Is the Bible Reliable? Debunking the Myths & Misconceptions

Episode Transcript
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Pastor Brent McQuay (00:00):
Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of
Between Sermons. I'm excited for this conversation.
We get to continue what the. The
message was on Sunday. We get to
kind of turn that into kind of

(00:21):
a small group conversation. We get to
dig a little bit deeper, maybe even
get a little bit more practical, figure
out how we can take what Pastor
Carlton taught on Sunday, which was fire,
and really just dive into it. And
so I'm excited today partially because I
didn't preach this message.

Pastor Carlton McCarthy (00:39):
I was.

I wasn't even in the building on
Sunday, so I feel like I get
to just participate in this one and
not lead anything. So, Tyisha, help us
get this thing started.

Ti'heasha Beasley (00:50):
You are definitely going to be the
host because you love the Bible and
I know you're ready to nerd out.
And so I am so glad that
I have you and Pastor Carlson here
today, because that means I don't have
to talk a lot. I just slide
into questions.

Wait, wait. So if I'm not talking
and you're not talking, that means Carlton's
doing all the talking? I'm down for
that. Come on.

He's gonna say something. Pastor Kraus is
gonna say something, and it's gonna, like,
wake you up instantly. And I'm gonna
be like, yes. And I'm not gonna
stop working until I get that moment.
So it is gonna be fun. We
are continuing the conversation about Christian atheists.
The first week you talked about I
believe. I know. Well, I believe in

(01:30):
God, but do I know I don't
know him. Then this week, we talked
about I believe in God.

I don't trust the Bible.

You don't trust the Bible? Have you
ever had that moment?

Well, I didn't trust the Bible.

Yeah.

No. I think it's because of how
I was raised. I was raised in
the church of God in Christ. And,
you know, you're almost taught a blind
faith without being a skeptic. And so
from that, you know, being the foundation
of my faith, I really didn't have
any questions. Even the weird things I

(02:03):
trusted just become from just because of
my upbringing, not because I had a
relationship with God and trusted God. It
was more religion than it was a
faith relationship.

Okay.

So I would say that in a
bad way. I didn't have that moment
where I didn't trust the Bible. I
think I was beaten into trusting the
Bible as a kid. So, yes, this
is how it went.

Yeah, I think maybe my. My journey
was similar, but maybe a little bit
more problematic. Maybe. I guess I don't
know the right way to phrase that.
But like, I kind of grew up
in the same, like, just believe it
because.

Yeah.

But then as a, as a teenager
started having like questions of like, well,
why? And that's that I'm, I'm inquisitive
by nature. And a little bit like,
just because you tell me something doesn't
mean I believe you or trust you.
And not always just because I think
people are malicious, but sometimes I just
think people are ignorant of things. So
I tried that. I didn't. Why you

(03:03):
gotta laugh? I didn't mean ignorant is
like they're a dummy. Like ignorance is
in. They don't know.

Yes.

Right, Right. So like. Yeah, so there,
there was like a lot of moments
in my life early on when I
was like, but why? Yeah, like why
do we say this is the Bible?
Why do we say. And I think
thankfully for me though, like that maybe
not trusting or doubting the Bible lasted
for about 0.2 seconds. Cuz it was
like immediately I was given like answers

(03:30):
to questions and I was like, well,
what about this? Oh, here you go.
And it's like, oh, okay, well what
about this? Oh, here you go.

Oh, okay.

Like, and so there was just, there
was enough people around me at the
time that when I had questions or
when I had doubts or, you know,
with the increase of the Internet, um,
you know, there was answers out there.
And so I didn't, my doubts didn't
last very long, I guess is the
best way to put it.

And, and I, I really don't think
that we should live in a, or
work or live or work in a
church environment where we think that questioning
things about the Bible or about God
is wrong. Yeah. I think God opens
the door for investigation because that's how
we get to know him better.

Oh yeah.

And I, and I really think growing
up in church it was like, how
dare you question this? And it's like,
well, questioning it may bring me closer
to knowing who God is and closer
to a relationship with him. Absolutely. And
I think it's just wrong for churches
to say, okay, well you can't question
this. This is absolute. And it's absolute,
like, don't investigate any further.

Right? Yeah. No, I think it's honestly,
if we believe that what we believe
is truth, then we should be able
to investigate it. Yeah, right. Like you
only say don't investigate something when you
know it's shady or you like, it's,
you know, it's on like it's on
quicksand.

Don't ask any questions.

Start asking questions. You're going to poke
holes in this thing. And. And so,
like, I remember still, like, as a
teenager, my favorite disciple was Thomas. Like,
I love the fact Tom Thomas. Like,
and I. I felt like I was
a little bit of Thomas, and I
got, like, offended at people. Like, oh,
doubting Thomas is like this negative thing.
It was like, don't you realize? Like,
look at every time he questioned something,

(05:04):
look at what the response, like, what
Jesus said, right? The truth that we
got out of his doubts. Like, when
he's like, I don't understand this. And
Jesus is like, boom. Like, he just
drops this beautiful passages. And it's like,
man, we learn so much. Because Thomas
was like, I got a question.

Right, right? And Thomas's response to once
Jesus revealed to him or answered his
question. I mean, he. When he touches
Jesus, sides, he says, my Lord, my
God, my Lord, my God. And so
he immediately responds with a greater level
of faith and understanding of Jesus.

And that statement right there is one
of them, the clearest, most definitive. Like,
Jesus is go, yes. Because if anyone
in Jewish culture would have been in
Jesus shoes, that isn't God, they would
have immediately been like, no, no, no,
no, no, no. You went too far,
man. Don't call me God.

Somebody else is getting crucified.

Like, somebody's getting stoned for that one.
Like, that is blasphemy. Like, don't do
that. And instead, Jesus is like, you
know, you've seen and believe. Blessed are
those who believe and haven't seen, right?

And that's good for us because we
take that and we say, okay, well,
we are the ones that haven't seen
and we believe. So thank God for
Thomas.

I don't know who's trying to call
me from Chicago, but I'm busy right
now.

I didn't.

I didn't put this on. Do not
disturb. My apologies.

In the middle of the podcast. You
ruined the podcast.

I clicked decline three times. They kept
calling back immediately. Like, come on, these
telemarketers.

Spam.

Likely spam, man.

I just want y' all to know,
y' all just did exactly what I
was hoping you did. That back and
forth little combo. It was.

Oh, really? How long did that take?

It didn't take no time. So this
is gonna be.

We're still in the intro. She's already
like, see nothing today.

We've already got a sermon about doubting
Thomas.

Brought my coffee and just sat back.
So where do people. Before we dive
into. Because I want to talk about
some misconceptions and some common misconceptions about
The Bible and it being reliable. But
before we go there, where do you
think people get stuck? Because you said
it's okay to have those questions. And,

(07:13):
and I do know some people in
that space where they like have all
of these questions, but sometimes they get
stuck and they derail. Like the train
goes left and it's like, no.

So I, I think the, the biggest
issue is where do you get your
answers from?

Got it.

And so I think a lot of
people have the similar questions, but if
you just regurgitate what you've heard somebody
say online, like if you're getting all
of your information from TikTok, you're, you're
probably just rehashing old issues and things
that have been debunked a billion times.
But because it's new for you, you're
like, oh, wow, this is, this is

(07:49):
amazing. I never knew this before. This
is a huge problem with Christianity. And
it's like, man, that, that was an
argument like 100 years ago that's been
debunked like 87 different ways. And if
you would just read somebody that's actually
knowledgeable.

