Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 667 | Phil’s Mind Is Blown by This Big Bang Theory & Jase’s Clues to the Beginning of the Cosmos

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Phil can't wrap his brain around the biblical evidence presented to the guys by author Frank Turek. Jase gets drawn into watching a TV show that includes some unsatisfying claims about the origin of existence. The guys and Frank discover that scientific evidence actually supports creationism and discuss the best way to present the evidence to nonbelievers. — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? All right, welcome back to unashamed. We got Jay's back in the house. I'm back. What does your shirt say, Jay's? Dig it. Can you dig it? Dig it. This phrase, although it seems simple. It's an old 70s phrase, Jay's. Dad, you remember when they used to say, can you dig it?

I do. Yep. So. You brought it back. So my lovely wife and my brother and his lovely wife, Jep. I guess he's the younger brother. The younger. The younger, we call it. Yeah, they were, you know, we have an upcoming show coming out.

So there's a lot of things that are coming out to promote the show. And they were like, we need like a tagline. So I said that. I said, I got one. And they're like, what? I said, dig it. Dig it. And it was just crickets.

I said, dig it. Get it? They're like, no. So after a few months of me, one, I brought that up. I said, you don't remember in the 60s and the 70? So you have that meaning. Right. We're bringing it back in a spiritual way.

Yeah. Because we're digging up. Can you dig it? Lost treasure. And in the spirit that we just celebrated the resurrection. Yep. Amen. Dig it.

Can you dig it? Dig it. See? I like that. I hadn't thought about that. That's pretty good. So yesterday was Easter. Sunday, which that was perfect for that, uh, that we celebrated.

Zach, did you preach on Easter Sunday? I did you, what did you preach on? Did you preach on the resurrection? I did. I kept it and I kept it. It's pretty much a simple sermon prep, right? If you do something other than the resurrection, well, something's wrong with you. I went back to the book.

I'm glad we did the, the book of Mark because that's where I, I mean, I got into it. I started in John 2 when Jesus told when he turned over the temples the first time and And he said, you know, if you destroy this temple, I'll rebuild it in three days. And he was talking about his body. And then I went to Mark from pretty much the last eight days of Jesus's life. And I mean, when you're talking about hammering down on the temple, that's the, I mean, that's where he was at the last eight days. And so we went to this whole thing of connecting the resurrection of the temple, the resurrection of his body, and then him becoming the cornerstone. And then now we are living stones built upon that temple.

So that was my message in a nutshell. If you want to go check it out, you get the website and listen to it. Did you ever raise your voice at any time? No, I'm not that kind of preacher. I don't. I just kind of, yeah, I don't do that. I hardly ever do that. I was just curious.

So we did, Mike and I did at our church at WFR, we did kind of a 50-50, is what I call it, a sermon. So we did the first half. We kind of looked at the life of Peter, because ours was called witnessing the resurrection. We've been teaching through the book of First Peter, kind of mirroring what we did on the podcast. It sounds like to me you and Zach are getting all your material from the podcast.

Oh, there's no doubt about it. I know. There's a question about it. At this stage of my life, it's got, it's efficiency. Exactly. At this stage of my life, especially since I'm not being paid anymore, I'm like trying to multiply all my studies. No, the secret is revealed.

of what you okay i get it well those guys oh i'm getting everything i can get out of you dad zach wherever i can get it from i'm mad into the to the table so so we were looking at the life of peter and so my thought what process was is that peter obviously became a different man once he witnessed the resurrection and so you know he became you know this this guy that would write first peter and so um so i had this idea we had this thing we call cardboard testimonies we did years ago when I was at WBFAR. It wasn't an original idea. We saw it.

Yeah. I think that was done 20 years ago. Oh, at least. And so Mack, Owen, who we had on the podcast, you asked when you were gone. Mac is the one that first found it 20 years ago. He showed it to me on a video some church was doing it. I said, that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen because you can look at 20 or 30 or 40 kind of short testimonies in one setting.

And you kind of see these little life changes. So we did that yesterday. So the idea was we were witnessing the resurrection through the eyes of other people. And so we called them cardboard testimony. So yesterday we had lunch together, kind of a little family gathering after, you know, we met together at my house. Oh, it was. And that was fantastic. Oh, man.

It's a good grub. Risk it, I don't know, with the bar. I guess Jay smoked that. They smoked it. It looked burnt. It looked burned, so I thought. You were worried about it. I was worried.

I know. And we were trying to find the grain of the meat because you always want to just helpful tip for gatherings. You want to cut across the grain. Correct. And so we were determining that. Of course, I was just using that for an excuse to be closer to the front of the line because I wanted to try this, you know. That's the classic move of let me help you find that grain. so that at the closing prayer, you have not only found the grain,

but you found your way right there close to the front. Well, I did get nominated for the prayer, so then it justified me being up there. You did. You weren't for it. I was like, Jay, go ahead, you know, bless this food, because there was a long delay. I think you were guilty of causing the delay.

