Did The Church BAN These Gospels from the Bible?! | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Can we really trust the New Testament Gospels to tell us who Jesus really is? If the real Jesus can really change your life, how do we know who the real Jesus is? And what sources and what books tell us? Well, hey, Lit Free Nation, before we jump into today's episode, I want to let you know that today's episode is going to be a little bit different. We're going to be reacting to a particular video and address the topic of the Gnostic Gospels. And it might feel a little bit more like a deep dive Bible study. So if you're watching or listening, this is one of those episodes where you may want to grab a pen, grab a notebook, and really lean in. Maybe you've heard people talk about the lost Gospels or the forbidden books or the books that the church didn't want you to read. And maybe you've seen clips online claiming that the Bible we have today is missing the real story of Jesus. And if you've ever wondered, is that true? Did the church hide certain books? Can I actually trust Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? This episode is for you. Chad G. Palsy and I are going to walk through the claims, slow things down, explain what the Gnostic Gospels actually are, why they are rejected, and why Christians can have confidence that the Jesus we meet in the New Testament is the real Jesus of history. This episode may stretch you a little bit, and it's a little bit more theological, it's historical, and we believe it is important. So let us know if you like this format, because if it's helpful, we might do more theological, deeper dives. So get ready, lean in, and let's jump into today's episode. Well, hey, welcome to a bonus episode of the Live Free Podcast. My name is Carlos Arazo, and I'm here with the one and only Chad G. Palsy, the Epistleman. The Epistlemissile Pastor, Paul Cunningham. What's going on, man? I have not heard the Epistlemissile in a while. I always liked the Epistlemissile. It started strong, and I felt like it was winning, and then it's just kind of faded over time. We should have it make a little bit of a comeback. I'm going to bring it back once in a while. Hey, today's episode, we're going to be asking, did the Bible ban books called the Gnostic Gospels? Is that true? First of all, what are those, and where did those books even come from? The way we're going to be answering those questions is, we're going to be reacting to this viral clip of Joe Rogan interviewing John Esther Haas, who is an author and a screenwriter for movies like Flashdance and Basic Instinct, which, honestly, Paul, I had never heard of these movies. These are your movies. Oh, no, they are not. No, they are not. By that, I mean your generation's movies. If you have not Googled Basic Instinct, please don't, and please do not watch it. I'm trying to get the bio of this gentleman over here. Wow, I'm turning red. I feel it. Wow, okay. It threw me under the bus. What I meant to say is that you're more familiar because I'm too young for this movie. Anybody got a shovel? He just keeps digging as he's going. Oh, my goodness. And we're off right now, everybody. This is great. So, basically, we're going to be reacting to this video. In particular, it went viral because it had a headline which read like this. It says, Joe Rogan was left completely stunned. That's too funny. Hold on. Here's what the headline said. Joe Rogan was left completely stunned after devout Christian Joe Esterhaz exposed who Jesus Christ really was. So, ultimately, we're going to be answering the question, can we really trust? You're too funny. You just keep laughing over here. I'm trying to keep a straight face. We're going to be asking, can we really trust the New Testament gospel to tell us who Jesus really is? That's right. Well, honestly, this is kind of great that this has happened, even though we did not plan this whatsoever, just the humor. Because a few things before we jump in. Number one, there are going to be some points where we have to do some correction, where we have to say, hey, what one or both of these guys says is wrong or off. But we don't want the tone to be, oh, these guys are idiots. Because one of the things that we also want to say in this video is, man, we love that they're talking about Jesus and they're interested in the things of Jesus. And so I'm kind of glad that we started off laughing because we talked about before that we really want to try, in essence, to be happy warriors. Yeah. We want to be people who will. We want to contend for the truth, but also not be jerks as we do it. So if anything, maybe this has set a good tone for us to get laughing as we go. And so, yeah, so I think this is a really important topic. We get asked about this all the time, specifically not about basic instinct, but about the Gnostic gospel. Some people call them the lost or the banned gospels. Yeah. We get asked about it all the time. So I think it'd be good for us to address this so that people can dive into it. It was a little bit of a hot topic with the Da Vinci Code back in the day. Big time. Big time. The Da Vinci Code. Tom Hanks. And then something we'll jump into in a little bit. There was something that happened in the 80s and 90s, the quest for the historical Jesus that culminated with something called the Jesus Seminar. And what's happened is so much of that has been debunked, almost all of it. That's right. But, you know, people held onto it and now just quote it as if it's fact. And most people don't know it has been debunked. So we'll get there in a bit. So good for us to hit it because we get asked this all the time. But I think another reason why it's important to talk about this is, you know, one of the things these guys are going to kind of allude to is that Jesus can change the world. Jesus can change your life, that the real Jesus can really change your life. But then the key question is, is how do we, you just can't, you can't recover right now, can you? I'm trying to be serious right now. You just can't recover. This is awesome. Is, is, hey, like if the real Jesus can really change your life, how do we know who the real Jesus is and what sources and what books tell us? Now, what we believe, I've got here called something called a synopsis of the four gospels. And what this is, it lays out the four gospels side by side. And it shows things that they have in common, things that once applies, other doesn't, and so on and so forth. And so we really just had to ask us, hey, when I read these four gospels, am I getting the real Jesus or are there other books, sometimes called the Gnostic gospels, that give us a Jesus who is more historical? So that's why it really matters because we want to know who the real Jesus is, because if we get it wrong, it has huge consequences. But again, just so people know, like sometimes when we're answering stuff in response to Joe Rogan, especially about Christianity or his guests. I think there's two ditches people can fall in. Some immediately canonize everything they say, meaning everything they said is true and right and immediately swallow it. And so that's one ditch. The other group or the other ditch is they immediately criticize everything. It's like, no, everything they said has to be wrong. And I just want to say, it's actually like, again, it's awesome. These guys are talking about Jesus. Some of the things they say are in here, great. Some are maybe a little confused. Some are outright wrong. Let's learn how to distinguish which from which and take the good and leave the bad. That's right. Yeah. And that's what we're going to do right now. Yep. We're literally going to react to the whole thing. We're going to react to the whole video. That's like a four-minute clip. And so before we play, anything else on your end? No, that was the big stuff I wanted to say at the beginning. Okay. Let's go ahead and start playing. And I feel like sometimes religion goes in peaks and waves. And I think there was a wave of atheism back then, and Hollywood was very non-Christian, to put it mildly. Yes. The Christian themes in films were never promoted. Yeah, it was absolutely right. It's not as bad now in that sense as it was in those days. Let's pause. Let's stop right here. So Carlos, the Joes, I'm just going to call them the Joes, by the way, because they're first. Yeah, it's just easier to do that than to try to say Esther House's last name. And it's, to me, just really hard to pronounce for some reason. Where's that last name from? I think he's Hungarian. Okay. He's Hungarian. At least he has a Hungarian background. And so, yeah, but they're here. They're talking about how there seems to have been a shift, even just recently, from people. It felt like for a while there was a resistance. There was a resistance to Christianity. And now there seems to be an increased openness to it. But a lot of it has kind of gone in peaks and valleys and ebbs and flows for the last 30 to 40 years. Maybe just helpful for context, if you could give people kind of a little bit of like some of that ebb and flow and what that's looked like. Yeah. So Aaron Wren, he has a framework that basically explains that there's been three different ways in which Christianity has been perceived by culture here in the U.S., at least in the last 40 to 50 years. And he calls them the. Positive world, neutral world, and negative world. So real quick, again, according to Wren, positive world is pre-1994. This is basically a time where, generally speaking, in our American culture, culture had a positive view