Right.

You actually, like, talk to a scholar
in that area, pick up a book
instead of just, you know, user 85793
on tick tock. That's, you know, it's
just.

That sounds sketchy already because I don't
even got a name.

It's always that stuff, though. Like, it's,
it's just. Yeah.

So.

And, and I'm guessing as we get
into some of those.

Yeah.

Misconceptions. It'll be stuff that's like, yeah,
man, I've seen a video. I've seen
somebody make that claim. I've heard somebody
talk about that. And here's why.

It's baseless.

And that's, that's usually how it goes.

I think a lot of times people
don't even. They, they haven't read the
Bible. Yeah. And so the Bible knowledge
that they get comes from either TikTok
or sermons from the church that they
grew up in. And they haven't actually
read the Bible. And so a lot
of pieces that are put together for
them is in the Word. And they
just haven't read through enough or studied

(08:50):
the Bible enough for them to understand
that there's answers to their questions in
the text itself.

Yeah. I've got a big fat book
that's like a reference book. So it's
not meant to be, like, read through.

It's.

You go for study that's like answers
to Bible contradictions and stuff. Like the,
the hardest passages in the Bible and
me, it's a fat thick thing. And
I feel like if more people just
took time to read something like that
or to take their questions of that,
because it's really easy to Google, you
know, top top 10 contradictions in the

(09:25):
Bible and Google's gonna spit out every,
every contradiction that seems like it's a
big thing. And yet I promise you
there's somebody that can answer every single
one of those. Usually because like in
philosophy an actual contradiction is what's the
way it's being phrased nowadays. It's a
contradiction is when a cannot also be
non a in the same, at the

(09:46):
same time in the same way. And
so a lot of times like contradictions
and things like that that you're going
to pull up, either it's a misunderstanding,
it's taken out of context, or it's
saying two totally different things. It just
happens to be using a similar word
or the same word is translated. And
so it's something. See here. Tada.

Yeah.

And it's like, no, no, no, just
read it in context. Two different things
talking about two totally different things. Yes,
it's using a similar word, but it's
talking about different. Yeah, so stuff like
that.

But a lot of contradictions. What people
think are contradictions aren't contradictions. Like we
look at the Gospels and they may
think that, you know, with, you know,
Matthew and Mark having a like story,
but there's differences in the story itself.
And it's like, well, that creates more
authentication for the story itself because you're

(10:32):
looking at it at different angles. If
they were, if they were delivering the,
the same story with the exact same
details, then like that's collusion. Yeah, absolutely.

You throw that out immediately.

Right?

Yeah. It's like I could, I could
be talking to you and tell you
that over the weekend I took Bennett
to the movies. I could talk to
Reuben and say over the weekend I
took Bennett to a soccer tournament. Somebody
would be like, that's a contradiction.

Because you didn't take.

The reality is in between games we
were bored, so we went to the
movies. And so like, yeah, I took
him to a tournament and he had
four hour window of empty space between
games. And we found a movie that
was.

And then if I talk to Soul,
like perfect Pastor Soul will say, well,
they were in Iowa.

Yeah.

And it's like, well how did they
go to the movies? Go to a
tournament and was in Iowa. Yeah. You
know, it's like, well, all that.

Happen and it all harmonizes but yeah,
you could argue those are contradictions. It's
like, no, because not in the same
place at the. In the same way,
at the same time.

Yeah, man. Okay, so.

We keep going.

I have no idea why we jumped
on that.

I don't know. So let's talk about
some misconceptions because I know even listening
to the message yesterday, it was definitely
convicting. For those who struggle with believing,
the.

Goal wasn't to address misconceptions necessarily or
contradictions.

Okay.

It was just to tell people, you
know, you should be reading the Bible.
But. Yes, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, but were you calling those who
just believe part of the Bible or
like, were you saying, like, you guys
have real problems, like you are a
Christian atheist. I need you to. The
Bible is the authority. Is. Was that
the purpose of the overall message?

Yes. The bi. Yes. The purpose of
the overall message was. Is to say
that the Bible is the authority of
our life and our faith and then
to try to address, you know, a
high level, some of the issues that
people have. And the things I talked
about was culture, moral conflict, where your
faith started being any. Like it starts
with an emotional experience and then just

(12:39):
a basic Bible reliability which I didn't
get into very deeply. I just gave
some high level facts about the Bible.

Okay.

Yeah, because it's like, it's the quote
that I overuse because I love it
so much. But Mark Batterson's whole. When
it comes to knowledge of a divine
creator, you either have revelation or speculation.
Either he speaks or we guess. And
I think the problem is if you
accept God but reject God's word, you're
left with only speculation. Now. Now you

(13:07):
get to be the authority on who
God is, what God likes, what God
doesn't like. And when you put yourself
in that place, now you're God, not
him.

Yep.

Yeah.

And so like, we do have a
reverence for God's word because we love
God and we worship God and how
we know God and how we understand
God is through his revealed word.

Yeah. Because if God has to live
up to what you've created God to
be. Like, I always talk about this
with the God's goodness. Like, if God
has to live up to your goodness,
then your goodness becomes.

Like your definition of goodness.

Yeah. Your definition of goodness becomes your
God. And when we have an entire
book that gives us the nature of
God and the book becomes the authority
of what God is like, not our
own definitions or our thoughts about God.
And without the Bible, we can come
up with anything with what we want
God to be. And that thing becomes
our God.

Yeah. Because, like, there's been things in
my. My own life where I would
never define it as good. Like, in
my understanding of good, however, it was
God's goodness in my life. Like, rejection.
There are times when, like, I didn't
get something that I really wanted. And
I was like, if God was good,
he would have given me this thing.
It's actually his goodness that kept him
from giving me that thing because of

(14:20):
where it would have taken me or
what it would have done in my
life. And what he actually had for
me was good.

Right.

But I wouldn't have seen it or
accepted it if it wasn't for the
blindness. So, like. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

When we.

We make goodness our God.

Yeah.

So you had a lot of good.
Like, one. Lighters and punches. I'm gonna
go through them.

Zingers.

Zingers.

I don't even. Like.

I'm gonna go through it and, like,
write them out because we definitely need
to do something with those. But, no,
I. I think that it really helps
drive home the message. What are some
that we remember?

We remember.

Like, what?

No free street signs.

I had to write two of them
down. They're good. I was gonna save
this for my landing the plane moment.
Oh, since you're there already.

Yeah.

The two. The two big. They're almost
back to back, I think. But one
was, you'd rather adjust your theology than
crucify your flesh. That one. That one.
That one stings. And the other one
was, some don't doubt the Bible because
it's unclear, but because it's too clear.

That was good.

I was like, oh, come on.

That was good.

Carlton got spicy.

He did. And yet the only thing
I remembered was you arguing with the
person on YouTube.

That was a rough one.

One what?

I preached that in my devotional or
taught it in my devo. That was
interesting, man. I couldn't help myself. I
usually don't comment on YouTube videos, but
he had zero comments too, so I
was the only comment. And it was
just like I had to say something
about that. I don't know. What. If
you want to go with this, I
missed.

I didn't. I didn't miss this whole
thing.

Oh, man. Okay, so we'll come back
to you.

Did you put it in the first
service?

