ENCORE: Cold-Case Detective Sets Out to Disprove Christianity . . . Then THIS Happened | Interview with J. Warner Wallace - The Greg Laurie Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Life audio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
So I'm speaking with my friend Jay Warner Wallace. That's
very impressive. Yeah, you wait to say your name.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
I know right. See, if I went with that, it
would be like Jean Mitchell Laurie.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Oh, that's an author that was a great for books.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Start going hello, I'm Jean Mitchell Laurie and I'm an author.
It's right, But you're Jim right, So, Jim, you were
a cold case detective for how many years?

Speaker 4 (00:38):
The cold case is for about ten?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
What is a cold case? So those are just unsolved murders.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
So if you're in Los Angeles County back in those days,
it's probably still true today and you're working homicides, you're
gonna you have the option if you want to pick
up as a collateral duty any unsolved murder, because those
don't close. They're not assigned to anybody, but they're sitting
in like a vault, or they're sitting on a shelf, or.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
They're sitting at all.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Like the TV shows that we see, were any of
those very realistic?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
There's a many of them, an there.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
There are, and probably that they are relatively close. But
the only difference is is they're usually compressed in time.
So I might open a case and take fifteen years
from start to finish.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
What so long did you work in a cold case?

Speaker 4 (01:18):
So well, see, I opened a case.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
I started looking at a case in the early nineteen
nineties that.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
I was just thinking of my dad's old case. So
I picked it up.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Your father was law enforcement, same.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Agency, same adiens worked or thomicide and he had an
unsolved murder from nineteen seventy two of a ten year old.
And I was about eleven when that happened. So it
hit our community hard, and my dad took it very
hard and changed the way he parented, like what you're
going to allow your kids to do? Because this poor
girl was just snatched off the street. So so it
changed the way that he parented. And I remember like

(01:52):
thinking about it for years, and so I became a detective.
It was assigned to Humed sub Even before then, I
was a sign of a surveillance team. I said, this
case isn't sitting on the shelf and it's not assigned
to anybody.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
Let me pick it up.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
And so I picked the start reading through all the
all the reports, started reading through all the interviews. Well,
ultimately I didn't get to submit the DNA on that
case until about probably two thousand and one or two.
I was brought in that range, so that's a few
years later, and it didn't hit. It didn't show up
in CODUS, which is our database for sex offenders in California.
So it just didn't hit. So I thought, well, this

(02:24):
is an unknown. Maybe he died, maybe he moved out
of the state, maybe he's just.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
No longer around.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Well not until the invention or the use of a
genetic DNA ancestry DNA.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, isn't this with all these people signing up for
like thirty three I mean.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I just the database.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
I always say thank you very much because now I
can take all your relatives to jail because you just
happened to put your database in. But so it's good
for us. But that was about twenty seventeen. So by
twenty nineteen we identified her killer. So I started that
tinkering with that in the nineties. I really thought I
was going to solve it in the early two thousands.
Didn't get solved until twenty nineteen. So how long does

(03:01):
that take? So a lot of these cases, are you
arrested this person? Well, it turned out he had passed
away about I think three or four years earlier.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
So and what about your father going back to that
little girl, did they ever find the person who killed him?

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yes, so we've identified him. We he We've identified him
through his daughter genetically. And then when we wanted to
confirm it, so he had passed away, we resumed his
body wow, and compared and compared DNA to make sure
that it is him. So it is him, He is
the killer.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
But we didn't. We didn't get justice.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Neck we got Well, it brings us some kind of closures.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Family.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
I always say it's a resolution, right, there's no closure, right,
because so much of closure is like, well, how am
I processing this today? Am I comfortable? And of course
no one ever is right. I can't bring I always say,
we can't get closure. We'll be lucky if we can
get justice. But well, that's what we're shooting for, but
we we're probably never going to get closure because I
can't bring your daughter back.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
So you're a cold case detective, you know, and I
know a lot of police officers, and you know, unfortunately,
you guys and girls, you see the worst elements of society.
You see people lie all the time. To you, you're
dealing with this constantly. To survive such a thing, one
has to develop a shell because you have to go home,

(04:15):
you have a life, you have a family. You can't
carry everything around with you emotionally all the time. So
it seems to me there could be almost a cynicism
that one carries in life. Did you sort of have
that cynicism when it came to believing in God because
you actually were an atheist?

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, no, I was very I think so one of
the best skill sets you have, and because how you're raised,
So my commitment, I was kind of like you. You had
a childhood that was similar to mine, and so my
mom was just my mom and I growing up. My
parents divorce when I was three, she never remarried, and
we were in Los Angeles County, and so you kind

(04:56):
of grow up quick, and she didn't. She really didn't
have the bandwidth I think to raise a son. She
needed someone she could talk to about everything. So that
means you not going to get a childhood, You're just
going to get another form of adult life at a
young age. So I always was anxious and felt like
we had no protection, felt like if she wanted she

(05:17):
always wanted to go to the movies, and she wanted
to go to Hollywood to see a movie. Well, you know,
I'm like, I remember being like six seven years old
with a you know, woman in her early twenties, who
is my mom in Hollywood and feeling like this isn't
a safe place, Like.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Who's our protector here?

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Like who's going to if something happens right now and
someone jumps out and attack, Who's going to defend us?
And I remember feeling that way my entire so that
kind of pessimism or like, hey there's something.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Became a protector in time, did well?

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Right, and then you're always looking to say, hey, the
next threat is around that corner. Well, if you grow
up that way, you're always looking for the next threat.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
So why did you become an atheist? Well?

Speaker 3 (05:54):
I think part of it was no Christians in my family,
no friends who are Christians. My mom grew up Catholic,
but in the early sixties, if you divorced your status
within the Catholic churchly she felt that way.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
The parish that she.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Was attending, she had a status change. And I thought,
this is such a ridiculous joke of none of this
could be true. Especially if it's going to treat treat,
And I thought there was sufficient explanation for the world
the way it is without having to embrace some form
of theism.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
So I just stayed out of it.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Also, I can tell you that you don't know how
many people you're going to take to jail for the
most ridiculous crimes that will tell you on the way
to jail that they are Christians. So I'm like, okay,
this is what it is. I had no interest, and
so I just had no interest. And my wife, I think,
was the one who really had the first interest in like, well,

(06:48):
what should we raise our kids this way?

Speaker 4 (06:51):
So sous than that.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
We were together about eighteen years before we walked into that church,
and we were thinking, okay, we had now we have
a six and a four or a seven and a
five year old, and we're thinking. SUSY's thinking, well, do
we want to at least expose them?

Speaker 4 (07:07):
I thought, no, I mean you can if you want.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
My dad's a very committed atheist and he has really
as long as I've known him, he's been that way.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
You're dead still living, yes, he's eighty five.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, A great story.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
It reminds me a bit of Lee's trouble, and so often,
you know, Jim, the wives are the hero of the story.
So Lee stroubled, his wife comes to faith first. And
then I interviewed Darryl Strawberry. He was strung out and drugs,
actually went and served time in prison, and his wife
wouldn't let him go and she just kept after him

(07:41):
and he came to faith.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Same for Alice Cooper.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
You know, his wife, Cheryl made a strong, principled stand
for him to get off drugs. And it's just amazing
how often the wives are sort of the unsung hero
of the spiritual story.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Susie for sure, and it's not that she was a Christian,
we both became Christians at the same time, but it
was she was interested in does the Christian worldview have
something that's important that we need to investigate? And and
my dad's the kind of person who, although he is
not a Christian, he will go to church. He'll go

(08:20):
to church and he knows that he's been in church
enough with him maybe with his parents, who are I
think were always kind of like cultural, kind of cultural Methodists.
That was my grandfather and my grandmother. So as they
got older, I would take them to church, and they
would happily go, but I don't know that they really
They were definitely not Bible readers. But my dad thinks