of Christianity. So if you're a Christian, hey, that's actually socially advantageous towards you. It is good for you, you know, for society, for Christians to kind of be around, good for you to go to church. That's a good thing. So that's positive world pre-1994. After that, 1994 to 2014, we transitioned to a neutral world. And what Wren would say is a neutral world is basically a culture where Christianity is no longer the dominant worldview, but it is one amongst many equal worldviews. So this is like the classic old school, I don't know if you ever saw these, Paul, Larry King live shows where like you'd have like a John MacArthur Bible teacher sit down with Deepak Chopra, spiritual guru with a Catholic priest and a atheist scholar. And they're, you know, they're having conversations about life. And, you know, Larry King would say something like, so John, explain what happened in 9-11. Whose fault is it? And it usually wasn't contentious. That's another thing. It's like, I think if people would go back and watch these, people actually might be bored because they usually weren't contentious. Christianity had a seat at the table and it's one worldview and they're all equally valid. And let's have a conversation about it. So that's neutral worldview, neutral world, 1994 to 2014. Now, Wren changes that in 2014. He says we transitioned to a negative worldview. And 2014 was when Obergefell happened. So gay marriage gets legalized. And now something that the Bible explicitly calls sin became legislated by law or as law. And so what that means is if you are here and you are a Christian and you believe the Bible, you no longer have a different equal perspective. Now you have a wrong and morally evil perspective. And now I have a moral obligation to oppose you as culture. And so that's after 2014. Now, it's interesting because we've been kind of in a negative world ever since. epoch or era but now in the last couple years uh some people might say man we we're like transitioning or shifting into another place uh that i don't know if anybody has put a name on it and basically there's been a fatigue and a disillusionment with secularism and people are now realizing hey we actually have lost something that actually matters here and we need to figure out how to get it back and so that's kind of what we're seeing right now and this is why we're you know today when you look at the news people there's a renewed interest in god church spirituality the bible sales are up uh people like joe rogan obviously uh nikki minaj sean ryan people in high profile government positions are having conversation that are explicit about faith and the bible and church attendance and so again this is an ebb and flow of of seasons that we're in and honestly this is why uh we have an opportunity right now as christians to hey let's have these conversations and this is why as you said paul we are applauding the fact that here are two men having this conversation about jesus that's right it's a prime time for us to press in and to have these conversations and i would even say like it's honestly refreshing to hear these guys like say hey it was maybe a mistake to go after christian principles and christian people we need to course correct on that and so to me it's like while the tone is the way it is as christians let's dive in and not mock guys who may end up saying some things that we disagree with and that we think are just outright wrong but i said let's engage them and let's engage them with kindness um you want to keep going that's it let's do it the christian themes and films were never promoted yeah it was the absolutely right the um it's not as bad now in that sense as it was it was in those days the and i think that that part of it it would frustrate me is that is that there would be an openness to that and then into christian films if they were real if they didn't if they weren't full of incense and piety right and actually stop again because um the point of the main thing that we're hitting today is the nasa gospels but i think it's still good to comment on some of this and just the tone and the tenor um what i appreciate um about what they were saying um was that hey culture had gotten too negative towards christianity but now it seems like what joe esterhouse is saying is hey we may have brought some of this um on ourselves by presenting a jesus in a faith that didn't have many rough edges or have tough things to say um and he seems here to be really focusing on christian films but i would honestly also add christian music for a long time sure um and i don't want to name names and go too stereotypically i'm kidding uh i'm tempted to uh but it did seem like it presented a jesus these films and music that really wasn't compelling to culture and i'll just be honest especially to men it was kind of hokey and these films were cheesy and cliche and so it seems like what's appealing not just to these two guys but to increasingly more men and more people in culture is the rawness of faith and the rough edges that we see in people frankly like the disciples in the new testament that these were not perfect people they were rough i'm like this and again this isn't the main thing we're hitting but carlos you're you're a cultured guy you know social media and media in general really well you watch a ton of movies uh know a lot about music and pop culture would you agree with what these guys are saying again i know it's stereotypical and there's exceptions would you agree with what they're saying i mean obviously you know when you look back at christian art in music and movies uh you know there's obviously a lot that uh you can we can learn from and you can criticize a lot of things um here's what i would say this is a i read this book a while back and he would say when christians look at culture you want to do four things or you have four options to do with culture you can consume culture so basically this is like the christians are just passively consuming culture without thinking about it um we don't want to do that we don't just want to be cultural consumers uh that's the first option consume culture we all you can also number two copy culture this is when uh you know christians would just do the christian version of whatever secular thing was out there uh consume culture copy culture you can critique culture you can criticize culture you can criticize culture uh this is these are the christians that just uh you know they're movie critics they they just tell you they just tell us what they like what they don't like and uh you know that that's but that's literally all they do uh or so consume culture copy culture critique culture or you can create culture at the end of the day uh we are called as christians to create and so i think when we look back at some of the christian art forms uh in the past that we don't like man honestly like yeah let's point it out and let's get better that's good and uh so that's kind of that's kind of what we've done over the years is make him a kind of fred rogers figure you know he wasn't that um you know the i'm not even sure that jesus really said do not resist violence you know jesus also said if you have a cloak but not a sword sell the cloak and buy a sword he also said um the i come to you and i'm going to buy you a sword and i'm going to buy you a sword and i'm not to make peace i come and not not to make peace but with a sword you know so the there's been a lot of of um of church stuff um and then especially i think catholics are more guilty of this to romanticize and sort of cosmeticize the figure of jesus of nazareth well there's always a problem when human beings add their own interpretation to an ancient story absolutely and do it for to fit their own narrative let's stop it there yeah yeah so again here's what we would say one uh man we want to affirm again anytime two grown men sit down and have a conversation about jesus in this case the two joes man we applaud that that's a good thing um second in many ways i gotta say paul like some of the things that they're saying like they're right yeah oftentimes jesus has been portrayed mostly as a quote-unquote nice guy and that is a problem uh because the bible doesn't describe jesus as being a nice guy if you read the bible the bible says jesus was tender he was compassionate he was merciful with some people that's true and it also says that he was tough firm bold confrontative with another group of people and that group of people probably wouldn't have said that jesus was a kind guy or a nice guy and so uh people often miss this but jesus is a man of humility is what the bible says but he is also a man of glory jesus is like a lion but he's also portrayed as a lion he jesus you will see him as a lion and he's also portrayed as a lion crying and you will also see him with righteous anger and so uh and to his point uh jesus tells peter at one point hey put down the sword um but then also before that they were going to go on a missionary trip and jesus says hey if you don't have a sword um go get one and then peter said hey we got two swords jesus and jesus is like great that'll do that's enough uh so that's right so again jesus is both compassionate and merciful and he is also confrontative and righteous and so i know you're about to speak more on this but basically you want to make sure you have the full character of jesus that's not a caricature of jesus but the full character of jesus so the full character of jesus would be hey what does the bible say about jesus uh as a whole person now a caricature of jesus is when you just grab