I did, but I think I explained
it a little bit better. Service, second,
third service. So I'm perusing through YouTube,
and it's this guy. And this doesn't
matter to the Story. But I gave
him a name. He's Nigerian, so I
call him Bishop Tutu. So give me
all my Nigerian friends.

But Pastor Ni is going to be
like, listen here.

I know. So Bishop Tutsu is explaining
Romans, chapter 4, verse 17, I believe
it is. But he's taking culture because,
you know, in culture, or these days,
we always talk about. Or the culture
is talking about manifesting.

Yeah.

Something for yourself, and it's pretty much
speaking to the universe, and the universe
will return something back to you. And
I'm like, okay, first of all, who
is the universe and what is it
like? That doesn't make any sense. But
nonetheless, he took the culture of manifesting
and interpret scripture with that.

That's some bad ice of Jesus.

And he was like, we can manifest
things in our life. We can create.
And he used, you know, when Romans
7:4, 17 says, it talks about Abraham's
faith being tied to the God who
can bring life to the dead and
who can call those things that are
not as though they were. But he

(17:31):
replaced God with us. And he said
that we can manifest things in our
lives because we can call those things
to life that are dead and we
can speak those things that are not
as though they were. And I immediately
was like, that's not what it says.
Like, I was like, I was with
you when you were talking about the
faith of Abraham, and then all of
a sudden you said that. And I

(17:52):
immediately went to the Bible and I
read the scripture and I copied and
pasted. I highlighted it, I added the
comment to it. And I was just
like, man, like, you. You miss God
here. Like, we don't have the power
to do that. Our job is to
attach our faith to a God who
can do that. Don't use language of

(18:13):
culture for clicks for views and misinterpret
the Bible. I was so furious. And
then he responded. I forget what the
verse in Ephesians was where he talked
about how we should mimic God in
the things that we do. But I'm
like, no, no, no. That me that
says we should mimic God and loving
each other.

There's context to that.

You can't misinterpret a scripture to prove.

A passage out of context and then
try to defend it with a passage
out of context.

And I was just like, let me
just stop with this guy, because this
would just go on forever. And then
he follows me.

He follows you.

And, like, I don't have a channel
or anything. So I'm like, what are
you following? Like, I don't know how
this works.

Rage baiting you.

He was like, you're missing the point.
I'm like, no, you're missing the point.
And like, we're just going back and
forth. I'm like, okay, God, let me
just stop. But the whole idea was
that he took culture and tried to
interpret scripture with it. I'm like, no,
man. Like, culture shouldn't adjust how. I
think this is the NC Wright quote.

(19:14):
Culture shouldn't adjust how we see the
Bible. The Bible should adjust our culture.

Yeah.

It's like he. This is a perfect
example of. And it's funny how God
works. Anytime you have a preacher sermon,
you have an experience of what you're
going to preach.

I've heard it said, you want to
look at culture through the lens of
scripture, not scripture through the lens of
culture.

Right, Right. So I was furious about
that. But it's just one of those
things where it's like, culture can't drive
our ideology, can drive our identity. It
can't drive our theology, because culture changes
all the time. Things that are trending,
things that we think about our identity
or society thinks about identity changes all

(19:55):
the time, but the Word remains firm.
It lasts forever. It's. It's what we
should have our. Our identity in.

Yeah.

It's the, the authority of our faith
and our life and. And that's where
we should be. Not in culture. So,
yeah, that was my whole little story
about YouTube. And I was like, I'm
never commenting again.

Then it probably had a question about
something you said. I'll blame.

Yeah. No, so I. I thought that
was good. And I think that's absolutely
correct. Like, when I have these conversations
with individuals who are struggling with believing
the Bible, they're. They're always drawn away
by their own desires or just like,
I want to have the same power
as God. Like, what. How does that
even make sense? You know? Or, you

(20:43):
know, the manifestation thing. Like, I'm. Oh,
my gosh, I hurt so many feelings
when I be like, sis, you can't
manifest that. You know what I mean?

There's too many New age culture things
that are trying to slip into, like,
Christian.

But it's like, has. Did God not
promise us enough?

Yeah.

Is eternity not enough? What else are
we looking for? Yeah. You know, we
only use the Bible for prosperity and
our own personal happiness.

Yeah.

And it's like, why? Why, like, is.
Is. Is our relationship with God not
enough? And in that relationship, he still
promises us a life that's abundant.

Yeah.

Yes. We go through trials and hardships
and we. He Teaches us how to
go through persecution to grow ourselves and
care and character and endurance. But Jesus
should be enough for us where we
shouldn't be looking at the Bible to
supplement happiness and prosperity.

Yep.

Yeah, but your point was, what was
your first one? You shouldn't change our
theology. We. We change our theology instead
of crucifying our flesh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was one where we'd rather adjust.

Your theology than crucify your flesh.

That was moral conflict. Yeah, yeah. When
there's a moral conflict, when we don't
like what the Bible says, we don't
like how the Bible wants us to
change our life or be transformed in
a way. We would rather say that
the Bible is not really saying that.
So we would change the interpretation of
the Bible or we dismiss it altogether.
So that was kind of the point

(22:15):
in that. And. And we see that
a lot. It's like, well, the Bible
really didn't say this or. Because the
language of the Bible doesn't directly speak
to the things we do today, then
we dismiss the. The overall or the
general principles of the Bible that change
how we live today and how we're
transformed as people. So we just dismiss

(22:35):
it or say that it doesn't make
sense or the interpretation is wrong.

Yeah, I saw somebody trying to argue
that the Bible doesn't talk about pornography.
So pornography is fine.

Right.

That's just stupid. Sorry, I don't have
a nicer way of saying that one
is just stupid.

I can't PR that one. But.

Just ignore all the passages about lust
and.

Yeah, it's like Jesus taught about lust
himself. It's not like, you know, it's
not some kind of Old Testament proverb
like. No, Jesus spoke on lust. I
mentioned in the sermon, like, what did
Jesus say about lust? And I said
this in a sermon. I said, he
said, take a fork and jab it
in your eye and pull it out.
Like if that's not pornography. And I
alluded to pornography because I use the

(23:21):
eye and the hand as my example.
Like, if your hand causes of you
to sin, cut it off. You know,
I was alluding to masturbation. Like your
eye is watching something and your hand
is doing an action. You should gouge
out your eye and cut off your
hand.

Yeah, I was very concerned when you
made that statement, though. Even though it's
in the Bible.

What?

When you say, like, take a forking.
I was just.

I was being dramatic. I know.

It's just a lot of people nowadays,
you just got to be very careful.

That's true. Yeah.

I don't want.

Okay, people, do not take a fork
and gals out your eye. Literal.

For it was not meant to be
a literal.

Do not. Like we just live in
a very. Like this world is.

Nobody's going to take that serious.

I don't know.

Jesus was painting a picture of how
extreme this issue is. Cuz somebody's out
there, right. Like Carlton said.

Cuz you know, you could be preaching
a sermon and it's like, okay, you
need some points to get people's attention.

So it definitely.

I was like, let me just be
grotesque in this moment.

I saw the phone calls that David
and I were gonna get, like, do.

I really have to.

Working with the Gen Z population, like
they take everything literal. It's like, if
I want to live a better life,
let me take this fork.

Look, Tyisha, I'm about to do it.

It's right there by my eye. Like.

No.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that was a portion of
my sermon. I was talking about things
we don't want to give up. Yeah.
When there's a moral conflict.

Yeah.