(08:40):
it's a useful delusion.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
So he's more and whatever you believe, and here you are.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
You are, you know, one of the leading apologists in
America today. You're the expert we go to to get
answers to return unbelieving friends and family. And yet you
have your father. I don't say that critically. My mother
didn't come to faith till the very end of her life.
And so I understand this because I think the hardest
people to reads are your family.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Oh, I can tell you that one year I was
going back to do a prayer breakfast and for it
or my dad's about two hours east to Dallas, and
so I'll call my dad and I said, I'm going
to after this prayer breakfast, I'm going to come out.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
And see you.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
He says, great.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Well, the next day before I leave, he calls me
again and he says, did you call me yesterday? And
I thought, oh, he's having memory issues, you know. He
said that time he's probably he was eighty eighty two.
It was not right in that range, and I told
my wife. I said, I'm telling you what. I am
going to Texas and when I come back, my dad
will be a Christian. I'm not leaving until he accepts
the God lives. If this could be done, so, I

(09:41):
remember I drove out and I got to his house
and I said, Dad, I just tried to leverage you
my relationship with him. I said, Dad, I mean, I
just can't imagine being an eternity without you. And he said,
I said, you're my best friend. He says, no, I'm
not your best friend. I said no, Actually, if I'm
honest with you, you are. And I mean I think
you are, but you are. I said, so I'm going

(10:02):
to tell you what, and he choked him up. I said,
I'm going to tell you what.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Tonight.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
You're going to go home and I walked him through
the gospel and you're going to have this conversation with
God and he just he was We're in the car
on the way to get barbecue and Jefferson, Texas when
I had this conversation with him, and he looked over
at me and he said, I can do that.

Speaker 4 (10:22):
So I didn't say anymore.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Didn't press it any further because I had been talking
to him about this, and he's never I wrote a book,
God's Crime Scene to him.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
He's never read it.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Okay, So I'm like, Okay, what I was going to
take to reach him, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
So I'm driving to Baubeque.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
The next day.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
I pick him up and we're going to a lot
of You, Texas to pick up a bike that he
needs to have repair. He was a bike rider in
those days, even in his eighties. So I thought, okay,
I'm gonna go get your bike. So we go get
this bike. On the way to a lot of You,
I said, so, Dad, did you have that conversation with
God last night?

Speaker 4 (10:50):
He says, yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
I thought he's on one hundred and ten acres of
piny woods, he said. I thought it was the kind
of thing I should probably go out in the woods
and have that conversation. So I left it. I thought, oh,
this is awesome. Maybe he's really made a decision. Now
in the years since I realized that, no, he's done
any more interested in God than he ever was.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
He hasn't told you. You know, I have a friend
Michael Frenzies. He used to be a part of the
Columbu Crime family was being groomed to be the next
daughter Godfather and his father Sonny Frenzies, was the hit
man for the columb of crime family and was sent
to prison. In fact, when he finally died, he was

(11:36):
over one hundred years old, and he kept he would
get released and he would violate probation because he would
hang around mobsters and be sent back to prison again.
But so Michael, you know, we had so many conversations
about his father coming to faith, and he'd go and
visit his father, and he loved his father so much.

(11:57):
And then finally he found out after his father passed
that some woman went in there who was a chaplain
who shared the Gospel with him and led Sunny Frenzies
to Christ. So, you know, just as I told you,
my mom didn't come till much later, and tragically she
died only months after she made that recommitment. So we

(12:17):
just keep praying, you know, and I think you identified
an important thing. You said certain things, then you stopped,
and I think sometimes you know, we want to close
the deal. Only the Holy Spirit that was the deal.
But you know, Paul said some so other's water God
gives the increase and just kind of knowing when to press,
knowing when to just stop and pray and leave it

(12:39):
in God's hands.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
Yeah, And I think that's so important with my dad
because his personality is mine. I mean, I remember growing
up my mom was very open minded, very focused on
grace and mercy, not so much on truth and justice.
My dad was always focused as a cop. He was
always seemed to me to be like the job had
poisoned him. I grew up in the arts, got a

(13:01):
bachelor's degree in fine art, and then I got a
master's degree in architecture, and then I joined my dad's profession.
And within three or four years of being in this profession,
I realized, oh, okay, I get it now. I see
how why he was the way he was. So I
know his personality because I had a lot of it
was built on the job and in the job, and
so I've experienced that now.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
So I just know.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Where how far I can go before I'll take any
ground that I've captured and surrender it back to him.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
So I try to.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
You know, you're right, I know that there is all
no it's time for me to close something with him.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
I also know his time.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Hey, this is this is a great advance. We've made
so much progress in this conversation. I'm just grateful that
we got this far. I'm going to leave it there
for now, So let's go back.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
We got a little ahead, you know, into your life
as a believer in the work you do. But so
you're a cold case detective, you're an atheist. Your wife says,
do you want to raise our children without faith? And
so you're open to it. So you take your skill set,
your investigative techniques, and it reminds me a lot of

(14:06):
Lee Strouble, who was an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
This erech right.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
So he took that same skill set and he was
going to disprove in his case, he wanted to disprove
the faith of his wife. But you weren't going out
to disprove it. No, you were saying, well, let's look
at it as though this were what.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Yeah, Well, my son and I just had this converse.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
He's also a detective, and he was raised out and
he was raising the generations all named Jim Wallas at
the same agency. So there's been a Jim Wallis of
that agency since nineteen sixty one. Anyway, so he was
we're on this call it yesterday. I realized it was
two hours and forty seven minutes that Jimmy and I
were talking about the theological history of different ideas in Christendom,

(14:49):
you know, different theological ideas. He's interested in authority, like,
how do we know this canon is the canon or
ought to be the canon? To be leave anything out?
Should else send something else be included? That's always Jimmy's thing, right, said,
He's been interested in that. Okay, Well for me it
was kind of similar. I it wasn't sure. I had
no upbringing in the church, so I didn't know anything

(15:10):
about like how.

Speaker 4 (15:12):
Were these books selected?

Speaker 1 (15:13):
What's the Bible?

Speaker 4 (15:15):
What's the history?

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Didn't care. Here's what I knew.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
This pastor said that Jesus was smart, and that was
enough to provoke me to buy a Bible to see
what's so smart about Jesus.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
So I bought a Pew Bible.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
They were like six or seven dollars at b Dalton,
you know, back when they had bookstores. So I buy
this Pew Bible and I get it home and I'm
reading through the gospels looking for.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
The red light. You knew to go to the Gospel
as well.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
I knew that as he had quoted in this thing
something from the Gospel, and this message at church something
from the gospels. So I started there just where he
had talked about, and I looked at oh okay. Didn't
know how the structure of this text was. Didn't know
what a gospel was compared to the letters of Paul
or I didn't know any of that. But I did
know as I read through these gospels that they varied,

(15:57):
like the same event is being described in what some
people might say are two different ways, and even they
might even say they're contradictory. Now I didn't take that
view because I've been working with eyewitnesses for a number
of years by that time, and if you get five
eyewitnesses to describe something that happened just fifteen minutes ago,
you will see the same level of variation between a
fifteen minute old event. This is just the nature of eyewitnesses.

(16:19):
We disagree typically because we come in with certain commitments
to reality that drive our observations. So if I'm somebody
who loves nineteen sixties cinema, I'll probably remember everything on
that poster on that wall that somebody else, Oh there
was a poster on the wall.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
I think there was a mirror on the wall. I don't.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
It wasn't paying attention. Well, no, there's actually a poster
from a night. Really, these seemed like two contradictory. Was
because I am committed to certain things that I'm interested.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
See and you saw that without even having a basic
understanding of Because the Gospels, as you know now, are
written from four different perspectives, you know, Matthew speaking more
to the Jewish mindset, and John maybe to more what
we would call secular view. You know, you know these
things we write that you may believe that ge this

(17:05):
is the son of God. So he's effectively wanting to
bring non believers to faith. Where Matthew it's like lots
of Old Testament references and showing how Jesus fulfilled all
these things, but both inspired by God. I see it
as sort of looking the same thing from different angles.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
Well, look at this way.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
If I'm doing an interview I am, and I'm interviewing
a boomer or maybe a gen X about what was
he wearing, I'm far more likely to get better information
from a woman than I am from a guy.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
Yes, it's just if it's in that generation.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
So it's because the commitments of each person, the interests
of each of each girl, and it changes generationally. There
are different things that you're interested in. And if you're somebody,
for example, who just by coincidence, happened to own the
same brand shirt, so you can tell me, no, I
know what he was wearing.