one particular aspect of his character and make it significantly bigger than what it already is to the point that it obscures everything else about who jesus is and so uh paul i want to ask you about this uh when he specifically said about the thing jesus never said that he was a lion he said that he was a lion he said that he was a lion what say you yeah well first i love that play on words actually that you said the character character versus caricature because if people don't even know what a caricature is if you go like a theme park or a carnival or a fair you'll see people doing drawings of people and usually exactly they'll take one aspect of you and heavily overemphasize that to the neglect of the other features of you and i think that's what we're is happening here and so i'm just at times as we're doing this by the way i'm going to almost pretend like if joe were here if we were just having a little bit of fun i'd be like oh my god i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited and i say man joe like yes he did say those things but he also did say in the sermon on the mount to turn the other cheek if someone strikes you on the cheek and he also even though he said did say go yeah go grab two swords um when peter took a sword and tried to kill someone who's trying to arrest jesus he rebuked peter and so like oh he didn't kill me tried to cut off his ear uh peter was probably not at a depth where he would could literally just swipe it like that and he was trying to kill the guy he was trying to kill the guy he was trying to kill the guy he was trying to kill the guy exactly he missed he was going for the kill shot and because peter was a fisherman and not a soldier he missed his head and hit his ear and so yeah you do have times where jesus does lean into maybe a justified form of violence and and we don't have the time to get into that today of hey when is it just for example like in matters of war and self-defense that's another podcast for another time but yeah there are places where jesus um is not just a nice guy but you also do see places where he advocates for non-violent resistance like turning the other cheek and he did not come to take over through violent means and so i'd say hey to your point when we're thinking about the character of jesus we have to take all the data from all the gospels and all the new testament the entire bible because we have to remember if we believe that jesus is god incarnate this is the same god as the old testament as well and we have to put them together to get a complete picture of him and there's a visual i've used for a while to kind of help me understand that sometimes people have a lopsided view of who jesus is um before we put this picture up on the screen i want to clarify for people i am not making fun of this individual it's actually kind of a cool thing there's this arm wrestler who has this genetic defect which basically makes one side of his body hyper grow and the other side say the same which this is even just a cool illustration that could be used one day where he used something that some people would call a defect and he actually uses as a superpower that's the sermon illustration waiting to happen but we've actually got a picture of this guy matthias schlicht uh he is a champion arm wrestler and so if you're just listening to this this would be a great time or later to go watch youtube we're just going to have a little bit of time to do that just Google this guy's name, Matthias Schlitt. Literally, to me, it's like you've got a guy, he's lopsided. To me, this is a picture of sometimes what people do with Jesus. They overemphasize one aspect of who he is and underemphasize the other. I would say to Joe, yeah, for sure, man, Jesus did so many things, but then he also said these other things. We've got to remember when it's appropriate to resist, and when it's violence, and when it is appropriate not to, and when you have to turn the other cheek. We could go more further into that. That's all I'll say for now. That's great. Okay, so what we're about to do right now, as we keep watching this video, we're about to transition to the main part of the video where Joe Esterház will say some things that honestly, respectfully, we will strongly disagree with. Yes. I don't want to say disagree. He's wrong. He's just historically wrong. That's right. That's right. And we'll explain why, because he's about to infer that the Jesus of the New Testament is not necessarily the real Jesus of history, and then what he'll do is he'll bring up the Gnostic Gospels, and he'll say some things about those books that are just not true. Yeah. And so, but before we. We keep going, Paul, because this will be helpful. What are the Gnostic Gospels for people that don't know, and why are they called that way? That's good. And this is really where we're getting, in a sense, to the meat of the video, and we're going to slow down a lot. We've been going pretty fast and shorter clips. We're going to slow down, and kind of like in the React video I did on the Apocrypha, I'll go ahead and give a warning now that we're going to have to give a lot of detail and a lot of nuance, because there's a lot of stuff here, but it'll be worth it if you stick with us, because it will bolster your confidence, because part of why we want to do this video is we don't want people to be led astray by this, and so if any Christian watches this, we hope that this bolsters their confidence that the real Jesus can be found in the four Gospels we have in the New Testament, but also if you hear other people who espouse these kinds of things, I want to give you the ability to help gently correct them and help them know that we can know the real Jesus through the Bible. So we're going to give a good amount of detail, but a few things to set up the stage before we move on in the video. So yeah, the idea of Gnostic Gospels. Gnostic comes from the word Gnostic. Gnostic, which simply is the Greek word for knowledge. Gnosticism wasn't any specific organized religion, but was really an overall philosophical concept and movement from about the 2nd to 4th centuries AD, so from the 100s to about the 300s. It came from the East, and really the idea of it is this, is that there is this secret knowledge that is true of you, Carlos. That if you would come to find out about it by learning and by absorbing the secret knowledge, you can figure out what is already true of you, and that is that you are divine, or at least in some sense divine. You've got a spark of divinity, but the only way you can come to realize that and see that is if I give you this secret knowledge that you don't have yet. So this was basically true of all these different systems. They had some differences between them, but at the heart of it was, hey, there is this secret knowledge that if you can unlock, you will realize that you are in some sense divine. Another unifying factor would be that they saw the material, physical, world as evil, but the spiritual as good. That gave us even like one story where people retold the story of Genesis, where it was actually a lesser God who created the physical world because he was bitter, and he was actually a lesser God. And so their whole thing was, hey, physical matter doesn't matter. If anything, it's evil, and we're trapped in it, and we have to escape. And here's why this matters. Salvation for these people would not have been Jesus coming and dying for your sins and rising from the grave. Salvation would be, you need to get knowledge that is already true about you that I have to give you, and then you need to escape the physical world. Whereas Jesus came to redeem us and to redeem the physical world. The story at the end of the book of Revelation is that not that we go up to heaven and we leave earth behind, but actually heaven comes down to earth and recreates the physical world. Okay, but so here's a very helpful thing to know as we're about to jump into the actual gospels and see more in this video. What happened is, as this philosophical. What happened is, as this philosophical concept would come into new areas, they wouldn't just simply try to replace the religion or beliefs that were there. Instead, they would attach themselves to it and recreate it, but using the same names. So in the case of Jesus, Jesus goes from being a person who had to die for your sins and rise again to, he's now of like the sage philosopher, and he's the one who's going to give you the secret knowledge. So that's why when you read these books that they then produce that sometimes people would call the Gnostic Gospels. He's more giving them the secret knowledge. In fact, the Gospel of Thomas, which is probably the most famous of them, is literally a collection of over a hundred simply sayings of Jesus. It's not focused on his actions, it's focused on his teaching and his philosophical concepts. Before we continue, and we actually get into the meat of some of what Joe Esserhaus has to say, let me clarify this. These so-called gospels are often called the lost gospels. As if like, oh, we didn't have these forever, and then they were discovered, and this is by the way true, these, these, these gospels were discovered in 1945 in a place called Nag Hammadi in Egypt, um, in a former monastery. Um, but people are like, oh, before that, no one had any idea what these were. And the church was trying to hide them. That's simply not true. We literally have church history from the one hundreds where they talked about these things and they talked about how insane and crazy they were, which by the way, I