I think one of my favorite ones
was lying. And it came to me.
I think the Holy Spirit gave it
to me. Is that Instagram? You've been
lying on Instagram since you first opened
your.

That was funny.

And it was like the whole life
that you're showing off there that you
are claiming to live on Instagram is
all a lie. And I don't think
that we actually see it as a
lie. I just think we see it
as an exaggeration of life.

I feel like that needs to always
be unpacked because I mean, there are
some people who use Instagram to lie,
but there are some people who don't.

Yeah, absolutely. But when you create a
perception of a lifestyle that you live,
that's not right. It's pretty black and
white that it's a lie. Absolutely. There's
people on Instagram who are not lying.
But it's like when I go through
your stories and your reels or however
Instagram works, I'm not there. But it's

(25:47):
like if I'm. If. If you're intentionally
showing me a life that you're not
actually living, then you are certainly trying
to lie.

I agree with that.

So Lust Lying Gossip was another one.

That was good. Yeah.

You know, we like to share stories
and sometimes the stories we're sharing, we
shouldn't be sharing. Yep.

Yeah.

You know, so.

Yeah, that's good.

Good stuff.

Okay, well, I mean, I think you
laid great foundation, so let's dive into
some of those misconceptions that people can
have. So I'm just gonna read them
and then you guys chime in. Okay,
so number one, a misconception about the
Bibles, the Bible being reliable. The Bible
is just like the telephone game. A

(26:35):
translation of translations of translations. It's been
changed over and over.

Yeah, I mean you can speak onto
this from a historical standpoint, but I
think it'll be hard to say that
it's the telephone game because we're not.
Well, many translations aren't translating a, translate
a translation necessarily. I think we have
so many original manuscripts of the Bible
that we can. We have translations of

(27:04):
the direct Hebrew and Greek text. And
so it's not like we took the
King James version and then translated to
the new living translation. The new living
translation gets translated to the niv and
the NIV got translated to esv. I
don't think that that's how it works.
I think we have so much of
original manuscripts that we. And we have
gotten better in understanding the cultural context

(27:25):
and the meaning of some of those.
The original languages of the Bible that
we can have very good translations now.
Like the ESV is very good translation.

Yeah, yeah, I can, I can remove
the word think from, from that. Like
it literally the. No, no, modern translations
are using modern translations to come up
with a new modern translation. Like every
modern translation we have is, is going
back to Greek and Hebrew and Latin
manuscripts to, to, to bring out the,

(27:56):
the English translation.

Right.

The other thing with that is a
couple things. So the whole purpose of
the telephone game is you can only
whisper like it's one person at a
time. And there's a kind of an
innate thing where like everybody wants something
funny to come out. Like, so, like
trying to change. So in actual Bible
translation you have the opposite of all

(28:20):
of that happening. Like you've got people
that are trying to be hyper vigilant
to get exactly what was. What was
said. Plus you've got. So like if
this was the game of telephone and
like we started with Pretty, and Pretty
whispers something to you and then you
whisper Carlton and Carlton whispers to me
and then I wish whisper to Reuben.
That's the game of telephone. If this
was Bible translations and you were treating

(28:41):
it the same way, then it would
be Pretty says something to Taisha. Taisha
reconfirms with pretty 17 times to make
sure she heard exactly what that sounds
about, then tells Carlton. Carlton confirms multiple,
multiple times with Taisha. Are you sure
this is what she said? Let me
just go back to Pretty So then
Carlton goes back to Pretty and says,
hey, pretty, is this what you said?
Is this why you said. Is this

(29:01):
how you said it? Okay, let me
transmit that over to Brent now. Brent
hears it. Now I'm reconfirming with Carlton,
making sure. Okay. And then I go
to Taisha. Hey, is this what you
told to Carlton? And then I go
back to Pretty and say, hey, pretty,
is this. And that's the actual translation
process. The. The issue is this became
popularized by a comedian. And I heard
somebody one time say, if you get
your theology from a comedian, don't be

(29:23):
surprised when it turns out to be
a joke. And so, like, this whole
telephone game, that's not how translation works.
And so, yeah, it's one of those.
Like, you're going to see that argument
on TikTok. You're going to see that
argument on YouTube, on little shorts, and
people like, it's a. It's a quick
little. But it's been translated so many
times. Who knows what it actually says?

(29:44):
Like, do you think we burn the
old translation when we make a new
one? Like, yeah, like, we're still going
back to.

We keep discovering, like, we just. I
think the original manuscript of Isaiah was
discovered, and it turns out that it's
word for word for what we have.

Not. Not original, but, like, I think
it's a second century. No. For Isaiah.
I forget what century it was, but,
yeah, very, very, very early, as part
of the. The Dead Sea Scrolls. And
it's. Yeah, it's almost carbon copy, right?

Yeah, that was a good analogy with
pretty. Pretty, you got to start a
telephone. Game change.

Let's do it now. All right, number
two, Constantine decided what books went in
the Bible first. Who is Constantine?

Very old guy.

A very old emperor of Rome. I'm
like, there's so many different things with
Constantine that, like, so you need.

I think we're just using his name
for.

Yeah, people. People just use his name
because he became a Christian. And so
people say that, well, he did it
for political power, which Christianity was still
the minority at the time. So if
he did it for political power, that's
the dumbest move ever. That would. I
don't even know what an equivalent to
that would be. Like, that would be,
like, the Republican Party wants to gain

(31:05):
political favor, so they're going to go
talk to a mom and pop shop
in, like, South Bend, Indiana, and that's
somehow going to get them all the
clout that they need.

Oh, wow.

Like, it's just. It's weird. Like, it's
one of those where it's like constantly,
that would be the dumbest thing for
Constantine to do. Plus the emperor, either
the emperor right before Constantine or the
one right before. The one before Constantine
just declared himself to be God. So,
like, if you want power, like, do
what that emperor, right, Just say, I'm
God. And so, like, the whole constant
thing is just, just. It's a mess.
But Constantine really did become a Christian.

(31:37):
And so people will say, well, he
made it the national, like, religion of
Rome, which he didn't actually do. He
just made it so that it was
no longer illegal for you to be
a Christian.

So he stopped killing Christians.

He stopped killing Christians. And people are
like, see, you know, he's just trying
to. So it's such a dumb argument.
If you know anything about history or
Constantine, like, he had no involvement whatsoever
with the canon of scripture, had already
been chosen before that moment or been
identified before that moment. And so, yeah,
Constantine had absolutely nothing to do with

(32:11):
any of it. But, like, he gets.
His name gets thrown into all kinds
of. You can't trust it because it's
just Constantine. Kind of like King James
Bible. You can't trust the Bible because
it was just King James and he
just wanted.

It's like he just wanted to put
his name in the Bible.

Okay, so can I show you the
ESV instead is like. Because it's not
based on him.

Right?

Oh, my gosh.

Silliness.

Okay, Number three, the Council of Nicaea.

Nicaea.

Nicaea decided what books belong in the
Bible.

Yeah, this is another one. I don't
know if you think they.

They didn't pick what books were in
the Bible.

They didn't talk about the Bible at
all.

I think the Bible was picked by
popular demand, almost like what books were
being read the most by the. By
people. And I think that's a move
of the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, yeah. And we can get into
how the canon was actually chosen. And
the. The basic principle behind the whole
canon of scripture is it is God
declared man discovered, I think, is the
way a lot of theologians put it.
So it's not that they decided what
it was. It was they. They recognized

(33:19):
what God had. Had chosen.