Speaker 4 (17:52):
I own that shirt.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
I got it at LL Bean It's an LL Beean shirt. Well,
that's great information to have, right, because I do a
search warrant I know what I'm looking for now. But
I mean, I get that unless you happen to have
a personal history that causes you to on the shirt
he's wearing. But that also means you probably missed that
thing standing over there because you were looking over here.
So your prior interest dictate the way you see in

(18:14):
an environment. It's not just that that I might describe
it differently.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
Is that I missed it all together?

Speaker 1 (18:19):
You know.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
One of the things is dangerous.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
I think about videos for police officers, and I'm a
favor of body cams because I think they're generally help
us more than they hurt us. But one of the
worst things about body cams is that they're not they're
not discriminatory. The same way you develop tunnel vision, especially
if you're in a crisis, trauma, traumatic moment, I will
start to not see the things in my periphery because

(18:41):
I'm so focused on the danger that the.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
Camera doesn't do that.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
When you play it the next day, it sees everything
as if as the same level of attention.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
And then you could ask the officer, why didn't you
see that? Well, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
I just know in real time, all I could see
is this, even though is that available to you, Yes,
but I couldn't see it because of other issues that
caused me to focus in Well, the same is true
for any set of eyewitnesses, even if it's something like
your grandmother's birthday. If you're going to go and you're
bored in tears, you're going to have a different report
of that birthday than somebody who's animated about the gifts

(19:14):
that she got. You probably couldn't even tell me half
the gifts she got, but somebody else could. And it's
not because we weren't there. It's because we were there
and we're two different people. So when I read to
the Gospels for the first time, I thought, oh, there's
like an embedded flavor here. That feels like it I
would expect it to feel, because certainly they had centuries

(19:35):
to work these issues out. If they wanted to eliminate
the differences between the gospels, it could have been done
before any of us would ever be the wiser. But
they left them in because this is the nature of
eyewitness accounts.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
So I thought, okay, and I say, eyewitness accounts. Here's why.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Well, John has historically been attributed as the writer of
the Gospel of John, and Matthew has historically been attributed
that gospel has been attributed to Matthew. But Mark, I
think there's an entire line of good evidence that that
is Peter's Gospel written in Rome. I think it's the
first Gospel. And I can make that case later. But
the point is it's a god. It's an eyewitness account

(20:10):
recorded by Mark. It's Peter's eyewitness account. And Luke tells
us that he is writing the eyewitness accounts of others, eyewitnesses.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
And servants of the word. Well, he interviewed people.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right. Well, let's put this way.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
When I get a case, I get a bunch of
supple in our reports that contain eyewitness accounts well, you
know that none of them were actually written by the eyewitness.
They're written by detectives who interviewed an eyewitness.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
So that's that's what.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
There's still eyewitness accounts even though they're not written by
the eyewitness. They're written by somebody who has access to
the eyewitness. So I look at Mark and Luke and
I jumped them in so I can now test these
given all the parameters we use in criminal trials to
test eyewitnesses, And.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
There's like what was the turning point? Like what did
a light go on? Or all of a sudden that
this is it? Or was a little more.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Graduate it was more great Because here's the even like
any case I work, I don't have a lot of
DNA cases, just that one I told you about with
that ten year old. That's the only DA case I've
ever had. In cold cases, I make cases by a
mass quantity, a cumulative, circumstantial case.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
It's fifty things.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
It's death by a thousand paper cuts, it's fifty things
that point to that guy. Now, any one of those
fifty things might not seem like much, but in total,
it's like, oh yeah, this is overwhelming. Who else could
it be that could meet all of these fifty conditions. Well,
so it's small little pieces of evidence that don't seem
like much on their own that point back to the
same suspect.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
That's all my cases. So here it was the same thing.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah, at some point the body of evidences was overwhelming
to me, and each one of them might seem like
a little bit of nothing. So you can look at
the archaeological support. You can look at the fact that
the language is consistent with people who would write in
the first century in that region. Even the use of pronouns,
these are all consistent. There's lots of different lines of
evidence you could look at. Now, here's what I would

(22:00):
say is that the deal killer for most people, And
there's these four criteria that I've talked about in cold
case Christianity. Just were they really there to see what
they said they saw? Have they changed their story over time,
can they be corroborated, even in a small way, And finally,
do they have a bias that would cause them to
lie to us? That's how we test all eyewitnesses and
jury trials. You could apply that template to the Gospels.

(22:23):
You'd be surprised with a land But there's a lot
of skeptics out there, and they're typically skeptical because the
Gospels contain miracles, supernatural events.

Speaker 4 (22:33):
Let's put it this way.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
If the Gospels were just a story about a first
century rabbi who had great sermons, nice guy, never worked
a miracle, but not born of a version, never rose
from the grave, just a smart preaching rabbi, nobody would
doubt the historicity of the Gospels. Based on the fact
we have so much overwhelming manuscript evidence. Nobody would doubt anything.

(22:56):
There's no better ancient a tested on manuscript evidence than
Jesus of Nazareth. But if you insert one miracle, just one,
everyone's says, oh, that's got to be I'm out. So
that tells you right now that this is not about
the manuscript evidence or the historical evidence. It's about a
presuppositional bias against the supernatural because people don't think the

(23:17):
supernatural exists in a modern world. They'll say, Hey, if
you're doing history and you're going to insert something supernatural,
you're no longer in the right genre.

Speaker 4 (23:24):
You're not in history now, you're in mythology.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
You just shifted because there's no we don't have room
for the supernatural in history anymore than we have room
for the supernatural in science. So we've naturalized, we've we've
kind of stripped out anything beyond the physical realm in
both history and science.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
And there's the question I have, do we like we
talked to?

Speaker 1 (23:46):
There's people we.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
Know, intellectuals in culture today who have big podcast audiences
who really kind of deny supernatural claims. Yet they think
they are they are considering this notion with their immaterial mind.
We're more than just brains, we have immateial minds.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
We're more than just.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
We're soulish creatures.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Well, how do we explain the soulish nature or the
immaterial mind in an entirely physical universe? There has to
be something beyond pure physicalism. There has to be there's
something outside of the physical realm that governs the universe.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
So what made it happen for Jim Wallace? Was there
a moment? Did you pray a prayer? Did you Well?

Speaker 3 (24:28):
I remember getting to a point where I was like, wow, okay,
you test it in these four areas. I think it's
written early enough because if you want to lie about Jesus,
just wait till everyone knows the truth is dead. Then
you can say whatever you want. I think it's written early,
and I make a case of my own evidence. Is
there a case for early dating? Yes, I needed to know.
Has a changed over time?

Speaker 1 (24:48):
No, it hasn't.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
The claims of Jesus, as crazy as they may be,
have always been that crazy.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
And you're thirty five years old. Thirty five years old.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Most people make a decision for Christ around eighteen, So
you waited. I mean, this is you know, you're really
thinking this through. Most people, I don't think go through
a like you went through.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Well.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
I remember there was a new believer's class, and I
wasn't a believer, but I went to it at this church,
and I remember them making arguments on the whiteboard and thinking, eh,
you know it's okay. I mean, yeah, I can see
why you might already if you already believe, you might
think that's persuasive. But I remember being skeptical and just
taking time to do it. So I remember at one

(25:28):
point I was laying in bed frind to fall asleep,
and I said to Susan, you know, I think I
think they're reliable. I mean i think I'm kind of
like I'm feeling like I'm stuck with Jesus right now.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
She had already become a believer.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
No, I think she was definitely the more open to
it because but all this during this time, like we're
hitting miss but we're for the most part trying to
go to church, trying to see what these guys are saying.
But we weren't through like every week, but we were
pretty pretty relatively consistent. And so I remember saying to her,
I think this is I think. I'm like, I'm not
sure what to do with this. Here's what I don't
understand though. I don't understand why, if there is a God,

(25:59):
and if this is true, why would Jesus have to
die on a cross like I did. I was convinced
the gospels were accurate and reliable, but I did not
yet understand the gospel.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
And that's the whole point.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, but here's what was different though for me. I
no longer had these walls standing between me and the gospel.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
So now I can actually I.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Think that's what apologetics do and effect is they take
down the wall.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
I don't think that there's any Only the Gospel has power.
You know that there's no power an unapologetic argument. There's
only power in the gospel. The problem is, though there's
many people who like my dad, I think still who
when you hear the gospel, when you present the gospel,
you're trying to figure out a new way to say it.
Because he's heard it so many times and he's only
hearing I think, blah blah blah, like Charlie Brown and