think we're going to read a selection of some of them. Cause don't just take our word for it. You're going to get to hear from it. Um, so they, we've known about these forever, but then in 1945, we. We did find them and they simply confirmed what all the church, it was a very big deal. People didn't hear about it at first because, you know, there was a little thing going on in 1945 called World War II. Took a while for it to get out. But anyway, so we found these things and we began reading them and it's like, oh yeah, well, this is why so many of these early church fathers and leaders were saying, yeah, these are crazy things because we could actually read them. But I just want to clear up. These are not things that were lost or suppressed. We knew about them for a long time. We just didn't have any manuscripts. We didn't have any manuscripts until about 1945. Okay. So the church didn't intentionally hide them. And then like for years, like, oh no, no, these, these don't serve as well. So we're just going to put them away and somebody just got, okay. That's not true. We'll get, we'll get back to this in a bit. If anything, it should tell you that for most of these Gnostic gospels, which is again, was basically, Hey, let's take Jesus. Let's take this philosophy that we're bringing in and attach it to him. We only have between one and four copies of each of them. Whereas we have thousands of manuscripts for the new Testament. So it actually should tell you something that these were not widely accepted. And their time is legit. There you go. Yeah. Okay. All right. You want to actually go into the video and get into some of his claims? Uh, yeah. One more thing I will say, uh, so people will, you know, cause you mentioned Gnosticism and there's a couple of things that, you know, that goes with that belief. Um, some people might say, oh, that's, that's a belief back then. Right. Like, you know, that's, uh, uh, but people don't know this, but Gnosticism is alive and well in many different ways today. Uh, let me just give you two examples, especially in secular modern gender ideology, especially with transgenderism and homosexuality and very brief, we don't have time for this. Uh, but super quick for transgenderism, it goes like this. So Gnosticism will say, Hey, body is bad. The inner you is good. Transgenderism says, Hey, your body is the wrong one. Therefore it's bad. It's a prison and the quote unquote true you, or the quote unquote, the real self inside of you, uh, needs to come out or needs to be freed. And so if you want to have, uh, if you want to experience that freedom, um, you just need to figure out what to do with your body to kind of get out of the situation that you're in again, transgenderism, um, homosexuality. For this, it will go like this. Gnosticism says, because your body is bad, you should deny the body that you have, or you should indulge in it because it doesn't even matter. That would be a very Gnostic idea. Homosexuality says, even though your body is designed as a counterpart to the opposite sex on the level of biology, physiology, and anatomy, you can, and you should deny that reality of your body and embrace your quote unquote, your inner self or your real self. And now you can indulge in that same, in same sex relationships. Because the telos or the purpose of the body doesn't even matter that much. Again, new age, same heresies. Keep going. That's good. That's good. Let's go keep going with the video and we'll get into some of the specific claims that we are going to have to lovingly debunk. Let's keep going. Absolutely. It's a great problem. But in this case, there is historical evidence on the other side and they, they simply ignore that and pretend it doesn't happen. The Gnostic gospels, um, the are full of, of, um, so-called revolutionary things. And the truth is that the Gnostic gospels were written 40 years, 30, 40 years after the death of Jesus. Whereas the Gnostic gospels, the ones that the churches have accepted were written 80, 90 years after the death of Jesus. Okay, let's stop it here. It's painful to hear. So Joe Lester has, has said right now that this is what he said, that the Gnostic gospels were written 30 to 40 years after the time of Jesus. And then he said that the New Testament gospels were written 80 to 90 years after the time of Jesus. Sounds like he's saying the Gnostic gospels were written first and then New Testament gospels. Is that true? And if they were written first, therefore they're more reliable about who Jesus really was. If Joe were with me, I'd be like, Joe, I love you. I don't know who has taught you this, but you have been severely misled because you literally just flipped the truth. You literally flipped it. That, um, the synoptic gospels, when we say that we mean Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were literally have written as early as 30 years after the death of Jesus. That you have Mark, which people would say it was the first gospel that was written, which was probably written in the early to mid sixties. And then you have the gospel of John, which was the latest one written, and that's between 75 to 95 AD. And by the way, not just conservative evangelicals would say that, like just regular modern now critical scholars who don't even accept the things that are written in the gospels would say that exact same thing. Whereas the Gnostic gospels, the earliest one, the gospel of Thomas that people would say was written, was written between 130 and 140. And 150. So a full, almost 100 years after Jesus' death. So he literally flips it. And I would also. I would also say to Joe, I'm like, Joe, have you actually read these things? Sure. Because, Carlos, when I'm asked about the Gnostic Gospels and people are intrigued or like, ooh, I'm like, I'll just say, have you actually read them? And you know what people almost always say? Probably not. And you know, they're like, oh, are you afraid I'm going to go read them? I'm like, no, I actually do want you to go read them because there's a reason if you actually will go read them, you'll know why this stuff is rejected because it contains, he said revolutionary. I would say it contains some crazy out there stuff. We're going to help you out because we're about to read it in just a second. I think you actually have some things. I'd love for you now, let's actually read some selections so people know we're not trying to hide what these things say. Let's actually say some things they say and show people like this is why they were rejected because you had had the Synoptic Gospels that had already been around for like, let's say this. By the time these came around, the Synoptic Gospels had been around for almost 90 years in the book of Mark and then 60 years maybe with the book of John. And then that's why when they read the things you're about to hear, they're like, what are these people talking about? So Joe described them as the so-called revolutionary things. Here they are. The first one, I got a couple of lines here from the Gospel of Thomas. Simon Peter said to them, let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, see, I shall lead her so that I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. By the way, that's not affirming the trans movement. It is literally saying that you have to become a man to become worthy of the kingdom. Yeah. It's basically saying women aren't going to make it into heaven, so I have to make them a male. And by the way, it said a living spirit. Again, the emphasis is on, oh, I've got to do something in the spirit. But by the way, that's literally how the Gospel of Thomas ends. Here's another one. Gospel of Philip. The world came about through a mistake. Hmm. Hmm. Okay. A little different. Okay. Another from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Oh, this is a good one. This child Jesus, when five years old, was playing at the ford of a brook. Then the son of Annas, the scribe, came by and stood near Joseph and took a willow. He took a willow branch and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together. Jesus became angry and said to him, You insolent, godless fool. What harm did the pools and waters do to you? See now, you also shall wither like a tree. And immediately that boy withered away. Real quick. So let's just take the picture here. So what happened is Jesus is like flexing in front of some other kids. Yeah. And he's gathered all the water together and already shown some miracles. Another kid takes like a stick and kind of disperses it. And the boy Jesus just gets mad at him and strikes him dead on the spot. Not today. That's right. Okay. Here's another part. After this, again, he went through the village and a child ran and struck against his shoulder. Jesus was angered and said to him, You shall not go further on your way. And immediately he fell down dead. So like right now we have like kids camp going on at church. And if you've ever, if you don't have something like that, maybe you can picture like early days of like growing up like a vacation Bible school or something. And just imagine kids running to each other. And so Jesus just didn't like it when this kid ran into him. He's like, you're dead. I was on the spot, struck him dead. Sounds like a genius. Jesus, I want to give my life to you right here, man. He said, you shall not pass. And it did not go well for the other child. It did not. Here's another one from the Gospel of Peter. This one is from the resurrection scene. And unlike the Gospels, by the way, women were not the first witnesses in this book. Since at the time, there