Right.

And so, but yeah, so with the
whole Nicaea thing, this one shows up
a lot. If you ever watch like
God Logic or some of the other,
like, anti Muslim apologists. Not anti, but
like, counter. Counter. Yeah, there you go.
Because Muslims will throw that one around
a lot. And then I've seen others
that try and use the whole. Well,

(33:43):
it's this, this Council of Nicaea that
just declared the books of the Bible.
The sad part about that or the
difficulty with that is we actually have
journals from people who were at those
councils who took none of the meeting
notes, and none of the meeting notes
say anything about the Bible. The whole
purpose of the council was there was
a group of people that were trying

(34:04):
to declare that. That Jesus was not
God. The, the Aryan group. And so
it was basically like they were trying
to figure out, okay, how do we,
how do we articulate things to come
against this?

It took meeting notes, it took minutes
on how to, on. On what was
discussed and why to address it. Yeah.

And the Bible literally didn't come up.

In the conversation, and those meeting notes
are preserved.

But some, somewhere probably in the last
10 years or so, somebody on the
Internet decided to say, this is when
it actually happened. Everybody just quotes that
guy. And that guy literally pulled it
out of thin air.

Yeah. How do you guys know this?
I'm just very intrigued. All of these
little details. I feel like I'm a
Christian ace. I'm a Christian atheist, because
I don't even know these details.

And, and here's, here's, here's why it's,
it's fun for us to, to do
this. You don't necessarily need to know
any of this. Like, you can be
a great Christian and not hear any
of these things before or understand any
of these things before, but it's good
for us to talk about it too,
in this space because you're going to
have friends.

Yeah.

That are. Come to you and be
like, yeah, but you can't really trust
the Bible because it was just, it
was determined by Constantine and he was
a bad emperor anyways. And it's like,
oh, well, how do I respond to
that? Go look up, read some books
about Constantine and what his role in
all this was.

But the Bible is so alive that
I think the message of the Bible
transcends any kind of historical conflict that
you can come up with. Like, you
can have that in mind as you
read the Bible and the Bible will
touch your heart. The message of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ is so powerful
that it'll. It'll just break through it.
This is just my opinion about the

(35:43):
power of the Holy Spirit. It'll just
break through any misconceptions that you have
or any conflicts that you think you
can come up with about the Bible
too. So for a lot of people,
I think they just need to read
the Word and let it speak to
you for itself.

Do you need the Holy Spirit to
help you read through Scripture.

Holy Spirit is in the Scripture. If
you don't have, if you're not a
believer or, you know, I, I think
that the. Something awakens in you. I'm
saying something awakens in you. I should
be more direct. But I do believe
that when you are reading the Word,
it does come alive to you. It
helps for the Holy Spirit to walk
you through the Bible. Like I mentioned,
as one of the application points, you

(36:20):
know, you pray before and after you
read and allow the Holy Spirit to
open your eyes to what it wants
to reveal to you. But there's so
many testimonies of atheists or non believers
who have read the Bible in order
maybe to disprove the Bible that the,
the, the living word affected them. And

(36:41):
they, they've came, they've come to Christ.
So in the moment that they are
reading the Word as an atheist or
agnostic or another faith, they don't have
the Holy Spirit necessarily. But I believe
that the Word of God is so
powerful that it, it cuts through all
of that.

Okay.

Yeah, cool.

Yeah. Okay. Number four, the Bible's. The
Bible was written hundreds of years after
the events happened.

False. So, I mean, some of the
events in the Old Testament were written
a long time after, but it was
like historical, it was oral tradition kind
of.

Being passed down, but actual writing is
within.

So Old Testament. So Moses writing about
Abraham, like there's hundreds of years there.

Yeah.

But when you get to the New.

Testament by the New Testament.

Yeah, so it's all within. So between
45, I think is the, the earliest
letter. 45 A.D. jesus died and 88.
80. 87. When was the, the fall
of Jerusalem? 87.

Yeah, 87.

87. So somewhere before 87 is most
scholarly consensus. There's some people though, trying
to.

Latest revelation was written by John and.

Like 90 A.D. yeah, somewhere in there,
the, the, the Gospels were all written
before the fall of Jerusalem. And it's
funny, as prophesied. So the funny thing
is like, one of the arguments for
why some people will push the dates
later is that. How do they phrase
this? It's because there's prophecy about the

(38:14):
fall of Jerusalem. It had to have
been written after the fall of Jerusalem
so that they could know that Jerusalem
was going to fall.

Yeah, no, that's not how, yeah, that's
not how prophecy.

But that, that's the secular view. It's
like. Yeah, well, clearly they had to
have written this after this historical event
because they knew the historical event was
going to happen. And it's like, no,
yeah, no, that's not how, like prophecy
works in, in religious circles. And so
you can't use that as definitive proof.
And if you had more evidence, then

(38:43):
sure, we'd look at that. But like,
when that becomes the main argument for
late dating on some of these books,
it's, it's weird. But yeah, so sorry,
that was way nerdier than it needed
to be. So, yeah, so the, the
actual writing was within the lifetime of
eyewitnesses. So Jesus would have been crucified
around 33 A.D. first book is written

(39:06):
about 15, 20 years later, with more
being written later all the way up
to right around the 80s, 80. So
you're still, you know, if, if somebody
was 20 when Jesus was crucified, they
would have been in their 60s or
70s by the time these Gospels were
written and some of these other books

(39:26):
were written. And some of them actually,
there's phrases and there's things that are
being mentioned that trace back to within
months or even the first couple of
years after the crucifixion. And so like,
the, the idea that these were written
hundreds of years later is just, it's
false. And everything was written within the,

(39:49):
the lifespan of people who would have
been there. But what, what some people
try and argue is that, well, why
weren't they written immediately? Like, why did
the, why did the Gospel writers wait
30 years before they crucify the Messiah?

And there was a disbursement. They were
on the run.

Yeah, yeah.

So the, the argument was for, or
the answer for why is first of
all, they didn't realize they needed to
write anything.

Right? Yeah, right.

Like this was all within a community.
They're sharing it. They're talking to, to
each other. They're sharing word of mouth.
They're talking about what Jesus did. People
are giving their lives to, to Jesus
without having to have a book or
a letter explaining it. But then time
goes on, they're getting more and more
dispersed. Now all of a sudden it's
like churches are being planted all over
the world really, at that point. And

(40:34):
so it's like, okay, we need to,
to, to communicate these things. Like we're
looking at Luke because Luke says, hey,
Theophilus, you've, you've heard all these stories.
Let me give you an orderly account
like you, you've been told all these
things. Let me write it down for
you. And that's really the, the birth
of these, these Gospel accounts and then
these other letters.

And you think about the occupation of
the disciples. They're not thinking about Writing
at all.

They're on a mission.

Yeah. They're running around trying to tell
me it takes Mark in Luke, you
know, to start writing. And then Paul,
being a scholar in himself, would be.
Would, Would naturally start writing letters to
churches. But his, his, his main point
wasn't to write the Bible.

Right.

It was to send messages to churches
into cities, into nations that he was.

For how they should be following Jesus.

Right.

Yeah. So we. It to. How do
I phrase this? We wouldn't expect them
to start writing immediately based on what
was happening.

Right.

