January 19, 2026 • 21 mins
ARE EVANGELICALS WORKING FROM AN INCOMPLETE BIBLE? That's what my 1pm guest says. He's a former atheist who decided to do some deep digging that led him to be a believer. His book Canon Crossfire does a deep dive into what he says is missing from Protestant Bibles: the Books of the Apocrypha. Find his book here. Matthew McWhorter joins me at 1 to discuss.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joining me now is a guy who decided to do
something that many people have never done. When you ask people,
specifically especially Christian people, like have you read the Bible
cover to cover?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Have you just done it? A lot of people have not.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Well.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Matthew McWorter grew up in a household where he was
named after two books of the Bible, but it wasn't
a particularly religious household, and as an adult he was like,
you know what, I think I'm going to read that
book and I think it's not too much to say.
It was pretty life changing for him, and now he
joins me to talk about his new book, Canon Crossfire.
Does the Protestant Bible blow up the case for Christianity?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Matthew, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
First of all, thank you God blessed, happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, let's start at the beginning of your story. We'll
kind of do that real quick, because I think it
matters greatly. You're an attorney by trade, but after taking
a retirement, you were bored one day and were like, Hey,
let's just pick up the Bible and read it. Tell
me about that.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah. No, I had major medical problems, you know, unexpected
medical problems, and survived them, and all of a sudden
it was like, well, I better get on that bucket list.
And on the bucket list was to read the books
I had been named after. So that that was it.
I had other books to read, including the Cowboys stories
my grandfather had left me, you know, just different things
to read. I wanted to read this. So I go
(01:18):
on to Amazon, and the first discovery was what Bible?
Because there's just Bible upon Bible upon Bible on there,
and you know it starts. Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox have
completely different Bibles, different books in the Bible. And then
there's other very you know, more recent variations on top
of that. And I had no idea what I was
supposed to be reading. So I did what you kind
(01:40):
of see behind me. I bought them all and I
so I read. When I say I read the Bible,
I started with Matthew chapter one, and I read it
across one hundred different Bibles and Bible commentaries. And then
I read Matthew chapter two. Then I read Matthew chapter three.
All of this seemed logical to me as a lawyer.
Every every time I tell people this, they get that
look on their.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Like, what, what are you even talking about like, what
are you? How long did it take you to get
through what?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Mark? And Matthew one one week of chapter So one
is a whole New Testament, and so Matthew, I think
is twenty eight chapters, so a little over half a year.
And then I moved on to Mark, and then I
moved on to Loop.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Then did you go back and read the Old Testament too?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I did that afterwards. Okay, just tell everyone that's the key.
Read the New Testament. It explains why you should care
about the Old Testament. If you don't do that first,
you can't make it through the Old Testament.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I always tell people the Old Testament is full of
the most interesting stories of daring do and backstabbing and
all of this. It's like a giant soap opera. But
it's also the history of the Jewish.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
People so well, and you have to care about the
soap opera. You have to invest in the soap opera
in order to enjoy it. Otherwise it's a lot of
bad people doing a lot of bad things. Yes, and
it's hard to you know. Yeah, it's a tough read.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Now, what would you say your level of faith on
a scale of one being you know, I'm agnostic to
ten being like, you're ready to be the next pope?
Where would you put you when you started this process?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Somewhere around zero? I mean I didn't really even understand Christianity,
the Christian story, et cetera. I had a vague grasp
of it, you know, an oddity of how I came
to this versus all these Christians I've known in life.
You know, when you ask them, you get vague answers
about Christianity. So even if I asked them, what you know,
what you oh, you're going what are you doing on Sunday?
You're not watching football? You're going to church? And you know,
(03:34):
they would start talking about the music, or they would
talk about their kids in the basketball program or the schools,
and like, okay, go do whatever you want. I don't care.
But I mean, there was never an explanation of this
is what the Christian message is. You should believe it
because it's true. That was a key part of my
journey was as a lawyer, I looked into is this true?
And what Bible should I be reading at the same time,
(03:56):
And that's where this canon crossfire concept comes in. The
in the scripture is the list of the correct books
in the Bible. I just wanted to know what the
evidence was for that, and I wanted to compare that
to what Christians were saying, you know, the evidence for
christ is that's where the crossfire rose. That's where my
book comes in. Having done all that work, I give
people the research in the book for everyone to make
(04:17):
their own decision. But the point is that I originally
was just asking is Christianity true? That to me is
the most fundamental question that every Christian should be prepared
to answer. And it's instead what I got whenever I
talked to somebody in the course of my life, was
you know, well we got great schools from joining us, and.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I will say you never did.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
For some reason.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Lawyers make the best apologetics, and of course apologetics are
people that will defend a belief structure. And one of
my favorite is David Limbaugh, who has he went into
it specifically with the goal of disproving Christianity. He was like,
this is hocum and he ended up being such a
strong He has such strong faith now and his books
are incredible. So let's talk about specifically Canon C. First
(05:00):
of all, I have to know which Bible.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Do you prefer mine is the Catholic Bible is it's
a huge part of this process. Is that a Protestant
Bible lacking those books. I actually don't think they would
win the case for christ. I'd be curious with David
Limbaughs to say about my book. I quote him many
times in my book. But my point is that as
a lawyer, I was asking those two questions at the
exact same time, and I noticed that it's the same evidence.