would have been an embarrassment for that to happen. So here's what happens instead. Here's what happened. This is what it says. They saw three men coming out of the tomb, two of them supporting the other, and a cross following them. The cross is just walking out of the tomb. On its own. I don't know. The heads of the two reached to heaven, but the head of the one being led by them surpassed the heavens. So it seems like it's saying here Jesus is emerging from the tomb and he's so big that his head extends beyond the heavens. And then the cross that somehow is walking out of the tomb with Jesus starts talking. And so, and I guess there's a voice that says, have you preached to those who sleep? And the response was heard from the cross. Yes. I mean, that's super over the top. And it reads more like mythology. Exactly. And so even because sometimes people will read the synoptic gospels, the gospels that are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that are in the New Testament. They think, man, this contains some crazy stuff. I'm like, yeah, and go read those now. And he was like, that is so far out there and just weird. And they don't feel historical at all. They feel more like mythology. And so I just tell people like, if you actually go and read these things, they were crazy. And so that's why we have the historical records of the early church leaders actually when they read these things like, no, this contains heresy. In fact, the first Gnostic. Gnostic gospel that is mentioned, people don't think it was the first one that was written, but it was the first one that was mentioned was the gospel of Judas. And by the way, notice what they all do. They all try to take one of the apostles and claim they were written by him. And the gospel of Judas is the first one that's mentioned around 180 AD. And it's literally found in a book called Against Heresies. And so it's a whole book saying, hey, this is weird stuff. Don't believe it. And you can see why after we read some of that stuff. Now, I think just, you know, you don't need to just take our word for it. Um, of the, Hey, like our books are right. And these books are wrong. I think instead, what I want to do is I want to give people a criteria that I've done this before. And I think it's a helpful thing. And even like when I'm in conversations with people about the Gnostic gospels. And again, if I were with Joe right now, I would do this with them and says, Hey, Joe, let me ask you just some objective questions over. How do we establish the truth of two different sets of books that are competing against each other or two different accounts? And almost always people come to the same criteria and it's the criteria that the early church. She was for which gospels, which books they were going to accept and which ones they reject. But let's do it like this because I'd like to take it out of, uh, out of the new Testament world. Okay. Carlos, let's imagine you got 250th anniversary of the founding of America is coming up independence. Come on. Still praying for, I don't know when this will air, but still praying that we faced England on July 4th for the world cup would just be the best thing ever. But, uh, but yeah, okay. So you have the founding fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. We have documents like the declaration of independence and the constitution a few years later, so on and so forth. So we have these. Okay. But then imagine, um, that we don't have digital technology, so it's all handwritten. Uh, but imagine then like we have other documents that were also claimed to have been written by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that seemed to contradict the things that are in the constitution and the declaration of independence. So like Carlos, if this were just you and you had to come up with some criteria, um, and I would, again, would ask Joe the same thing. I'm guessing he would say some of the same things that you're about to say. What are some criteria that you would personally use to say, okay, if we have to figure out which of these were actually by the founding fathers. And which ones were not, what would be some criteria you would use? Yeah. Do we know if they were written at the time that the founding fathers lived? Yeah. It's like, what are the earliest ones? Because if we want to know if the founding fathers wrote these, um, if one document was likely written in the 1770s to 1790s, it's probably by them. But if another one was written in, let's say like 1830, George Washington couldn't have written that because he was dead. And so even this is, uh, an idea of when we're talking about the new Testament, that's called apostolicity. We want to know, was this document apostolic? Was it actually written in the time of, of an apostle by an apostle or a close associate of one? So same criteria. Can we get back as close as we can in this case to the historical Jesus? So right on, right on. Any other criteria you'd use? Uh, does the, whatever it is, whatever is contained in these writings, um, does it align with things that actually happened at the time? Yeah. Yeah. And like, and their general beliefs at the time. And so like, if you start reading things in them that reflect like later thoughts and developments from like the 1800s, you're like, Hey, they weren't even thinking about this then. And they weren't talking this way. And like, if you found names in some of the documents and like one of the names was, I don't know, Claudio. And they're like, dude, no one had that name in the 1700s. You'd be like, Hey, something seems a little off. I mean, they could have. I mean, they could have theoretically. He may have been the first one named Claudio and maybe he was the pace setter for it. But so you kind of, and we're being silly, but this is actually going to matter in a bit when we talk about the historicity of the new Testament gospels versus the Gnostic gospel. Another big criteria that most people say was like, okay, if it seems like people everywhere accepted one group of writings, but only a few people accepted this other one. Hey, we should probably prize the one that's more widespread. I'm like, exactly. Almost everyone I've asked this to always comes up with these same criteria. And this is the same criteria that the early church used and that we use today is we would say is that apostolic did the actual apostles who were closest to Jesus write these things. Okay. Number two would be the Catholicities is the fancy word. Basically is how widespread are these books? Did just a few random people accept it or did everyone else accept these other books? And then finally, a final category was orthodoxy, which kind of went into when you said, hey, this is fitting with what was talked about and said and accepted in most places. And so when you use this criteria, you have to say that the gospels and our new Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are reliable and that the Gnostic gospels were not. The Gnostic gospels literally fell each one of these criteria. Yeah. And it makes sense because, again, hence, some of the things that are included in these gospels are just completely far off from what the New Testament gospels say. So in the gospel of Philip, Jesus supposedly kissed Mary Magdalene. This was written over 100 years after Jesus. So, again, it's just like, and the kiss is actually meant to be symbolic for knowledge and receiving spiritual truth. Again, so there's more there. In the gospel of Judas, Judas is the hero and Jesus' most trusted disciple. In the Gnostic gospels, also, Jesus didn't really suffer on the cross. The creator God is a lesser being. The physical world is a mistake. Humans contain a divine spark. Like you said, salvation comes from awakening to who you really are and a secret knowledge saves you. That's very different than the New Testament gospels that were written way before. It's way different. In fact, I think it'd be helpful, and again, I know we're going to the details right now, but I think it's really important for you to have confidence that when you read the New Testament, you're reading about the real Jesus who can really change your life and you shouldn't be taken in by false Jesuses who can wreck your life. It's really important. Right. And so I know if you're listening. listening to this, maybe you're even still skeptical or even like, okay, you're not, But you're like, okay, well, how do we know, though, that these were earlier? Like, how do we come to that conclusion? And again, how do even non-Christian scholars come to the conclusion that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written first? Let's break it into two categories, external evidence and internal evidence. I've actually got a slide on the screen that helps us with our external evidence. I think it'd be helpful to kind of give us some things. When we say external evidence, we mean, hey, getting out of the four Gospels and getting out of the text of the Gnostic Gospels, can we just look at history and kind of get a sense, is there evidence for which was written first? There is. So around 30 A.D., Jesus dies and rises. You then have in 95 A.D. a guy named Clement of Rome. There are other writers at this time, but early church leaders who are citing the Gospels. They're citing stories from, again, the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They're talking about them a lot. They're referencing them a lot. You have a guy named Papias, who is, I believe, a bishop in Turkey. He names Mark and Matthew as authors of two of the Gospels. Between 110 and 130 is