How the gospel was being spread, how
the churches were being planted, and how
the believers were being scattered and persecuted.
And so you, you actually, the timeline
actually makes sense for, for why some
of these writings were happening 20, 30
years after the event.

I mean, think about the events in
our own life. I mean, our life
is not equivalent to the material Messiah
coming, but we don't naturally think to
journal our life.

Yeah.

You know, if you are a writer
or you have that mindset or that's
part of your profession, you may think
that way, but even our own lives,
we don't. We don't journal the actions,
the activities of our life naturally. Yeah.

Enemy, Sorry, this is a crude example,
but 20, 30, 40 years after 9,
11, if you were to take somebody
who was living in New York at
the time, who was affected by the
towers, if you had them sit down
and write about what happened, I'm pretty
sure they'd be able to get the

(42:32):
details right.

Yeah, absolutely. And then the cost of
writing too, you know, they couldn't just
pull out a notepad and a pen
and started writing like the type of
material that they needed to write. And
then to the courier cost too, to
spread the writings was very expensive. And
so it's not even the more so
is not something that they would have

(42:53):
naturally thought of in the moment to.
To do, but the fact that they
did it so, you know, close to
the resurrection of Jesus is. Is amazing
in itself, which further proves the accuracy
of the Bible. What you got, Taisha?

Tai's loving this conversation. Yes. This is
a great podcast right here.

Yeah, no, it is. I picked the
topic.

Well, I guess we're. We're talking about
the service.

Yeah, we're continuing the conversation. All right.
Number five, the gospel writers are anonymous,
so we can't trust the accounts.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I don't think I've
heard that one, but that sounds ridiculous.

Oh, I get that one a lot.

Anonymous.

Yeah, there will the gospel. Who, who
actually wrote John and, and you'll say,
well, John did. Well, who, who's John?
Which John? How do you know it's
John? Yeah, it's, it's a dumb argument
for a few reasons. One, biographies in
that time period didn't have an author
attached to it. Like, that was common
practice at that time in that region.

(44:01):
If you're writing an account of something
else, you don't put your name on
it. Like it was, that was actually,
I think it actually goes to like
now. Man, I don't want to say
something out of line. There was a
Aristotle or one of those guys, like
one of the famous intellectuals of Greece,
like, actually put together like a. This
is how you write biographies. And I
forget who it was. That's why I'm

(44:21):
butchering the details. But in it, he
basically gives like, instructions on how you
write these things. And so at that
time, you didn't put your name on
it.

And the Gospels are appropriate to those
guidelines?

Yes, the Gospels match those, those guidelines,
which is interesting in and of itself.
But beyond that, the 1st century, 2nd
century, 3rd century Church Father writings never
attribute those four Gospels to anyone other
than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Like,
so we're talking within 50 years of
those things being written, everybody is 100%

(44:54):
unanimous. Matthew wrote Matthew, Mark wrote Mark,
Luke wrote Luke, John wrote John. And
it's actually part of the criteria for
why other gospels are rejected because they
say, but we don't know who actually
wrote that because this writing came about
in the second century. There's no way
Judas could have written that because Judas
has been dead for a really long
time already. And so we reject that

(45:16):
gospel because it clearly wasn't written by
a disciple. And so like, yeah, Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John. That's, that's who wrote
the Gospels. The document itself may not
have their name on it, but everybody
around them was like, yeah, that's, that's
who wrote that. So why would we
doubt it? And it fits with historical
practice.

That was good.

God knew what he was doing.

Okay, number six, there were lots of
other gospels that got suppressed.

Oh yeah, I just kind of answered
that. Okay, so the, there are a
bunch of other gospels. Some are, are
in the second century. Most of them
are way later than that. But there's
like, there's a couple that are attributed.
Thomas, which I hate because, like, I
love Thomas. And then people are using
his name. But yeah, several of those.

But Those were written two, 300 years
after.

Yeah, so there's, there's a couple. There's.
I think there's two other gospels that
are in the second century, but that
would have been over a hundred years
after the person that claims to have
written it was dead. And so. And
there's other criteria for why those things.
So here's an argument that I often
will hear is other gospels were removed

(46:28):
from the canon and the actual truth
is none of those books were ever
a part of, like, so nobody actually
removed them. They were just rejected immediately
because it was like, I don't know
who wrote this, but it doesn't match
up with everything else we have written
that we know who wrote. And so
there's no reason for us to accept
these. And then if you read some
of them, they're absolutely ridiculous. Like, yeah,

(46:49):
some of them, like, they match exactly
what people that were anti Christian were
trying to claim. Like, one of the
gospels is basically like, it clearly had
to have been written by a Muslim
that was trying to like to fit
Jesus into the order, into all the
other stuff. And it's just, it's so
weird. And it's. And that one was
written in like the 7th century or
8th century or something. Something. So, yeah,

(47:10):
it's like clearly these.

Look what I found.

In my back pocket.

Wow.

It's just all kinds of stuff. There
was one here recently that was like
written in like the 18th century or
something that was trying to claim that
it was like an original. And it
was just. Yeah, there's all kinds of.
It's kind of funny when you get
into like some of that scholarly level
stuff, stuff that's way above my, my
pay grade and my, my brain power.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting.

But.

Yeah, no, there's there was never any
other gospels included to be removed and
nothing was suppressed. There was just a
lot of people wanted to jump on
the bandwagon. Like, it was like if,
if I put a disciple's name on
this thing, it gains notoriety, it gains
publicity. And so I'm going to write
this thing that I'm going to try

(47:58):
and use to influence people. I mean,
we got the same thing happening today
for sure. Right. Like, there's so many
people that are writing crazy books. If
they had the ability to say, you
know, Thomas wrote this, yeah, they would
do it to make, make a quick
buck to, to gain like, authority. Right.
Because their name doesn't carry any authority,
but this other person's name does. So

(48:18):
I'm going to slap their name on
it. Yeah, but it's just. Yeah, they're,
they're silly.

Wow.

Silly rabbits. Tricks are for kids. Sorry,
I don't know.

T is trying to join in the
conversation. Doesn't really know how to fit
in.

I'm out. Continue answering, asking the questions.
Number seven, the Bible is full of
contradictions.

Yeah, we kind of answered that.

At this point. He's like, I'm over
it. Yeah, we answered.

No, no, no, I think we did,
we did address it. So if you
want to talk through like textual variants.
Yes, there are tons of, of textual
variance. Are there contradictions? No, I think
the, the closest thing to a contradiction
that you can find in the Bible
is usually referred to as a scribal

(49:11):
error. So like there's, there's one story
where it was a thousand chariots and
that same story is described in another
part of the Bible and it's 10,000
chariots. And it's like, okay, a scribe
missed a zero or a scribe added
a zero. But does that change the
Bible? Like, does that make it now
not trustworthy? Like, no, obviously not. And

(49:31):
so yeah, when you, when you get
into the supposed contradictions, you're going to
find that if just you read it
in context, it solves it or if
you have a better understanding of what's
actually being said. But yeah, I don't
even know if we need to go
into like details or, or exactly these
contradictions.

Like the census taken in numbers is
different from, from the accounts of Exodus
of the multitude.

Right.

And it's like, well, we don't know
who exactly. They may have not counted
all the children.

Yeah, they could have counted in a
different way. Like if, if you can.
So that, I think that's why we
mentioned the whole contradiction thing is you
can't have a also be non A
in the same way. And at the
same time, like if you have that
understanding of contradiction, then when you find
something that can be explained outside of
a contradiction, then it can't be a
contradiction.