(05:24):
They'll be quoting the same father. Pick a guy named
eron As in one seventy seven a d. And you
know he's speaking about the Gospels. So they say, well,
this is early evidence for the Gospels. Okay, it's erin As.
It's one seventy seven a d. It's early. I look
over at these extra books that are in the Catholic Bible,
and people say, well, that those books came late. There's
(05:45):
very little evidence for him. Like I have eron as
in one seventy seven AD saying that Bruke was handed
down by the apostles, just like he said the Gospels
were handed down by the Apostles. That's the same person
at the same time saying the same things. That's a
big problem, and whatever the conclusion is. The point in
my book is that the Protestant answers are very shallow
(06:07):
and superficial when I looked into them. Whether there are
better answers is the question I'd love to ask David Limboff.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Right, Well, and let's talk about the Books of the
apotomy Yeah, let's talk about the Books of the Apographa.
Because growing up Catholic, I was aware of the Books
of the Apographa. They are part of the Catholic Bible
that were taken out of, to your point, the Protestant Bible,
because the people that were putting together the Protestant Bible said,
to your point, those didn't happen. They were like hundreds
of years after Christ. So we're not going to give
(06:34):
them as much credence. But I honestly have never looked
into the big differences, like what is in the Books
of the Apographa that you don't have in the Protestant
Bible that you are so certain is the game changer
when it comes to proving the divinity of Christ.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Well, what I'm stressing is the evidence that authenticates those books. Okay,
not necessarily, what's actually in the books. Some of these books.
The books are of variety. Some of them are sort
of a pieces of Jewish history. Some of them are
stories about specific people, like a woman named Judith. Some
of them are sort of inspirational, like the Book of Wisdom,
kind of like a book of Psalms or proverbs. So
(07:14):
they're a variety of books. But the point that I'm
making is that the evidence saying that they were authentic
comes from the early Church. And it is that evidence
from the early Church that Christians say is more than
enough to show that the Gospels are true, but they were,
that they are came from the real apostles and describe
a real event in the resurrection of Jesus. So it's
that authentication evidence that's the crucial piece for what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So why do you and I don't know the answer
to this. Why were the books of the Apocrypha left
out of the Protestant Bible? Who made that choice? Was
it just because they said the timing was bad? I
don't know the clear answer there.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
So I looked into three things and then there's a
dovetail into what they why they aren't there. But one
is what did the Jews say about these books. I
hear what Catholics say, I hear what Protestants say. I
just wanted to know what Jews say. I found that
in Jewish books. I put that in the book. I
wanted to know where in the New Testament the apostles
and subchases Jesus may have referenced these books. There are
(08:10):
hundreds of times that Protestant scholars I didn't look for Catholics,
I was or biased or anything like that. When do
Protestants tell me this? Does I find all those I
just assemble them for a reader to see them for yourself.
And the third thing is I wanted to know what
every single Christian in the first four hundred and fifty
years of Christianity ever said about these books. So I
went to the mattresses. I went out to find all that.
(08:32):
I pull it into this book, and I just give
it to a reader. What happens when you look at that,
is that the story that the Protestants tell you, which
is that they like you, said that they came too late,
that they weren't accepted by the Jews, that the Early
Church didn't really accept them, etc. Those are very superficial answers.
The Jews say they came, that they predate Christ Christ.
(08:53):
They say that the Jews were accepting them at the time,
or at least some Jews. The question is how you know.
They call it fuzzy edges. There were books that were
clearly accepted, and then there were books that had that
mayor were being disputed. Esther, which is in the Protestant Bible,
is one of those books that was being disputed, for example.
But so the Jews tell a different story. The Early
(09:14):
Church says we accept these books, knowing full well that
the Jews don't accept these books, like they didn't try
to match what the Jews had, Right, There's just all
these disconnects between the evidence and what the story is.
