This Biblical Case That Destroyed an Atheist’s Argument

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
It is just much more plausible to be able to say to somebody in
a bar, down the pub, in a cafe, yeah, I am going to church this
Sunday and I'm going to take my kids with me.
And people are like, oh, yeah, I've been meeting to do that.
That that is now. Wow.
And you had a conversation like that with Bart Ehrman?
Yeah, who seldom concedes much of anything when speaking to
Christians, but he did concede that.

(00:21):
Everybody wants to save the world.
Nobody wants to do the washing up.
And you know, the Bible's constantly saying, like Jordan
Peterson says, you know, put your own house in order.
Like like tidy your right? Bruce LON, ladies and gentlemen,
I got one of my favorite apologist and he's not even all
the way apologies. He's really an evangelist and
he's here with us in the studio.Originally from Australia, but

(00:42):
currently out of UK, Great Britain, England.
England. Yeah.
Guys have so many words for the same things.
Yeah. Sussex out here in San Diego,
thank you so much for being here, man.
Pleasure to be here, thanks for having.
Me. Glenn Scrivener.
Hey, the one and only. OK, could you pull the mic up
just a little bit closer? So you're nice and nice and
loud. Nice and present.
OK, so I got hip to you because our mutual friend Wes mentioned

(01:07):
you in a couple of interviews he's done.
And so I said, OK, who's Glenn Scrivener?
And also you started getting worked up.
My algorithm, the book. Amazing.
The air we breathe, How we all came to believe in freedom,
kindness, progress and equality.Amazing book you describe it as.
It's Dominion for Dummies, and I'm the dummy, so.

(01:28):
Yeah. Yeah.
So Tom Holland, the historian, wrote the the big fat book about
the Christianization of the Westcalled Dominion.
And he was coming at it from a very secular point of view, just
as a historian looking at the West as the product of centuries
of Christianization. And it is the waters that we're
swimming in. It is the air that we breathe.
And, and so he, he kind of wrotethat book.

(01:50):
And in the process of writing that book, he certainly wrote
himself into church. So he, he started to think about
these things and it led him to all sorts of Christian
conclusions. But he's not, you know, out and
out as a, as a Christian. But I was wanting to write the
same kind of thesis, but from a Christian point of view and a
lot shorter. You know, 200 pages as opposed
to 650. So I'm sure a lot of people

(02:12):
appreciate that it's a lot shorter.
I think, I think they probably do.
Yeah. It, I mean, Dominion sits on a
lot of people's bookshelves. It looks fantastic on a
bookshelf. And in fact I gave.
This is This is Gen. Z Gen.
Alpha Baby award-winning cover. Award-winning cover.
I had nothing to do with it, which is why it's beautiful
award-winning. But look at that.
Yeah, the the air blows through it.

(02:32):
And yeah, I, I kind of wrote it for my father-in-law because he,
he's the kind of guy who loves writing, you know, reading
historical books and historical novels and, and he had, you
know, Tom Holland on his shelf the entire time and he was not
going to take it down and read it.
So I thought I'll write him a book.
He wasn't going to take it down.Or he's just just for aesthetic.
It's just for aesthetics. I mean, that's what that's what

(02:53):
physical books are these days. Let's let's be honest, This is
this is what it is that's. Amazing.
OK, so you write it because you want to have a a shorter version
for your father-in-law, but you make the same or similar claims
as Tom Holland, as a lot of people have Megan Jordan
Peterson, as Justin Briley, thatChristianity overall has been a

(03:19):
massive net positive in the world.
Oh, completely. And, and your argument in the in
the book is that freedom, kindness, progress and equality
all come from that. And then more specifically, you
have a kind of a chapter on all of these.
Yeah. OK, so equality, compassion,
consent, enlightenment, science,freedom, progress, all all

(03:41):
Christian ideas. In the, in the ways that we have
come to understand these ideas in the West in the year 2025
that they are this is the air that we breathe such that, you
know, so I talk about the quality compassion, consent,
enlightenment, science, freedom and progress.
You know, that these are transcendent ideals in our
world. Because when anyone reverses any
of these, you think that they'rea blasphemer.

(04:02):
You want to excommunicate them. This is this is, you know,
absolutely heretical to disbelieve in equality.
Like we're meant to be equal. You know, no matter male,
female, gays, straight, black orwhite, we're all equal.
Don't you think that if you don't think that, you get kicked
off YouTube pretty quickly, right?
But the world hasn't always beenlike that.
That's the punchline. Well exactly.
Pre Jesus. Man.

(04:23):
What was the world like? You've got this vitigenously
steep hierarchy of being in in which, you know, the gods are at
the top and then the emperor andthe slaves are at the bottom.
And you know, Plato would talk about there are some people who
are gold, some people who are silver, some people who are who
are bronze. Sounds like a caste system of
sorts. It is a caste system, you know,
Absolutely. And and whereas we think that

(04:45):
the caste system is the weird thing, actually human equality
is the weird thing. We, we tend to, to, to look at
cultures that disbelieve in equality as, as you know, the
backwards ones. Yeah.
And yet really around the world and down through history, the
peculiar view is to think that, you know, you take two people
and you declare them to be equal.
Like a Plato or an Aristotle would say, like, well, this guy

(05:08):
is richer than that guy, right. And and this guy's a man, this
guy's a woman. And this is a master and this is
a slave, this is a citizen, thisis a barbarian.
In what? In what sense are they equal?
Like equal? Hell, this person's rich, this
person's poor, this person's oneclass.
This person's another class. In what?
In what sense is is, are any of these people equal?
And what's fascinating is you, you just, you talk to secular

(05:28):
people about this and they recognize, oh, yeah, I have
beliefs. I didn't think I had beliefs.
I thought I was a purely, you know, atheistic, agnostic,
secular person who's navigating the world according to reason
and evidence. And you just press into any one
of these values and you can start to show secular people
that actually they're believers.And the sorts of beliefs that
they have are profoundly Christian beliefs that they

(05:50):
believe in. And they might not be aware that
they believe in these things forChristian reasons.
But it has been centuries and centuries of Christianization,
meditating on on the cross, meditating on Christ, meditating
on Scripture that has gotten us to where we've gotten to
nowadays. And so I, I, I pull on that
thread away. I pull on the thread about
compassion. You know, so compassion is this,

(06:10):
this belief that a society should be judged by the way it
treats its weakest members. And we just like, and we all go,
yeah, sure. That's, that's how everybody
thinks. No, that's not how everybody
thinks. You know, you've mentioned the
cast system. What about karma?
You know, karma is well, what goes around comes around, and if
you put good out into the world,good should come back to you.
Where do we get the idea that ifsomeone is down on their luck,

(06:31):
someone is an outsider? The last least and the last that
you should expend your social capital and your money and your
energies in order to lift up thelowly.
That's that's not obvious. That's not the way nature
operates. So why do we think this is
natural or obvious or universal to, to, to act like this?
Well, there's, there's a one word answer.
It's Christianity. Yeah, that's good.

(06:52):
Equality is so taken for grantedand.
It. Is such a non negotiable for
society today? You're a monster if you deny it.
Yeah, you're a monster if you deny it, but it's it's not
hasn't always been around that there was a time to your point
that it wasn't people weren't always equal.