(26:47):
his teacher, you know, wanh wanh wanh wanh wanh So
he's not hearing it. And so it's because he's put
a ton of stuff between him and the gospel message.
And I have to figure out, like what is the
stuff he's putting in there? Because if I can.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Get rid of that.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
And now you could argue that really you can't get
rid of that, Jim, that that's something that God has
to get rid of. Yes, but God uses us, right,
I mean, I mean, clearly God could have had said
that when we're born, we are born with an innate
sense of the Gospel, never need to hear it, or
he would visit every one of us at our tenth
birthday in our dreams and present the gospel.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
Fully, he could do it any way he wants.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
It turns out he uses us for some reason, and
I think he also uses us to, like you said,
to sow that ground, to break up that ground so
that somebody can plant to seed, because right now it's
just bouncing off. And that was me, It was all
those There were people who I'm trying to think if
I ever heard the Gospel before I bought a Bible,

(27:41):
and I don't. If I did, I don't remember hearing it,
and probably I did, but I just did not hear
it because I didn't want to hear it.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Now you've written a book called I'm Jim Wallace and
You're Not, which I think is an arrogant title. Down there,
it's well like true would be I'm Jay Warner Wallas.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
You know why I took that name?

Speaker 2 (28:00):
You know why?

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Probably do you know who Jim Wallace is of Sojourners? Oh?

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yes, okay. So I was doing Radio Understood.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
When I first started, and I was just Jim Wallace
and one of the radio hosts says, I can't have
you on anymore with that name, because if I say
I'm want to have Jim Wallace on tomorrow, they all
think you're that guy. So, and he's very different. He's
a he's a very politically active guy. Let me tell
a quick side story. So I Trump's first administration. I
was part of this group of Christians who was going
to go and look at law enforce law enforcement reform

(28:32):
in Washington, D C. And Trump's legal her Christian advisor, Pam,
She called me and said, would you come to this
meeting of all you know, politically active people. So I said, sure,
I'll come. So I go walk into the room in Washington,
D C. And I see at one of the tables
there's a name tag for Jim Wallace. He spells his
name W A L L.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
I S.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
Very different approach to how to how to think about
law enforcement, very different approach to almost everything from me.
We're almost completely different, I ideological extremes. But I got
a chance to meet him. So he comes in and
I shook his hand and I said, I want you
to know you're the reason why I use j Warner
Wallace because my name is Jim Wallace and him, yeah,
I told him this and we laughed about it, and
that was the last, I think kind thing we said

(29:12):
to each other the entire moeting, because we are so
different in terms of our approach to law enforcement. But
that's why I go by Jay Warner Wallace. Also, you know,
you were saying if you don't have a good male
role model, that maybe it's a stepfather, or maybe it's
somebody who becomes the guy who you think, Hey, that's
my dad. Well, I have a great dad, I mean,
but he was not available to me a lot of
the time. And the man who had the biggest impact

(29:34):
on my life was a guy named Warner Wallace, my grandfather.
So even before I became a Christian, all my search
warrants said Jay Warner Wallace to tip the hat, tip
my grandfather.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
So I just took that name because it.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Was beautiful, you know, jd Vance or vice president. You know,
his mother had huge addiction issues, and he had his
grandmother who called Memma, who literally rescued him. He wrote
a book about it called Hillbilly Elegy, and a movie
was made about it as well. And she saw his
life was going the wrong way and she took him in.

(30:08):
She's very rough around yet, just kind of a woman,
very country type woman. But you know he attributes be
you know, basically getting through that and going on to
obviously get a great education and then become a senator,
most significantly the vice president, but I love to hear
when grandparents step in. You know, my mother was married
and divorce seven times, and I lived with my grandmother,

(30:30):
who he called Mama Stella because that's a Southern way
of calling them, you know, their first name with mama
or daddy attached to it. And it was the time
of stability in my childhood that my mother was not
able to provide. But before I got of from this
rabbit trail about mocking you about a book you didn't
even write, I was going to say, you really did
write a book called Cold Case Christianity. And in this

(30:51):
book you identify ten what is it, ten principles that
are of detective work. Yeah, tell me about the ten
principles and maybe tell me if there's one that stands
out above the others that we can apply when we're
trying to communicate our faith with others.

Speaker 4 (31:10):
Okay, So I think there's a couple of things here. Yeah,
I think a lot of it. You might say, well,
how do you how do we think?

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Well, and I'm not to say that detectives always think well,
but we have to think in a way that we
can then communicate to a jury. So howe whatever process
we're going to put in place. It is eventually going
to get tested in front of a jury, and if
we didn't do it well, we don't understand these basic principles,
it's going to get exposed. So I think we try
to be tight about how we think about investigating claims.
So a couple of things I think will help people

(31:34):
maybe hadn't thought about. Well, what could you learn? Give
you a simple one. There's a big difference between what's
possible and what's reasonable. This idea, this idea that we
are trying to make a case in front of a
jury beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a lower standard than
beyond a possible doubt. Possible because there's no possible way
this could be wrong. Now, I think that I'll never

(31:56):
say I could prove anything, and I tell juries all
the time, I could never prove this beyond a possible
doubt because I have unanswered questions, and those questions are
what separate reasonable. I'm beyond a reasonable doubt. I think
he's the guy, but I can't answer. So I tell
juris all the time. We tell them we will say
this very commonly. We're going to tell you everything you
need to know, but not everything that could be known,

(32:16):
because we don't even know everything that could be known.
We know that he did it, and we can demonstrate
that for you, but until he confesses, we won't know
precisely how he did it or why he did it,
because we can only.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
Imagine those things.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
So you're gonna have to make a decision about this
beyond a reasonable doubt, even though you're gonna have unanswered
questions that would put you.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
Beyond a possible doubt.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
There's nothing you know we tell jurors beyond a possible doubt,
even our existence in this podcast. People who are watching
this right now, do they know it's really us? But
the AI, being as good as it is, do they
really know it's us?

Speaker 1 (32:49):
You don't even know.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Is it possible it's not us? Yes, it is possible,
but it's not reasonable, and we live in the area
of what's reasonable. I tell jurors all the time. I'm
going to give you a line of evidences that point
right to this defendant. Now, you're not going to point
a foot to the left or foot to the right
of him. They're going to lead you right up to him,
but they're going to stop short because I don't know everything.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
I could know.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
I just know what's needed to know.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
And this gap between the end of the evidence trail
and his position is a gap that is filled with
all of your unanswered questions.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
I'm still going to.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Ask you at the end of this, though, to take
the most reasonable step and render a verdict, because it's
pointing or right to him. You cannot get hung up
on your unanswered questions. And we tell people all the time,
if you're the kind of person who needs to have
every question answered before you can render a verdict, you're
going to get excused because we can't use those kind
of people. I can never answer every possible question. Well,

(33:43):
the same thing is true by consis.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
I've been chosen for jury duty two times and they
always reject me. I get into the box and it's like, okay,
get out of here.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah right, I don't know. There's something that.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
So a lot of it is is that they're looking
for people.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Each side is trying to put the jury that they
think is going to favor them, and most of the time,
if they think that you're a somebody who holds to
certain object of religious truths and moral truths, then sometimes
we get excluded. I get that, but that's okay, But
I say the same thing about Jesus. You're gonna have
evidence that's going to point right to the doors. It's
not going to point to a foot to the left
of Jesus or a foot to the right, but it's
going to stop short of what you might like to have.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
And those are all of.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Your unanswered questions about why would God allow this? How
is it that God has you know, a sovereignty, yet
I seem to have freedom to make choices?

Speaker 1 (34:29):
What's the end?

Speaker 4 (34:30):
Time is going to be okay?

Speaker 1 (34:31):
All of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
Those are the unanswered questions that I get. I understand,
but I have those same questions. But I know that
I have enough evidence to make that step and render
a verdict, make a decision for Jesus. There's more than
enough evidence for this. And so the question is, are
you willing to step across your unanswered questions but the
same way that everyone does for everything else. Do you

(34:56):
understand how a tumblr lock works? I don't yet I
put my key in them every day, yes, because I
don't have to have every question answered to know that
this is going to turn this lock. So the same
is true for everything we do. But when it gets
seems like we get to issues about surrendering our life
and our will and our moral all of this to God,
and we're like, oh, no, no, no, no, I have
to have a perfect case without any questions in my mind.