I was, because typical that we had a lot of visitors, and I preached yesterday, so I was working the line that I was like. Well, and y'all were cooking macaroni and cheese, and I'm not going to say who, but somebody said while the weight went on, I don't like weighting on macaroni and cheese. I just thought I'd say that. Unless you ate it, then it was worth the weight. This ain't a box mac and cheese, Jay's.

This is the homemade. No, it was homemade. But the bark was not, it was not burned. It was perfection. Full of flavor. It was one of the greatest things I've eaten. It was the best brisket I've ever eaten. It good.

Fantastic. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, this, this, this, this, this poster board gig, that was. No, he just, you know, Phil has a habit. This is a little weird since he's sitting, catty corner from me, but Phil has a habit for coming up and starting in seemingly the middle of a conversation. So he walked up to him and he said, this, this poster gig, you know, the poster gig. and I said, poster gig. I was looking around on the walls at Jay's house

because I was like, I don't see any posters. And I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. Then I was thinking maybe he means then the video days when we used to have the posters that go with the video. That's literally what I was thinking. And he kept saying, you know, they get up there and they say, what would he say?

He says, it's all gloom and doom on one side. Yeah, he said, It's gloom and no, I'm angry and fearful and my tank's out of gas. And he said, then they turn it around and I'm happy. Then it hit me that he was talking about the cardboard testimonies. Yeah, well, so if you're wondering where we get our term cold open from, it came from Phil. You come into Unashamed podcast and you're right in the middle of the conversation. It's already been happening.

Oh, it was, it was hilarious. Then I realized, because Phil's, I'd never seen that one before. And I thought, well, Phil, they've been doing that around there for 15, 20 years, not a lot, but. But it's probably been 20 years since we did it. And that's why that had. Phil's been over, he's been over at university for a while. That's right. I actually did that one time.

My wife and I, we had, we rode out the cardboard and then got up. Y'all did it last time we did. last time I did it, we were there. But it was really interesting. This time was unique. And you don't know who's going to do it. And since I didn't work there this time, since, you know, I was gone, I just came in and a priest.

So someone else was gathering these people together. But it was really interesting because this time was unique from times we've done in the past. There were a lot of couples that had come to Christ together. So they had a, so on one side they would talk about, you know, different things that had happened. I was in their life. they were not Christians or, you know, like you said, bad things.

And then when they flipped their cardboard over, they would put them together, sort of have the message of redemption together. And I thought that was really unique and interesting, the idea that a lot of times families are saved, you know, obviously through, you know, a redemptive act of coming to Christ. And so, I don't know, that spoke to me uniquely yesterday. I thought just from watching it, it was really interesting. I never had seen it before. It was really powerful.

Everybody clapped and cheered with everybody's kind of mini. So nobody said a word. You're just listening to music, you know, watching the words. And it's just an interesting way. Well, it's because, you know, growth in any capacity. You really can't see it. I mean, we measure it, you know, we test it. But you think about it.

I mean, there's a reason why when your little kids, you're putting the pencil over his head and writing on the door frame. Because you don't feel like you're, growing and if you just if you stare at somebody you know in a physical way or plants or well the same thing you know when you go to spiritual these people are giving you a capsule of what's happened in their life because and you might they might have been there for years and then you're like oh wow because one side like you said Phil is like oh and they turn it around so they're showing the evidence of of growth transformation and growth spiritually and would

Which was powerful. It was. It made a nice Easter message for us. So you were telling me you saw something yesterday. Yeah, so, I mean, it's a tradition. Like no other. I always watch the Masters. And it kind of, in this case, I was watching it for a couple of reasons.

One, I have not touched a golf club in probably six months. Me neither. There's been no time. However, it provides some inspiration because it is a tradition that, that I like. I've been there. I think you've been there. I've been there three times.

Yeah. And so I watched it, and it was kind of ho-hum. I mean. It wasn't like close or anything. No. John Rom. Congratulations. But here's the reason I'm bringing this up is after it's over, 60 Minutes was on,

which I didn't even know was still on. I remember when I was. I was saying the only way you would ever watch 60 minutes is if you happened into it, after the masters. That's the only way. I got distracted at the end because I like watching the whole, you know, I didn't realize he had a family and $2. Yeah, I thought that was neat.

I'm a big, you know, Scotty Schephyriffen fan because his caddy, Ted Scott, who loves the Lord. He's a friend of ours. So he was giving the green jacket, you know. I just like watching all of them. So I was, when they tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, the clock came on. This is 60 minutes. I can't believe he didn't change.