(07:13):
And now this is all anchored on the Christian worldview,
obviously also the Jewish paradigm of your creator in the
image of God and Jesus says do unto others as you have them do
unto you love your neighbor as yourself.
That's where the idea of equality from and that those are
the verses I went down the rabbit hole of the abolitionist

(07:33):
and the theology of of the abolitionist and there was a lot
of I thought it was going to be all the the verses about, you
know, the the book of Exodus andand and those but it was really
the verses of we're creating theimage of God.
Jesus says love you and I be as yourself do unto others.
And though that was the framework that led to slavery
being, yeah, destroyed in in America.

(07:54):
Yeah, I think David Bryan Davis is is probably the pre eminent
historian of of the transatlantic slave trade and
and his magnum opus is called inthe Image of God.
And and he notes that the abolitionist movement was
completely a Bible centred movement of preachers,
evangelicals and Quakers in particular, who are in

(08:14):
particular taking taking seriously the image of God.
And that's got a real pedigree to it.
You can trace it all the way back to Gregory of Nessa like in
the 4th century. Right, Right, Right in his
commentary, Right. Talking about how slavery is
wrong. Yeah.
So he's got this sermon on Ecclesiastes and he and he
starts like it's, it's, it's thefirst classical objection to

(08:35):
slavery wholesale. Different people would object to
being slaves themselves, but no one thought to kind of take down
the institution. It was so woven into the fabric
of society. What would we do without
slavery? And so Gregory Vanessa was was
meditating on the image of God and in his sermon on on
Ecclesiastes, he, he says, you know, what will you buy and sell

(08:57):
the person who is, who is valuedas the image of God, Like what,
what, like what, what price willyou put on his head?
And, and that I mean that one doctrine of the image of God,
you can trace it through. You can see how it's at the
heart of the abolition of the slave trade.
You can see how it's at the heart of charity.
You know, we, we think that charity is just obvious that

(09:18):
that obviously we should expand our own resources to lift up the
lowly. And yet, you know, ancient
cultures had alms giving and, and that that kind of thing.
But it was usually the the rich benefactor who who wanted to
have a name for himself as, as somebody who was beneficent.
And you know, you know, throwing, throwing the bridge
from the carriage for, for all the hoi polloi to kind of kind

(09:40):
of eat. But the idea that you would
serve the poor for their sake, not for your sake was this
profound kind of, and again, it was all based on the image of
God. And, and you see these, these
sermons from the early church. And it's very interesting to, to
think about going into a temple in, in the 1st century.
And if you go into a Roman temple or a Greek temple, you're

(10:02):
just surrounded by images of gods and you burn incense to
them. You do your religious duty and
then you get back out into the world of commerce and, and you
and you do your thing. You go to a church and there are
no images of God, right? You meet around the table, you
hear scripture, you eat bread and wine and, and, and you hear
a sermon in which the preacher says we don't have images of God

(10:22):
because we are images of God. If you want to serve God, don't
burn incense to an idol. Go and serve the, the poor and
the least and last and the and the last and the lowly and, and
the way in which you therefore kind of horizontalize your, your
religious devotion births charity.
So instead of it being this vertical thing, you're, you're
always doing your bit for the gods.

(10:43):
It's like, no, forget that the image of God is kind of in other
people. And as you serve them, charity
kind of proliferates and, and abolition and science comes from
the image of God, you know, So like the idea that you can do
science is, is not obvious. Like why should this 3 lbs of
grey matter have any purchase onthe mysteries of the cosmos

(11:05):
except that we're made in the image of God.
And all the kind of the, the founders of the, the Western
scientific tradition from the 16th century onwards, they're
meditating deeply on the fact that we are in this privileged
position as humans who are made in God's image.
So we can, we can to some degreeknow the thoughts of God, and
we're commanded to go out into the world and take dominion over

(11:26):
it. And it was those people, it was
Christians at Christian universities for these Christian
presuppositions that birthed themodern scientific movement.
And the image of God was at the heart of that as well.
That's beautiful. And I think people will hear
these things. Maybe they'll see someone like
Tom Holland, who, you know, has been more of an agnostic maybe
perhaps recently coming to faithand and push back.
And you had a conversation like that with Bart Ehrman, who

(11:48):
seldom concedes much of anythingwhen speaking to Christians.
And yet you guys had a conversation and he did concede
that specific point that compassion for the least of
these for for poor serving the poor for the sake of serving the
poor because they created him asGod that that is a Christian
concept. He could see that.

(12:09):
What was that like conversation having having that will borrow
because he didn't concede a lot of the other ones which I don't
know how you don't see consent as that We'll get into that
later or equality. But he did concede that
compassion was overflowing from a Christian world that that is
what Christians unequivocally formal agnostic.
One of the leading textual critics conceded that compassion
is definitely down streams of a Christian worldview.
Yeah. And, and I, I think it's hard to

(12:31):
deny that this was a revolution in the ancient world that where
the ancient world uses power to dominate.
You know, Christ comes and says,you know, Mark chapter 10, verse
45, you know, I, I did not come to be served, but to serve and
to give my life as a ransom for many.
This, this, this inversion of the way of nature is a

(12:51):
profoundly Christian thing. So he acknowledged that.
And then, then we, you know, he didn't like the equality stuff
because he, he thought that Christianity is always stood
against equality. And he he went into sort of
male, female equality. You thought the church has been
bad for women. And we, we got into that kind of
stuff. But my, my challenge back to
butt Ammon at that point was he seemed to think that all the

(13:14):
progress that we've made in things like equality have, have
only really happened since the Enlightenment, since we, we, we
kissed Christianity goodbye. And now we've, we've discovered
equality in, in, in terms of getting rid of the, the bad dark
ages of the church. And I, I kind of challenged him
on that, that, that essentially that's a creationist view of
history, that there were long ages of darkness.

(13:36):
And then, you know, Immanuel Kant said, let there be
enlightenment and there was enlightenment.
And out of nothing erupts this, this modern notion of, of sex,
liberal values. And I, I do think that the
Batman view of history is this kind of creationist view of, of,
of, of history in which there isnothing, nothing, nothing,
nothing, nothing. And then boom, everything.

(14:00):
When, when we kissed Christianity goodbye.
I I I don't find that satisfyingor plausible.
Yeah, yeah, No, I I would agree with you.
Do you think that he was close on any of the other points that
you made or was that the only one that he seemed to push
against? Because I think consent is also
easy one right? Like women's rights and and
bodily autonomy and that you can't just have sex slaves just

(14:21):
because your position in power. That Christianity definitely
seems to have added a lot to monogamy being a virtue.
Would you think he was close on that one?
No, he wasn't. And it's a tough sell with
people who have bought the the paradigm that's the sexual
revolution of the 1960s has beenthis unequaled good for society.

(14:44):
And that's the sexual revolutionthat we need, really need to
pursue. And the church has always been
against that sexual revolution. What I what I'd like to say to
people like that is that the sexual revolution in the 1960s
was really the reverse of the first sexual revolution, which
is which happened 1900 years before the swinging 60s.
That actually with the 1st century church.
What you get is the sexual revolution that says men must be

(15:08):
as constrained in their sexuality as women had always
been expected to be. And there was the equalizing of
the sexes. And Jesus just says it's one
man, one woman for life. The doors are locked.
You don't get out of this thing alive.
You know, it's, it's this, it's this real constraining of male
sexuality, which I think is being for the utter blessing the
world. Absolutely.

