Did The FLOOD/Noah’s Ark REALLY Happen!?…(or is it a MYTH!?) ft. Dr. Jeremiah Johnston | Live Free with Josh Howerton

We apply a hyper-skepticism because the Bible's involved that doesn't apply in the real world to any other artifact. You don't counterfeit something unless it's real. So there must be a real story, a real version out there that the rest are counterfeited off of. The flood gave Noah a new earth, but only Jesus can give you and I a new heart. Well, hey, Live Free Nation, before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. But the Live Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this, we want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for Church Online. Every weekend, we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our Church Online platform. And it's more than just watching a service. There are live hosts in the chat, prayer teams ready to stand with you, and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, Church Online is a great way to jump in. And experience what God is doing here at Lake Point. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend, and now enjoy the podcast. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free Podcast. This is episode 80 here with Live Free Podcast. I'm here with Pastor Paul Cunningham. My name is Carlos Arrezo. And today, Paul, we have a special guest. I'm going to give you a whole introduction right now. Are you ready? Come on. So he is a New Testament scholar, pastor, author of a bunch of books, radio host, Bible teacher, apologist, and more. His first time here with the Live Free Podcast. That episode became probably one of the most special, unique episodes we've ever had here in the podcast. Literally till this day, I still have people come and ask me about it. It's because you were on it, Carlos. Well, trust me, I think there's another reason why. But between the first time he was here and until now, he became a number one bestselling author for his book, The Jesus Discoveries. He is married, five kids. He's a man who loves God, loves his family, loves the church. We want to welcome right now, the Shroud Scholars. We want to welcome the Shroud Scholars. rip off the story of noah's ark from other pagan myths and also this went viral like a month ago or something or like a couple months ago an organization called noah's ark scans led by researcher andrew jones they basically are claiming that they are convinced that they have found the actual noah's ark in turkey and i want to ask dr jeremiah johnston here if he finds the evidence compelling enough to agree so we're going to go there and more it's going to be a great episode a couple things i want to celebrate before we jump in uh this year this just happened we had over a thousand three hundred students attend our summer camp alongside 300 volunteer leaders we saw 198 students place their faith in jesus so bro we are celebrating as a church this is a great summer we see this every single summer yeah got to doing more and more and more paul you were there right yeah i got to go to our fifth and sixth grade camp okay went there to bless our staff because our staff and amazing volunteers many of them were for there for two straight weeks because we had seventh and eighth and fifth and sixth back to back and so got to go and visit them and bless them but then also uh my daughter was there so i had a little bit of a you know ulterior motives to get to go and it was just incredible uh we stayed for worship that night and the pastor gave an invitation and just got to see dozens and dozens of students response the invitation to receive salvation but then another touching moment for me um was then afterwards after they had left and they were counseling those kids who'd received jesus uh they were just like hey if you need prayer for anything just come up and so they had leaders in the front and the back and this wave of kids get up and it was amazing not only to see that god was working their hearts but i had a moment where i got to see my daughter walk up with a friend who was struggling and so it was cool to see students come around each other and pray with each other getting chills and trying to hold back tears right now thinking of it it was beautiful and so you hear the numbers but we just got to remember that those were real kids with real names and real stories that god was redeeming that night and so many of the nights that we've had at camp lots of answer prayers from parents basically praying for their children sons and daughters hey i pray for them to have an encounter lots of answer prayers in this so praise god hey we're also getting excited because in july 11th we are starting our brand new sermon series at the movies every summer this is a thing uh in the gospel jesus uses stories to illustrate biblical truths in this four-week sermon series we will use movie clips to illustrate biblical truths and so we'll have fun with it uh characters in the lobby popcorn drinks for everyone obviously in addition to worship bible teaching and more don't miss four weeks at the movies come hang out also if you're part of the live free nation and you have not yet come say hi if you're ever in the area we'd love to visit uh find us in our first time guest stand we have a small gift for you and pastor paul cunningham wants to fact check your tattoo as well every single week we do a giveaway so this is a good one because if you are on youtube or spotify but by the way this is the episode you if you're an audio listener you probably want to come on youtube or spotify because we've got some some visuals here we got a little show and tell uh but we have a giveaway uh jeremiah what's his giveaway for today well i'm praising god um for just the blessing i dedicated this book to abel i don't think i've shared this on any other podcast and we experienced the physical healing of my son abel who's a who's nine years old i wrote the book last may it was a very traumatic time in our family's life we had to go down to scottish right an incredible hospital here in texas and i told the little abel he's the oldest of our triplets i said i'm dedicating this book to you brother god's got huge plans for you bro and so there's a video out there from last mail my social where when i click i let him click the mouse to hit the manuscript and so it comes out and i pray i believe in praying big prayers and i said lord will you heal our son and they told us at scottish right the cast he had to wear for 12 hours a day would not heal his body they said it will just help him from having to get steel rods from his chronic scoliosis in the