You must have had to have your hand on the remote. Wait for it, Al. I couldn't find the remote. There you go. So as I'm looking, because I've been watching the Masters a couple days, because I was on a long journey in the last couple weeks. So I was just resting up. Well, all of a sudden, they said, we have discovered new clues and secrets to the origin

of the universe. Uh-oh. Next up. I'm like, well, forget the remote. moon. They've discovered the origin of the universe. I got to watch this. So I watch the seven minute segment on what the somebody's name, but it's Webb's his last name's Webb. What they launched a James Webb Telescope. James Webb, they launched it. And now they have this, it's pretty fascinating piece of work. That's incredible. And it takes pictures infrared. So it's

basically uncovering what we can't see. It takes pictures. And so these pictures, now, look, some of the pictures, they say, after the artistic impression of what this implies. You know, it's, so I thought, oh, wait a minute now. I thought this was the, well, they have the pictures, and then, you know, they have artists who then tells you what it really should look like. So all of a sudden, I was seeing some, it was starting to leak oil. So, man, I spent seven minutes because I thought it was going to I mean you know what the phrase I kept thinking of because immediately they got into the big bang and the the guy who produced it actually said in a joking way we're fixing to reveal a new definition in the phrase let there be light I was like okay this and

this are we actually gonna we're going down that road but then he he grinned like that was a joke so yes he was kidding so then they started revealing this and spent seven minutes of my life which i'll never get back and all i heard was maybe possibly we were wrong now this changes everything but it really the clues and the secrets never never came forth it just revealed that it was way bigger than they thought and that there's no such thing as really what we call space because it's way more crowded than they thought and so the phrase I kept thinking of is they're going to have a smoking gun to the big bank get it there was no smoking gun so here I am looking for the person who pulled the trigger yeah instead of

It was just the thing that sticks out of the end and says Big Bang. It was just impressive, and it made me validate my faith that there is a designer to the design. Well, Jay, you're in luck as well as our audience, because we have a guest today. Little did we know that you would lead us right to the Promised Lamb. You think that we would be coordinated on that, but it was sure. It was sheer random from my... Like everything else on this podcast, it was just where God leads us. So, Zach, we're going to take a break, but tell us when we come back who's going to be our guest on Unashay.

Good friend of mine, a guy named Frank Turrick, who is one of the, I would argue, one of the greatest Christian apologist out there. He wrote one of my favorite books that was very transformational. And when I went to a season of doubt, the title of the book is, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. And Frank's in town touring a bunch of college campuses. And so, yeah, we'll get him on this conversation, Jay. He's one of the best out there. So stay tuned. Come back over on the other side of the break for Frank.

All right. Welcome back. Frank, welcome to Unashame. Great being with you guys. So Frank, I always like to ask people when they come into the Unashamed layer. And you travel all around the country, a lot of college campuses. So what was your thought as you came into our layer as you traversed into our outer layer to get to the inner layer? to get to the inner layer.

Have you ever been, is you, you do a lot of podcasts. Success has not ruined you, I can tell you that, man. It has not. We are in the lair and nobody's finding this place. Nobody, right?

They're never going to figure this is. I was asking Phil before the, Phil, can you tell the story of how you found this place? Because it's, you grew up more than two hours from here. I told Ms. Kay to find me a place where we're right down on the river,

on the river bank. I said in the woods, dirt road, and I said, I'll fish for a living, and then I'll build these duck calls right here, and that long green will be in your pocket. That's the way it works. And here we are. She was looking at me. She said, let's do it.

Now, it was funny when y'all were talking before, though, because you're speaking at Louisiana Tech. That's right. And Phil, you infamously went there and was a quarterback, but you were telling a story about how it relates. to how you got down here. I think that was pretty funny. Whether they tell you,

they called you in to the, what was the name of the guy? The dean of. He said, what street do you live on? He was the what, the dean of what? Dean of men. The dean of men. If you get in trouble as a male in Louisiana Tech

at that point, you had a meeting with the dean of men, and he lines you out, straightened you out, or ran you off, one of the other. So you went in there, and what did he say to you? He went to bad mouth and all where I put my boats and hook nets and decoys and my yard. And he said, where you live, that that road is called Scholar Drive.

And Mr. Robinson, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're not very scholarly. He said, and the president of the unit, this university has ordered me to tell you, clean the yard up. Get all that, get all that junk out of that. I said, junk, that ain't junk. I'd say, that's some good stuff. I had decoys. So that answers the question why he moved out here. He just moved it all here.

It's right here. There's no dean of the neighborhood. Well, somebody told me, I don't know whether they do or not, but after all the smoke cleared, I don't know what they were trying to get in my little head, you know, but I never heard anybody mention God or Jesus, not once in all the classes, and they were bad mouth of me to having a dirty yard.

But as it ended up, Somebody said, I have a plaque that's positive on the wall over somewhere. You do. You are in the Hall of Fame of Tech alumni. You were put in there in 2014. The Dean of Men tried to thwart that. Well, he's probably, the Dean of Men is taking credit for your success. He's probably passed on by now because he was, you know, it's been his wild.