(15:28):
Actually now the 1960s sexual revolution, which we've been
taught to think is the really liberating thing is, you know,
instead of men being as constrained as women, it's
basically saying through, you know, contraception and through
easy access to abortion, you know, women are to be as
liberated as men, as men have always been.
But but that kind of kind of theeruption of libido and letting

(15:50):
that, you know, letting that loose on the world, I I think
has not been for for the greaterblessing of this world.
Well, I think it's interesting that secular spaces have
acknowledged now and now people would say they were more far
right conservative, like the like the trad wife movement and
the red pill spaces, the manosphere, that the sexual

(16:12):
revolution was not a net positive that it was, it was a
con. It was, it was negative.
It was, it wasn't helpful. You, you, you framed it
brilliantly and you said like men's libido and you're trying
to bring women to be a sexually liberated as men.
To me, the hilarious part is like, what does liberated even
mean? Right?
Like freedom is not about unrestrained.

(16:35):
Right. Pursuit of your most carnal
desires, your most animalistic desires.
I'm just gonna conceding that evolution is true, which that's
a whole other conversation. But like I my most animalistic
primal desires is just spread myseat everywhere, right?
And like, and women should be that way too.
Like that's crazy to me. Yeah, yeah.
And it's, well, it's have you ever met people?

(16:55):
Like, have you ever met human beings before?
Like men and women are differentwhen it comes to sex and
sexuality, and making women playa male coded game when it comes
to sex is not in the long run good for women or for men.
Actually, it's and the people who really miss out in the
sexual revolution of children, like always, they, they pay the,
they pay the price because in the 1st century sexual

(17:17):
revolution, basically Jesus is tying men to their women and to
their offspring, because biologydoes not tie a man to his
offspring. Biology doesn't tie a man to to
his woman either. A man can be Genghis Khan and he
can spread his seed as as widelyas a human being has ever spread
his seed. And and we don't consider
Genghis Khan to be the greatest human.
Yeah, why not? Well, why not exactly?

(17:39):
But this was just echoed by Andrew Tate on the PBD podcast.
So the the question is, how muchtime do you get with your kids?
Someone asked him that. Maybe we could slice that that
in a post. And his answer was, well, as a
man, there's degree of potency and if you are more potent, then
then you need less time to, to impact more with your just

(17:59):
presence. And so basically he said, I
don't need a lot of time with mykids because I'm a more potent
man and I'm more interesting andtherefore I don't have to be
with my kids. And so he has however many baby
Mamas and however many kids withthose women.
And it's, it's OK. But every even his own comment
section, even the PBD comment section was roasting that like

(18:21):
this is utter and complete code.Like boys especially need their
father. Kids need their father, but
especially boys need their father.
And to just be like, because I'mpotent and I'm a man's man and
I'm a high value man, therefore I don't have to be present is
complete ridiculous fool. Well, the, the charges that he's
facing would, would show that this is a, this is kind of a

(18:43):
monstrous philosophy, I think. And it's basically saying be
more Genghis, you know, and at the same time as you've got
Genghis Khan, you've got in the Middle Ages in Christendom,
you've got this very different vision for what men are meant to
be. You've got chivalry, right?
And what, what is a knight of the right round table meant to
do? Yes, he's meant to be strong.
Yes, he's meant to go out into the world and, and forge a way

(19:06):
ahead. But it is in order to save and
protect and bless the, the damsel in distress, you know,
and, and we can have all sorts of arguments about, you know,
how diminutive that that makes women in, in that scenario.
But in a very unsafe world in the Middle Ages, you probably
better have Lancelot looking after you.

(19:27):
And, and in that setting, you'vegot kind of the opposite of the
Genghis Khan view. The Genghis Khan view is that he
uses his power in order to dominate And, and the chivalrous
view is that the masculinity is to be used to serve others.
There's been a fascinating book written by evolutionary
biologist called Joseph Henrik. It's called the Weirdest People
in the World talking about why the West is peculiar and why

(19:50):
it's prosperous. And he says it's utterly because
of Christianity. He's he's he's not a Christian
at all. Evolutionary biologist, Harvard
University. But but he says that basically
what's the church did. Through its marriage and family
program, which is its sexual ethic, he says it it reached
down and grabbed men by the testicles.
Come on. Which is, yeah.

(20:11):
Which is a very raw way of saying it.
It's it constrained and channelled male sexuality into
its proper ends, which is to bless and serve the family.
And from that has come all the peculiarity and all the
prosperity of the West simply through that sexual revolution.
Yeah. So people who say that the, the
real liberation comes in the 1960s, I I beg to differ.

(20:34):
I mean you need to go 1900 yearsearlier.
Yeah, well, if you look at the Old Testament, the sign for the
children of Israel was circumcision, right?
I don't think that was an accident.
I think there was something to hey, we're going to mark you at
your member. And then in the New Testament,
we see this idea of the circumcision of the heart,
right? You don't know, don't have to
get circumcised as a man, but you there is a circumcision of

(20:54):
that that happens of the heart. And I think perhaps that's
alluding to a complete paradigm shift of how we're viewing
sexuality in the versus how God designed it.
It's different, you know, peopleare not always the most ethical
when it comes to how they engage, especially with people
who they have power over. But you have this, this
harnessing and and suppression of it so that there's the most

(21:15):
amount of goodness and beauty I should in through sexuality now.
Yeah, because what happens in nature is that, you know, the
Genghis Khan's get all the womenas you know, wives and
concubines or or, you know, lookat biblical times, Solomon, you
know, you know, thousand wives and and concubines.
This is no good for the wives and concubines.
It's also no good for the non elite males, right.

(21:36):
You get a lot of in cells if Solomon's got all the women.
But there there is this redistribution of availability
for the to find a partner when you have the the Christian
marriage and sex kind of kind ofprogram.
And so, yeah, I think. And that's, I think that's where
they, I've seen arguments made against polygamy, because if

(21:56):
polygamy is the system, then that means the most powerful men
are going to have all the women.And so then you'll have a
natural underclass of men that will likely rise up and be upset
that they they they can't have afamily and be married.
Right. And every story of polygamy in
the Old Testament is a story of strife, right?