(35:19):
Really about what else do you have that kind of
a perfect case.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Well, Jesus said, people don't come to the light because
they don't want their deeds to be expressed, right, So
sometimes they'll wrap it in a so called intellectual argument
that will often collapse quickly when you push back with
some facts. And really the reason is they don't want
to change, you know, they don't want this thing to

(35:42):
happen in their life. But you know, the very thing
they're resisting is a thing that could transform them in
so many ways. And it's not even logical why a
person would say notice something like they'll say, I don't
want to hear what the Bible says, but they won't
even read it. They won't even just like give a
cursory glance at it. You know, what do you think

(36:02):
that is?

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Well, a part of it is it's about I think
it's all about commitments.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
What are your prior commitments?

Speaker 3 (36:07):
So, for example, the same people always say I could
never look at something like the Bible as authoritative on
my life still embrace authoritative views from any other number
of sources. So none of us are the makers of authority.
We're trusting somebody, and it's always something other than scripture.
So I think the ones you realize that, you know,
everyone stands on the authority of a teaching, it's what

(36:29):
you learned in college from secular books, You're standing on
that authority, or it's what you're going to learn here
from this ancient Now, I will say that I do
think that people are shifting. I think that maybe my
age is a boomer. I think that probably we were
more concerned about is it factually true? And so books
like you know, evidence that demands a verdict? Those are
kind of wheelhouse kinds of books. Yeah, Josh McDowell. Those

(36:52):
kinds of things, I think are like probably where we
would have been, say, fifty years ago.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
I think this generation really wants to know is it good?
Forget about it? True is a whole other issue.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
True is I need to know? Is it a good?
Definition of good? Isn't it definition of true? Also? What
is good?

Speaker 4 (37:08):
Well, here's what it means?

Speaker 1 (37:09):
It means that's not a long time ago, right? What
is truth?

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah, exactly, And so part of it is that I
think if we are convinced that what culture says is
what's good, then we're going to become more convinced that
scripture isn't because it turns out culture is going so
far astray from the biblical world.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
For instance, the Bible would tell us to marry a
person of the opposite sext remain in a monogamous relationship
with them. That's contrary to what they think you should
be able to do, because maybe you're not even sure
if you are a man or a woman, and why
can't people of the same sex marry and fall in
love and all that?

Speaker 1 (37:46):
So their version of truth would be contrary to what
the Bible actually says.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
We're watching this show on PBS All Creatures Great and
Small as Folly that you saw.

Speaker 4 (37:56):
It's a show that's I really like it.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
I like it too, and I thought, wow, isn't it
interesting that this show made in the UK, which is
always about fifty years ahead of us in terms of secularism?

Speaker 1 (38:04):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Isn't it interesting that this show would be allowed to
be produced without importing any current mores into the show.
It feels like, well, I think they can argue, well, yes,
but we're writing about We're just writing from the book.
There's a series of books right from this veterinary area,
James Harriot, and so there's a series of books and

(38:25):
it's depicting the England or Scotland or wherever it's set
in nineteen forties. And this is the way the world
was in the nineteen forties. So you almost have an
excuse to go back to something that we've lost.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
That it shows you that.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, if you compare sitcoms about families in the nineteen
fifties with sitcoms about families today, you're not even going.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
To tell that we're on the same planet.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Well, the ones we grew up with, you know, the
Donna Reid show, right, father knows best or leave it
to Beaver Beaver.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
It's so funny.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
I was a kid without a dad, and when Beaver's
dad would lecture him, I would like listen for like
information because even though he's an actor, Hugh Beaumont playing
a father, Yes, you know, I'm going okay, maybe some
direction here.

Speaker 4 (39:09):
Bother funny what is the what is the Chuck Connor rifleman, rifleman.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Okay, I'm just gonna we just had this conversation with
my wife and I I grew up looking at Leave
de Beaver and the Rifleman as the sources of my
paternal idea.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Where they started rewatching the riflemen. And it's a beautiful series.
Not just about a guy with the rifle that's in there,
of course, but but it's about a father and a son.
It's absolutely and he always is giving wisdom In a
couple of episodes, even quoted scripture yes to his son,
and I thought.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
Wow, what a different world we live in. Okay, So
there's the shift.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
And this gun's cool too, right, And you would have
said in those days growing up, people admired they said, Wow,
wouldn't it be cool to be that kid being raised
in that way and that setting in that environment with
those values.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Well that's gone.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
But you're talking about young people today. Our generation maybe
would be more interested in facts. But this generation wants
to know if it's good, Is it good?

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Is it good?

Speaker 4 (40:10):
And here's the problem. So here's what I would say.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
I think very I think most of us when we
ask is it good, what we really mean is it good?
For me, that's true, and we selfishly want one two
three four five, And so the question is, well, your worldview,
give me one two three four five. I think part
of the problem that the project now is going to
be to help them to see is that one two
three four five even good itself?

Speaker 4 (40:34):
Why would you want those things? So it's even deeper.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
It's that that Christianity speaks to our desires, not how
our desires are expressed, it speaks to the desires themselves.
And this is why I think that for me, my
writing is tried to do both. Look, if it's not true,
then how can we even say that?

Speaker 4 (40:55):
Is it something untrue?

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Good?

Speaker 3 (40:57):
I think by nature there is a connection between these
two things. So I think we have to make a
case is this evidentially true? Now we can talk about
what does it speak to say about life, about marriage,
about identity, about.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
What is life? To begin with?

Speaker 4 (41:10):
What does it say about those things?

Speaker 3 (41:12):
It's going to have to be true first, because the
idea that we can build our worldview on a fiction
of our own has consequences, and we've seen those consequences
in our culture in the last twenty years. Is if
we can't even agree on what good is right, then
we kind of let's illustrate.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Let's say here we have a boomer and here we
have a gen z young person. Okay, and let's say
you're going to engage each of them in a conversation.
Let's say there's separate conversations. How might you start a
conversation with a boomer and how might you start a
conversation with someone who's gen z.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Well, I think it's a both end and not in
either or so I always think about it and say, hey,
this is what's great about it is that Christianity is
both true and good. Is that not only is it
true and it's demonstrably true, that we can look at
it as something that actually happened in history. Did Jesus life,
his death, and resurrection are historical facts? That it turns
out that the Christian worldview is the source of all
beauty in art, literature, music, science, education, and world religions

(42:14):
are dominated by a Christian influence, not because we're the
most powerful, but because we are.

Speaker 4 (42:20):
It's true and good, and so people.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Once they see it and they recognize it as true
and good, then that yes, could it be abused?

Speaker 4 (42:28):
Absolutely? Do you remember that movie The Book of Eli.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
It's yes, it's a great Denzel Washington and he's in
this movie and he is a guy who is he
is he's trying to get the last Bible in this
dystopian future world.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
He has possession of a Bible.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
And the bad guy in the movie wants the Bible
because he thinks this is I can use this to
control people, and it's a power.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
I want it because the power that's in that.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
Book, Well, it's because any substantial, substantive worldview can be
distorted by people and used evily. It's like the same
the knife you use to cut your bread could also
be used to kill somebody. Is a knife bad because
it can be used to kill somebody? So we see that, yes,
that that Christianity has been distorted by many who would

(43:14):
call themselves Christians and to do evil. I get that,
but it is the source of the things that help
us to flourish. If you just adopted the views that
are in scripture and you married because of the view
you hold, you identified yourself based on the view in scripture,
you actually learned what to worship and value based on
what is taught.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
My gosh, every aspect.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Of human flourishing that we can measure in secular studies benefits.
If you simply do it the way it's described.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
You're more healthy and therevity, everything everything.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
I mean, give you an example of this. Just the idea,
you know, I've talked about this before. Just the idea
that humility is this hidden resource for humans that if
they can just adopt a position of humility, every metric
of human flourishing and proves from health, longevity, depth of relationships,
how much money you're going to make, how smart you're

(44:11):
going to become. Everything benefits from humility. And only one
worldview promotes humil Have you ever thought about that? So,
for example, atheism does not promote humility. Why because it's
work based. If you have to work to get it.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
I'm going to do these five things.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
I'm going to earn an education. I'm gonna do these
five things. I'm going to earn a promotion.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
It's the meritorious nature of atheism that builds pride, not humility,
because what happens is I do these five things and
he gets the job. Wait a minute, now I'm mad.
Why because I think I'm better than that guy. Now,
every other theistic worldview is also based on merit. I
do these ten things, I'm gonna be right with God.

