The Sean McDowell Show - The Extraordinary Life of John Lennox: His Story

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Dr. John Lennox has lived one of the most remarkable lives in modern Christian thought. From sitting in on CS Lewis's final lectures at Cambridge in 1962, earning his PhD and teaching at Oxford as Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, debating Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and authoring best-selling books on faith, science, suffering, AI, and Revelation. In this conversation, Dr. Lennox joins me to discuss his new autobiography, My Story. We talk about his encounter with CS Lewis, what he considers the hardest objection to Christianity (suffering and evil), and how his mind is increasingly filled with the hope of heaven. READ: My Story: A spiritual and intellectual autobiography by John C. Lennox (https://a.co/d/0acz3D0D) *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://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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and you talk about how being an academic, being a mathematician, is a way of honoring and serving the Lord. You've also gone beyond that. You're also an apologist and an evangelist. The logic of the truth of Christianity really spoke to me and said, you cannot keep this to yourself. You need to articulate this. I tried as a young person, as a teacher.

teenager to begin to share my faith. My experience of people being angry showed me that they'd lost the plot if you cannot discuss reasonably and in a friendly fashion. The Lord was only tough on people who were bigoted. With all others, he was just so gracious. He never compromised truth. Meeting C.S. Lewis. Debating leading atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, studying at Cambridge and teaching at Oxford, many best-selling books. Dr. John Lennox, you have lived a truly remarkable and fascinating life, which you chronicle in your new autobiography My Story. First off, thanks for coming on the show again and sharing about your life.

That's a pleasure to be with you again. Before we get to your story, I have to start with your encounter with C.S. Lewis. What was that encounter like and how much did he and his writings influence your life? It was a remarkable encounter, really, in the sense that it was one of his final lectures in 1962 in a very cold winter. And I knew that he was still in Cambridge at the time, and I discovered he was lecturing. and even better I discovered he was lecturing very near to the Mathematics Institute. So I went to hear several of his final series of lectures that he ever gave on the English poet John Dunn. And what I remember of it, which I've reenacted in my film Against the Tide,

is that it was freezing cold. The place was packed. and Lewis, a big chap, came in at exactly the right time and he was wearing a heavy coat and a big long scarf and a hat. And he started lecturing the moment he came through the door. I hadn't seen this before, but he did. And he kept lecturing as he wound his way among the students who were sitting all over the floor.

And gradually unwound the scarf, discarded his coat and his hat so that by the time he was firmly standing at the podium, you'd had four or five minutes of a brilliant lecture. And then after 50 minutes, he reversed the process. He kept lecturing as he put on his coat, wound up his scarf, put on his hat, and his last words were perfectly timed to be uttered at exactly the time he disappeared out through the double door. so there was no Q&A. That is fascinating. Now, of all figures that you discuss,

how central was his writings to you and your worldview? It was very important to me because Lewis was someone I found crystal sharp in his logic. And to have that kind of mind applied to basic Christianity, I found inordinately helpful. Secondly, he had not been brought up in a Christian environment as I had, and I still have no idea what it's like to be an unbeliever and an adult. So he was my guide into what it was like to be an adult and an atheist. And his development that is thinking, I followed very carefully. and found that immensely helpful.

Then another aspect of it was, although Lewis was in the humanities and confessed he wasn't much of mathematician, he had a good sense of how geometry worked, and he had a very good sense of what we would now call the philosophy of science, and better than many scientists, I know, I'm afraid. And so he could disentanglement

the worldview commitments that lay behind many pronouncements. And that I found greatly helpful at a stage when I was growing up and trying to fit various things into place, like where did mathematics fit into science? And where did science fit into our understanding of the world out there? These were all to become very important fields of thought for me. So Lewis was, was crucial and he was able also to use geometry and novel ways to illustrate some basic Christian doctrines in a very understandable way. But most of all, Sean, I think what I owe to him is a standard of clarity of logical thought and I suppose one should add his what has been called thoroughgoing supernaturalism. He grasped that Christianity had a supernatural dimension,

without which it completely fell apart. And I could see that that was right. So he helped me a lot to settle in me at a very early age, a deep conviction that Christianity was true. And that, of course, puts it in a very different league. It's not just a collection of wise sayings and good advice. It's a true message and it gives us a true analysis of the world in which we live. So Lewis was very important for me. We're going to come back to some of your reasons why you're Christian, but let's go back kind of where you start in the book. Some of the early experiences in Northern Ireland, what were some of those key experiences? And how do they shape your life and shape your faith? Well, they were key experiences.