(22:16):
People sometimes go back to the Old Testament and kind of say,
you know, you want biblical marriage.
Oh, which biblical marriage do you want Solomon?
Do you want Abraham with his, with his wives and that kind of
thing? But that, I think fails to
understand how narrative works in the Hebrew Bible.
And how narrative works is not that the narrator comes in and
says, now Abraham did a bad thing with Hagar here.
Instead, it just shows you, you know, the the the impacts of

(22:39):
that kind of way of life. And yeah, polygamy does not come
out smelling of roses. Yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Let's talk about your
conversation, your debate with Matt Delahanty.
I have seen Matt Delahanty do really well in certain debates.
I've seen Matt Delhanty rage quit and I've seen Matt
Delahunty I think take a pretty Big L in your conversation with

(22:59):
him when he started specifically, I think it really
went off the handles for him when he started straw man and
Christianity and like why would why does God like the smell of
blood and all all this? Burning himself to himself for a
weekend that makes everything for everyone right you.
Know and you did this brilliant breakdown and just made it
really simple of like well, one of the roles that the priest had

(23:20):
was he was always he's also the butcher and like the meat wasn't
just like burnt and then discarded.
They ate the meat and the animalis literally symbolizing the
death of an animal for the life of the people.
Like the way you articulated that was so brilliant.
And then I think he just, in my opinion, unraveled because he
then gets into the thing that completely falls apart, which is

(23:42):
like your world view does not have an, any sort of virtue
ethic. And so the question Justin
finally asks him, like, can atheism or, or whatever you want
to call it, secular humanism present a better alternative?
And he's like, I don't know, like debate lost, bro, debate
lost. How was that debate?
Do you what, what was it like? What was it like doing that in,
in the moment? Did you feel like he he he

(24:03):
failed and and he lost? Or was it like, oh, this is
actually more of a back and forth?
I, well, I mean, going into it, I, I thought I was on a hiding
to nothing. I don't know why I said yes,
except, you know, I've, I've gotsome sort of self harm
tendencies clearly. But I, I said yes.
And I remember the morning of the debates, I was giving a talk

(24:24):
in Eastbourne, where I live on the South Coast of England.
And it was two of a, a women's group of, they were all
retirees. So that they're all grey haired
old grandmas in their, in their 60s and 70s and 80s.
And, and I just said to them at the end, I'm, I'm just off to
London to, to debate this atheist.
And then they said, well, we will pray for you, won't we?
And I thought that they, they meant I would go and catch the

(24:44):
train and they were praying and they all stood together and
there were, there were like nearly 100 old ladies sort of
standing. And this, this one woman was
sort of praying, holding onto the microphone.
And I was just in the middle of that prayer thinking, you know
what, Matt Dillahunty does not have a prayer like, like in very
literally, he doesn't have a prayer.
And like, I can go into this with a, with a real freedom and

(25:08):
I can go into this because he knew nothing about me.
Nobody knows anything about me. So, you know, I kind of have
that as a, as a blessing to, to debate others with.
And then we got into the debate and I thought I did OK.
I thought I did quite well, but then then the the debate came
out and all his audience sort ofcame into the comments section

(25:29):
and well. Because at the time he was
pretty high profile. He was higher profile than you
were. And so, yeah, you're, you're
going to get just that that, youknow, cage stage atheist that's
just mad at Christianity flooding the comments.
I have a massive update for you.I'm sure by this point you've
heard about the Blessed God Summit happening March 27th,
28th, 29th here in beautiful Carlsbad, CA.

(25:51):
But we've heard your request. We've conceded to your demand.
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And for those of you guys that are looking for something extra,
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(26:13):
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So join us online for the virtual event and experience
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Lila Rose, Alan Parr and his wife Jen Parr.

(26:36):
We even have Nate Sala from Wisedisciple, Gavin Ortland, David
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And on the pastoral side, we have my friend Daniel Golding,
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(26:59):
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as well. I'll see you over there, all
right. So it's very, very interesting.
And, and so you read the comments and you know, you know,

(27:21):
Glenn Scrivener was destroyed and all that kind of thing.
Last year I was in Australia giving a series of talks.
And on the first night this guy came, he said that he was new to
faith. And he said, I almost didn't
come when I heard that it was you speaking because I, I heard
the debate, you know, back in the day when it came out.
And I wondered, am I going to waste an evening on the guy that

(27:42):
Matt Dillahunty destroyed? And so I, and he said I came and
I really enjoyed, you know, whatyou said.
I just wanted to encourage you that you've come a long way in
the last four years. Yes, And so like I just let that
so Oh, so tell me some more about your story.
And, and he, you know, it was, it was a wonderful story about
how in the last 12 months he's come to Christ.
And, and then just towards the end of the conversation, I just

(28:03):
said, maybe have a look at the debate again and see what you
think. And then later in later in the
week, he came back to me. He said, I don't know what I
saw. I don't know what I was watching
in 2020, but you totally destroyed that.
And so the, the same person watching the same debate, I I
guess he's not the same person, right.
Yeah. In one big sense, yeah.

(28:24):
And that, that makes you sort ofsee debates in a different way,
doesn't it? That there is no neutrality?
Yes. Yes, Yeah, there's no neutrality
here. And then the scriptures talk
about specifically with with with the Jews, but like there's
a veil over their eyes. Yeah, right.
And so I think it it, you do filter things through your
current paradigm in worldview. And so if your worldview is
aligned with Matt Delahantes, you're gonna see it from a very

(28:46):
specific paradigm that just is. Am I?
My opinion just wasn't accurate.Yeah, and I, I mean, I saw that
again with Wes Huff, you know, going on with Billy Carson.
And like, never has anyone destroyed like, like we, we we
put in caps lock on YouTube so and so destroys so and so.
We don't really mean it. But when Wes Huff went against
Billy Carson was like, Oh my goodness, call the doctor.

(29:08):
Like this is this is Ralph Wiggum style, you know, stop it,
stop it. He's already dead.
And that that kind of got me to see that there is something
possible with debates where if if somebody is all front and no
substance, the the kind of the exposing of a person can do
immense good. Because you just read the

(29:29):
comments section underneath thatdebate and you see so many
people who said, you know, I don't know why I was following
Billy Carson for so long. Yeah, now I've, I've seen like
the absolute vanity of it all. And I'm coming back to Jesus.
Yes, I'm, I'm trying church for the first time and like,
extraordinary. I don't think I've seen a debate
do as much spiritual good as that debate did.

(29:51):
I don't think I've seen a debatedo as much spiritual good and
also elevate someones profile like that.
And this is what I mean in very little sense.
I just was at the Apologetics Canada event with Wes.
So he spoke, I spoke, and then we did a panel together and then
they were like, we're going to give people 10-15 minutes to
come meet you guys. And so we just literally hopped

(30:12):
off the stage and we're just in the front meeting people.
And he was like a beetle. Yeah, he.
Was and I had, you know, a couple people come up and talk
to me, you know, and then it wasalmost like people lining up to
talk to him. They just felt like, oh, Ruslan
doesn't have anybody. He's like, let me get a picture
with you, Ruslan. I had never.
What's Wes like? Yeah, I had never seen anything

(30:33):
like that. I mean, he was just swarmed with
people and I was like, this is and, and, and Wes is such a cool
guy and he does not play into that celebrity thing in the
slightest because I think that'show you combat celebrity.
And like people who are now like, Oh my gosh, you're so and
so is it you just humanize them.Like you start talking about
them and you lean into the conversation and he, he said you
got, but it was so wild to see that like in person.

(30:55):
So not only are people coming tofaith and detangling the
foolishness they used to believein, like this dude's kind of a
celebrity. And, and here's the kick.
And I'm not saying that in a in a disparaging way or in a way to
glorify celebrity, but like, if there's any I want, I want to be
a celebrity. Yeah, it's a W up.
It's Someone Like You. It's someone that did the work.

(31:16):
It doesn't want to be a celebrity.
And and and and God just breathes on what they're doing.
Yeah, and their and their profile lips like that.
Which is kind of like the anti Billy Carson kind of model,
isn't it? Like for whom celebrity was
everything and then there was nosubstance behind it.
I think, I think W up is the opposite of that.
I I went and did the apologeticsCanada thing in November.
OK, so right before it all blew up.