So they claim that, well, they were gotten rid of
because they came too late. Is not what the Early
Church said and is not what the Jews themselves say,
et cetera. So you just have to compare the evidence
(09:36):
to the narrative that somebody's telling you. And as I say,
the answers are just too superficial. They don't work. And
that's where the Cannan crossfire concept came from.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So you're essentially maintaining that the evidence for the books
in the Protestant Bible is not as strong as it
is for the books of the Apocrypha.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Not if you claim that the Apocrypha don't have an
evidence or came too late, et cetera. If you make
the statement, you are the person admitting that the Apocrypha
are not proved. Okay, now we come back to the
Case for Christ and we compare the evidence, we compare
the timing, we compare who's saying what, et cetera. And
you're the one who admitted it's not proved. To a
(10:18):
judge who's you're now asking to say, I've proven Christianity,
and he's gonna say, no, you didn't prove it. It's
the same stuff that you just said you admitted is
not proved. So that's the key part is that a
Protestant is admitting that the evidence is not sufficient for
these other books. Okay, take that back and compare it
to the evidence for the case for Christ and see
where you stand. And that's the point of my book
(10:39):
is to show people that was.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
There any particular piece of evidence that you found to
be the most compelling or the more compelling, or what
was the thing that made you go in as a
skeptical attorney, And did you have a moment where you
went wow, I actually think this could have happened.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
What was that moment if there was one.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, the evidence is actually good for Christianity. And that
was a key part was I was coming to see
how good the evidence is for Christianity, and then all
of a sudden I was reading over here on the
case for the Canon people bashing that exact same evidence.
Like I said, Aaron As is an early father. He
learned from a guy named Polycarp. Polycarp learned from John.
(11:18):
He is one step removed from John. And he is
telling you that the Christians have four Gospels, what those
gospels are, et cetera. He's a key witness. He has
effect the key witness for proving that fact. And Harry
is also saying the same thing that you know the
Apostles handed down Baruk, and Baruk is not in a
(11:39):
Proestant Bible, it is in a Catholic Bible. And to
claim that he that the Apostles did not give us
Baruk is to say ieron As was not a truth teller,
can't be relied on. And he's here, he is the
star witness on the Four Gospels. So that that's a
key part of what I'm trying to show in the
book is how that becomes a problem because to me,
the evidence that Irenas presents is so powerful in the
(12:02):
case for Christ. For you to then say, no, your honor,
don't believe Erineus is a real problem.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So is the purpose of this book to maybe let
Protestants see.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
A more compelling case.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I mean, because the pitch that I got from your
pr people was a very good pitch in it They're like, look, Evangelicals,
there have been some significant problems in evangelical churches. There
is a growing movement of people that call themselves ex
evangelicals instead of evangelicals.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And you know, I grew up Catholic, but I grew
up in.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
The Deep South, so I was surrounded by Southern Baptists
and Evangelicals, So I grew up around in their churches.
I mean, I'd spend the night with a friend and
I would go to church with them, went to an
evangelical summer camp. Like, I've met people's spirit filled with
the Spirit of the Lord my entire life. So for
me to go back and say, hey, you're missing something,
it seems a little presumptuous. So what is the purpose
(12:56):
of this book.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
The purpose of the book is to get the evidence
out let people make their own decisions. Like I said,
I think the conclusions are fairly obvious. That's why I
ended up where I go. But the point that my
publicist was making is if you and I've run into
this myself, no matter who I'm talking to, if they
are either an ex evangelical or an ex Christian, the
usual answers that I get is I got very superficial answers.
(13:21):
I went to talk to somebody about these doubts I
was having, and what they told me was, you know, effectively,
it could be just shut up and believe it. It
could be shut up because you know the church says
so it could be you know, something that's almost childlike
in some of these answers of like, well, the Jews
never accepted those books. If you're asking about the canon,
(13:41):
go out read the Jewish scholarship. It says otherwise, like,
you know, that's not going to hold up when somebody
goes out and looks at it. And then when these people,
these ex evangelicals you asked, Christians did that journey, they
found very bad answers coming from their own church and
they walked out, and that, to me is a piece
of the book. Book is trying to show people. I'm
not giving you the final answer, although I have my own.
(14:03):
We all have to make our own way in the world.
What I am doing is saying the superficial answers clearly
do not work, and everyone should recognize that and start
thinking more carefully about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
We have some questions from our Common Spirit health text
line at five six six N I know you can
text us.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Mandy. I'm listening about the Bible.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
My question, therefore, what is he saying the Catholic face
is the Catholic faith is the right one, even with
all their extra biblical beliefs and practices. So is it,
I mean it's you're not You're not sitting here and
posturing like you know we're number one? Or I mean,
is that what's happening?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Uh? No. I So I have my own answer, but
that's way beyond my book.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
So the lawyer lawyer argues a case. Everything else is extraneous.
That's how I see the world. I'm not here to
argue for Catholicism or do it. It is my choice
if you know, someone wanted to talk to me and
talk to you about it. But the point is for
my book is whether you're Orthodox and accept these books
as the Orthodox churches do, or Catholic and accept these books,
or a kind of Protestantism that accepts these books. My
(15:05):
point is that I think the evidence is on the
side of those books. And again, if I'm wrong, that's fine.