experiences because I grew up and what I discovered later was quite an unusual family, Christian, evangelical, but not sectarian. And that was an unusual thing. My father insisted on employing across the divided community, and it was divided. It ended up in violence, most of which happened after I left the country. But it was getting hot enough for me to ask him on one occasion why he risked this employing both Catholics and Protestants. And he said something that left a deep mark. He said, scripture, Genesis 1, first page of the Bible, teaches me that all people, whatever their worldview, are made in the image of God. And I intend to treat them like that. Well, that was a deep lesson in how.

not to be sectarian and I've tried to practice that the rest of my life. Secondly, he loved us children enough not to impose his strong Christian views on us without discussing them with us. He was very keen on discussion and opened my mind and that of my siblings to the wonder of the biblical world as a very open kind of thing, getting me into ancient history of Egypt and Babylon and Medo-Persia and also discussing the big ideas. And he introduced me to other worldviews like Marxism and so on and told me I needed to understand what other people thought. So it was quite remarkable. And that was an immensely valuable foundation for someone who would end up most of his life at the academy. Do you have any sense of what motivated him to parent that way, was just a confidence

in the truth? Like, where did that desire come from? Because my dad parented us very similarly, believes Christianity passionately, but would always make us think about two sides of an issue. And Sean, read the other side. And he parented similarly. For him, that came from a deep conviction that Christianity is true. Why did your father parent you and your siblings that way? I think it was similar. But one of the other driving factors was that his father had not allowed him to gain a higher education.

and he would love to have done that. And I think when he observed that I had the kind of ability that would lead me into a higher education, he decided that he would give me the chance. And to a certain extent, bless him, I believed he lived through me and often visited me in Cambridge and asked to meet my friends

and ask them all kinds of questions so that there was a deep. desire in his heart. He wasn't really cut out to run a business even though it was quite small. He would tend to sit in his room reading all kinds of books, particularly Christian books, but not only. And as I got more and more deeply into that, he would ask me what books to read, and we would discuss them. He was very humble in that sense. And I think how should shall I put it. He was a frustrated academic for most of his life. You described pretty early in the book of being convinced early on that Christianity was true.

So you have a father talking with you, having you read multiple sides and not kind of forcing, so to speak, this on you. What convinced you that Christianity was true? What was that journey kind of like? And have you ever looked back and second guessed that Christian commitment? it. Well, I've spent my life looking back and second-guessing it, and mostly without looking back, because my conviction at Christianity is true has arisen because I've opened my life and mind and thinking and made it vulnerable to criticism from its opposites. And so very rapidly I got involved in that because of a very simple objection that I still meet, it's rather comical now, but when people say, okay, you're a Christian, well, what a surprise, all you Irish believe in God and you fight

about it. It's just genetics, that's all it is. And there's nothing more to it. Well, of course, I'm familiar with the philosophical superficial superficiality of that kind of argument. But But what it did for me was to say, now I've got an opportunity at university to meet people who were not brought up with the kind of background information or culture that I was. So let me start to expose my thinking to them and find out what they believe, why they believe it. And how does my worldview have answers to the questions that raised, and of course that, well, I say of course, but this net effect was to increase my confidence

in Christianity immeasurably because my newfound friends, and there were many of them, raised all kinds of questions, and I spent time researching these questions, so that even before I got to university, I must say, I'd read a lot of stuff on how to answer the big questions coming from all worldviews. And that prepared me to do my own study of these things in a living context with my contemporaries at Cambridge. You're an emeritus professor of, no problem, of mathematics at Oxford. What was the journey of becoming a mathematician and how do you see the intersection of math and faith?

