The Sean McDowell Show - Reacting to Wesley Huff on Joe Rogan

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Wesley Huff was recently on the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the largest podcasts in the world. He is a Christian apologist, public speaker, and current Central Canada Director for Apologetics Canada. Today, I discuss the podcast and give my insight on some of what they talked about. Check out the full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwyAX69xG1Q See the Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7ngjtT43-4 *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/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Mega podcaster Joe Rogan has on a Christian apologist. They talk about ancient manuscripts, intelligent design, and the identity of Jesus. Well, since I'm a Christian apologist, I've had friends texting me and commenting on social media. What do I think about it? Well, here it is. So I'm gonna give you the quick backstory,

one insight about this, and then we have about, I don't know, six or eight video clips from the interview and some TikTok videos that I'm just to choose to comment on as we go so quick backstory wesley huff is a canadian apologist and he was invited on to have a conversation with a self-proclaimed bible scholar billy carson well they went on the show and to make a long story short, you should watch the entire engagement yourself. But Wesley Hupp very graciously, but very firmly showed that so many things Billy has claimed about the Bible is blatantly false. Now, Billy had a huge YouTube channel, huge following.

And after that discussion, actually tried to sue Wesley who's in Canada, so it wasn't going to do any good to do that, preventing him from letting it come out. Now, Billy had been on the Joe Rogan podcast. And so I think that's one reason why after this blew up and people started talking about it, that Joe invited on Wesley. They had a three hour plus conversation and I'd encourage you to watch all of it. If you don't watch all of it, watch the last, say, 45 minutes or so at least. Now, one takeaway for me before we jump in. As far as I'm aware, Wesley was not out actively trying to get on the Joe Rogan podcast. You know what he was doing? He was doing good scholarship. He was defending the faith. He was day by day being faithful in the task that God had given him. And then this opportunity arose. Our job as apologists

or anybody in life as a Christian, a follower of Jesus, it's just to be faithful. And then God may sovereignly bring opportunities. If that's the case, will we be ready like Wesley clearly was when those opportunities arise? All right, here's my reaction to some of the content in this exchange with Joe Rogan. Listen, I like Bill. He was a nice guy. I really enjoy talking to him.

I really do. I think his videos are fun, but I also think truth is important. I had no problem with him as an individual. He just needs to course correct. Yeah. Yeah. Course correct and recognize what you know and what you don't know. I've got to point this out. We are told so often that we live in a post-truth culture, that truth doesn't matter anymore. Joe Rogan is exactly right. He's like, this guy is entertaining. This person, you know, is interesting, but truth matters. And you know what? Nobody watching this, whether you take Joe's side, Billy's side, or Wesley's side, says, you know what? I disagree.

Truth doesn't matter. We know it intuitively because we live in God's world and we're made in God's image. We know that truth matters. So don't let anybody tell you truth isn't important. We live in a post-truth culture. I don't fully buy it. This points out, and Joe said it clearly, truth matters and in fact trumps all. Here's a clip on the oldest extant New Testament manuscript from the Gospel of John. So this guy is P52, John Rylands 457. So that's a genuine Egyptian papyri that I made. I cut it out for you, and then I transcribed the text on that manuscript. So when we're talking about what is potentially our oldest evidence for the New Testament, this manuscript that most likely comes from Oxyrhynchus Egypt is the one that usually is universally accepted as our oldest one. And that contains John 18,

where Jesus is on trial before Pilate. And yeah, so that's the one that's in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. So this is a copy of that exactly this is exactly what it looks like now maybe it's just the apologetics nerd me but i got goosebumps when i first saw and heard this i was like here's one of the largest podcast platforms in the world and we have a christian apologist showing a credit card size portion of probably the earliest physical copy of the New Testament of the Bible, P52. Now what's amazing about this, and Wes goes on to explain, that when you compare this with other physical manuscripts that we have, it's so much earlier than many other books that people don't question, and it put to rest, to rest because probably i mean some scholars will date it between 100 and 200 a.d some will go a little earlier into the middle of the first century but bottom line it's just a second century document most likely a portion of it which pushes back the

gospel john much earlier than critics used to claim. Here's a remarkable conversation on the Great Isaiah Scroll. So when you say the book of Isaiah is intact, how similar is it to the book of Isaiah that's in the Bible? So that one is fascinating. So this isn't true for all of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but when we discovered the Great Isaiah Scroll, previous to that, the earliest copy of Isaiah that we had was in the Masoretic Text, which is in the Middle Ages.