(44:50):
I do these four things, these eight things, I'm going
to be right with God. Only one worldview says, no, No,
there's nothing you can do.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Not about what you do.

Speaker 4 (45:00):
It's about what's been done for you.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
I know.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Because we are wired for pride, we are wired to
compare ourselves to others.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
We are wired to say, I did the ten things
this guy didn't. I deserve more than this guy.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
Well, only one to you says, not tell you what.
Neither one of you deserves any of it. Yeah, but
I'm going to give it to you anyway.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
One thing I pointed out is there's going to be
good people in heaven. Excuse me, bad people in heaven
and good people in hell. And because we think, oh,
heaven is for good people. And if you live a
good life and do x amount of good things, you
will get to heaven. If you live a bad life,
you will end up in hell. Well that's actually not true,
because you could live the best life imaginable, but a

(45:41):
life without God. And even the Bible says Jesus speaking,
many will come to me in that day and saying Lord, Lord,
did we not go stock demons in your name and
do many wonderful works in your name? And he said,
and I will say to them, depart from me.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
I never knew you.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
But then bad people in heaven, because if you turn
from your sin, even on your deathbed, God would forgive you.
Case in point, the thief on the cross, and he
probably was worse than a thief because the Romans didn't
generally crucify thieves. They crucified murderers. He's probably an insurrectionist.
Well we might even call a terrorist against Rome. So

(46:17):
he's been crucified for a capital crime. Yet Jesus says
to him when he says, Lord, remembering me when you
come into your kingdom, Jesus says, today you'll be with
me in paradise. Let me do a lightning round with you, okay,
and speak in the vernacular like I'm just someone and
we're at a Starbucks and we start a conversation, and
I'm going to hit you with the things people often say,

(46:40):
but I need like kind of like kind of quick
ones just so people get a sense. Because they can
get your book Cold Case Christianity, and you've written some
other books.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Tell us the titles of your Okay, so I wrote
the Cold case Christians.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
I wrote a book called God's Crimes, which just looks
at the evidence for God, forensic faith, how to develop
a evidential faith. Personal interest is about the impact of
Jesus on culture and.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
The truth and the graphic novel, a comic book. I'm excited.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
We both have a background at art, and so you're
going to now take what you're doing and put it
in the graphic novel format. But anyway, okay, so they
can get your books and get more details. But so
you know, you're talking to me about God, and of
course I probably will start with this, Wait, hold on,
how could a God of love, you know, allow all

(47:27):
the horrible things happening in the world, the wars, the injustice,
people born with disabilities. If God is so loving and
God is so good, why would he allow this?

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Okay, well, a couple of things.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
I say that if the answer is more complex, and
one is a small short answer. But I will say
this is one thing I know for sure as a
cold case detective. If you think God is loving, that
means he was probably the kind of God who would
create a world in which love could exist. A loving
God would create a world in which we could experience love.
But do you really want that kind of world? That's
a dangerous world because it requires a dangerous prerequisite to love.

(48:03):
I could take my gun out and say did you
love me, Greg, and you'll say yeah, you don't mean it,
but you'll say it good. But it's not true love
because love can't be coerced. In order to love somebody,
you have to have the dangerous prerequisite, which is free agency.
Oh my gosh, do you want a world in which
there is free agency?

Speaker 4 (48:20):
Because it's logically.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Impossible to create a world with free agency where people
can love without creating a world with free agency so
people can hate. It's a logical impossibility. If you want
love in this world, you have to create it with
free agency. I can't just program you. See, you'd never
do wrong because you wouldn't be free. I could program
my phone to say I love you every morning. It

(48:43):
doesn't mean it loves me. It's been programmed to say that,
so it's not genuine. So I could create humans this way,
but it wouldn't be genuine. You want love, that means
you have now Here's what a loving god does is
he gives you this dangerous thing called free agency.

Speaker 4 (48:56):
But he tells you how not to abuse it.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
He gives you a rule book with ten rules, for example,
about how not to abuse your free agency. That's what
that rule book is. It's a rule book about how
to manage your free agency. If you choose to ignore.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
It, that's not on God.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
I've given you the dangerous thing you wanted, free agency.
I've given you a guideline not to abuse it.

Speaker 4 (49:19):
If you won't follow the guideline, you're going to see
all kinds of crazy.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, and we typically do, and the world as a
result is broken along with us. And so it's not
just that we have we sit against each other or
we make bad choices against each other. Is that we
also neglect our environment until we have wildfires that kill
half of us.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
Yeah, we do all kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
That's called California.

Speaker 4 (49:43):
Yeah, it's called California.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
So, I mean, this is just the nature of the
world we live in. Because you want to be in
a world in which you can love and God wants
you to love him genuinely, that means he has to
also create people who could reject him freely.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Also, Yeah, but you mentioned the Bible Jim, and I'm
still playing the role of a nunbeliever. I'm not saying
this as a pastor or be very alarming. Yeah you
mentioned the Bible, Yes, yeah, sure, but the Bible is
full of contradictions. It was written by men, and it
is not a book that can be trusted.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Well, okay, so absolutely, we've got a record of something
that's happened in the past that's been recorded by men. Now,
even if you rejected the idea that these were divinely
inspired men, Okay, fine, let's.

Speaker 4 (50:25):
Just go forward with that idea.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Let's just say it's a record of something that happened
in the past that's been recorded by men. That's every
case I've ever worked. Can you actually come to a conclusion,
a true conclusion about what happened in the past, if
it was thirty years ago, if all you have are
their records of man, well, yes, if you test those records.
I don't believe eyewitnesses. My innate skeptical nature is to
trust every eyewitness until I test them. I always say,

(50:50):
don't trust an eyewitness, test an eyewitness. But if you
test the eyewitness and he passes the test, then you're
a fool, not to trust him, so that what was
me I needed to know? Are those gospels recording something
true about the past? Well, how would you test them?
Were they written early, do they have any corroborative evidence,
have they changed over time? And do they really written
by people who are trying to lie to me for
some bias purpose. If they passed the test in those

(51:13):
four categories, then you're a fool not to trust them.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
And that's the same thing that most people the Bible's
full of contradictions probably have never read the Bible. Right, Well, listen,
you know.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
That your kids can watch the same party and come
home and tell you four different stories.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
You wouldn't say you're full of contradictions.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
There was no party.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
Now, you just say what's going on here? Like, what
were you looking at?

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Jim? What were you looking at? Greg? Two different things?

Speaker 4 (51:34):
Okay, I get it now.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
And what we see in scripture are constantly descriptions that, well, okay,
if there are two angels, well there is also one angel.
So if I only describe one of them because he's
the one who's answering my question or addressing me, they'll
be surprised I didn't mention the other one.

Speaker 4 (51:48):
It doesn't mean I'm contradicting.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
It just means that I'm focused on this one, only one,
because he was speaking, So that's the one I record.
Now here's the beauty of criminal cases. I get this
report from detectives from thirty years ago. The witnesses, if
I'm lucky, are still alive, but not always. Sometimes they
get the report. Witnesses are dead. Now the guy who

(52:10):
recorded it, he's also dead. This is from fifty years ago. Well,
now I have a report about a claim made by
an eyewitness. The eyewitness is gone, and so is the
report writer. That's the Gospels. If you can solve that case,
you can solve the Gospels. You just simply have to
apply the same approach. Now, in the end, will there

(52:30):
be sufficient reason if you want it to be that
you could reject them. Yes, it's like every criminal trial.
There's always hung juries, and then you just try it
again and you might win the second time.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Well, what happened here?