Well, I started at school, got interested in maths and wanted to be various things at various times. First of all, I was interested in being a classic scholar because I liked Latin. And then I shifted and I wanted to study modern languages. And then I ended up with electronic engineering and got a very good scholarship to a local university to do that. But everything changed when my headmaster said to me that I might have a chance at Cambridge, but only if I switched to concentrate on maths because they couldn't teach at the necessary level in physics and chemistry that would be needed to do the natural sciences at Cambridge. And that's how I ended up doing maths at Cambridge and developed a mathematical career doing my undergraduate.

and PhD at Cambridge University doing research. So that all that time, of course, I was interested not only in mass, but the philosophy of mass, where does mass fit into the big picture? And I discovered very early on the conviction of pioneer scientists, like Galileo, I suppose, and then Kepler and then Newton, who are brilliant scientists, believers in God, but all of whom believed that mathematics was the key to all of this and was essentially, as I would now say, the language of God. That's quoting Francis Collins, actually, who said that and put it as the title of his book on the human genome. The point there being that, you know,

mentioned science or mathematics and faith, but I discovered a long time ago that faith is ubiquitous, that mathematicians are people of faith, not necessarily Christian faith, but they believe that the universe is mathematically intelligible. And I came across the statement by Albert Einstein, and that lived with me and still does, where he said, I cannot imagine a genuine scientist without that faith, by which he meant and explained, faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe. So I suddenly realized that everyone is a person of faith. The question is, what do they believe and why do they believe it? Is it evidence-based faith? Spring is full of special days. Easter, Mother's Day, graduation and Father's Day, and Crosswalk has made it

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universe. And of course, that took on a new dimension when the structure of DNA would have discovered that I found that biology is word-based as well, the longest word in chemical letters, of course, that we've ever discovered. So the notion of a word-based universe was well attested, both in scripture and in science. They fitted together like a glove on a hand. And And that gave me tremendous confidence in the biblical revelation and in the value of science. So I tend to emphasize very strongly, and I think I do it in my autobiography, that we shouldn't really be talking about science and faith. Faith is involved in science, belief in the intelligibility of the universe.

If you want to talk about science and something God related, you really should talk about science and theology to balance the thing out, because science is a set of intellectual disciplines as is theology. The nearest I allow myself to get to it is to say science and faith in God, or better still, faith in science and faith in God. What is the justification of the warrant for both of those? And that helps people to see that it is a nonsense to talk about Christians, as many do, led by Dawkins, as people of faith, meaning that they believe where there's no evidence, because that's their definition of faith.

That is absolutely false. It's obvious you love both math and you love the scriptures. but it seems like the love of math came to you somewhat naturally, but maybe not the love of scriptures in the same way. What I mean by that is you write being puzzled that if scripture was really inspired, this is years ago as a student, why did you not find it more interesting

than say math or philosophy of science? When you encountered and had that thought, who or what changed your mind to the point where your book before this one was a huge commentary on revelations. which somebody only writes if they have a certain level of love for the scriptures. Oh, that's absolutely right. It wasn't that I didn't love the scriptures. It was that I was trying to be honest about the effect scripture was having on me and realizing that one of the

fundamental things that Jesus claimed to his disciples was that if they loved him, he would reveal himself to them. And it was that experiential sense of God speaking through his word that began to exercise my mind. And that's when I began to realize that perhaps I needed help and guidance arrived in the form of my longtime mentor who's gone to glory now, Professor David Gooding, who at that stage of life, performed for me a very important function in that he showed me how scripture worked. And it was clear. It didn't take long to do that at the beginning.

This was something that was missing. And it was odd because my father saw it at the same time as I did. We were both learning together. And it was just a very important. opening of the door by someone who had penetrated further than I had into how scripture worked. And that's why I've ended up not simply writing on science and religion, but also actually writing books that expound scripture. And as you say, ending up with a massive book on the Book of Revelation, a very risky thing, of course, for a mathematician to do.

for sure well i'm amazed at how much you've written on intersection of say faith and work you've written on the book of daniel you've written on revelation science and faith just such a breadth artificial intelligence and this leads me on the next question is you're obviously an academic at the highest level trained at cambridge emeritus professor at oxford and you talk about how being an academic being a mathematician is a way of honoring and serving the Lord. But you've also gone beyond that. You're also an apologist and an evangelist. What experiences or thinking led you to not just be a mathematician,

as wonderful as that is, but also an apologist and evangelist? I think the simplest answer is that the logic of the truth of Christianity really spoke to me and said, you cannot keep this to yourself. You need to articulate this. And I could see that I don't know who it was said it. It may well have been F.F. Bruce and one of the books I read years ago, that the New Testament doesn't imagine or envisage a non-evangelizing silent Christian. And so I tried to, as a young person as a teenager, to begin to share my faith.