You still need to argue from the evidence. And the
point of my book was to assemble all that evidence
for people to you know, start discussing and start making
decisions from. But it's that platform, that foundation that everyone
should be making decisions for, one way or the other,
no matter where you end up.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
What about the Gnostic Gospels? As this texter, so that
was what are the Gnostic Gospels? Explain that first?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
So there are many other books including that, some that
call themselves gospels that were floating around in the first
you know whatever five hundred years of Christianity, et cetera,
that claim to be Christian, claim to be representing Christ,
claim to go back to the Apostles, et cetera. Mainstream
Christianity would say those are fakes. That's why we call
(15:54):
them the Gnostic Gospels, and the question for me is, well,
what is the evidence for them? What is the evidence
for the ones that are in the regular mainstream Bible.
Let's compare the evidence. Do that that that is the
case for Christ. That is part of what's being discussed
in there is what is authentic, what is not authentic,
what is real? And do we have the real, authentic
(16:16):
eyewitness testimony that we claim to have in the first
the four Gospels that are accepted in mainstream Christianity. The
problem that I saw is that when we make that argument,
we have to be conscious that there's also these other
books in the Old Testament. What is the evidence for them?
Make the same comparisons. So, with respect to the Gnostic Gospels,
the answer from many Protestant apologists would be, well, those
(16:39):
don't have enough evidence, just as they're saying there's not
enough evidence for these other books, other books in the
apocryphal Well, if we can, you can compare all three
of those one, two, three and see where they stand up.
You've got to have a consistent answer. And that's the
point that I looked into. I believe the Nastic Gospels
are not proven. They're not They don't have enough evidence.
(17:00):
I think the New Testament does have enough evidence. And
when I look at these extra books they still call
it apocrypha. They too have enough evidence. That's where I
ended up, Matthew.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I think a lot of people who have never done
a deeper dive on Christianity don't realize how much good
evidence exists around Jesus, around the you know.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I mean if any Christian when I say, like in
my whole life, you know, if Christian had just said
this is true, and let me show you how right right,
what a powerful message that would be. And yet so
few people look into it, so few people learn it
so that they could teach it to someone else. You
should be that to me, that is the key message
of Christianity, and that's what worked in the beginning to
(17:41):
make the world, you know, the Roman world, Christian, and
that'll work again if we all get back to it.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
In mind, I think that we've sort of and I
don't want to cast as versions on everyone, I please
don't take it this way, but I think a lot
of people have sort of outsourced their deep thinking about faith,
and they show up on Sunday and they sing the songs,
and their kids go to the school and they go
to Sunday School and then they're done, like that's boxes
checked for the week.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And I'm not saying they're bad people.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
I want to be clear about that, but I do
think what's happening right now is that more and where
people are saying, wait a minute, what actually is there?
I mean I personally, and maybe it's a function of
my age that I'm in the mid fifties and you know,
you start thinking about what's coming next. I personally know
so many of my friends that have read the Bible
in the last two years for the first time in
(18:28):
their lives. They had gone to Sunday School, and they'd
done all the things, and they checked all the boxes,
but they had never gone through that process themselves. Do
you see any signs in your studying or anything like
that that people are now more curious? Are they Are
they dipping their toe in? Are they starting to, you know,
look at the same kind of things that you're looking at,
only maybe with less of a microscope.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, I hope so, you know, I see indications of it,
but of course you also see counter indications from time
to time that faith is lessening in the United States,
et cetera. But to me, what will strengthen everyone's faith
is to get back to the original Gospel, the original teaching,
and to understand that it is true and where it
comes from, etc. So again I went out and I
(19:11):
looked at what all the earliest Christians said about these books. Well,
as part of that, I discovered somewhat to my shock,
how much persecution this early church went through. Of the
ten earliest Christians, the big names that you hear often,
of the ten earliest, seven were tortured and killed for
their beliefs. Seven out of ten, only three escaped being
(19:35):
tortured and killed for their beliefs. That was just mind
boggling to me. So I'm reading the words of people
who are going to be tortured and killed. I'm reading
as they are preaching to their congregations that are going
to be tortured and killed. And you're watching all of
this sort of almost in real time as you're going
back and reading these things. And every single one of
them had one obsession, which is the truth. They were
(19:58):
willing to enter knowing they would be persecuted. They had
no delusions as to where this would end. They were
joining a church that was being persecuted. Why did they
do that? Because it's true, and you withstand things because
it's true. I feel like so many people lose their
faith late in life, or you know, as they grow up,
they go off to college and do the stuff like
(20:19):
you've got to show people it's true or all of
that Sunday School type stuff is kind of not enough.
You have to have that firm foundation. And I hope
that that element is growing in our society and will
allow us to sort of rejuvenate the church and grow
again here, because there are signs that that's happening, but
there are also signs that maybe that isn't happening. You know,
(20:40):
there's always counter trends to help. Our trend will be
on the rise here.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Matthew mcgwarter his book Cannon Crossfire. I put a link
to it on today's blog if you want to buy
it and read it for yourself and then decide if
Matthew is true and I mean the author, not the book.