when this comes out. But here's a key thing to note, is that the way he talks in his writings that we have records of, and it was later a guy named Eusebius who actually references. One day, if we could ever find his original writings, it would be amazing because it could tell us a lot. He was an early church historian guy. Anyways, he talks as if he were still alive while John the Apostle was alive, and he was born when the other Gospels were being written. So while this didn't come out until 1100, 110 to 130, he talks about being alive and being conversant with people who either knew John or maybe being potentially he talked to John. Now let's fast forward to 150 to 160 AD. We're now 120 to 130 years after Jesus dying and rising. That's the first time any Gnostic group is mentioned by a guy named Justin Martyr. So already right here, if one group has already been talked about repeatedly, and we've already heard about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John repeatedly, but the other group is not first mentioned until over 100 years later, it would seem like a logical person would say, hey, that the books that we have in the New Testament are the earliest ones. The first mention of a Gnostic Gospel isn't until 180 AD. We're now 150 years after Jesus. So to put that kind of back into the founding fathers' time frame, imagine that if we didn't hear about something until 1920, but they were claiming to be all the way back to 1776. That gives you an idea of the kind of time frame we're talking about. And then in 2020— 230 AD is the first mention of the Gospel of Thomas, which is usually claimed to be one of the earliest Gnostic, if not the earliest Gnostic Gospel. And you had some very liberal and non-believing scholars who in the 80s and 90s said, actually, it's earlier than the Synoptics. But almost no credible person believes this anymore. Because if it was the earliest, why did it take over 200 years for us to hear about it? So on the external evidence alone, we see a strong case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But let's talk. Let's talk briefly about the internal evidence. A few things I can mention a ton. This is, by the way, a great book on this stuff in general is Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham, mainly focusing on, hey, how do we know if these were actual firsthand accounts of eyewitnesses? Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham. Maybe we could put a thing in the show notes whenever we release it. So here's some internal evidence. Number one, the Gospel of Thomas, again, the earliest Gnostic Gospel, I should say, 50 to 65 percent of it is pulled from the canonical Gospels. It overlaps with it. But the canonical Gospels never pull anything from the Gospel of Thomas. Here's why this matters. So let's say you and I are sitting together by each other and we're taking a test, okay? And it's on modern movies and it's on basic instincts, which you've never seen and apparently I have. And by the way— Modern, you mean like post-2000s or like 80s, 90s? Making jokes about my age again. Listen, anyways, I'm just playing with you. But anyways, we're taking a test by each other. And hey, 50 to 65 percent of your answers, it seemed based off of mine. They're either direct copied or they're very similar, but none of mine come from you. What's the teacher going to conclude? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you took it off me. And if you took it off me, then who had to have written their answers first? That's right. Me. So that's one of the big things. Another thing, and this is an interesting one, is the names that are used. The names that are used in the Gnostic Gospels are not popular until the 100s and the 200s and the 300s. And sometimes even the 400s in some of the ones that we have. Whereas there's actually been a study done—and again, this is nerdy, but to me it's really cool. There's been a study done on the names that are found in the New Testament. The names—and again, this is great. If you're just listening to this, great thing for you to go watch and look at later. Maybe, again, we can even have this in the show notes as well. The names that are used in the New Testament are also used around the same time by other outside sources. They in the New Testament, people like Josephus, Ossuaries, which is kind of like basically where people— people whose bones would be collected, and Dead Sea Scrolls. And so all the names that we have in the New Testament, including Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, match the names that are in that same time. Whereas the Gnostic Gospels don't have names that commonly match the same time in the first century. So using this and just some other things, if you just look at the internal evidence that we actually have in the documents themselves, it's very clear that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written by or people close to eyewitnesses of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. That's great. The Gnostic Gospels came hundreds of years later. That's great. And this should strengthen—by the way, if you're listening to this, and you're like, "My, that's really geeky." Well, this should strengthen your view of the four Gospels that you have in your Bible. They are telling the truth. This stuff happened. These are—there is historical evidence for you to be confident that when you read of all the things that Jesus did, and he said the things he said in your book, in the Bible, that actually happened. Yes. Anyways. Yeah, love it. Let's keep going. We've—we've—we've— We've drilled down to set it up. I feel like we made our point lovingly for our guide, Joe. Let's keep going. So they had to have been taken secondhand from people who said they saw things. Right. Where with the previous, there's a shot that people directly saw them. The people in the Church Gospels who are named like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not the people who were in the Gospels as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Then nobody knows who wrote them. They took with those names. But they were not those people. Really? Yeah. Yeah, let's stop there. Okay. You know, honestly, I feel like Joe right there, Joe Rogan, he's like, really? Yeah. And I hope he was just doing that to be kind and not to contradict his guess. But there's part of me that's really afraid that he actually thinks this is legit. So a couple of things. One, he said that we know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn't write the Gospels, and then nobody knows who wrote the Gospels. But I want to ask you that in just a second here. But then he said even the churches admit this at this point. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not true. Yeah. I would ask Joe, man, what churches are you talking about? Yeah. I'm like, which people are you talking to? Which churches? Because he said he goes to Catholic Mass. So, you know, it can't be the Catholic Church because I got this right here. Second Vatican Council in 1965. This is what the Catholic Church declared. It says, The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. For what? The apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ. Afterwards, they themselves and the apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine spirit, handed on to us in writing the foundation of faith, namely the fourfold gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then before that, at the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the early 1900s, the Catholic Church held that Matthew and John genuinely wrote the Gospels. Literally almost every major Protestant denomination would say the same thing. The only people maybe that would deny that the Gospels were written, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, typically come from more liberal backgrounds. Maybe some liberal college professors. I've had a couple of those. You know, maybe a couple of liberal authors. I've read some of those books as well. That doesn't mean that their views officially represent the Church's. Exactly. I think this is a good example. And here's what I was going to say about Joeser House right now, is that, because again, the post that we originally saw this clip in is like, Oh, devout Christian says this. You can be sincere and be sincere. Sincerely wrong. Or in this case, I'd probably say, probably, I want to give Joe the benefit of doubt. Sincerely misled. You can be devout and love Jesus, but you can still get some things wrong. And I think this is just a case where he's just been told some things. And we'll share in a minute. I think I know, again, some of the sources. And I even mentioned them earlier in the video where I think he got them from. We'll get to that in just a minute. But I just wanted to highlight that. That's right. Hey, like we're not bashing Joe. We're not trying to shred him or anything. I just think he's been sincerely misled and we're just trying to give some gentle corrections to kind of, for this stuff. I think it's, I think it's important though, to say, Hey, just because someone claims to be a Christian or as a part of a quote unquote church, just because they're saying something doesn't automatically make it right. This is where I tell people like, check your sources. Like when we do theology classes for our staff and for our ministry residents here at Lake Point, when the first session we do is how to be a good theologian, I give them, I think, 12 words of how to do theology well, how to think about and talk about God well. One of the words is