Whoa. Yeah, so it was literally a thousand years. We literally pushed back our understanding of Isaiah a thousand years. And the thing that really shocked scholars, like I said, this isn't true for all the Dead Sea Scrolls, but one of the things that shocked them about Isaiah was that it was word for word identical to the Masoretic text. Word for word. Word for word.

Wow. Huge points for Joe Rogan and his enthusiasm. I love his wows, by the way. Now I've actually been to Israel and I've climbed up the side of kind of the mountain and the big hills and walked into where the great Isaiah scroll was discovered. And this is a common point that apologists have been making for a while, that it's not true of all the documents that were found in the Dead Sea, and this is for different reasons.

But from the Masoretic text to the time this was written, about a thousand years of hand written copying, it's virtually identical. Later on, what's fascinating is Joe Rogan comes back and he basically calls that a miracle. And I think he's onto something. I think it's because God implanted into the minds of the Jewish people such a reverence and care for scriptures that they copied it letter by letter from generation to generation and just preserved it with such clarity. Now, one reason Isaiah matters so much is because Isaiah is cited so often, whether it's Isaiah 7 with a virgin birth, whether it's Isaiah 53 with the death of the Messiah in the New Testament. That's in particular also why this is so important and clearly predates the time of the Gospels,

which means this wasn't invented and written in terms of prophecies after the Gospels themselves. Here's a fascinating clip and my thoughts on Jordan Peterson. I have this love-hate relationship with all of Peterson's stuff because he seems to get so much right where he walks up to the line, but he doesn't want to cross over. And is the crossover, you think,

connected to a life in academia? No. What do you think it is? I wonder, and I'd love to talk to him about this, how do you remedy this issue? Because he seems to think that the concept of Jesus as an example is more important than the actual flesh and blood, first century itinerant Jewish preacher

who was crucified and rose from the dead physically, which is the claim of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, that that's an example for us to look on and live by. But I actually think that Jesus condemns moralism. And ultimately what I see Peterson doing is looking at Jesus as a moral example. And if Jesus is nothing but a moral example, then you can save yourself and you don't actually need a savior. Wesley Huff is exactly right about this. I just did an in-depth review of We Who Wrestle With God, the new 500 plus page book by Jordan Peterson. That was basically my takeaway,

that he loves the scriptures, loves the gospels. These are examples we can learn from. But if I told you there's a story of say, George Washington cutting down the cherry tree, how much power does that story have if it's fiction? Not the same kind of power if it's true. The Christian account is that this is not just a fictional story that we moralistically learn from, but that it's actually true in history. And in fact the moral lessons and the theological message of Jesus only make sense and are only true if these facts are true.

That's in part why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus is not risen, our faith is in vain. So I too would love to have this conversation with Jordan Peterson if he ever would be up for it. There's a great exchange on the resurrection of Jesus. So how do you fact check someone coming back from the dead? Well, if you, how many people saw his body, right? Well, Paul says that 400 people saw him all at once. 400 people saw the crucifixion? No, saw the resurrected Jesus. Yeah. First Corinthians 15, Paul says that Jesus appeared to the disciples and then he appeared to 400 people all at once. I mean, if we read the Gospel of Luke and Acts, the same author wrote these both documents,

he says that Jesus was walking around teaching them for 40 days after he was resurrected from the dead. And so these are written within a time period when you have people who would have seen Jesus' ministry, who were there, say, at something like the feeding of the 5,000, who could have been able to verify or debunk some of these things that are being said. And you go from a bunch of scared guys who, because Jesus wasn't the only messianic figure who arose and claimed to be the Messiah right there were a number of

individuals both prior to and after Jesus but they die and the movement dies with them I've seen a few people lose their mind ago Wes he doesn't know what he's talking like he says 400 if you go to 1 Corinthians 15, it's 500. Can you give the guy some slack? Cut him some slack. My goodness. He's on over three hours on one of the biggest platforms in the world. Then he said, Wes, I think you mean 500. He'd say, of course. If you're picking on Wes for this, you are straining a gnat, but swallowing a camel to quote Jesus. Wes is exactly right to address Joe's question, how do we fact check the resurrection?