Thank you so much for your time today, Matthew. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Thank you, God bless happy to join you
Joining me now is a guy who decided to do
something that many people have never done. When you ask people,
specifically especially Christian people, like have you read the Bible
cover to cover?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Have you just done it? A lot of people have not.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Well.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Matthew McWorter grew up in a household where he was
named after two books of the Bible, but it wasn't
a particularly religious household, and as an adult he was like,
you know what, I think I'm going to read that
book and I think it's not too much to say.
It was pretty life changing for him, and now he
joins me to talk about his new book, Canon Crossfire.
Does the Protestant Bible blow up the case for Christianity?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Matthew, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
First of all, thank you God blessed, happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, let's start at the beginning of your story. We'll
kind of do that real quick, because I think it
matters greatly. You're an attorney by trade, but after taking
a retirement, you were bored one day and were like, Hey,
let's just pick up the Bible and read it. Tell
me about that.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah. No, I had major medical problems, you know, unexpected
medical problems, and survived them, and all of a sudden
it was like, well, I better get on that bucket list.
And on the bucket list was to read the books
I had been named after. So that that was it.
I had other books to read, including the Cowboys stories
my grandfather had left me, you know, just different things
to read. I wanted to read this. So I go
(01:18):
on to Amazon, and the first discovery was what Bible?
Because there's just Bible upon Bible upon Bible on there,
and you know it starts. Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox have
completely different Bibles, different books in the Bible. And then
there's other very you know, more recent variations on top
of that. And I had no idea what I was
supposed to be reading. So I did what you kind
(01:40):
of see behind me. I bought them all and I
so I read. When I say I read the Bible,
I started with Matthew chapter one, and I read it
across one hundred different Bibles and Bible commentaries. And then
I read Matthew chapter two. Then I read Matthew chapter three.
All of this seemed logical to me as a lawyer.
Every every time I tell people this, they get that
look on their.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Like, what, what are you even talking about like, what
are you? How long did it take you to get
through what?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Mark? And Matthew one one week of chapter So one
is a whole New Testament, and so Matthew, I think
is twenty eight chapters, so a little over half a year.
And then I moved on to Mark, and then I
moved on to Loop.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Then did you go back and read the Old Testament too?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
I did that afterwards. Okay, just tell everyone that's the key.
Read the New Testament. It explains why you should care
about the Old Testament. If you don't do that first,
you can't make it through the Old Testament.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
I always tell people the Old Testament is full of
the most interesting stories of daring do and backstabbing and
all of this. It's like a giant soap opera. But
it's also the history of the Jewish.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
People so well, and you have to care about the
soap opera. You have to invest in the soap opera
in order to enjoy it. Otherwise it's a lot of
bad people doing a lot of bad things. Yes, and
it's hard to you know. Yeah, it's a tough read.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Now, what would you say your level of faith on
a scale of one being you know, I'm agnostic to
ten being like, you're ready to be the next pope?
Where would you put you when you started this process?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Somewhere around zero? I mean I didn't really even understand Christianity,
the Christian story, et cetera. I had a vague grasp
of it, you know, an oddity of how I came
to this versus all these Christians I've known in life.
You know, when you ask them, you get vague answers
about Christianity. So even if I asked them, what you know,
what you oh, you're going what are you doing on Sunday?
You're not watching football? You're going to church? And you know,
(03:34):
they would start talking about the music, or they would
talk about their kids in the basketball program or the schools,
and like, okay, go do whatever you want. I don't care.
But I mean, there was never an explanation of this
is what the Christian message is. You should believe it
because it's true. That was a key part of my
journey was as a lawyer, I looked into is this true?
And what Bible should I be reading at the same time,
(03:56):
And that's where this canon crossfire concept comes in. The
in the scripture is the list of the correct books
in the Bible. I just wanted to know what the
evidence was for that, and I wanted to compare that
to what Christians were saying, you know, the evidence for
christ is that's where the crossfire rose. That's where my
book comes in. Having done all that work, I give
people the research in the book for everyone to make
(04:17):
their own decision. But the point is that I originally
was just asking is Christianity true? That to me is
the most fundamental question that every Christian should be prepared
to answer. And it's instead what I got whenever I
talked to somebody in the course of my life, was
you know, well we got great schools from joining us, and.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I will say you never did.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
For some reason.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Lawyers make the best apologetics, and of course apologetics are
people that will defend a belief structure. And one of
my favorite is David Limbaugh, who has he went into
it specifically with the goal of disproving Christianity. He was like,
this is hocum and he ended up being such a
strong He has such strong faith now and his books
are incredible. So let's talk about specifically Canon C. First
(05:00):
of all, I have to know which Bible.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Do you prefer mine is the Catholic Bible is it's
a huge part of this process. Is that a Protestant
Bible lacking those books. I actually don't think they would
win the case for christ. I'd be curious with David
Limbaughs to say about my book. I quote him many
times in my book. But my point is that as
a lawyer, I was asking those two questions at the
exact same time, and I noticed that it's the same evidence.