But I could hear him saying, yeah, I finally got that guy. So on Dad's plaque, it says, Duck Hunting Iicon, Television Personality, a Servant of Christ. Oh, it says Servant of Christ. Now suddenly Jesus is okay when they can use you for PR. That's exactly right. Is that it? That's it. I was trying to help them out, but they just... He's on the wall.

So, Frank, you may not remember this. You may not know this. When I heard your name, when Sat told you were coming on the podcast, I said, man, I know that name. I mean, outside of me knowing your work, I was like, I know. I thought I'd met you. I was trying to remember what it was. You and I were actually on a movie together. Which one?

How many movies have you been on, Frank? Well, I don't know. Sometimes they come to my place and film something. It was a documentary. Was it the AFA, American Family Association? It was not. It was a small documentary. Which one was it?

And I think we both filmed it the same way. We didn't know the people until we did it. Yeah. It was called Bible idiots. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bible idiots. We're Bible idiots. We're Bible idiots.

I did this. I'm not getting invited to that. Wow, you should have. You weren't enough of an idiot back then. You should have been a headliner, Judge. That's right. You should have been about you. You should have been the star.

But I knew I was a Frank Turk. We were both, we got interviewed for that movie. And Chris is now, I keep up with Chris. He's a friend of mine now. I love to look into that. He's a pastor up in Iowa. And I sent him a text and I was like, was Frank Turk on the Bible? He said he wasn't.

I knew that's where I knew your name from. So we were both appeared on this movie and we did an interview for it, We're both idiots. We don't even know the movie. I don't know the movie. Right. That was the idea is that you can be an idiot, but as long as you try to in the Bible, it elevates you. Well, I've been saying that my whole lot. That's what I said. This is like your life story. Jesus makes you smart. So I want to ask this question because we kind of left it hanging about you were listening before when we did the cold open about Jason's swerving into 60 minutes. His accidental swerve into 60 minutes. So.

And here's the weird part of that. story. We did a cliffhanger there. You know, the cliffhanger? You know what a cliffhanger is right? Yeah. What was that? That was the cliffhanger. I got it. I got it.

You know, cheesy. I'm just playing a lot. I've used that. I'm here to make this. I'm here to make this look good. And so, hey. So what happened was this morning I got up like I normally do and said, let's see what we're doing for the podcast this morning.

And then I'm like, get out. Now I know why I couldn't find the remote because I saw that you were coming on. And I was like, what are the odds of this? I was like, I must tell this story. Because I just seemed a little out of the ordinary. I mean, I'm not claiming miracle here, but I'm just saying I do know that God is very good at getting people together. Yeah, absolutely. So what are the odds?

So you go to college campus. Tell us a little bit about what you do, your minute. You have a television show, you have radio, you have podcasts. You're everywhere. So tell her on this a little bit about it. I'm on Bible idiots too, but I didn't know it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we do colleges, high schools, churches.

We present evidence that Christianity's true from this book. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, which I wrote with the Michael Jordan of apologetics at the time, Norman Geisler. When this guy died four years ago, they added up the number of books either wrote, co-wrote, or updated. It was 129. The guy's forgotten more than I'll ever know. Anyway, we wrote this book, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist in 2004, 2007, created a ministry called cross-examined.org. That's cross-examined with a D on the end of it, and we go to colleges, high schools, churches,

present the evidence that Christianity is true. We talk about the big bang. If there's a big bang, there's got to be a big banger. There's got to be a creator. And we'll talk about that at tech tomorrow night, going to be at Louisiana Christian tonight talking about these issues. We go to a lot of secular colleges. I was at LSU.

last year talking about this because other than the White House, the most unchristian real estate in America is the college campus. That's correct. That's correct. And so that's why we're trying to bring the evidence to the college campus. We're trying to throw a lifeline to Christians. We're trying to put a stone in the shoe of the skeptics. And we open up the the Q&A mic for anyone. They can say whatever they want. And so we've got about 1,600 videos on our cross-examine YouTube channel. Most of them are Q&As from the college campus. So do they generally ask the same questions pretty much? They ask a lot of the same questions. You probably get 20 of the same questions over and over again. And the questions are usually related around morality. Really? Oh yeah. It's all LGBT stuff,

or why did God kill the Canaanites or why is there evil in the world? Why did God create people he knew would go to hell? These kind of questions you get all the time. And just about every one of those questions assume a moral standard. So I'm always asking them, what's the moral standard? Where are you getting this moral standard?

I mean, in your uncanceled book, you talk about that, right? You guys, you're saying you're offended. If you're saying you're offended, there's got to be a standard that you say we're violating. What is it? Where are you getting the standard from? If there's no God, there is no standard. If it all happened randomly by accident, well, why can't we just make up our own rules?

