apologetics program, Lou, but we just are starting this semester fully entirely online. So we used to have students come out for a weekend or for a couple weeks now you can do it 100 online if you have an undergraduate degree you want to study the resurrection problem of evil reliability scriptures cultural apologetics there's information below or

if you thought i'm not ready for a master's but would like a certificate program we have videos and exercises we'll send you and just kind of walk you through a formal study of apologetics there's a big time discount uh below so thanks everybody for joining us don't forget to hit the subscription and the notification bell dr marcos don't take off yet but to the rest of you uh thanks for great questions and a wonderful interaction looking forward to seeing everybody soon our next live stream so thanks for joining us merry christmas to everyone