Speaker 3 (52:41):
There was a hung ur the first that I've been
two who didn't agree totally get it. Our human nature
is that we've been provided that kind of freedom. Now,
God's given us more than enough evidence, but he's not
going to overwhelm you God as a gentleman, He's going
to respect your free agency because then you're going to
love him genuinely when you decide to love him.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
How important is it when, like I've often said, when
I'm preaching, it's a monologue, and I engage people with
the gospel, it's a dialogue. Take Jesus and the woman
at the well. You know, he went back and forth
with her, and he listened to her and he responded
to her. Really the same as true of Nicodemus as well,

(53:19):
and even to some degree with ponchest pilot. So I
think that you know, when you're talking with someone about
Christ like one on one not you know, I think
sometimes Christians will you know, they'll just it's non stop talking.
They won't come up for air, they won't give the
person an opportunity to respond. Do you think it's important
to like, like you asked a few questions of me,

(53:41):
would you do that if you were talking to someone
and say, well, let me ask you this, I'll let
them answer and then then you respond appropriately to what
they just said.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Well, I think part of it too is like we
get a chance, you and I get a chance to
talk about the Gospel a lot I get a chance
to write about it. I don't feel like every interaction
I have with somebody I have to get I've had
pent up gospel conversations that all have to get out
right now. So I have to overwhelm you with everything
I've ever learned about this. And I think as I
get older too, there's a part of me that says, Okay,

(54:11):
I want to be sensitive to what God is doing
in this moment, not just what I could say in
the moment.

Speaker 4 (54:16):
When I was younger, I think it was a little different.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
I was like, hey, I's had a sense of urgency,
as we probably should, right because if the Gospel is
a cure for what's killing us and not just an
opinion about God, then we should be urgent with cures.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
And and your wife ever win in argument with you,
Oh God, the water.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
She has I think both of us, you know, kath
is probably the same way is that we marry the
people who we consider to be like the one person
who could tell me that you're flat wrong, Jim, you know,
And she's the person who I'm who's the first one
I don't know but you. But for me, Susie is
the first reader of anything I write, and she's the
first one who says this is not good.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
When I first wrote Cold Case, I had a completely
different approach, and I thought, I'm not gonna who cares
about this detective thing.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
I'm gonna go this way.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
And I wrote a chapter and I showed it to
her and she says, yeah, it's kind of boring. Okay,
I'm never going to write a book. I've never found
it to be boring. No.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
I think the way you use your story, you know,
because one of the most powerful tools we have in
our evangelistic toolbox is our testimony. And everybody is a testimony.
Now some are more dramatic than others. I take you
and contrast you with Michael Frenzies. His testimony is he
was an organized Christ. That's not your testimony.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
You were.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
You were an enforcer of the law. But each of
you can take your life and use it as a tool.
Even the apostle Paul, who is a great orator and communicator,
would often start his talks with, Hey, let me tell
you what happened to me in the Damascus Road, And
you know, because that was his testimony. And I think
that each of us find you know our story because

(55:53):
you know, not everyone relates to you, not everyone relates
to me, but but you're going to find someone out
there that will really relate to you. But ultimately, the
power is not even in our testimony. It's in the
essential Gospel. Here's what I've discovered doing this as an
evangelist is there's a place for apologetics. There's a place
for answering difficult questions, there's a place for making a

(56:16):
logical case for Jesus Christ being the son of God.
All of that is important, But ultimately, there is an
innate power in this simple message of the Gospel that
we must be very careful to not complicate, water down,
or change in any way, shape or form. You know,
Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ,

(56:37):
for it is the power of God antssipation. Years ago,
I was having lunch with Billy Graham, and I said, Billy,
if an older Billy could speak to a younger Billy,
what advice would you give yourself? And he said, I
would preach more on the Cross and the blood of Christ,
because that's where the power is. I've found that to

(56:58):
be true.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Well, yeah, I know, it's so interesting that you say that,
because I was listening to Tim keller sermon and he
mentions that Dick Lucas, who is an Anglican rector, who's
he talks about how when Billy went to Cambridge, maybe
the first in nineteen fifties, he had several nights there
and the first two nights were flat. He said, But

(57:21):
in the third night, in front of all of these intellectuals,
and Dick Lucas was in the audience with other bishops
from his denomination, Anglican bishops or whatever, and he said,
Billy abandoned his plans. He had written all the messages
in advance, and he simply focused on the sacrificial system
from Genesis.

Speaker 4 (57:37):
All the way to the cross.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
It was blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Four hundred students gave their lives to Christ that night,
and is there it is so I think that you're
absolutely right. The old Jim Wallace would have said, well,
if a church says, Jim, can you come to our
church and talk about the case for Christianity, I would
say sure, and I would go, and I would make
this four point case and I'd show you how these
conditions are met. Blah blah blah, and that would be
the end of it. I won't do that anymore. If

(58:03):
we're going to do that, remove hopefully barriers for people
who are in the audience who maybe who would or are.

Speaker 4 (58:09):
There with their spouse.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
They've been coming with their spouse and it's always been
want for them because they are not interested and they've
had these intellectual barriers. Fine, if we don't preach the
gospel at the end of that case, we have missed
the opportunity because there's no power in the case.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
The power is in the gospel.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
The case just made the Gospel available for people who
have pridefully built these walls. That was me. I had
any number of objections that would keep me being God,
keep me in charge of what my moral order was,
whether I was being successful or not.

Speaker 4 (58:38):
I was the judge of all those things.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
I needed something to knock those down so I could
realize who I really was. And you know when I
finally that happened for me, I was convinced the gospels
were now accurate, and I thought it's time to read
the letters of Paul. And I had read the Letters
of Paul, but I mean really read them, and I
remember reading through Romans and First Corinthians and reading about
the natural and spiritual man and realizing.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
That, wow, that's me.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
I would never have been humble enough.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
The nature man cannot understand that.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
That's right God, And I realized that I was. Now
I realized I was a sinner in need of a savior.
But now I knew there was a savior because I
had done the work in the gospels to know that
this dude is who he said he was. So so
now I was able to kind of connect those two dots.
But I think if you'd have started in the letters
of Paul from me, I would have said, yeah, I
saw a fiction.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Even if this was true, this is fiction.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
So even if I am broken and I do need
to be fixed, I do need forgiveness, there's no this
is fiction.

Speaker 4 (59:37):
Once I knew this wasn't fiction, I realized that I
could meet this need now with a real savior.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
That so, now, if you were to go back to
your days as a detective, if you were going to
solve the case, because you would often work with partners, right, yeah,
if you were going to solve a case with a
biblical character helping you, who would you.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
Choose Oh, that's a great No one was ever asked
me that question.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Well, of course you want Solomon probably first of all,
because he's the wisest man.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
You know, you want to give me wisdom. Of course
that's true. God it carts.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
But you said to local characters, and so I immediately thought, well,
that's God. So yeah, we're going to have to have
somebody who's biblical character. So I thought, if I happened
to be, I'm going to tell you something on the side,
want to give us something on the side to here though,
because you know you've talked in the past, and I'm
actually I tend I come every Tuesday night. I come
here to law enforcement first responders, a small group here

(01:00:27):
at Harvest, and I listened to all of your I
travel on weekends this week and I'm in Dallas, for example,
out of church, but I listened to your messages because
this is you know, we are here in southern California
with you, and I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
And you mentioned one time, it was not that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Long ago, there was a sermon on biblical reliability, and
you mentioned how you have several Bibles and often you
would write in the margins. There's even pictures hanging up
downstairs in the church. Here about the margins where you
make notes, I do that too. By crazy, I mean
that's me too. I'm always looking at a little investigative things.
You're always talking about. Well, maybe it's a five point
sermon in there or a three point sermon in there.

(01:01:05):
In your notes, I'm looking at it in terms of, oh,
look at that. That word would not be there if
this was not historically true. So I'm looking at and
trying to pick that stuff apart. But one of the
people in our small group mentioned that she had just
come across her mother's Bible. So now what I did
is I went out and I have three granddaughters, three
three grand kids, two two granddaughters and one grandson. And
they're very young. One the oldest is too, so these

(01:01:27):
are young kids. But I bought a Bible that has
got a journal bible. It's got a wide, wide margin
with very faint lines. You can keep your letters straight,
you know. And so now what I'm doing is I'm
in scripture writing my notes, not.

Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
For me anymore, but to that grandchild.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
And it's probably a ten year project, because you know,
if you think about having to go through every page.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
And you're very artistic too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
You mentioned your an artist, but I've seen your actual
illustrations in some of your books, and you know it's funny,
you'll know what I'm talking about. But in those old Bibles,
I used a rapidiograph pas yes, which is generally used
for art. So it's very very fine point yes. Now
I read things when I.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Write things, I know, so I'm trying to do before
I can't do it anymore. But a lot of it is, yeah,
I'm using these you know, these acid based or non
acid based. They don't they don't bleed through the paper,
and they're point zer zero five, so they're tiny, tiny
fine lines and I'm just trying to get my notes
in there. But that all came because you had to
preach that message about the same time that this lady

(01:02:27):
was showing us her Bible from her mom, where she
had notes about her own kids.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
And I thought, I'm going to do this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
So now this has become a ten year project. And
I mentioned it because I'm in the Old Testament. I'm
in First Samuel with my grandson James, and I'm in
First Samuel and I'm just looking at all the Old
Testament so you're not ere encountering these Old Testament characters.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
But even like, but isn't it interesting that people.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
Like Solomon and Samuel and Eli like one generation in
their kids are sideways. I know, and you're thinking to yourself, wow.
So I think at this stage, for me, a lot
of it is is I want books like Cold Case
to be the kind of book and I've written them
all from a crime perspective because I think that's what
gets people to go, oh, yeah, that makes sense now,

(01:03:08):
because that would make sense in our criminal trial, so
that should make sense against the Gospel. And I think
it helps people to kind of grab the idea.

Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
And I want my kids to.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
But but if you notice this, like my grandkids, my
kids have not read all my books. Like my kids,
the value I have for my children is not in
the books I wrote to strangers. The value I have
in my grandchildren is the time I spent with them.
And I'm thinking why, as you're just what do they

(01:03:37):
call you?

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
Opah?

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Yeah, you're just so pod to that. That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
And you know later when they get older, they'll figure
out your Jay Warner Wallace.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
But and that's it. And but those are such.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Important impressions because I'll remember he had time for us.
He took us to ice cream, you know. He always
told us stories, you know, and it's very important to
be a grand no doubt.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
And I think the problem is is jd Vance. He
was just talking about the order of loves and the
order of charity. I think as men, we are so
consumed with our how we appear to this outside ring
of strangers, because we're wired with our testosterone to conquer
the next mountain, to make us, to protect our families,
to provide for our families. So we're going to do

(01:04:24):
all that stuff out there, and we hope we've done
enough at the inside ring of our family where I
need to flip the identity and say, okay, I need
I hope I've done enough in the outside ring to
help people examine Christianity to see it's true.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
But have I done enough at the inside ring?

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Because I've been concerned for so many years with the
I think I've got the order of affections wrong, and
so I have to really kind of rethink that. And
that national discussion that's kind of been circulating in the
last couple of weeks has helped me to rethink it
in my own life, because the reality of it is
is that, yeah, if you know that you're people that
you love the most, who are closest to you are

(01:05:01):
not even familiar with the work that you thought was legacy,
it wasn't legacy. It turns out these were the people
who are legacy, and I have been ignoring.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
That's true. You know. George H. W.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Bush, the first President, Bush was once asked you know
what his greatest accomplishment in life was. He could have said, well,
I was the ambassador to China. I think you may
have directed the CIA. The course was vice president and
he was president, and he said, the greatest accomplishment of
my life is my children still come home to see me.

(01:05:32):
And I like that because that's a man who understood
the value of family.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
And you know, I love how it says of David,
he's served the Lord in his generation. It's all we
can do, you know, and then we pass it on.
We pass it on to the next generation. The Christian
life is like a relay race. We carry the baton
for a time, and then when we're done, we hand
that baton on to the next generation and they carry it,
hopefully do the same and so you know, but I

(01:06:00):
just want to commend you for the incredible work you're
doing and the fact that you have had to people
on the outside. But it's great that you're thinking about
your family. A last question, Jim, So, let's say someone's
listening to this right now, and maybe they're an atheist
or the very least a skeptic, And what would you

(01:06:22):
if you're sitting over a cup of coffee with them
and they say said something like, I want to know
what's true, but it's so hard for me to intellectually
accept it. It's like you were saying of yourself when
you were younger. You know, you read that the natural
man receives not the things of God. You were trying
to wrap your mind around it. What would you say

(01:06:43):
to a person who's grappling with this but wants to believe.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
Isn't it interesting that we think that, you know, if
I have to understand more in order to believe, that's
kind of a claim.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
I need to know more.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
But it turns out, if there is a god of
the universe, it has the power to create everything in
the universe from nothing. That kind of power is scary.
If you think about it. That means he'd had to
have infinite wisdom along with the infinite power. Because he
has he have power to eliminate all misconception. All that's power,
And that means that you're trying with your finite mind

(01:07:17):
to be able to conceptualize a god of the unit.
If there is a God of the universe, you should
be really ready to accept the idea that there's going
to be a lot of mystery. There's going to be
a lot of stuff you can't figure out if there
really is a god we're talking about. Otherwise that thing
you created in your mind is too small. It's not
the God of the universe. It's something you think I
can actually dissect and know how he thinks and understand

(01:07:38):
how he thinks and how he operates in the world. Well,
if there is a god like this, how he operates
in the world, being timeless and knowing that what that
domino is going to do fifteen generations from now, knowing
how this is going to affect another series of thousands
of people, you're not going to know that. So part
of it is that we, even as atheists, we have
constructed an idea of God that is completely in our

(01:07:59):
own minds that is so small that we think unless
I can understand, And what I've learned is a Christian
is that if obedience is important to me as a parent,
when I ask my kids to be obedient because I
know better in that situation when you're three, I need
you to obey because there's a danger involved here.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
If there's a God who's separated.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
From us in terms of intellect, in terms of capacity,
it's a far bigger separation than me and my three
year old. I'm asking my three year old to trust
and obey because I know better. If there's a God
like that who's asking you to trust and obey. If
my three year old said, I'll obey you, but first
I need to know every reason why you're asking me
to do this, that's not true obedience. It turns out
true obedience is when you obey not knowing the wise yet. Well,

(01:08:42):
am I willing to obey this not knowing the wise yet?

Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
That's really the question.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
And I think that if there is a God, I
should expect them to be a lot of stuff I
don't understand, and I can't use that as an excuse.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
We then there can't be a god. No, no, no, no, No,
if there is a God, this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
Is exactly what you would expect that this is going
to be something that you're going to struggle with. It's
actually an evidence for God, not an evidence against God.
So I think that part of it for me is
realizing that if there is a God, I am, by comparison,
so limited in my understanding that I'm going to have
to get comfortable with that limitation. And then of course
there's enough been revealed to me. And again, look, there's

(01:09:17):
a lot of views that people have about God.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Test them. I welcome my kids to test those things.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
I didn't become a Christians office thirty five, and I
can begiming a Christian because I tested the claims.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
But I'm also at least fair.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
I mean, as far as criminal cases, I've had a
lot of cases I wish were better, but I have
took them to trial. I still took them to trial.
They were good enough to win the case. It was
clear to me he was the guy. Dude, I wish
I had a better case. Yeah, So if you feel like, yeah,
I wish I had a better case than this, there's
still enough, more than enough. Yes, I can still take
that case to trial.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
And you can too.

Speaker 4 (01:09:51):
It's just being comfortable with what you don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Thanks so much. Great to have you, and God bless you.

Speaker 4 (01:09:57):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
I appreciate it here everybody, Thanks for listening to my podcast.
Before you go, I wanted to let you know about
the important work we're doing here at home Harvest. You know,
we've had the same goal these last fifty years, which
is simply this. We want to know God and we
want to make Him known, and we do that in
a lot of ways documentary films, animation, radio, television, large

(01:10:21):
scale evangelistic events and more. If you want to be
a part of what we're doing to fulfill the great commission,
you can support us with whatever you can give at
Harvest dot org slash donate again, that's Harvest dot org
slash donate and thanks so much

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}ENCORE: Cold-Case Detective Sets Out to Disprove Christianity . . . Then THIS Happened | Interview with J. Warner Wallace