(31:36):
So he picked me up from the airport and I was like, what's
going on in your world? And he said, well, I've just
debated this guy called Billy Carson, if you heard of him, was
like, no, the tapes are not being revealed.
And, and I was like, oh, that's,that's interesting.
I thought nothing of it. And then we just did, did the
conference and then, you know, the next month he's on Joe
Rogan. You know, it's, it's, it's
amazing what God is up to in that.

(31:57):
It's, it's really cool. Well, it, it, it kind of brings
us to what Justin Briley's been talking about.
That's a mutual friend of ours, right?
The the the surprising rebirth and belief in God that I say his
book, right. That's it, that's it.
Yeah. And I think that, I mean, Gavin
Ortland has said there's a vibe shift.
You're seeing it in your own local church.

(32:18):
You've told me about this in terms of you have a couple,
maybe a dozen guys showing up, half a dozen guys showing up and
they are there because. Just Jordan Peterson and the
constellation of social media channels and podcasts around
him. And, you know, and, and when I
say half a dozen in my church, that's, that's a huge
proportion, right? Because I'm, I'm, how big is

(32:39):
your church? I mean, there's probably 200 on
a Sunday morning and that sort of thing.
But the stories are repeated again and again.
It's, it's usually a guy usuallyin their 20s, they've just
ordered a Bible from Amazon or, you know, they're, they're

(32:59):
taking the whole, the whole family to church.
They're, they're deciding that, you know, I've got a neighbor,
he's like 4 doors down and he's started taking his church, He
started taking his family to church.
And I said, you know why, Why isthat?
And he said, well, it seems likeChristianity has built the West
and I don't know the first thingabout it.
And I said, oh, so the whole TomHolland thesis.

(33:20):
Yes, what? Do you have a book about this?
You should go check it out. I'll give you a friend, Price,
but yeah, and, and, and there are a number of neighbors who
are basically, you know, taking their families to churches.
Wow. Because of the Tom Holland
thesis and that kind of thing isis happening a lot.
Some of them are taking them to churches.
I wish they wouldn't take them to, but I think we are

(33:45):
experiencing something of a shift in which the plausibility
structures are shifting. And it is it is just much more
plausible to be able to say to somebody in a bar down the pub
in the cafe, yeah, I am going tochurch this Sunday and I'm going
to take my kids with me. And people are like, yeah, I've
been meaning to do that. That that is now wow.
The the reaction as opposed to you're doing what's.

(34:06):
Yeah, what what's going on with that?
And so people are coming and they're wanting something that
is deep and rich and old and challenging and wise and sane
and grounded because the culturewars are swirling around and
they're wanting something Sacramento and liturgical.
I'm. I'm part of the Church of
England. And so they will come to our
kinds of churches because we've got the pointy Spire and it

(34:27):
looks like a church and but we're quite an evangelical
Anglican church. And so they're, they're wanting
us to be more liturgical and more Sacramento interesting
than, you know, we, we did stolethat stuff in order to be
missional. And now actually the missional
thing is you do weekly communion, you stand for the
creed and you have, you know, your prayers and, and stand up

(34:48):
and sit down and kneel and, and all that kind of stuff.
That's, that's what people are looking for.
That's not a barrier anymore. That's that's a bridge to face.
Yeah, that, that, that aspect like the, like the, I don't see
the resurgence of, of high Church, but the, the, the
explosion of high Church right now, especially amongst young
men is very fascinating. I know in France they're
experiencing big surge with Catholicism exploding.

(35:09):
Obviously Eastern Orthodoxy amongst young men is exploding.
That is very, very interesting. So it's almost like people want
it to be hard and not accommodating.
No, exactly. Yeah.
And then I think the evangelicalsensibility is to be we're,
we're just sort of bundles of availability.
It's quivering availability likeus, like us, like us.
And the whole thing is, is sort of a breadcrumb trade trail into

(35:30):
church. And sometimes I characterize it
as as sort of evangelical evangelism.
Is, is often a bit like, you've got this incredible cathedral
there. And the evangelical evangelist
like I am usually stands outsidewith, you know, a little
pamphlets, you know, like explaining with with a thumbnail
sketch the diagram of the cathedral, how the how the

(35:51):
cathedral works. And we, we just want to make
everything plain and understood and simple.
And I think traditional Christians have forever just
been like yanking people and just taking them inside the deep
weird of Christianity and showing them something that is
cathedral like in structure. And you won't always get it.
And that might not be the point.Maybe the point is to surrender

(36:14):
to the mystery, surrender to thestory and be found again.
Not as somebody who explains everything or understands
everything, but but somebody whohas been overwhelmed by
something that is far, far beyond us.
Well, that that's interesting you say that because then the
question because like, well, what is the role of apologetics
in that? And I'm OK and and it's my

(36:36):
frustrate some people like I'm OK with a degree of mystery in
my faith. I'm OK with not being 1000%
certain of everything. I'm OK with there being
paradoxical tension I have to hold in different aspects.
And I think especially in the West, especially with an
evangelical or more fundamentalist evangelical

(36:57):
circles, like they need every I dotted and every T cross, then
they need a certainty and a verywooden view of of these things
where I'm just like there's a mystery there and it's
beautiful. Yeah.
And how does faith happen? I think faith happens in the
community of people in which youkind of you surrender yourself
to something that is larger thanyou.

(37:17):
I'm often thinking of the road to Emmaus.
So Luke chapter 24, how does therisen Jesus encounter this
couple? Because this is the big day in
which the, you know, the risen Christ is going to display his
glory. And, you know, first of all,
he's just kind of Incognito walking up alongside them, you
know, what's been happening. And then they get into this
conversation and and then he opens the Scriptures to them,

(37:39):
which, you know, warms the cockles of my evangelical heart.
And I think, oh, fantastic. He leads them in a Bible study.
And at that point they give their lives to Jesus, right?
Like, no, he leads them through the Bible study.
And then he makes like he's going to go further and they
invite him home and they basically have a mini church
service. And then he breaks the bread and
in the breaking of bread, their eyes are open.
They say we're not our hearts burning while he was on the road

(38:03):
Speaking of the scriptures to us.
And so yes, it is the Scriptures.
But yes, it is also this mini church Sacramento kind of
experience in in which Christ ismade real to people.
And and I think that is where people are finding faith.
We absolutely need the scriptures to reframe people's
perceptions of things. But you know, Paul van der Clay,

(38:23):
the, you know, the YouTube. Yeah, yeah.
He roasted me once for my thumbnail faces and then we met
and he was like the sweetest guyat the first arc.
Yeah, Yeah, I think he does all his thumbnails in PowerPoint, I
think basically. But he he says, like, if you
want to believe something, find a find a group of people who
believe it and join them, which which is.

(38:45):
That's what I told Alex O'Connor, though, oddly enough,
I said, hey, man, like perhaps your entire view of faith as
these propositional truth claimsthat you have to have 100%
certainty of is a different paradigm than what faith truly
is, which is a trust and a confidence of something that is
uncertain. And then the practice of said
trust and confidence. And then in hindsight, you look
back and you go, oh, I'm, I am more certain and more confident

(39:09):
after I walk through the process.
And he was like, well, I just would feel like I'm faking it.
And I was like, just pray, dude.Just pray and just see what
happens. Well, I feel like I would think,
I feel, I feel like I would, I would be testing God and that
wouldn't be fair. And I'm like, no man, like many
of us attended church or steppedinto a, a service or something
without having all of the answers and just said, Oh, I'm

(39:31):
going to give this a little bit of trust, a little bit of faith
and see what happens. It's such a faulty view of faith
to see faith is being able to take off every single item of a,
of a creed ascenting to this list of, of truths.
Is that what faith is? No faith is loyalty.
Trust. Faith is trust in Jesus.
Does that mean you know everything about Jesus?