It seemed like it'd be. That's what's going on. Yeah, right? But they're claiming their rules you have to live by. Well, exactly. And evolution and survival of fitness wouldn't seem like that wouldn't matter. So did I get it wrong when I watched the images that this web telescope is bringing back to us now? that they had all these sayings like we're going to we it's now uncovering the clues and the secrets to the origin of the universe but the more I read because then after I watched this you know I started reading because I just want to say oh maybe I miss something no it was just more unexplainable what we believe I mean it was more spectacular we know it you know the things we're seeing but I just viewed it as more.

evidence of God. I mean, I just didn't hear, I didn't hear these clues reveal secrets, which was kind of very sad. They pitched that on the show and even in the, all the articles are read. What the web telescope, space telescope has confirmed is that the idea that space matter and time had a beginning is really true. Yeah, if space matter and time had a beginning, what could have caused that? Only something that's spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful to create the universe out of nothing, personal in order to choose to create. In other words, whatever the cause was, someone had to make a choice, right? And then obviously, the cause would have to have a mind to make a choice. So I always ask people on a college campus,

I say, when you think about a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause, who do you think of? And everyone says, well, it's God. Yeah. Well, but they say, you know it's the Christian God, and my answer is we don't yet. I mean, it could be Allah from this one argument, right? But if you look at the evidence for Jesus rising from the dead, then you realize that the same being that walked out of the tomb 1,990 years ago this week is the same being in whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing. So you get those two facts that God exists, he created the universe, and Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity's true, and this book is true. You can show that the Bible's true just starting with those two facts. And that's what we do in

the book. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Oh, that's powerful. I love it. What would you, what would you say to the student that would say, basically like this is Easter weekend. We just came out of and they say, well, because I mean, I think it's at least fair to acknowledge that we put our faith, and I said this at the beginning of my sermon yesterday. I put my faith in a man that I've never physically met that allegedly was killed on a Roman cross, put in a tomb, and three days later, his dead body came to life. So how do you approach, if somebody says that, I don't accept that as a fact. Like, what's kind of just your core kind of go to if you're in one of these settings and somebody asks a question like that? How do we know? How do we know he wears from the dead?

Yeah, the first thing I'm going to say is, if God exists, miracles are possible, right? If he exists. And the greatest miracle in the Bible is not the resurrection. The greatest miracle in the Bible is the first verse. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Because if there is a God and create the heavens and the earth, can he raise Jesus from the dead? Can he walk on water? Can he part the Red Sea? Of course he can.

The interesting thing is atheists are admitting the evidence for the first verse. I mean, they don't think it's God, but you watch 60 minutes and they talk about there's a beginning. And Stephen Hawking. There was no doubt there was a beginning. Oh, yeah. I watched it. They're acknowledging. That's why he said,

they let there be like, because there was a start. That's right. And if there is, if Genesis 1-1 is true, resurrections are possible. Then I point out that all the writers of the New Testament,

with the exception of Luke, they're all Jews, right? They all think they're God's chosen people. Why are they inventing a resurrected Jesus? Because by saying that, they got beaten, tortured, and killed. So last, last time I checked being beaten, torturing, and killed is not a list of perks, right? We're not going to make that up, right?

So, and notice it's going to sound weird for all of us out here in the unashamed podcast land that we and Zach, you preach on this too, that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. What I'm going to say now is going to sound like I don't believe that, but it's true. And that is Christianity is not true because a series of documents we put under one binding we call the Bible says it's true. In fact, Christianity would be true if the Bible never existed. And people go, why? What do you mean? Because I was asking, do you realize there were thousands of Christians before a line of the New Testament was ever written? Why? Because they witnessed the resurrected Jesus. They didn't read about it in a book. They saw him. And then they wrote it down. Great point. Then they wrote it down. So I always say that the New Testament writers did not create the resurrection.

the resurrection created the New Testament writers, right? We wouldn't have these New Testament documents, Zach, written in the first century by people who claimed to be Jews and didn't think a man could claim to be God or rise from the dead. They thought that was blasphemy, that a man would claim to be God. I mean, the last people in the world are going to say, a man is God, are the Jews, right?