holy spirit i believe in a god who heals i believe in jesus that jesus heals and so i prayed that and we didn't want to put it on the church prayer list because we didn't and that might sound crass to some people but i didn't want anyone asking how are you doing or you know are you healed yet you know you have to be every parent should be mindful about how they ask for prayer requests and so we shared it with my pastor jack graham the same week that my book hit the number one new york times bestseller list we go to the scottish right and his spine is as straight as an arrow wow i have chills telling you this we're praising jesus all the way home and so now abel will sign the book because i believe god honored him a nine-year-old who loves jesus um and so i give god all the glory for what he's doing through my book and it's just reaching a ton of people for christ but i want i've been waiting to for a big podcast to share that story on that god still heals and if any of you are going through stuff with your kids at children's hospitals it will humble you really quick and i emailed my publisher in february i said i hope you've printed enough because i believe god's hands on this and i believe god's gonna heal my son so praise jesus amen thank you i'm sorry for the long answer no you're good that was amazing well we want to be a part of that and obviously for uh this week's giveaway i didn't even share the giveaway i'm celebrating it we got 37 copies i keep giving away to the team here we started with 40. so now 37 copies that we just want to give away to people obviously you can get this also on amazon all the places right get the free version uh and what do they have to do carlos to get the free version so to get the free version and win this giveaway go to youtube or spotify and just comment jesus and we'll make sure 37 of you right now jesus that's right j-e-s-u-s and so man uh also if you want to get our merch you can go to livefree.shop or text the word hat bro i've been wearing my gray live free hat i need another one of them because i sweat through it i wear it everywhere we'll hook you up last thing to find our daily bible reading plan plus the weekly sermon plus an early release of this podcast you can download the lake point church app text the word up to two zero four one one or you can go to apple or google play store hey we got a lot to cover today so let's dive right in we are in week two of this sermon series called en fuego where pastor mike bro is walking us through anger and we first week was on combustible explosive anger second week he's addressing slow smoldering anger and we call that bitterness and lack of uh forgiveness and so uh i love this is what he said in this last week and he said explosive anger hurts people around you smoldering anger hurts the person carrying it and the main text is colossians chapter 3 and so this is what we see in scripture here is paul basically sitting in a roman prison and because of people that falsely accused him and abandoned him and offended him and more and likely within chains in his wrist he's writing this letter to the colossians and he says forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone so paul i want to ask you anything else from this weekend that stood out before we dive right in on forgiveness and then what we're going to do is i want to ask you a couple questions both you guys uh and then we'll transition to talk about noah's ark yeah yeah i'd say a few things um i mean number one maybe if you weren't there if you're listening or watching this and you weren't there you haven't listened to this sermon yet just a few other points that i think is really important because mike covered hey here's what forgiveness isn't and here's what it is because i think sometimes we'll read verses like the ones in colossians or like when jesus talks about forgive as you've been forgiven um and then we maybe misapply that and misunderstand it so mike hit a few things number one forgiveness is not forgetting you often hear that oh forgive and forget but we literally can't forget literally not in the bible yeah it's not in the bible even sometimes when people say well hey god says no more but that doesn't literally mean he forgets that's a way of expressing is he isn't holding that over you or against you and so if you're out there like man i i want to forgive but i keep remembering it you can forgive even though you remember it um number two he said forgiveness is not saying it's no big deal now there are some things this kind of goes back to week one where sometimes our anger is disproportionate to what's actually happened against us uh but then other people have had to deal with some really tough things and it's not about saying it's no big deal in fact it's not about saying it's no big deal in fact it's not about saying it's no big deal in fact the sin that was committed against you was such a big deal that the son of god had to give his life for it so it's okay to say it's a big deal it's just about i'm not going to hold on to it because if jesus died for it and he satisfied god's wrath against it one of two things is going to happen if the person who hurts you does not repent and place their faith in jesus they're going to have to answer for that one day or if they do place their faith in jesus or have guess what jesus already was punished for it so by you clinging on to it you're basically saying what jesus what you did was not enough i want more so it's not saying it's not a big deal it's simply saying that jesus paid the price for it so i can let it go and then finally mike said forgiveness is not a feeling because if you wait until you feel forgiving you're gonna be waiting forever yeah uh in many cases um instead he said what forgiveness is is something that comes from your heart so it's actually it's not a matter of like if you're gonna feel anything it's actually saying hey it's allowing yourself to feel the pain of what happened to you but then two other things get even and then agreeing to live the consequences of their sin so if you haven't listened yet just want to give you an overview of what he said so just a few things from my end um one just on a personal level uh forgiveness is a huge part of my story you know i think we i think every person has like two or three or four big themes that god kind of weaves in and out throughout their story and this is one of mine and there's a lot there i'll try to keep it brief but i mean i said a really rough three years starting from when i was in 7th grade into 9th grade my brother became a really violent guy he was a really violent