to do theology critically, critically. And what I mean by that is, is don't, not to be critical and not to be a person who is just a continual skeptic and that you're mean and you're, you're, you're judgmental, but the idea of don't automatically swallow everything that everyone says, to just slow down and learn to take in the good from the bad. Or like I've heard one time, the idea of, Hey, eat the fish, leave the bones, or some people would say, eat the meat, spit the bones. And so, and just to weigh in briefly on this, cause you already hit some of this stuff, um, we, we do actually, I want to admit the gospels do not self-identify who wrote them. They don't. Like if you read the Gospels, it never says, I am Luke, I am Mark. It doesn't do that. And I think there are, by the way, some good reasons why it doesn't do that. Number one, they're not trying to draw attention to themselves. It's about Jesus. And this was also just a common thing in this day, that people didn't always self-subscribe. I am the author of this. So then we have to rely more on external evidence, and we have it. I mentioned another guy named Papias, who was born and lived around the time of when these things were being written. Alive and again, we believe, conversant with the Apostle John, or at least with some of John's representatives. And he said that Matthew and Mark wrote these Gospels. Then within a few generations later, a few years later, we've got Theophilus and Irenaeus writing around 180 AD, who they actually give it. I've got their quote right here. Matthew issued a Gospel written among the Hebrews. Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us the writings, things preached by Peter. Luke, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel. Peter, preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, published a Gospel while living at Ephesus. So we have a strong early church tradition of this. And here, if I was talking to John, I'd ask him this. I'd say, okay, even if—but that was written afterwards. I'd say, if they were making it up, why would they choose Mark and Luke? Like, because if you think about the Gnostic Gospels, they would say the Gospel of Peter. Sure. The Gospel of Judas, although it's kind of weird to choose Judas. But still. They said the Gospel of Thomas. People who were actually apostles. Well, Judas is making sure people know that he was Jesus' closest friend and, you know, he was actually the hero. Maybe he was just misunderstood. We got the story wrong. We're getting the story from his perspective and everything. But the point is, if the church was just making stuff up, you would think they were like, oh, this is the Gospel written by Peter. Instead, they're like, no, this was written by Mark. And it just said, and he got his stuff from Peter. So I'm always kind of like—and this is my point in general when people are like, oh, they made this up. I'm like, if they made this up, they did a crappy job of lying. Whether it's about the names that were attributed to the Gospels or, as we've talked about before, this is kind of your thing when you mentioned how in one Gnostic Gospel, the women were not the witnesses. Because in that day, the witness of women was not admitted into court. The reason that that's found in the Gospels is because it's actually true. If I were making up something, I wouldn't have women be the first half witnesses, but they weren't. And so we'll get into this a little bit because it's a good criteria for how do we know what to accept and what to reject. I just want to say, like, hey, we can have confidence that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authoritative, writers of these Gospels. That's great. Let's keep going. No idea. Absolutely. No doubt. Even the churches admit that at this point. Yeah, there you go. There you go. 2,000 years is such a hard time for us to conceptualize, to put into our head as to how much time has passed. Yes. Such a—you know, to try to get an accurate understanding of what was going on back then is insanely difficult. Let's stop for a second, actually. He said insanely difficult and almost impossible. Would you agree? Yeah. You know, not really. No. Like, you know, you said this, Paul. I mean, we know the New Testament Gospels were written within 35 to 65 years of Jesus' crucifixion. So they were written while eyewitnesses were still alive. Luke explicitly says he investigated eyewitnesses' account. There are over 24,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts or fragments, plus tens of thousands of quotes from early church fathers. By the way, that's significantly more than other ancient documents. Another reason historians— like you mentioned—believe the Gospels accounts are legit is because you have multiple independent sources. You got the four Gospels. You got Paul's letters. You got more. You have other non-biblical, non-Christian historians talking about these events. Tacitus, Josephus. Is it Pliny the Younger? Is that— Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pliny the Younger. These guys are writing these things 80 to 85 years within Jesus' crucifixion. So, man, I'm not so sure. That is insanely difficult. There's just—there's a hyper-skepticism applied because it's related to— Christianity and the Bible. Yeah, it's because of what's in there. Yeah. It's like if it didn't talk about miracles and a resurrection, probably people would not be so slow to adopt it. Because people don't sit here and continuously doubt the records that we have of Roman history and Greek history because people aren't worried about miracles and those. They just accept the history as it is written, even though there's way more evidence and it's way closer to the events when it comes to the Gospels. Here's an analogy I like to use with this. It's like we actually have criteria because, to your point, the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. You didn't mention this, but I think Pastor Josh has actually said this in another episode one time. You have names of people that it just doesn't make sense to put their name in because they're minor characters. People like Rufus, which I believe was like the child of Simon of Cyrene who carried Jesus' cross. You got a person named Cleopas, who's, I believe, in Luke, one of the disciples that walks with Jesus after his resurrection. One of my favorites is in the book of Mark. Almost everyone that is healed by Jesus is like, oh, that was the blind man. It was a paralytic. It was a paralytic. It was a paralytic. It was a paralytic. But it actually names— It names his name Bartimaeus. He's the guy who was blind saying, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Well, here's an interesting tidbit, is that unlike the other people who most of the time when they're healed, they just go their way, it says after Bartimaeus is healed, he then followed the Lord along the way. He became a disciple of Jesus. He became a part of the community. So they actually know this guy's name. Why put the name in there? Why? Because he's an actual guy. They're like, hey, you can go and actually ask him about the story. So we have eyewitness accounts. So here's the thing. Let's just talk about eyewitness accounts in terms of their validity. Usually there's a few big criteria. In addition to the character of the eyewitness, and maybe do they have ulterior motives? And by the way, with the rioters of the New Testament, they were being killed for their faith. So if they were lying, why would you lie if you're going to get killed for it? But that's another thing for another time. Here's the three big categories in terms of we establish, is this a credible eyewitness? And you said some of these. Number one, multiple attestations. Are multiple people saying the same thing? And so that's why it's amazing that we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who though they have different details and put different emphases on things, they're all telling the same basic story. You mentioned the Apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians, he quotes what now many people recognize as one of the first creeds of the church. And this was within just a couple of decades of Jesus' death when he said, I pass on to you what was in first importance, that Jesus died according to the scriptures and that he rose according to the scriptures. So you have multiple accounts pointing to the same truth. Also, a huge thing is early testimony. Were these people? Were they actually there? And did they see the event happen? And there's a final criteria, and that's a criteria of embarrassment. Would a detail be embarrassing if this thing came out? It's interesting. Mark is the first gospel. And again, church history tells us that he wrote this in conjunction with Peter. Peter looks like an idiot in the gospel. He abandons Jesus. He fails at every turn. All the disciples do. Why would they commission something? And these are the leaders of the early church. Why would they commission something that makes them look weak and stupid? Unless these things were just actual. These are actually true stories of what happened. And so here's my thing is, imagine like we had a trial that happened right now, 2026. And all these criteria met with eyewitnesses. And we believe that whatever story they were telling was true. Okay, now let's have 2,000 years past and we're in the year 4026. Has really anything changed to change the story? No. The only thing that could change the validity of the story is if we had new evidence came out that they didn't have before that contradicted it. And