Yeah. And yet here they say, a man claimed to be God and rules from the dead. That must have really happened. If it didn't happen, they never would have went to their deaths writing this stuff down. right yeah exactly yeah i like second thessalonians yesterday i gave a lesson on jesus him crucified and raised from the day at easter sunday but i started with this uh among god's churches we boast this is written 2 000 years ago thereabouts uh the churches we boast about your perseverance

your faith and all the persecutions and trials you're enduring they were they were really catching a lot of trouble way more than we are now, but it was the same group. All this is evidence that God's judgment is right. And as a result, you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are suffering. You say, suffering is a good thing. Very good thing. God is just. He'll pay back trouble to those who trouble you. That's coming. And give relief to you who are troubled. That's coming and to us as well it's coming the apostle paul wrote this this will happen somewhere in the future when the lord jesus is revealed from heaven and blazing fire with his powerful angels if you ever argued there's he's not there there is no god this says you're going to look up one day and there's

going to be an end to it he will punish those who do not know god pretty good group then and now He will punish those who do not know God. Lots of some are there. They might try to find him. That's what we're here for. And the ones who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord

and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified. We are, as Christians are looking forward to that. in His holy people, and to be marveled at when all this ends, marveled that among all those who have believed. This includes you, these Thessalonians, because you obeyed, believed, and testimony to you. So with us, we're saying, who has the best story? These are us. We live. there's a price to be paid when you say there is no God.

Oh, yeah. Life and immortality is writing on this, and you're not going to take a look and do a little investigating. You count time by him. You say, what are you doing? It took me a while to find it, but I glad I did. I think the first miracle also was, you know, you were talking about the first miracle.

The greatest miracle in the Bible, yeah. Genesis long ago. The first miracle from non-believer perspective would have to be, because I've spent a lot of my life blowing things up. It's just what we do down here. And, you know, when you think about the big bank, somebody naming the big bank, it started off, even if you didn't, if you're saying there's no God,

well, but you're acknowledging a miracle because the first time in the history of explosions, this one happened and you had beauty, symmetry, order. That's the design argument, Jace. That's right. Yeah. It wasn't a random big bang. Yeah. When I look at these things that blow up, I'm like, okay, so it just doesn't add up.

And that's why I told you before we started, I was like, when I was watching this, because when I was early in my faith, I remember thinking, oh, you know, I wonder if they send these telescopes out there, if they're going to find something that all of a sudden just nullifies God. I was scared because I was immature in my faith. But now, even when I watched that last, when I was watching this imagery of the telescope, I was 100% confident. I knew what they were going to say.

I knew there was going to be nothing to this. Oh, we found the secrets. We're fixing to reveal the clues of the origin of the universe. and then it was never revealed because I just thought they wanted your attention, but it was like a lot of other, you know, philosophies out there. It was hollow and empty. And so it was kind of disappointing. It seems to be whether we're looking inward, whether it's archaeology, those type of things,

or we're looking out, astrology, whatever, everything has continued to give us more evidence of creator, more evidence of the Bible, more evidence of those things, not less. I mean, it continues to be proven to what we've always believed, not the other way around. I was wanting to know your thoughts. I would think you get a question from the audience. Well, how come that science and archaeology says the universe is like, what do they say now, 14 billion? 13, 14 billion years old.

And the Bible seems to only be, what, 6 to 7,000? depends on how you get that question all the time yeah i always say i'm absolutely convinced the universe is at least 61 years old that's how long you've been here let's throw my mom in there she's 85 all right that's a great laugh we talk about it it's on our youtube channel the short answer is this i think the bible leaves the age of the earth indeterminate here's why what's the first verse of the bible say in the beginning god created the heavens in the earth okay when did god create heavens, the earth. It says, in the beginning, you say, what about the days? The days don't begin till verse three. In fact, the first verse says, in the beginning, God created heavens and the earth,

there was no word in Hebrew for universe. So heavens and earth is the universe. Yeah. And then the next verse says, and the earth was formless and void. Wait a minute, time out. You went from the whole universe to now the earth. What happened in between? Doesn't say. Doesn't say. Right? It could be thousands, according to the Bible, but it could also be a lot longer. And I think the best evidence is it is older, but I don't care how old it is. I don't care if it's older young because you still need a cause no matter how far back you go. And Frank, to that point, so you're sitting at a table where you've got an old earth guy, a young earth guy, and a guy in the middle. Yeah.

That things are created. I was kind of with Frank. I agree with everything he said. So what I'm saying is you're sitting at a table with guys that have three different views of that exact thing. And yet we're all in unity that God did it. But here's why it doesn't bother me. Like last night when they said the earth is 14 billion, I mean the universe is 14 billion years old.

Well, a thought hit me in that moment. I thought, well, I know that this creation reveals a creator. Well, how old is God? Think about this, though. He's eternal, right? Yes, he's eternal. So why would it bother me if you even claim that you could prove that it was 14 billion years old?

Well, that's nothing compared to who started it. Well, he's outside of time. If time was created, whatever created time is timeless. And if you're timeless, do you have a beginning? Do you have a cause? No, he's outside of time. That's what I'm saying. It wouldn't bother.

That's my point. We're trying to interpret the times, and we're missing the one who's the father of time. He invented time. I'm a little bit stretched out when some guy says, I said, How old is the earth? It's a 14.5 billion years. I'm like, look, when you see a human being, when you see a human being who tells you,

he knows when the beginning was, which was 13, 14.5 billion years ago, don't listen to him. I mean, you. It's a good point. That's a long time ago. That's right. That's right.