(05:24):
They'll be quoting the same father. Pick a guy named
eron As in one seventy seven a d. And you
know he's speaking about the Gospels. So they say, well,
this is early evidence for the Gospels. Okay, it's erin As.
It's one seventy seven a d. It's early. I look
over at these extra books that are in the Catholic Bible,
and people say, well, that those books came late. There's
(05:45):
very little evidence for him. Like I have eron as
in one seventy seven AD saying that Bruke was handed
down by the apostles, just like he said the Gospels
were handed down by the Apostles. That's the same person
at the same time saying the same things. That's a
big problem, and whatever the conclusion is. The point in
my book is that the Protestant answers are very shallow
(06:07):
and superficial when I looked into them. Whether there are
better answers is the question I'd love to ask David Limboff.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Right, Well, and let's talk about the Books of the
apotomy Yeah, let's talk about the Books of the Apographa.
Because growing up Catholic, I was aware of the Books
of the Apographa. They are part of the Catholic Bible
that were taken out of, to your point, the Protestant Bible,
because the people that were putting together the Protestant Bible said,
to your point, those didn't happen. They were like hundreds
of years after Christ. So we're not going to give
(06:34):
them as much credence. But I honestly have never looked
into the big differences, like what is in the Books
of the Apographa that you don't have in the Protestant
Bible that you are so certain is the game changer
when it comes to proving the divinity of Christ.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Well, what I'm stressing is the evidence that authenticates those books. Okay,
not necessarily, what's actually in the books. Some of these books.
The books are of variety. Some of them are sort
of a pieces of Jewish history. Some of them are
stories about specific people, like a woman named Judith. Some
of them are sort of inspirational, like the Book of Wisdom,
kind of like a book of Psalms or proverbs. So
(07:14):
they're a variety of books. But the point that I'm
making is that the evidence saying that they were authentic
comes from the early Church. And it is that evidence
from the early Church that Christians say is more than
enough to show that the Gospels are true, but they were,
that they are came from the real apostles and describe
a real event in the resurrection of Jesus. So it's
that authentication evidence that's the crucial piece for what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So why do you and I don't know the answer
to this. Why were the books of the Apocrypha left
out of the Protestant Bible? Who made that choice? Was
it just because they said the timing was bad? I
don't know the clear answer there.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
So I looked into three things and then there's a
dovetail into what they why they aren't there. But one
is what did the Jews say about these books. I
hear what Catholics say, I hear what Protestants say. I
just wanted to know what Jews say. I found that
in Jewish books. I put that in the book. I
wanted to know where in the New Testament the apostles
and subchases Jesus may have referenced these books. There are
(08:10):
hundreds of times that Protestant scholars I didn't look for Catholics,
I was or biased or anything like that. When do
Protestants tell me this? Does I find all those I
just assemble them for a reader to see them for yourself.
And the third thing is I wanted to know what
every single Christian in the first four hundred and fifty
years of Christianity ever said about these books. So I
went to the mattresses. I went out to find all that.
(08:32):
I pull it into this book, and I just give
it to a reader. What happens when you look at that,
is that the story that the Protestants tell you, which
is that they like you, said that they came too late,
that they weren't accepted by the Jews, that the Early
Church didn't really accept them, etc. Those are very superficial answers.
The Jews say they came, that they predate Christ Christ.
(08:53):
They say that the Jews were accepting them at the time,
or at least some Jews. The question is how you know.
They call it fuzzy edges. There were books that were
clearly accepted, and then there were books that had that
mayor were being disputed. Esther, which is in the Protestant Bible,
is one of those books that was being disputed, for example.
But so the Jews tell a different story. The Early
(09:14):
Church says we accept these books, knowing full well that
the Jews don't accept these books, like they didn't try
to match what the Jews had, Right, There's just all
these disconnects between the evidence and what the story is.