And there was a book I found very helpful in those days, how to give away your faith. And coupled with a couple more books, one of them, I think by the same author, know what you believe and know why you believe. and I began to try to sort this out in my own mind and share it with other people, particularly one-on-one. It was a long way from doing it in public, but it was my experience as a university student where I spent quite a bit of time sharing one-on-one or one-on-two or three, discussing as fellow students what we believe to be true. And it's a lot of, it's a very, gained traction. And when I saw that gaining traction and people began to be converted, not in big

numbers, but seeing people change their worldview was a remarkably important thing for me because it answered the old question. It's in the Irish genes. And therefore, you stay, you stay believing what you grew up to believe. Well, I discovered, no, you don't. You can be convinced of the truth of Christianity starting from any position whatsoever. And that was a very clear validation to me that this was a message for the world. I love you talk about the Irish genes. My mom was actually traveling through Ireland when they were married before they had kids and saw the name Sean as like if I have a son, I want to name him Sean. So there's that Irish built in my blood and built in my name. So I love here you do.

describing it that way. One of the ways that people would describe you is you're obviously brilliant. God has gifted you with such an amazing mind and you've used that for his kingdom, but you're just kind to people and you're gracious to people. And I'm wondering, is that a product of one of these or all these, like the environment, the culture you grew up and your family? Is it your understanding scripture? Is it your personality? Why do you choose to communicate the way that you communicate? Because any other way doesn't get through to people. And I had gracious parents, that's true. Not that they were never angry, but my experience of people being angry showed me that they'd lost the plot if you cannot discuss reasonably and in a friendly

fashion. But what is more? I noticed in scripture the way in which the Lord was only tough on people who were bigoted. And with all others, he was just so gracious. But what he was able to do was a huge challenge. He never compromised truth. And coming across the balance that Paul taught in Ephesians, speaking the truth in love. It seems to me that that was something really deliberately to aim at in private discussion, befriend people, listen to them. And all of those things that come with it, listen to others, and you learn a great deal about yourself as well as about them.

And of course, in the public debates, it was perfectly clear that when people lost their temper, they might as well have given up. very very true well there's some there's so many anecdotes in your book we obviously won't even remotely get to in this interview about being in rwanda and communist russia and poland and hungry i want to highlight a few just so people we can draw out some of these experiences that you've had but i also first want to ask you a question people ask me regularly they'll say what do you consider the toughest objection to christianity and how do you address it now you could probably give a three-hour lecture on it, perfectly timed like C.S. Lewis's lecture,

but I'm really just curious, what do you think is the hardest of Christian faith? And maybe just a few points you would make in response. Well, the hardest problem anybody faces, I think, any human being faces, is the problem of suffering and pain and all the things that surround that. and you can attach to that various consequences like a sense of meaninglessness, a sense of lack of purpose and so on. But the problem of suffering and pain, and it does demand a careful analysis, it demands something more, it demands sympathy and empathy, because it seems to me that we need to distinguish two perspectives on it.

The person is the pain and suffering of others. And people like that, and it's often many of us watching the TV news and seeing some awful atrocity, that's where a lot of intellectual questions come from, seeing suffering, and asking why doesn't God do something about it? But then there's the experience of the sufferer, the person that's going through it, they may not be in a position to even understand an intellectual response.

They want comfort, they want reassurance and so on. In other words, they need a pastoral response. And then if you stand back from the problem, you see that it is two sources. there is the suffering that people cause to one another, which we call moral evil, bombings and mutilations, atrocities, gangsters, and all the rest of it. But then there's the problem of pain, as Lewis called it, and that is tsunamis, earthquakes, cancers and all of that.

There are different sources, although they often intertwine with one another. So that what we face is a set of intellectual problems, a set of emotional problems and meaning problems, and at the heart of it lies suffering. Now, on the intellectual side, one notices that the solutions offered are not many. Atheism said it has solved it because there simply is no God and suffering proves it. But that, to my mind, an analysis proves to be very shallow. First of all, it doesn't make sense because atheists will, if they follow their logic carefully, as Dawkins is done, end up with the universe where there's no good and no evil. And then they call suffering evil.