Right.

If there's another plausible explanation for why
this says this and that says that,
as in maybe that census was actually
taken at two different times.

Right.

Maybe this guy's census was counting able
bodied men only. Maybe this person doing
the census was counting all people.

Right.

Maybe this census was, you know, so
there's, there's all kinds of explanations for
that. And then even people like Bart
Ehrman, like textual critics that are not
Christian, they'll even admit like there's, there's
no variation, there's no change in the
core message of the Bible. There's nothing
that bears any kind of significance. It's
less than 2% of the textual variants

(50:59):
have Any significance whatsoever of those 2%?
None of them change a core doctrine.
So you, like, you've got, like, the
longer ending of Mark, but it doesn't
change any core doctrine. You've got the
woman caught in adultery, whether that story
was original or not. And there's great

(51:22):
arguments for both ways.

Yeah. So did Jesus feed 5,000 or
4,000? Or maybe.

Maybe he fed 9,000.

Wow. Okay.

Jesus.

Yeah. So it's one of those things
where, like, people. People will find enjoyment
in being able to say, see, contradiction,
or see, there's an error here. And
it's like, okay, does that. Is that
error an actual error? Is that a
actual contradiction? And if it is, does
it change something?

Right, Right.

And the answer to the first question
is 99 of the time, no. And
in the 1%, if you go to
the second question, the answer is 100%.
No. It doesn't change anything.

Yeah. Is Job a real story? But
it was written like poetry. Yeah. Does
that change the meaning of Joe? Right.
All right.

This is great watching you guys go
back and forth.

I mean, like, the Psalms is written
in. In Hebrew Alphabet. Some of the
Psalm chapters are written in Hebrew Alphabet
form.

It's really neat.

Yeah, it's. It's beautiful. Like, that doesn't
change any. It actually makes it even
more impressive.

You know, I saw somebody one time
try to use proverbs as, like, contradiction,
because they're like, proverbs says this, and
yet I have an example where that
doesn't happen. It's like, you do know
that proverbs written as, like, words of
wisdom. It's like general truths. It's like.
Like, the. The principle here is, hey,
if you do this thing, then most
likely the outcome is going to be
this. It's not a promise or a

(52:54):
guarantee that 100 of the time this
is going to happen.

Right.

It's like, no, like, if you do
the right thing, then most of the
time, right. Stuff is gonna happen.

Yeah, good.

But it's a contradiction. No, it's not
a contradiction.

You just want to tell everybody. You
just want to say, I know. Just
get it out so that. That we
could wrap up the show.

How many more we got? We got
what, two more?

Three more? So number eight, the Bible
was edited to control people.

People.

No, man, that's really false. Because if
it was edited to control people, it
was edited poorly.

Yeah, well, the main argument against that
is it would be impossible. There's too
many manuscripts in too many different parts
of the world, where even now, like,
the super brainy guys like, they can
determine where a variant arrived. Like, like
there are variants in manuscripts. They're like,

(53:49):
oh, this originated in Greece, or this
originated in Turkey, or this one originated
in. In rome in the 18th century.
And it's like, well, how do they
know that? Well, because they can compare
the manuscript from this part of the
world to this part of the world
and the other 5,800 manuscripts that we've
got scattered all over the place in

(54:09):
those first few centuries. So, like, you
can. Like, there's literally no way. Because
if I wanted to change something in
the Bible, I would have to collect
all of the copies of the Bible
from all over the world and change
all of them in the exact same
way. Not only that, but then I
would go have to sneak into the
homes of all of the early Christians

(54:31):
and the church fathers who were quoting
the scriptures, and I would have to
change their personal journals and their letters
to other people to make sure that
what they were saying matched what I
changed the Bible to say. Like, it
literally, like, even today with our technology,
it would be absolutely impossible to do.
And to say that second, third, fourth,

(54:52):
when would that have taken place?

It couldn't. But even the messaging of
the Bible doesn't lean towards control by
an actual pastor or a prophet or
anything. If anything, you. You read the
Bible, you don't want to be in
the camp of being an elder or
pastor or prophets who have control over
people.

A great example of that is during
slavery, they created the slave Bible, right
by editing. I saw one stat that
said 90% of the Old Testament was
removed and 50% of the New Testament
was removed or altered in order to
create the slave Bible. So it was
intentionally designed to never give slaves hope.
So you had to remove all of

(55:31):
Exodus. You can't have any of the
Jewish people in bondage and slavery and
then being set free by God. Like,
you can't have any of that in
there. You couldn't have anything about Jesus
coming to set the captives free. So,
like, you had to edit all these
different verses. And we know that it
was changed. Like, you can look at
it and be like, this was this
was changed. If so, if we were

(55:52):
trying to do something like that on
a global scale, like, it. It's absolutely
impossible.

Well, this, you know, I'm just gonna
say this last question we've already answered,
but I'll just read it for the
fun of it. The early church voted
the books, voted on which books they
liked and wanted to keep.

So there. There was somewhat of a
voting that took place. It Wasn't based
on what they liked.

I think it was a recognition of
what was being read by the.

Yeah. So they had. They had four
or five different criteria, depending on how
you break it down. I don't know
if I can rattle it off the
top of my head, but it was
apostolic authority, so it had to actually
be written by an apostle or somebody
that had a direct connection to an
apostle. So, like, Matthew is direct, John
is direct. Luke is tied to Paul,

(56:43):
Mark is tied to Peter. Right. And
so, like, you've got that direct attestation.
And so, like, you can. You can
have trust in it. Another one was
like, orthodoxy. Like, does it actually. And
consistent consistency. Like, does it match up
with the other parts of Scripture? Does
this letter match what Jesus was saying?
If it's contradictory, then it can't be

(57:03):
written by the Holy Spirit. And then
it was like, liturgical use. So, like,
is it being used in church services?
Like, are we referencing it? Are we
quoting it? Or is it part of
our worship expression? Because if the. If
it is, then clearly that was ordained
by God. And then another criteria was
like, I forget how they phrase it,

(57:25):
but it was essentially like life change.
Like, does this scripture inspire somebody to
live like Christ?

Right.

And if it doesn't, then it's not
part of scripture. It might be a
good letter, it might be whatever, but
Scripture's purpose is to make us more
like Christ. And so does this letter
actually do that?

And it's easy to identify the power
of the Holy Spirit in each letter.
Level of criteria.

Yeah.

And then they did have historicity. Like,
it had to have been from the.
The time of Christ. Like, so, like,
you couldn't. You couldn't write something in
the third century and be like, let's
add this to the Bible. It's like,
no, no, no, no. So they call
that. The canon is closed. The canon.
Canon is in, like the.

Yeah.

The authority, the authoritative books is the
canon. And so, yeah, the canon's closed.
You can't write a new part of
the Bible today. That's the fun part
about being a. A pastor. Right. Like,
you don't get. There's no new stories.

Yes.

Like, it's the same Bible.

It's the same Bible. Wow. That has
to be challenging. Thinking of new ways
to communicate.

Not at all.

The Bible is so amazing, man. Read
it every day for the rest of
your life and you're still going to
be impressed.

No, I agree. I was just thinking
about, like, your sermons were already probably
taught.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes you come up
to Christmas you come up to Easter
and it's like, okay, everybody knows Jesus
died, but he rose again. Like you
already know the punchline.