So they claim that, well, they were gotten rid of
because they came too late. Is not what the Early
Church said and is not what the Jews themselves say,
et cetera. So you just have to compare the evidence
(09:36):
to the narrative that somebody's telling you. And as I say,
the answers are just too superficial. They don't work. And
that's where the Cannan crossfire concept came from.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So you're essentially maintaining that the evidence for the books
in the Protestant Bible is not as strong as it
is for the books of the Apocrypha.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Not if you claim that the Apocrypha don't have an
evidence or came too late, et cetera. If you make
the statement, you are the person admitting that the Apocrypha
are not proved. Okay, now we come back to the
Case for Christ and we compare the evidence, we compare
the timing, we compare who's saying what, et cetera. And
you're the one who admitted it's not proved. To a
(10:18):
judge who's you're now asking to say, I've proven Christianity,
and he's gonna say, no, you didn't prove it. It's
the same stuff that you just said you admitted is
not proved. So that's the key part is that a
Protestant is admitting that the evidence is not sufficient for
these other books. Okay, take that back and compare it
to the evidence for the case for Christ and see
where you stand. And that's the point of my book
(10:39):
is to show people that was.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
There any particular piece of evidence that you found to
be the most compelling or the more compelling, or what
was the thing that made you go in as a
skeptical attorney, And did you have a moment where you
went wow, I actually think this could have happened.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
What was that moment if there was one.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, the evidence is actually good for Christianity. And that
was a key part was I was coming to see
how good the evidence is for Christianity, and then all
of a sudden I was reading over here on the
case for the Canon people bashing that exact same evidence.
Like I said, Aaron As is an early father. He
learned from a guy named Polycarp. Polycarp learned from John.
(11:18):
He is one step removed from John. And he is
telling you that the Christians have four Gospels, what those
gospels are, et cetera. He's a key witness. He has
effect the key witness for proving that fact. And Harry
is also saying the same thing that you know the
Apostles handed down Baruk, and Baruk is not in a
(11:39):
Proestant Bible, it is in a Catholic Bible. And to
claim that he that the Apostles did not give us
Baruk is to say ieron As was not a truth teller,
can't be relied on. And he's here, he is the
star witness on the Four Gospels. So that that's a
key part of what I'm trying to show in the
book is how that becomes a problem because to me,
the evidence that Irenas presents is so powerful in the
(12:02):
case for Christ. For you to then say, no, your honor,
don't believe Erineus is a real problem.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So is the purpose of this book to maybe let
Protestants see.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
A more compelling case.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I mean, because the pitch that I got from your
pr people was a very good pitch in it They're like, look, Evangelicals,
there have been some significant problems in evangelical churches. There
is a growing movement of people that call themselves ex
evangelicals instead of evangelicals.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And you know, I grew up Catholic, but I grew
up in.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
The Deep South, so I was surrounded by Southern Baptists
and Evangelicals, So I grew up around in their churches.
I mean, I'd spend the night with a friend and
I would go to church with them, went to an
evangelical summer camp. Like, I've met people's spirit filled with
the Spirit of the Lord my entire life. So for
me to go back and say, hey, you're missing something,
it seems a little presumptuous. So what is the purpose
(12:56):
of this book.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
The purpose of the book is to get the evidence
out let people make their own decisions. Like I said,
I think the conclusions are fairly obvious. That's why I
ended up where I go. But the point that my
publicist was making is if you and I've run into
this myself, no matter who I'm talking to, if they
are either an ex evangelical or an ex Christian, the
usual answers that I get is I got very superficial answers.
(13:21):
I went to talk to somebody about these doubts I
was having, and what they told me was, you know, effectively,
it could be just shut up and believe it. It
could be shut up because you know the church says
so it could be you know, something that's almost childlike
in some of these answers of like, well, the Jews
never accepted those books. If you're asking about the canon,
(13:41):
go out read the Jewish scholarship. It says otherwise, like,
you know, that's not going to hold up when somebody
goes out and looks at it. And then when these people,
these ex evangelicals you asked, Christians did that journey, they
found very bad answers coming from their own church and
they walked out, and that, to me is a piece
of the book. Book is trying to show people. I'm
not giving you the final answer, although I have my own.
(14:03):
We all have to make our own way in the world.
What I am doing is saying the superficial answers clearly
do not work, and everyone should recognize that and start
thinking more carefully about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
We have some questions from our Common Spirit health text
line at five six six N I know you can
text us.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Mandy. I'm listening about the Bible.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
My question, therefore, what is he saying the Catholic face
is the Catholic faith is the right one, even with
all their extra biblical beliefs and practices. So is it,
I mean it's you're not You're not sitting here and
posturing like you know we're number one? Or I mean,
is that what's happening?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Uh? No. I So I have my own answer, but
that's way beyond my book.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
So the lawyer lawyer argues a case. Everything else is extraneous.
That's how I see the world. I'm not here to
argue for Catholicism or do it. It is my choice
if you know, someone wanted to talk to me and
talk to you about it. But the point is for
my book is whether you're Orthodox and accept these books
as the Orthodox churches do, or Catholic and accept these books,
or a kind of Protestantism that accepts these books. My
(15:05):
point is that I think the evidence is on the
side of those books. And again, if I'm wrong, that's fine.