He wasn't there. No, he was. You know, we keep talking about science says this, science says that. In reality, in fact, we covered in this book, Hollywood Heroes, how your favorite movies reveal God that science. Well, you're in Jason as well. I didn't know you wrote this book. Yeah, with my son.

This immediate, I thought I was the only person revealing that, and now I was late to the story. It's in this book. It's in the, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Here's the interesting thing. Science doesn't say anything. Scientists do. That is correct. Science doesn't say a word.

Why? Because all data needs to be gathered and all data needs to be interpreted. Thank you, Vanna. All data needs to be gathered. All data needs to be interpreted. And who does that? Scientists do that. Yeah.

And sometimes their philosophy, Phil, as you know, will cause them to interpret the data differently. In fact, you ever wonder why we got such conflicting advice on COVID? Man. Why? Because science doesn't say a word. It's scientists saying things. And some scientists are saying, we're right, and we're going to shut you up because we think... Wait a minute, right.

Are you telling me that Tony Fauci is not science itself? He's not science. I thought he himself physically in his body was science. I had a booster. I had five boosters. I had five boosters. I still got COVID. You know, but I think we got a, I think that you do have to, as a Christian, though, we don't have to fear scientific discovery.

because for years I grew up, if I heard the word Big Bang, I automatically thought that's the opposite of Christianity. But when I read, I think you were about to reference this earlier, Frank, Stephen Hawkin, who was not a believer. But when he wrote his book, Reef History of Time, I mean, he makes the point in that book that if the Big Bang is true, which he calls the standard model of physics, he says if it's true, he says, it's unavoidable that God exists. at smacks of divine intervention, I think, was his exact phrase. And so when I started reading your work and Dr. William and Craig and some Norm Geist for years ago, like, to me, that was liberating that the truth of God's existence is so necessary that our scientific discovery, it actually proves his existence, such that the thing we were fighting over and saying, well, this is a model that came out of the atheistic world,

it came from science and all that. In the end, it actually proves God. God's existence because if there's a beginning, the Big Bang theory essentially says if there's, there's the beginning of the universe. That's right. And the one thing that science does pretty much universally agree on, the scientist at least, is that if the universe has a beginning, well, they don't agree on this part. They agree it has a beginning, but if it has a beginning philosophically and logically,

it has to have a cause going back to that argument you mentioned earlier. So I don't think we have to fear anything when someone says the universe is 14.5 billion years old. and the Earth is $4 billion or whatever it is. I mean, that doesn't scare me primarily because of when I read their own work. They're like, yeah, and if it has a beginning, we've got issues because, you know, that kind of means God exists. And Hawkins said, therefore, the goal of modern physics is to disprove this standard model of physics because we know God doesn't exist. They can't prove it, Zach. They've been trying.

They can't do it. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, they can't get around it. No, the last 50 years has been one failed to tempt. after another to get rid of the Big Bang cosmology and replace it with a new theory. They can't do it because the evidence, by the way, you don't even need science to know this. How could today have gotten here if there were an infinite number of days before today?

Couldn't, right? You'd always have to live another day if there was an infinite number of days before today before you got to today. But since today's here, there can only be a limited number of days before today, which means whatever created time has to be timeless. And if you're timeless, do you have a cause? No, you're the uncaused first cause. So when people say who made God, you go, nobody.

It's like asking a bachelor, what's your wife's name? He doesn't have a wife, right? So God is unmade. You don't ask who created the uncreated creator. He is the first cause. It's unavoidable, too. I mean, it's completely, you cannot avoid this conclusion. I mean, I sat on a plane recently with a theoretical,

no, she had a Ph.D. from Princeton in some kind of engineering. And her husband was a professor at an Ivy League school who had a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, which I don't, I'm not even close to that level of intelligence. But I started to throw some of this at her because she wasn't a believer. And I was doing it very kind, but I was just throwing these concepts out there of an infinite past and how that would be impossible, an infinite regress. And I mean, it was like she had never heard it. But she didn't have an answer. for it because this is mathematics. I mean, this is logically coherent. You can't avoid, number one, the fact that the universe has a beginning. And number two, you can't avoid the fact that if it does, then there has to be a cause to that. And to me, that was, that strengthened my faith so much in the early days of my walk with Jesus. And if you're going to say no to that, that it doesn't need a cause, you've just given up on all science because science is built on cause and effect. That's what you're trying to discover, right? Scientists are looking for causes of effects. In fact, that's, when people say, how do I know God exists? I always say, well, one way I know is by his effects,

right? I'm reasoning from effect to cause. So if there's a creation, that's the effect. I'm reasoning back to a cause of creator. If there's design, that's the effect. I'm reasoning back to a cause a designer. There's a moral law written on the heart. That's the effect. I'm reasoning back to a moral law giver. If there's evidence, a man claimed to be God and rose from the dead, that's the effect. What could have caused that? Only of being like God. Yeah. I say the same thing about DNA.