Well, you fact check it the same way you do any other event in history, 2000 days ago, 2000 years ago. You look at the quality of evidence, internal, external, and you assess it and the quantity of evidence and the evidence for Jesus dying, rising on the third day and appearing to people is compelling. And Wes is right to point towards many of these things happening in public places. So people could confirm or deny them. And

interesting in the first message in Acts at Pentecost. Paul taught amazingly in the first message at Pentecost. Peter talks about the resurrection of Jesus and says these things you know to his audience, that they're in public and know these things are true. That's remarkable. Let's look at another clip. In fact, the ancient world didn't really have a problem with supernatural events. There is an ancient writer who mocks Christianity, and he particularly mocks Christianity in saying that, of course, Jesus did miracles because Jesus had a childhood in Egypt. And he goes, all those Egyptians are magicians anyways.

So he just learned the magic when he was a child. So he actually confirms, incidentally, two things that the narrative in the gospels where it says that the holy family fled to Egypt during the reign of Herod, he corroborates that he actually thinks that happened and that Jesus did miracles. He just attributes the miracles to Jesus being a traveling magician anyways. And, you know, anybody who lived in Egypt knows some magic. That is what's really fascinating that the mindset of the people that lived back then was that whatever was going on in Egypt was so crazy that they had to be magicians. Yeah. See, Wes is right about this. There is historically no early account of a non-miracle working Jesus. It's consistent. It's early. It's woven into all of his messages, which is why the

first challenges, including from religious leaders and later by certain Jews, as you got into kind of the mission, the Talmud era was not to deny that Jesus had supernatural powers, but to attribute it to other factors. Now, Joe Rogan pushes back and says things like, wait a minute, if they just accepted the supernatural, then how do we know we can trust these accounts? The point that Wes was making is that they didn't have this, there weren't like a bunch of naturalists running around and supernaturalists running around.

The supernatural was woven into the world as they saw it. They believed the world was enchanted and everything wasn't just what you could touch, taste, and feel. But that doesn't mean they just believed any miracle claims at all. In fact, the miracles were specifically done by Jesus to show the people that he had authority to speak. Raises the paralytic. And what does he say? This is done so that you may know. Heals the blind. Heals leprosy.

Walks on water. Rises from the dead. Now they believed in supernatural, but clearly even then people knew that if you died, you stayed dead. So don't confuse the majority or almost all of people believing in the supernatural to people just being gullible wesley pointed that out well one of my favorite clips from the whole interview the miracle of the big bang take a look terence mckenna had a great line that said that um science requires one miracle the big bang yeah it requires it requires

a miracle well i always say that when people ask me about you know the miracles in the bible and i say well you know if the first miracle happened if everything you know nothing became everything then you know jesus turning water into wine that's a easy one well yeah that's a party trick yeah exactly it really is nothing compared to the birth of the universe but we're we're convinced at the creation of the universe and we're very skeptical at other miracles yeah very odd oh man again i got goosebumps when i saw this i think joe rogan is right he just to say wait a minute kind of something from nothing a cosmic beginning points to a supernatural cause and wes pointed that out and wes is exactly right if god can

speak the universe into existence then walking on water feeding the five thousand even stories like a donkey talking in the old testament or jonah being a whale for three days is easy, so to speak. It's candy for God to do. Now, I actually think that's not the only miracle science requires. You could say life from non-life, given how complex and intricate life is, requires a miracle. You could say things like consciousness from just inorganic matter also requires a miracle. You could point to certain things like near-death experiences and people having a flat line with their heart. Coming back and knowing things they could not have known in that physical state is also akin to a miracle. So I think Rogan is right. I just don't think it's the only miracle. In fact, the more we look at a science, origin of life,

philosophy, consciousness, I think we see evidence for even other miracles in nature, not even to mention the evidence for the miracles of Jesus. Here's a question I love because it was right on the root of my academic research on the crucifixion of Peter. In fact, maybe even upside down crucifixion of Peter. Who was it that got crucified upside down? Peter. Why? Was it because like regular crucifixion wasn't good enough for him? Or what was it? He didn't deserve it because Christ had gone through it? Well, the story is that they say we're going to crucify you. And he says, it's like too big of an honor to die like my Lord. And they say, well, we can fix that. I appreciate that Wes says, here's the story about the upside down crucifixion of Peter.