You still need to argue from the evidence. And the
point of my book was to assemble all that evidence
for people to you know, start discussing and start making
decisions from. But it's that platform, that foundation that everyone
should be making decisions for, one way or the other,
no matter where you end up.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
What about the Gnostic Gospels? As this texter, so that
was what are the Gnostic Gospels? Explain that first?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
So there are many other books including that, some that
call themselves gospels that were floating around in the first
you know whatever five hundred years of Christianity, et cetera,
that claim to be Christian, claim to be representing Christ,
claim to go back to the Apostles, et cetera. Mainstream
Christianity would say those are fakes. That's why we call
(15:54):
them the Gnostic Gospels, and the question for me is, well,
what is the evidence for them? What is the evidence
for the ones that are in the regular mainstream Bible.
Let's compare the evidence. Do that that that is the
case for Christ. That is part of what's being discussed
in there is what is authentic, what is not authentic,
what is real? And do we have the real, authentic
(16:16):
eyewitness testimony that we claim to have in the first
the four Gospels that are accepted in mainstream Christianity. The
problem that I saw is that when we make that argument,
we have to be conscious that there's also these other
books in the Old Testament. What is the evidence for them?
Make the same comparisons. So, with respect to the Gnostic Gospels,
the answer from many Protestant apologists would be, well, those
(16:39):
don't have enough evidence, just as they're saying there's not
enough evidence for these other books, other books in the
apocryphal Well, if we can, you can compare all three
of those one, two, three and see where they stand up.
You've got to have a consistent answer. And that's the
point that I looked into. I believe the Nastic Gospels
are not proven. They're not They don't have enough evidence.
(17:00):
I think the New Testament does have enough evidence. And
when I look at these extra books they still call
it apocrypha. They too have enough evidence. That's where I
ended up, Matthew.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I think a lot of people who have never done
a deeper dive on Christianity don't realize how much good
evidence exists around Jesus, around the you know.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I mean if any Christian when I say, like in
my whole life, you know, if Christian had just said
this is true, and let me show you how right right,
what a powerful message that would be. And yet so
few people look into it, so few people learn it
so that they could teach it to someone else. You
should be that to me, that is the key message
of Christianity, and that's what worked in the beginning to
(17:41):
make the world, you know, the Roman world, Christian, and
that'll work again if we all get back to it.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
In mind, I think that we've sort of and I
don't want to cast as versions on everyone, I please
don't take it this way, but I think a lot
of people have sort of outsourced their deep thinking about faith,
and they show up on Sunday and they sing the songs,
and their kids go to the school and they go
to Sunday School and then they're done, like that's boxes
checked for the week.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And I'm not saying they're bad people.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
I want to be clear about that, but I do
think what's happening right now is that more and where
people are saying, wait a minute, what actually is there?
I mean I personally, and maybe it's a function of
my age that I'm in the mid fifties and you know,
you start thinking about what's coming next. I personally know
so many of my friends that have read the Bible
in the last two years for the first time in
(18:28):
their lives. They had gone to Sunday School, and they'd
done all the things, and they checked all the boxes,
but they had never gone through that process themselves. Do
you see any signs in your studying or anything like
that that people are now more curious? Are they Are
they dipping their toe in? Are they starting to, you know,
look at the same kind of things that you're looking at,
only maybe with less of a microscope.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Yeah, I hope so, you know, I see indications of it,
but of course you also see counter indications from time
to time that faith is lessening in the United States,
et cetera. But to me, what will strengthen everyone's faith
is to get back to the original Gospel, the original teaching,
and to understand that it is true and where it
comes from, etc. So again I went out and I
(19:11):
looked at what all the earliest Christians said about these books. Well,
as part of that, I discovered somewhat to my shock,
how much persecution this early church went through. Of the
ten earliest Christians, the big names that you hear often,
of the ten earliest, seven were tortured and killed for
their beliefs. Seven out of ten, only three escaped being
(19:35):
tortured and killed for their beliefs. That was just mind
boggling to me. So I'm reading the words of people
who are going to be tortured and killed. I'm reading
as they are preaching to their congregations that are going
to be tortured and killed. And you're watching all of
this sort of almost in real time as you're going
back and reading these things. And every single one of
them had one obsession, which is the truth. They were
(19:58):
willing to enter knowing they would be persecuted. They had
no delusions as to where this would end. They were
joining a church that was being persecuted. Why did they
do that? Because it's true, and you withstand things because
it's true. I feel like so many people lose their
faith late in life, or you know, as they grow up,
they go off to college and do the stuff like
(20:19):
you've got to show people it's true or all of
that Sunday School type stuff is kind of not enough.
You have to have that firm foundation. And I hope
that that element is growing in our society and will
allow us to sort of rejuvenate the church and grow
again here, because there are signs that that's happening, but
there are also signs that maybe that isn't happening. You know,
(20:40):
there's always counter trends to help. Our trend will be
on the rise here.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Matthew mcgwarter his book Cannon Crossfire. I put a link
to it on today's blog if you want to buy
it and read it for yourself and then decide if
Matthew is true and I mean the author, not the book.
Thank you so much for your time today, Matthew. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Thank you, God bless happy to join you
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