(39:51):
It's it's like, you know, how did I get to know my wife?
Did I get to know my wife with aclipboard and a pen and 17
questions each more tricky than the last.
That's not how you get to know everybody.
And, and if that is the way you're getting to know somebody,
that's probably why you're stillsingle, right?
If this is how people are doing.But what you do is you spend
time with them, they spend time with you, You enter into their
world, they enter into your world.
And at some point you're like, OK, I don't know everything at

(40:13):
all, but I'm in. And then you get married and
then all the questions really begin questions like like, why
are you like this? Who raised you?
What's going on? What's going on with this, this,
this. Suddenly you have all these
questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the questions now really mean something because you
jumped in with both feet to the trust thing and you and you have
those questions on the inside ofthe faith.

(40:34):
And so that's where apologetics comes in.
I think apologetics has always been this, this thing that
strengthens the faith of believers.
And actually it's kind of on theinside of of the church.
Because there's a, because there's a defense against the
faith, right? Whereas polemics would be like,
we're going to argue and fight. The apologetics is saying it's a
it's a defensive state once you're already in the church.

(40:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And let's go back to first Peter
315, where the word comes from, You know, always be prepared to
give an answer, an apology to anyone who asks you for the
reason for the hope that you have.
Do this with gentleness and respect.
Now notice like who is initiating that conversation?
It's it's not the Christians, not the apologist, It's it's
somebody else who's basically looking at first Peter, some

(41:15):
refugees who are clinging on by their fingernails loving Jesus.
And somehow they're still standing.
And basically the non Christian is saying, how are you still
standing after the year that you've just had?
And the apologetic is saying, I don't know, but somehow Jesus
has got me through. Do you know Jesus?
Can I invite you to a community in which you can experience
Jesus that's apologetic to the 1st century since?

(41:35):
Yeah, that's good. I think we've twisted and
detached it from that over 2000 years.
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that painting because I
think doing life with people is often times the the best witness
for, for the faith. I I love how you explain it.
OK, so let's, let's talk a little bit about I think your,
your, your, your paradigm of theworld is interesting because
you're in the UK. You guys are probably a bit, I

(42:00):
think it's fair to say the word liberal than us in the United
States. And I think you end up having
these really refreshing and interesting points with regards
to, like, our political climate here in America.
And there's one video specifically where it was JD
Vance. And he said something that I was
like, I was like, oh, this is a no brainer.
Like, yeah. He said something along the
lines of like, you know, you take care of your family first,

(42:22):
then you take care of your community, then you take care of
other communities and other nations.
And that was his tie into like an American first approach.
And it was like this massive divide that was caused.
And you, you took a, a fairly middle of the ground approach
because I, because I, I'm very much so like, hey, if you have
your house in order and then youtake care of your extended

(42:43):
family and then you pour into your local church that, that is
how we usher and change, right? And then yes, of course, like
when opportunities present themselves as in Galatians, like
we care for refugees, we care for other people, right?
But not at the expense of our own household, not at the
expense of our own children, right?
And you, you, you obviously agree with that, but then you
also had a, a bit of a nuance take on that.

(43:05):
Can you kind of expand your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think you can find all kinds of verses for that kind of
let us look after our neighbor. I mean, I love that the Bible
does not say go love the world. God loves the world.
You are not called to go and love the world.
You're called to love your neighbor, which is a very
different thing. You know, it's like everybody
wants to save the world. Nobody wants to do the washing
up. And, you know, the Bible's

(43:26):
constantly saying, like Jordan Peterson says, you know, put
your own house in order, like, like tidy your room, right.
And, and so I love that, you know, you can find all these
scriptures about, you know, if aman does not look after his own
household is worse than an unbeliever and all that kind of
stuff. So you can, you can find a, a
lot of encouragement to love those who are nearest and
dearest to you and in concentriccircles to, to, to widen that

(43:49):
circle within the same scriptures, though you, you also
get the, these incredible kind of, you know, love the stranger
and love them as your neighbor, right.
So even within like the Leviticus 19 that's, you know,
love your neighbor as yourself, it kind of finishes off that
chapter by talking about, well, remember, you were aliens in

(44:09):
Egypt. And So what I want you to do is
when I say love your neighbor, Idon't just mean love people who
look like you. I mean actually.
And so what's beautiful about there is you've got the union
really of love for the outsider,but it's also a love to make
them proximate to, to make, to love them as yourself, because

(44:30):
you know, the, the, the assumption is that you already
love yourself a very great deal.You already serve yourself in,
in, in all sorts of ways. And so you are to go beyond
yourself in, in this way. One of the one of the problems,
I think if you just do an America first thing is that
who's going to challenge you to love those beyond this
concentric circle and that concentric circle and that

(44:52):
concentric circle. And at some points you can get
into the Luke chapter 10 problemof being like the teacher of the
law who's like, hang on Jesus, but who is my neighbor?
You're like just wanting to constantly shrink the circle and
shrink the circle and shrink thecircle to make it manageable.
And of course, Jesus explodes that with the Good Samaritan.
Now, what the Good Samaritan doesn't do, which is what some

(45:13):
liberals will say, is the Good Samaritan, you don't outsource
it to the state, right? And this, this is, you know,
personal charity that the Good Samaritan exercises.
He doesn't do everything for the, for the guy by the side of
the road. You know, he, he just does
enough to put him on his donkey and and he just pays the two
denarii puts him in an in he'll circle back to him.

(45:34):
He doesn't do absolutely everything for the guy, and it's
not a love for somebody on the far side of the planet.
It's a love for somebody. Who is your proximate neighbor?
Who? An opportunity presented to you
and you make the most of that opportunity.
And by the way, you actually have Denari to take care of the
guy. You actually have the means to

(45:55):
take care of the guy. Yeah, right.
That's. True.
And so it's like, it's not like we're we're saying, hey, like
I'm gonna take care of this guy,but my kids are gonna starve.
Yeah, it's no. This dude has the means, the
resources and the opportunity presented in front of him too
care, Care for this person. That is a very good point.
Margaret Thatcher, I remember. So I, I was at the very same
Oxford College that Rory Stewartwas at.
So Rory Stewart is the guy who really took issue with the JD

(46:18):
Vance and they had a message to the spot about it.
So he's, he's the English guy who, even though he was a
conservative politician, was more on the liberal side of
things compared to JD Vance. And we, we're at the same, you
know, Oxford College. And so, you know, politically,
certainly I've, I've come from that side of things.
But but he, he was kind of wanting to say, you know, let's
let's foreground the Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan.

(46:39):
And I remember back in my back at Oxford, I was writing an
essay about politics, and I was deriding Margaret Thatcher, who
said famously, but the thing we always forget about the Good
Samaritan is that he was rich. And you can't be a Good
Samaritan unless you're rich. And I remember 20 years ago kind
of writing an essay into like, this evil witch.