If there's a sophisticated code in your body. Yep. Who wrote it? It's a coder. Yeah. It's a program. It's got to be a programmer, right? I've always thought of the idea of the three and one, you know, let us make man in our image.

And how when you look at humans, how we have this sort of three-part makeup of who we are and how that smacks of what we see in God from what we study in scripture. It's always been that marker to me that it just makes perfect sense that, you know, when you see, when you see a human being, you see a person made up of this, of our animation, you know, our spirit and that our physical body. And yet that thing that draws us to the spiritual, where does that come from? I mean, how does that just come out of thin air out of, you know, that crawled out of the primordial soup, you know? And where did the primordial soup come from? Exactly. If that's how, and we didn't get here that way. Right.

The evidence shows us not the case. Here's a designer. Not to mention all the artistic side of things as well, right? But I will say this. Zai, when you said you were sitting beside the real smart professor from wherever, it's not what you know that makes you smart, which we were joking about this earlier. But it is who you know and who you're known by. So that's what I'm saying.

I'm not impressed if someone can retain a bunch of meaningless knowledge or has an extensive vocation. as I've proven. Because really when you talk about, you know, Jesus, I mean, I think it's funny that Jesus said, you know, I'm the alpha and the omega, which we'll talk about that on another podcast. But the first letter of the alphabet, the Greek alphabet, and the last, it's more who you're putting your faith and trust in. And that's what's the interesting thing. I loved your point about the Bible, whether it being true, whether you're actually reading it or not, it points to a person, a being. It's more sophisticated than us, obviously.

But if you're in a right relationship with the author of this Bible, you're good. No matter how many verses you actually are able to memorize and say, it becomes a smaller point than when you're having a friendship and a vibrant relationship with the creator of the universe. Yeah, death is philosophy's only problem, right? We all die, right? Yeah, exactly. If we live forever without God, okay, what would we even consider a cause? But we don't. And that's why, I mean, look at this Bible, man.

This guy has got this thing horn up, man, because he knows. All I do when I meet individuals is point them to their problems. That's right. Sin. I said, just think of a place where you could be with all your sins removed in the past. None in the future counted against you. He's there to mediate for you. and you're also going to be raised from the dead.

I said, I'm telling you, it's that rarest of commodities. It gives one peace of mind. Which I think is the greatest apologetic is what you just said. You mentioned 2nd Thessalonians chapter 1, which is funny, Phil, because I preached out of that. I used that same text yesterday in my sermon. And the point that I made was that there's another level beneath us because we're not just purely cognitive thinking beings that are looking for rational answers, although we are. That's part of what we are. But then there's this whole other side of me that's longing for beauty in the world.

It's longing for, man, I want to be connected. I want intimacy. I want, man, I want my life to matter. There's like there's this other thing that I can't really even put to words, you know. And I use this verse to prove that when it says that. God's going to pay the penalty, pay them a penalty of eternal destruction, which he describes as away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. So hell is to be away from God's glory and his wonder when he comes to be glorified in his saints on that day and to be marveled at among all who have believed. And I thought, man, how interesting is it that he describes hell as not being able to marvel at God?

And I think that in the core of our being, we were created to worship and to marvel at the beauty and the majesty and the wonder of God. And so it's interesting to me that even in these intellectual pursuits that I've had discussions, Frank, I know you have too with people. It's almost like they separate the intellectual from like their real life. and even if they may work it out over here intellectually, man, they still have this inner thing that's like, man, but I'm longing for something. Like, I want something beautiful and something

transcendent, but at the same time, something imminent that's right here with me. You know, it's just crazy. And I think all of this is realized in the person of Jesus. I think we should continue the, in the overtime. We have discovered... It's the beauty of the kingdom of God. You see all kinds here.

I got a killer question for the overtime. All right. Killer question. I'm going to say this. You can use with your non-Christian friends. So watch the overtime. Oh, I like that. The other teasers, I think we just discovered the origin of the Marvel movies.

They were. Well, we just read it. Hollywood heroes. They're going to be marveled. Oh, there you are. At the resurrection. Marvel, get it. If you want to follow us over, BlazeTV.com slash Unashamed is where we do our overtimes.

Frank, thank you so much. My pleasure. Coming on Unashamed. What a quick time for our podcast. podcast. Follow us over for the overtime. We'll hear a little more. And I want to hear about how you came to Christ because I have a feeling that may be what fueled you to what you're doing today. So check us out overtime, blazedtiv.com slash unashamed. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by rating us on iTunes. And don't miss an episode by subscribing

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