So there's something double-think going on there. In other words, their atheism undermines the categories of good and evil, as the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky saw a long time ago. And he put that in his famous phrase, if there is no God, everything is permissible. That is, there's no rationale. There's no good and no evil. So atheism is an intellectual dead end, but also it doesn't remove the suffering. For some atheists, it appears to give them a ground for just pressing on and hoping that they'll gain something in this life because there's no future life in which any compensation could take place. So that needs to be analyzed, though.

But on the other hand, on the Christian side, we've something utterly unique. And that is, at the heart of the gospel, is a God who suffers in his son, Jesus. Christ. That's the claim. And I feel that that gives huge traction because it's not a simplistic answer, nor is it in one sense a philosophical answer in terms of principles and so on. It's an existential answer in terms of a God who in Jesus Christ goes to the cross and suffers. And that shows us, first of all, at the very most obvious level that God has not remained indifferent. Hi, everyone. If you've been injured in an accident that was not your fault, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions for free.

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may not be available in all states, not available in California. Who are human suffering, but has become part of it. And then what gives me hope is the fact that it wasn't left there. In fact, if it had been, we'd never have heard of Jesus Christ. But God raised them from the dead, and that's where the hope comes in. And that is, as I said before, that is something thoroughly supernatural. God raised Jesus from the dead, and death can never look the same.

And so we have to factor that in. So that's how I'd begin. But I've written quite a bit about this. And there's lots out there in cyberspace of me discussing it. It's interesting thinking of the United States and North America. I think I've done over 60 Veritas forums in most of the Ivy League and elsewhere. and the top topic by some distance has always been the problem of suffering. And one very memorable evening was spent at ground zero.

Not at ground zero. Looking at ground zero from Upper Manhattan, the steps of the library at Columbia University, where I was given for the first time, I believe, in its history, the opportunity to give a talk outside to the students assembled on the steps. And it is called, and you can get it on the Veritas website, the loud silence, where is God on 9-11? And that, I felt, was a unique opportunity

to at least bring some of the scriptures to bear. There are no simple answers. There are ragged edges and all the things. rest of it. So let me make the final point. People often argue and say it surely a good and all-powerful God would put a stop to this and he would do this and he would do that and we've argued that. But we've never really got anywhere with that argument. It goes round and round and round and round. Now I'm a mathematician and when we come to arguments like that that get nowhere, we tend to look at ourselves and say, are we asking the right questions?

And I think we may not be. So I have another question that's equally difficult, but it'll get you a lot further. And that is this, we all must face the fact that the world we look at presents a mixed picture. I call it beauty and barred wire or beauty and bombs. And everybody understands that. We all must face that. So my big question is this, granted that it's like that, is there any evidence anywhere that there is a God that we could trust with that? And I believe there is.

And the way to understand it is start with the cross of Christ and go to the resurrection and all Jesus promises about the future. Amen. I love that response that appeals to both the heart and appeals the mind. I haven't done 60s. That's correct. Yeah, I haven't done 60 Veritas, but this spring I was out, Kyle Pauly, San Luis Obispo, and the topic the students wanted for myself and an atheist was, why is there suffering and evil in the world? It really is the big question. Now, speaking of kind of dialogues on college campuses, I've got to ask you about the exchange with Richard Dawkins.

And a part I'm curious, do you know him? You're both at Oxford. Is there any backstory to the preparation, what's come following from it? Just tell us that story and kind of what happened, if you will. No, I'm afraid it's quite one-dimensional. I have not met him outside those debates. I had not met him before and I haven't met him since, although I made some effort to do so.

It's sad to my mind because in preparing for those debates, I had to do an enormous amount of work in trying to understand what he was saying and all the rest. of it. But outside the debates, no contact whatsoever. So I have nothing really to offer in that regard. And in that sense, what I would say is that everyone else that I've debated, I was able to interact with outside the debates and got really meaningful traction with every single one of them. I love that.