(47:02):
What an awful woman to think that.
But you know, that's, that's what happens when you get into
your 40s. You're just like, Oh yeah, no.
Yeah, makes sense. Well, I mean, I, I think the
parable of the talents going right into caring for the least
of these. Yeah, the the I I think that's
on purpose. Like I think people read these
three separate, you know, first two parables, which is about the
wise and foolish virgins live asif Jesus going to return, right?

(47:23):
That's the first one. And then it goes into the
parable of the talents, which I would argue isn't just about
money, but he's using money as an illustration there.
But I think it's about our resources in general.
And then oddly enough, from there it goes to caring for the
least. Even I'm not one of those people
that would say like the least ofthese brothers, sisters are only
Christians because that's been kind of like a hot take on the
right. It's like, no, no, no, this is
just for Christians. It's just for persecuted

(47:43):
Christians. No, no, I think it's and both I
think it's for both Christians and non Christians.
But the parable of the talents is they have means now and then
they care for the least of these, right.
And so I think some of the conversation is like one, do we
have the means to care for people and, and, and, and should

(48:04):
there be a framework around First Timothy 5, which I think
is a beautiful chapter about these widows.
And they're not, they're not being cared for.
And so Paul is like, hey, you know, care for the widow in your
own household, basically, right?If he does not provide the needs
of his family, his immediate family.
And then like those widows who are young enough to get
remarried, they should get remarried.

(48:25):
And then those widows who can't remade, that's who the church
cared for. And then at the end, oddly
enough, is, is that, and I just discovered this like this week,
that same chapter is where he goes into and a pastor or elder
of a church who's good and faithful in teaching the word
should be worthy of a double portion, which is most people
would agree, like that means that a pastor should be paid
well and taken care of well, right?

(48:46):
So it's interesting that there'sthis hierarchy he laid out in
first Timothy 5 and then goes into first Timothy 6, which is
all the, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil,
right? So I, I, I, I love that like
Paul's like creating this tension and his balance of, of
like, yes, you're, you're home, but your church home as well.
And oh, by the guy that the guy that preaches to you and and and
cares for your soul. Pay him well.

(49:07):
That's really interesting. And so, so I think, yeah, a lot
of what was going on behind thisJD events debate was often
unspoken. And, and often the unspoken
thing certainly on the more liberal side of things was that,
Oh yeah, we're, we're, we're rich, we've got, we've got
plenty of resources to to to go around that.
That was kind of an unspoken untested assumption going on.

(49:30):
Also secondly that the state is the proper like agent yes in
which to do the work of the goodstate.
Not, not not not the chairman too much, but this is where I
would say the right gets it wrong because they don't OfferUp
a different solution for who is supposed to care.
Yeah, right. Who is supposed to provide
resource? So I think if the presupposition
is the state is supposed to do all of it, well, that's kind of

(49:52):
crazy. But if the presupposition is on
the right, which I think this would be a better story to tell
on the right, hey, we want to make the government small in
your life. We want to make it so you don't
get taxed as much, so that you can go and care for the least of
these. You can go and do the charity.
You can go and give to that church, that mission, that
nonprofit, whoever, whether you want to do a globally or
locally, you can do that. And I think if the right,

(50:15):
especially in America, did a better job of telling that
story, I think some of this willbe alleviated.
But I think right now it's like they're bad immigrants, bad
refugees, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
We don't have it. We got to take care of America
first, bad, bad, bad. And it's like what a better
story is, hey, we need to take care of our own, but the the way
we take care of others is by making it feasible so you can

(50:36):
earn more money, so you can givemore away.
And and I think those on the right adopt at rates that are
far outstripping. Yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes. Those who are.
Chris the dad is already there. I would agree with you, I just
don't think there's a vision being casted for it.
But I think that's kind of a paradigm.
I think pretty much our immigration issues should be
nested underneath the the broader issue of hospitality.

(50:59):
Like how do we do hospitality? You know, So I'm an adoptive
dads, you know, so I've got I'vegot two kids.
We were offered a couple of years ago.
Would we like to take a third atthat stage who has additional
needs that we concluded after a lot of agonizing prayer.
We, we thought that those additional needs were beyond

(51:20):
what our family could cope with and, and what our two existing
children could cope with. And so at, at that stage, we
said no to the third child. Now did we say no to the third
child because we were kind of, we were gracious enough for two,
but, but we're not too gracious.I, I think probably and, and I
hope this is the case, I think we were gracious enough to have
to and, and gracious enough to say no to the third because we

(51:44):
wanted to look after, you know, the children we already have.
The the two you have are adoptedas well.
Well, I've we've, we've got one natural child, 11 adopted.
Got it. OK, OK.
And so, you know, you might think that the gracious thing
would always be to expand the number of children you have in
the family. You know, no matter what's
happening with the 13 year old who, who might be going off the
rails, etcetera, etcetera. That's not the case in our

(52:04):
family, but I I think that kind of paradigm people can instantly
see in a world of finite resources that that actually
loving your neighbor is starting.
You know, charity does begin at home.
That's the goal is always to expand that circle of love, but
that sometimes because of. Limitations finite.

(52:24):
Yeah, finite resources. You, you say no, but you're not
saying no because I'm kind of loving, but not very loving.
You're, you're being maximally loving by saying no, by drawing
a circle. Because I I think that
hospitality is is the the context in which it makes sense.
Yeah, ultimately about stewardship, right.
Like if you, I think there's a paradigm that says, yeah, just
have as many kids as the Lord would give you.

(52:45):
And I would say, and that's, that's beautiful.
And, and I do believe that that that that can expand your
capacity. However, what if you don't have
the means to care for all those kids, you know, and what do you
do that? And I get us that that's not a
soft push for like birth controlor anything like that, but that
is a real reality that a lot of people have to count the cost
on. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
A couple of years ago, I was, I was preaching on the Good

(53:06):
Samaritan and on the way to church, I was, I was staying
with somebody else. He was driving me on the way to
church and we passed underneath this sort of bridge that was
going over the street where we were.
There was a man in great distress.
He had one foot on one side of the the fence, another foot back
on safety, and it looked like hewas going to jump.

(53:27):
And we kept on driving because I've got, I've had sermon to
preach, right? So I open my sermon and I, and I
tell that story on the way here.We passed by a guy in great
distress and, and we passed on by and you could have heard like
a pin drop in the, in the congregation.
And I said it might help you to know that there was a police

(53:47):
officer there and there was an ambulance crew down there.
In a sense the Good Samaritan had already shown up because
we've kind of outsourced the Good Samaritan to a large
degree, especially in the UK to social services and to, and to
the state in that kind of way. But what was fascinating to me,
kind of circling back to the, the air we breathe is everybody
in that room, It was, it was a guest service, loads of non

(54:09):
Christians in the, in the room. Everybody thought the wrong
thing to do was to pass on by. Everyone thought I was a moral
monster for, for about 30 seconds.
I I allowed them to think that and I gave them the contest.
And then but then you're able tosay like, do you not see you're
a believer? Yeah, you strongly.
You might think you're an agnostic.
You don't really hold beliefs. You only go by the evidence and

(54:32):
what reason and and and facts will will lead you to know you.
You believe in these things so, so strongly.
And let me tell you where this is That's.
Good, that's good. And then I've kind of preached
the the Good Samaritan. And what I love about the Good
Samaritan is fundamentally the Good Samaritan is Jesus, right?
Like here is this guy who has gut wrenching compassion for
the, for the, the by the side ofthe road.