Now, look, there's a lot of stuff Wes says about the enuma, a lish, and some of these manuscripts and languages that is outside of my expertise. But this is my lane, having written an academic book on it and finishing up a 10-year update. The first account of Peter being crucified upside down shows up at the end of the second century in a document called the Acts of Peter. It's an apocryphal account full of many just kind of miracle claims that are clearly grandiose that we know are not meant to be taken historical now what actually happens is when peter's crucified upside down if you look at it theologically the story is more indicating that the world has been turned upside down and peter sees it clearly upside down and its crucifixion will help turn the world right side back up. It's later on that

certain church historians start picking this up as historical and claiming it. I don't think the evidence is good that Peter was crucified upside down. It's possible it happened at times. In fact, I actually think Peter probably wasn't crucified. Now, he almost certainly died as a martyr. I think we have as high historical confidence as you can have for an event 2,000 years ago. There's at least 10 sources in the first and second century that point towards the martyrdom of Peter. But what's interesting at the end of the gospel of John, it refers to Jesus says to Peter, he says, you'll be taken where you do not want to go. And kind of the author of John says this was to indicate the way that he would die. Specifically to his hands

refers to him being clothed. Well, it didn't occur to me when I first did my research that in crucifixion, the vast majority of people were unclothed to be shamed publicly. So yes, he died as a martyr, but probably was killed in another fashion than being crucified, let alone crucified upside down. What do you think of Jesus? Well, it certainly seems like there's a lot of people that believe that there was this very exceptional human being that existed. So the question is, what does that mean? Does it mean he was the son of God? Does it mean he was just some completely unique human being that had this vision of humanity and this way of spreading this ideology that would ultimately change the way human beings interact with each other forever is is he the son of god well are we all that's

another question but you have to submit to this concept that this guy was the child of god who came down to earth let himself be crucified came back from the dead explained a bunch of stuff for people and then said all right see you when i back. If we get to a point where artificial reality is indiscernible from regular reality, and Jesus chooses to come back at that moment, boy, that's the ultimate test of faith. I'm pretty sure when Jesus does come back, artificial intelligence aside, he'll find a way to let us know that it's him for real. With that said, I really love when and how Wes asked this question. He came on the Joe Rogan podcast, and instead of getting too quickly, hey, here's who Jesus is, and pushing Jesus at every turn, he played by the game of what Joe wants his guests to do.

He listened. He was conversational. He answered questions. He didn't force things. And then after he had developed some rapport and they had talked about a lot of things, he just asked him the most important question that Jesus asked in a sense, who do you say that I am? And he just asked, didn't cut him off, didn't jump in quickly to correct him. He just said, who do you say that I am? And he just asked, didn't cut him off, didn't jump in quickly to correct him. He just said, who do you think is Jesus? Now, of course, I differ with Joe's conclusion on this. What's amazing is he gets it on the level of like, we have to kind of submit ourselves. We have to have faith. We have to trust this story about Jesus who lived, who was crucified, and rose again. Wes, great job. I am super proud of you. You carried yourself well as an ambassador of Christ. You asked great questions.

This was a pretty remarkable thing, and I hope it's just the beginning in your life and ministry. Hey, if you watch this, let me know if this is helpful. I don't do a ton of larger react videos to events that take place kind of in culture, but this felt like one I had to weigh in on. But I'd love to know if you want me to do videos, 10, 12, 15 minute long videos when things on apologetics and culture and worldview happen, kind of film my responses to them. If that'd be helpful, let me know below and make sure you hit subscribe. We'll see you next time.