here's what I would tell people. In the last 2,000 years, there has been zero, zilch, nada, no evidence that has come out that has changed the testimony of those who walked and lived with the Son of God, Jesus Christ. That's amazing. Yeah. Let's keep going. I have become a, since my sort of conversion to Christianity, and I would style myself a devout Christian but not a devout Catholic even though I go to Mass. And I love the Mass. I believe in it. But since 2001, when this process really began, I've become a real student of the historical Jesus. Actually, let's stop right there. I'll do this briefly because I know we need to kind of maybe put a bow on this here in a few minutes. And I think we've made a lot of our big points. But this is the big clue I've mentioned a few times in this video. If I think maybe we're Joe, our friend, who loves Jesus and that's awesome. But maybe he's been misled. Whenever I usually hear, oh, like the quest for the historical Jesus, usually referencing, and he says, I think it was like 20 years ago, so early thousands. He is probably referring to something I mentioned earlier called the Jesus Seminar. So let me give brief context of what this is. So there's this idea that, hey, the Jesus that we have in the four Gospels of the New Testament, that's not really the real historical Jesus. That's who they wanted him to be or that's who they presented him as or get power. That was their interpretation of Jesus. So we want to find out who this real Jesus is using a historical method to find the Jesus behind this Jesus. Who is the actual real historical Jesus? So you had a guy in 1985, the name of Robert Funk, and it included other scholars such as John Dominic Carlson, Marcus Borg, all very liberal scholars, did not believe in the miracles, did not believe that Jesus was divine. And so they basically got this group together and they used this voting method using beads and they went through basically the Gospels, just a verse or a few verses at a time. So they got this group together and they used this voting method using beads and they went through basically the Gospels, just a verse or a few verses at a time. And so they got this group together and they used this voting method using beads and they went through basically the Gospels, just a verse or a few verses at a time. has been debunked, not just by conservative scholars, Most liberal scholars don't even hold to any of the findings of the Jesus seminar, at least not most of them, because really three big reasons. Number one, the voting was kind of gimmicky. Like the idea that we're going to have this like scientific method using beads where we just drop in with our predisposed opinions is not really actually doing good, credible, historic research. Number two, and I kind of already just said it, it began with questionable assumptions. So if I come in and I'm one of the guys voting and I believe that there's no way the miracles could happen because miracles don't happen, then you know where I'm going to vote whenever a miracle is voted on. So if you come in with an assumption, then it's kind of a loaded vote already. And if most of the people in the seminar believe there is no way that the miracles happened, there's no way the resurrection happened, that all the apocalyptic traditions that are in there, that Jesus was talking about the end of the world, all that was made up, well then, yeah, I'm going to believe most of it was made up. So that was a big thing. And then a third thing is their findings presented a really unusual Jesus who didn't fit the first century whatsoever. He wasn't a man of his times. So just know when people hear about this, this has been debunked. We, again, very much believe that the Jesus we see in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is the real historical Jesus. Let me put it this way. Is it more likely that a group of people 2,000 years removed from the person has the right interpretation of that person? Or is it more likely that a group of people 2,000 years removed from the person has the right interpretation of that person? Or the person who walked and lived with them did. The person who walked and lived with them. And in 1 John chapter 1, John is talking about this Jesus who they had touched with their hands and seen with their eyes and heard with their ears. They're with him. Their testimony is reliable. That's great. All right, you want to wrap it up? You want to get it to our last segment? Let's wrap it up, man. We've got a little bit more. And I learn more and more, and I'm more and more astounded at what's been done. Because medicine. Besides this man who is Jesus of Nazareth. Well, it's also, he had some of the most profound and insanely resonating teachings, like even today. The words that he spoke 2,000 years ago, they're still today. People, I mean, they resonate with people. And if you live your life by the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will be a better person. Yes, you will. It is a great framework to live your life. Yes. Which is incredible when you think about a person that lived so long ago. Man, I love that Joe is saying. Honestly, it seems like he's seen it. He knows people. He's seen it. He's wrestling with it. How can this man, who was a Middle Eastern man born in a poor family 2,000 years ago, raised as a construction worker, who only lived to be 33, can change somebody's life today? Like, and so I love that he's. I'm so impressed with that. Here's how I would land. When you think about the story of Jesus, the one, the same Jesus that we find in our Bibles, and we say, man, how is it possible that that man today, whether you believe in Christianity or not, you have to explain how no person has attracted more followers, more attention, more devotion across cultures, languages, and nations than Jesus. Yes. Every event in history. is defined by whether it happened before Jesus or after Jesus. No emperor, no philosopher, no military conqueror became the reference point for time. Jesus did. If you think about it, again, Jesus never wrote a book. Today, millions of books have been written about him. Jesus never wrote a song. Today, millions and millions of songs are sung to him and are about him. Usually, when the leader of a movement is killed, usually the movement dies. Jesus got the most humiliating and excruciating and brutal death in history. And today, one out of three people in the world worship him as God. The best paintings, sculptures, cathedrals in the world. We're talking The Last Supper, the Pieta, the Sistine Chapel, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which took 144 years to build, which, by the way, I'm going there literally in a couple days. They're all about him. The most prestigious universities in the world, Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, Oxford, Cambridge, all started as universities to train people in their devotion to Jesus or were rooted in strongly in faith in Jesus. Today, this is crazy too. Today, most Hindus are still Indian. Most Muslims are still South Asian slash Indonesian. Most Buddhists are still East and Southeast Asian. Christianity started in Jerusalem. It spread across the Roman Empire, then the Mediterranean, then it went to Asia, then it moved to Europe, then to North America. And today, the average Christian is a young woman of color, likely black or brown, living in Africa, Latin America, or Asia. How is that possible? Here's how. Jesus said in his gospel, Jesus said in the gospels that his message, his good news will be preached to all nations, all tribes, all people, all languages. Jesus had no servants, yet we call him Lord. He had no formal education, yet we call him teacher. He practiced no medicine, yet we call him healer. He commanded no army, yet he has conquered the world. He never ran for political office, yet today he is still King of Kings and Lord of Lords. How do you explain that? Here's how. Philippians chapter two, verse nine to 11. Therefore, God has highly exalted Jesus and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen. That's how. He is the real Jesus who can really change us. And that is because he wasn't just really a man. He was also really, God of all time. And so the reason he is timeless is because he is the God who stepped out of time and into time to change people for all time. And it's amazing that we get to encounter this real Jesus in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's just awesome. Come on, man. Come on. You want to pray for us? I would love to. Um, yes. And Jesus, we do. Thank you for stepping out of heaven and, uh, into time and into this earth or to change the world and to change us individually. And God, we want to, we want to know the real you, Jesus, we don't want to know counterfeit versions of you or slightly altered versions of you. We want to know the real you. And so God, I pray that you would help us to be great students of your word. And what I want to pray for the two Joes on here, it just seems like they really are drawn in by you. And I pray that you continue to draw them into know you more. I pray that for all of us, not just for the Joes, but for all of us, Lord, that we would be constantly looking out, um, for lies or for half truths that could potentially draw us away from you to a counterfeit version of you. And so Holy spirit, would you lead us into your truth? And we can tip it, continue to help us capture everything that is not from you and Lord submit everything to you. Lord, we love you. Just let me pray in your name. Amen. Amen. Live free brother. Live free.