Well, no problem at all. I'm not fishing for anything that's not there. Well, there's nothing to, there's nothing to gain. And I appreciate the question. It's a perfectly warranted question. I'm sorry, I haven't got a better answer to it. No, the best answer is the truth, and that's the truth. So we will let it sit.

I'm perfectly happy with that. That's fine. That's fine. Let me ask about a few of the encounters that you, had. One was interestingly with a secular Jew on an academic visit to Israel. You kind of talk about what you learned, but also this case that you made for why you believe Jesus is the Messiah. What happened in that exchange? That's a bit more complicated in the sense that these were academic people. I met them first in Scotland at a mass conference. And they are

invited me to Israel where I had lots of discussion with them. I actually was a visiting professor at the top Orthodox University of Bariland just outside Tel Aviv, or within Tel Aviv, essentially, in Israel. And what I discovered there was they were extremely friendly, but really puzzled by someone like me, who was a non-Jew, but believed. the prophets. And that led to many, many discussions. But the start of that, the first interaction that led to it was over breakfast at the Mathematics Conference in Scotland. I was eating a pork, sausage and bacon, the usual English breakfast with mushrooms and so on. And one of these Jewish people had a kippa on. And the

sat next to me and he was eating an orange. And there was another one the other side not wearing a keeper. I can't remember what he was eating. So there were the three of us at a table. And I knew one of them moderately well because I'd met him at other conferences. But the man with the keep up, I said, you mind me asking you, but I see you're an orthodox Jew. And he said, yes, I am. I asked him if he was expecting the coming of Hamashiyah, the Messiah. And he said he was. And the other man then chimed in and said, and I'm not. So true to good scriptural form, there arose a dissension among them.

And I didn't get a word in for quite a while. when one of them said, but one thing I do know is your Jesus, your Yeshua, using the Hebrew name, could not be the Messiah. I said, oh, really, why is that? Well, I'd not forget as the answer in a hurry. It was so compressed. He said, our nation was under Roman occupation when Jesus came, and it was. still under it when he left. He didn't deliver anyone from anything. That's the way he put it. And I said, is that what you really think? Because I have a slightly different take on this. I said, look, tell me, was Moshe a prophet? You always use the Hebrew names if you want to get anywhere talking to these people. Yes, he was a prophet. And he instituted, under God, the tabernacle system and the

offerings and sacrifices. What were those for? Oh, he said those were for dealing with the problem of human sin. And I said, yes, so it would seem to be. Now, what about Yeziyahu, Isaiah? Was he a prophet, yes. And I said, why do you think he personalized it? And I quoted Isaiah 53. He was wounded for our transgressions. And before he said anything more, I jumped in and said, now he cannot have been speaking about Israel's suffering because it says explicitly for the transgressions of my people, suffered. Now, I believe that Messiah will come and will rule, but that he first had to do this. There was a dead silence at that, you see. And they looked at each other, and I thought that was the finish of it. But the very kindly, and I liked him a lot, he's dead now. They became a very good

friend. He looked at his colleague and he said, I think we should invite this man to Israel. Okay. And that finished it, except for one really amusing thing. He held his finger at a safe distance from the sausage on my plate. And he said, and what does your religion say to this? And I grinned and said, ah, I said, that's a good question because when the Messiah was an earth, he removed those food restrictions. He said, we'll talk in Israel, and we did. So that is the history about that.

And during my month in Bariland, I got opportunities all the time to talk to these people. They even tried to persuade me to stay so that I could learn Hebrew, which I'd love to have done, but I had a wife and children waiting in Cardiff, so I couldn't do that. Final question, if that's okay. And by the way, 1 John 513 also affirms your view. It says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. Yeah, that is very important. We can know. And it's worth saying to people, I'm glad you raised that. It's worth saying to people, I don't know everything. But I know, I can know what God wants me to know. is one of them. It's a very important statement because you will get another group of people

in various sections of Christendom who say, oh, we cannot really know much about God. It's the so-called apathetic tradition. God is not this, he's not that. We must be humble and realize that we cannot. And I say, look, we can know about God what he is revealed. To say we can't is actually arrogance, not its opposite. So that one John five is a very important text. So my final question for you, Dr. Lennox, is that I was interviewing my father for a while. He's 86 years old. And I asked him how he thinks about faith differently. And this is when he turned like 75 plus. And one of the things he said is he thinks about heaven a lot more than he used to. the last chapter in your book is on heaven kind of the hope of heaven tell me why that's the last