(54:53):
And that word for gut wrenching compassion, It's a word that's
only ever used of Jesus. It's the number one word to be
used for his emotional life. It's this kind of gut wrenching,
stomach churning pity. And he goes to the guy and you
know, he pours in oil and wine. Oil is always a symbol of the
spirit. You know, wine is always a
symbol of blood, lifts him up onto his own base, takes him to
the the end. He's got to denarii.

(55:14):
The only other thing we know about denarii in the Bible is
that it's a day's wage. It gets you through one day, so
he's sort of putting him in the safe place for two days, and
then he's going to return on thethird day to raise him back up
again. This beautiful stranger who
comes from outside the system, who raises up the dead guy.
And then I love in the story that Jesus basically says, who
was a neighbor to the guy who fell among thieves?

(55:37):
And the question that had sparked the whole conversation
was, who is my neighbor? You know, the the teacher of the
law is like, who is my neighbor?And she's like, yeah, right.
Who was the neighbor to the deadguy?
So who we meant to be in the story, like you're meant to be
the dead guy, right? To whom extraordinary mercy has
been shown. And here is the stomach churning
mercy and compassion and love that's been shown to you in like

(55:58):
in all your sin and shame and unrighteousness.
And then Jesus pours his blood out for you.
He pours his spirit into you. He raises you up and he'll
complete the job, you know, on on this third day resurrection
kind of kind of move. And then he says go and do
likewise. And he says go and do.
And and that's the story like that really burst this
compassion revolution. It's it's the story that's burst

(56:20):
to the this this Christian movement that is overtaking the
world. I love that.
I love that. We were having dinner in London
at a Korean spot. You took us to such a great
time. Me, John Mccrae, yourself, my
man Ray Rock and you, we had this really interesting
conversation about this, this, this triangle you described and
that the tension that many of ustheologically can wrestle with

(56:43):
when it comes to soteriology, when it comes to hell, when it
comes to all all these really real things that I think people
are wrestling with. Can you kind of break that down
to me again in this conversationtrying?
To think how how it came up on the night, but we were, yeah, we
were talking about God's activity and salvation and, and
if God really wants everybody saved, you know, how come
there's a hell and that kind of thing.

(57:05):
And one of the ways I think about this is it seems to me
like there are there are three truths that the Bible speaks of
in this area that are really clear.
There is probably a dozen versesplus that are connected to each
one of these three truths. And I can't figure out how three
of them are true at once, right?And, and I don't know anyone
who's, who's figured out how to make these three, these three

(57:26):
truths true all at once. And therefore we, we often just
speak to two of those truths andnot not all three.
The three truths are God really wants everybody saved.
He says again and again and again and very, very clear Old
Testament, New Testament, God soloved the world and like the
propitiation for the whole worldand all that kind of stuff.
So God really, really, really wants to save everybody.

(57:48):
He says it, let's just believe him, right?
But also in in the Bible, when God saves someone, he does it
all like he he actually saves people.
You know, the story before the story, the story after the Good
Samaritan. When you get into Luke chapter
15, you know, Jesus talks about the good, the Good Shepherd who
just goes into the far country. He lifts up this lost sheep,

(58:09):
puts it on his shoulders and walks the walks the sheep all
the way home. He, he doesn't say, come on,
Flossie, let's get let's get home.
He, he, he does, he does it all.So God really, really wants to
save everybody. He keeps on saying it when he
saves people, he does all the work.
And the third truth is there's such a place as hell, right?
And I don't know how to make allthose three things true, but the

(58:31):
Bible consistently says them. And what tends to happen is
that. OK, so.
So you can take two of those truths.
God really, really wants to saveeverybody.
And hell is populated. So how is that true?
Oh, oh, OK. We must contribute to our
salvation. And there are some people who
contribute and they get saved. There's some people who don't

(58:52):
contribute and they go to hell. Right.
And, you know, classically, that's kind of falling on the
Armenian side of, of that great debate.
Yeah. Other people, they, they take
the truth that hell is populatedand they take the truth that
when God saves people, he does the entire job.
So how come there are people left in hell where he clearly
doesn't want to save everybody, right?
And so you deny the fact that hewants to save everybody and that

(59:13):
that's many forms of Calvinism, right?
Or you take the fact that God wants to save everybody and he
does the entire job. So no hell, right?
Universalism, universalism. And, and so it seems to me that
the, the sort of the Calvinist side of thing, the Armenian side
of things, the universal side ofthings, basically attempts to
square this circle. They're basically attempts to

(59:33):
take two of these truths and notall three.
And I'm just, I don't know, maybe I'm wishy washy, you know,
but. You're a fence sitter.
Yeah, I will die on this fence, I think.
You're right that all three are true.
And, and, and again, it goes back to what I said earlier.
It's like that paradoxical tension, right, that we have to
wrestle with. Yeah.
And, and I'm OK with living in that tension.

(59:54):
Yeah. You know, so, yeah, I love, I
love how you broke that down. That was that was really helpful
to me. Tell people about this 321
course that you have that is equipping people to kind of do
some of the work that that's that's in your wheelhouse.
Yeah, so for the last 15 years I've been kind of explaining the
gospel in terms of three, two and one.
And it's basically life according to Jesus.

(01:00:14):
If you come and let Jesus describe God to you, the world
to you, and yourself to you, he'll talk to you about the
threeness of God, the tunness ofthe world, the oneness of you.
And so the threeness of God is that he is the Son filled with
the Spirit, bringing you to the Father.
So Trinity, the Tunis of the world is that the world is split
between the way it's meant to beas is represented in Jesus and

(01:00:36):
the world as it is that's represented by Adam in all it's
sin and curse and judgement. And So what did Christ do?
Well, Christ the second Adam came and took out plight on
himself. He took our death, rose up
again, and he says to us, be onewith me.
And that's the one, right? We're born one with Adam, we're
born again and we're one with Jesus.

(01:00:57):
And, and so 3, two and one theseways.
I've been explaining the gospel for 15 years and people can go
to 321course.com. Yeah, we have it pulled up here.
And and discover life according to Jesus.
There are 8 sessions that you can do.
You can binge the whole thing intwo hours or you can take it one
thing at a time. Churches can do it.
So we've got 1000 churches running this and we're seeing

(01:01:17):
hundreds of people come to Christ either through the online
route and we've got around about20,000 people who signed up to
to do it online and it's totallyfree.
Yes, thank you, Zach. It's the price is right people.
The price is right. That's beautiful.
Man, Well, yeah, so 321 course.com.
That's the one. Yeah, Glenn, thank you so much

(01:01:38):
for doing this, man. Hopefully we have you back.
Maybe sometime I'll be in your neck of the woods and we'll do
something over, over, over the pond.
I'll have you on Speak Live, that'd be great.
Hey, thank you so much for checking out the video.
Please be sure to comment below and subscribe and all that good
stuff and check out this other video that YouTube seems to be
recommending just for you. Let me know if they nailed it.
All right, I'll see you over there.
Oh.

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