Right, Right. It works.

Yeah. But that makes us dive into
it deeper. And you know, you never
know how the Holy Spirit is going
to give you a fresh revelation of
the Word.

That's very true.

That's the fun part. It's like, man,
I read this. How many times has
Passage Jerry said, I read this a
thousand times and I'm just saying this
now and it just one word or
phrase.

That's what make it active and alive.

Absolutely, man.

That's great.

So, so yeah, so I would, I
would tell people like with, with these
questions, these things that we went through.
There are some great apologists, there's some
great scholars out there that have much
better answers than, than we've got. This
isn't my area of focus. Like I'm
just trying to pastor a church.

Sure.

But I do nerd out on some
of this stuff. I do enjoy learning
and listening and watching and reading and
all that. Like my, my home library
is filled with books that are way
beyond my comprehension. And I still try,
but like, man, just check the sources,
check the people who are giving you
answers to these questions to make sure

(59:54):
that they know what they're talking about.
So you got anybody you would recommend?

Pastor Carlton McCarthy (01:00:01):
No. What you had as far as
like scholarly source for like to be
able.

Pastor Brent McQuay (01:00:09):
To answer some of these questions?

No, not, not any, not any one
particular person. I think my, you know,
my focus is mainly on the message
of the Bible and not. I haven't,
you know, found a group of, of
people or. Yeah, you know, the resource
that answers these questions for me at
least I just go to Pastor Brent's
office and say, hey Pastor Brent, blah,
blah.

And then I usually just tell you
what I heard. Wes Huff stay.

Say Wes Huff has been on fire
lately.

West Huff is, is popular right now.

Right now.

Yeah. I like Wes. I like inspiring
philosophy, does a lot of research behind
all of his stuff. So when he
starts saying something like he's got. He
comes with receipts, which I appreciate.

Yeah.

But yeah, there's some other. Lycona has
some great books out there. Yeah, there's
some good ones.

Ti'heasha Beasley (01:00:57):
It's got question.org or com is it.

Questions is not bad.

They come across different things that I
maybe disagree with a little bit.

Yeah. That from. From our word non
denominational but charismatic church. Like there's some
doctrinal things that we would differ on.
But I think that 90% of what
got questions is going to answer. I'd
probably answer the same way.

Okay.

So. Yeah.

Okay.

Just a few variations.

Yeah.

But nothing that would be like deal
breaking for me.

Well, I mean, I think this conversation
was eye opening, edifying, encouraging.

Doesn't know what to do with this
kind of conversation. So, like, I'm just
here to watch.

We're gonna land that plane. What's next?
Next week's next.

I believe in God, but I don't
fear him.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, that'd be nice.

That'd be good.

This was good, too. Don't count yourself
out.

As far as general conversation goes. Yeah,
it'll be really good.

No, I think I said this before
the show. I think a lot of
people are in this space with like
the, even the conversation about the Bible.
So I think, yes, every week is
going to address, like some very popular
topics that's happening right now.

What's interesting for us personally with this
so Christian Atheist is a book that
was written decade ago by Craig Rochelle.
But it did have an impact on
me when I first read it all
those years ago. I think I got
it like a week after it came
out. Like, it was one of those.
I was like, he's got a new
one.

Let me get it.

And it really, that, that was almost
a catalyst, I would say, even to
leading to our changing from Christian Life
center to Disciples Church. It really was
this, man, we, we claim something that
we're not actually living.

Yeah.

And that's, that's really the heart behind
that name change. And if you, if
you actually trace back to three years
ago when my wife and I became
the lead pastors, like, so many of
our messages, so many of our, our
teachings were around that same concept. It
was like, stop saying something. Start living
something. Something like, don't, don't be just
another Christian. Be a disciple of Jesus

(01:03:07):
Christ who's actually devoting their life to
actually doing what he said to do.
And so we actually, we changed the
name of the church because it was
like, man, we're saying it over and
over again and people are still like,
okay, that's nice. Like, what can we
do to just like shake them and
wake them up? And so we made
that change. But like, so this whole,
this whole series is, man, it's, it's
really near and dear to our heart

(01:03:29):
of, as a, as an organization, as
a church.

So, yeah, I, I agree.

I'm a little bummed we're only doing
it for three weeks.

Man.

That would have been fun to keep.

Going, but yeah, who's Stopping us. You're
the lead pastor.

You can take us. We're going to
talk about red flags and relationships.

That's going to be fun. And we're
going to the Christmas season.

Don't invite me to those podcasts.

Okay. Add him. No. Just fine. So,
no. This was a great tool and
a great space to just grow in
your understanding of, like, why is it
important to see the Bible as an
authority? I'm not going to close us
just yet. What are your takeaways before
we. We land the plane?

Takeaways from the sermon?

Yeah.

Oh, man. What are my takeaways from
the sermon? Read the Bible. I think
that was my first point of application.
Like, reintroduce yourself to the word.

Let's go.

Because I think that we could get
lost in the nuances of the Bible,
the reliability of the Bible, the canon
of the Bible, and all these other
things. Like, just read the Bible. Open
the Bible and read it every day.
If it's a verse, a chapter, whatever
it takes for you just to sit
down and read the Bible, whether it's
a Bible plan or not a Bible
plan. I even mentioned in one of

(01:04:42):
the services, you can just drop the
Bible on the ground and let it
open up and just start reading.

Just read the Bible.

It was kind of weird because you
could be opening up in a weird
place. But I think the idea is
just, like, read the Bible because it
is a living word. It is. It
is alive. It's not just reading a
Dr. Seuss book and it's like, oh,
that was good information or entertaining, but
it is alive as it relates to
your life. God is speaking to your

(01:05:09):
heart and speaking to your life. It
is the instruction manual of our lives.
It's the. The authority in which we
should live by. And I think if
you just start reading it, you'll start
to see the Holy Spirit working in
your life and opening your eyes to
the words of God.

Yeah. Beautiful.

That's good. Yeah, you, man.

Yeah. I think my. My big takeaway
for people. Maybe this is less for
myself, but more for the audience watching
right now. If you want to claim
that you're following God, you got to
abide by scripture. Like, you can't accept
God and reject God's word. It doesn't
work that way.

Yeah, right.

So, like, you've. You've got to. If
you really love him, love his Word.

Yeah, right. That's good.

What did Jesus say? If you. If
you love me, if you want to
abide in me, abide in my word.

Yeah, right.

Like it's just can't get away from
it. So stop trying to follow God
without following the Bible.

That's good. My takeaway is whatever they
said. No, it was, it was good.
I think that I love the place
that we're in where we are addressing
like real life issues as a church.
And so I would just encourage you
to re. Re watch the message from
Sunday. It was really good. And I

(01:06:31):
won't say have an open heart, but
evaluate your heart because I think this
whole concept of being a Christian atheist
is again, to realign us with God's
word, his purpose, his plan. And I
just feel like this is a great
message and space to really realign us
with falling in love with the Bible.
And so I would just encourage you

(01:06:53):
to re watch it and spend some
time with Jesus. He will.

He will.

He will speak with you in this
season. And so until next week, if
you have any questions. I know we
haven't said that in a while. Let
us know in the comments. No, let
us know in the comments. No, you
can email me as well. I'm open.
But we would love to spend some
time answering those questions before we get
started next week. If you have any
from last week or even this week,

(01:07:20):
let us know. And until the next
week, we'll see you. And I love
you. God bless.

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