chapter and why that uniquely gives you so much hope well for the same reason as your father is talking about it to you you said earlier that the book before this book my story is about the book of revelation and my reason for writing that is very clearly that as i approach the last phase of my life, my mind is increasingly filled with the wonder of what lies before. And that, to my mind, is evidence of the truth of Christianity. Many years ago, a friend of mine who's a brilliant epidemiologist, did research on elderly people. And he discovered as a byproduct of his surveys that as spring is one of the most meaningful seasons of the year. We celebrate the resurrection of Christ at Easter.

We honor the moms who shaped us. We cheer on graduates stepping into their future, and we thank the dads who led the way. But finding a gift that actually means something, that can be tough. That's why Crosswalk has put together the spring gift guide, a curated collection of faith-based gifts perfect for every spring moment. Bibles, devotionals, books, and more, all chosen with the Christian heart in mind. Whether you're shopping for your mom, your graduate, your dad, or celebrating the risen Savior, Crosswalk makes it simple to give something that lasts beyond the moment.

Head to crosswalk.com and explore the spring gift guide today, because the best gifts point people back to faith. People grew older. If they were unbelievers, their time horizons shrank very rapidly. First, they were concerned about the next year. Then they were. the next month, then the next week, then the next few days, then the next few hours and minutes, as if the horizon was collapsing. Whereas the believers he met, it was the exact opposite. As they grew nearer to death, their minds grew wider. And if Christianity is true, that's exactly what you would expect. And in addition to that, it seems to me, in light of the undermining of hope today and the sense of

meaninglessness through fear of artificial intelligence and things like that, we need the church needs to articulate the Christian hope right into the middle of that. And I started doing that in my book on artificial intelligence, 2084, to try to get some of the hope that's expressed in the book of Revelation elsewhere into the debate. When I'd done that and realized the traction it got, I then took the big risk of writing a book on revelation. So it's interesting to hear that about your dad whose books

helped me again in the past. And if you see him again, you tell him that. Oh, that's really kind of you to say that. I will say that for sure. And the insight you made about how non-believers and believers think about time as they approach death is just one example of the kind of insight that fills this book. It's called My Story and you tell your spiritual and intellectual autobiography. So it's huge out of four or five hundred pages, very readable. It's full of kind of the apologetic case that you make, but through your story and your life in a way that just draws readers in, there's a kind of drama that's built into it, which is why I told my wife when she has time this summer, I think she would really enjoy if she read it.

Well, if folks enjoyed this interview, we had a conversation about your book on AI. We also had two conversations here on your book on Revelation. And so people can check that out as well. I appreciate your personal friendship. You mentioned that my father's books have influenced you. Your writings and our conversations have profoundly influenced me, not just in the defense of the faith, but the kindness and charity. I consistently see you just model in your engagement with others is an inspiration and encouragement

to me. So thanks for taking the time. Thanks so much for joining us. This has really been a treat. Folks, pick up a copy of the book, My Story. Believer or not, you will not be disappointed. You'll be drawn in from the opening story, I believe, to the end. And I can't wait to go back through it another time.

Make sure you hit subscribe, friends. We've got more stories. more conversations and so many fascinating dialogues here. Some on heaven, near-death experiences coming up, some of the other interviews on the topic of revelation that we discussed, and far more. And if you want to study apologetics, we'd love to have you at Talbot School of Theology, where we talk about truth, but sharing it graciously. And you've been a wonderful personal friend, Dr. Lennox,

as well as a friend to what we're doing at Biola and Talbot. So thank you again for coming on and all that you do. It's been my great pleasure. And I wish you and the school, God's rich blessing in the future, because what you do is extremely necessary. Keep going. Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet. And it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community.

And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School. of theology at Biola University, where we have on-campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual formation, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. This is Chris Christensen, and back in 2006, I started a simple project, a project to try and introduce more people to the Bible through Bible study called the Bible Study Podcast. It's a

simple name and a simple idea. Each week, every week, we study one chapter of the Bible, talk about what it says and what that might mean for us today. To listen now, go to Life Audio.com or search for the Bible Study podcast on your favorite podcast app.