guy um lost a couple family members in a week you know about a year after that and then when i was in ninth grade my mom left and i was just filled with such anger going back to week one i mean just i was angry at my mom i was angry at satan but just being real, I was angry at God. I would just scream at God and just say, God, you say you love me, you say you'll take care of me, but I feel like I'm a toy in yours and Satan's hands and you're just seeing how far I can go till I break and I'm done. I still believe God existed. I just thought, hey, if this is what it's like, that relationship with you, I don't want that. So I walked away for a season and then just spiraled out of control. One of the things, it's not about this right now, but I'll just say this, if you're there right now and you're feeling this like the way I was then, I realized later that the greatest mistake I ever made in that whole situation was not that I was angry at God or frustrated with God, it's that I stopped carrying those feelings to him. It's when I actually went off on my own that I spiraled out of control and just sunk into a deep depression, became suicidal. God rescued me from that and by his grace restored me. But what happened though is, is I was trying to now hold back onto God, but I was also trying to hold on to the anger I had towards my mom. And God said, hey, I love you, but it doesn't work that way. You got to give that to me if you're going to want to hold on to me. It's almost like you joked, he's the Indiana Jones, which by the way, just good. I love that you also equate him with Nicholas Cage, always a- From National Treasure. I mean, from National Treasure. Listen, Nicholas Cage is a little bit of a national hero and treasure. And yeah, so- I'm a fan. That's all I'm going to say. But in Indiana Jones, the third one, there's that scene where he's trying to reach for the Holy Grail and his dad is holding him on and he's like, Indiana, let it go. Because he couldn't pull him up out of the pit. That's when he says Indiana. Yeah, Indiana. And he's like, he couldn't pull him up out of the pit if he was trying to hold on to one hand on his dad and another hand on to the Holy Grail. And that's how I felt. I felt like I was trying to hold one hand on to God and one hand on to my unforgiveness. And God's like, you got to let it go. So this is a huge part of my story. And so here, if I was going to share something that I learned at one point with everybody is when someone hurts you, big or small, you've got really three options. Number one, you can hold on to what they gave you. You can hold on to the hurt and onto the bitterness. But there was a writer who one time said, holding onto bitterness and unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. That's right. It's only going to hurt you. So you can hold on to what they gave you. Number two, you can give them what they gave you. You can return hurt for hurt, evil for evil. But then now you're becoming the very thing you hated. You're becoming like them. Or number three, you can give them what God gave you. So you can give them what they gave you, or you can give them what God gave you. And so part of my story is that I had to realize that, yeah, my mom and others had done some things that hurt me. But I was just as sinful as them. That my sin put Jesus on the cross as much as theirs. And that if God was willing to forgive the inexcusable and hurtful things that I had done, I must be willing to do the same. So that's just a few things that I would just share from my personal story and just some pastoral things. Well, let me make it practical. Let me just ask you some questions real quick, and then you guys can answer it as you guys see fit for people that are most likely going through some of this. Somebody might be asking, should I still forgive them even if they never apologized? Jeremiah, what do you think? First, Paul, thank you for sharing that. That really genuinely touched my heart. And I know there are so many thousands identifying with you right now. And you dropped so much truth. I would encourage people to go back and rewind everything you just said. If I may just give a few footnotes and then answer the practical question. We all pray way too religiously. I would encourage people when you're struggling to pray the prayers of the Bible. Have you read the book of Habakkuk recently? It's 56 verses. And at one point, his prayer literally goes like this. Hey, God, God, are you dead, God? Why don't we pray like that? Do we not trust him? He already knows our heart. And this is when God responds. And he said, if I were to tell you what's going to happen, you wouldn't even believe it because guess what? It was about to get a lot worse. A lot of people misquote that verse. They think it's going to get better. It was going to get worse. And that's where Habakkuk 2.4 says, the just will live by faith. And it takes three New Testament verses to figure out why God responds to Habakkuk that way. And then Habakkuk eventually does pass out. He says, God, you have to stop. You're wearing me out. And then Habakkuk 3 is the greatest picture of faith of what you just explained in all of the Bible. And Habakkuk 3, this is where Paul is quoting, rejoice in the Lord, Philippians 4. That's a callback intertextually to Habakkuk chapter 3, where he says, hey, if there's no grain in the van, a grain in the barn, if there's no cows on the hills, I'm still going to trust you. So he goes from God, are you dead? To God, I'm going to trust you no matter what. And so what's really cool about that is God is a big boy. He can take our deepest, darkest questions. 2 Corinthians 1, Paul had the authenticity. And a lot of people say Paul is the Job of the New Testament because he was so clear about his problems. Some of his greatest problems came from other people. Believers who didn't believe God was with him because he had so many challenges. At one point, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, I have the sentence of death within me right now. I don't even want to go on living. Any of you out there feel like that some days? I do. But he said, if I look behind me, God delivered me. If I look forward, he will deliver me and he is delivering me now. And so that's the message someone needs to hear right now. So is it always right to forgive someone, whether they apologize? Or not? The biblical answer is Matthew 18, 21 and 22. Peter feels as if he's being generous. And so for people that are new to the Bible, he walks up as he often does. And he says, Master, how often should we forgive those who sin against us? What do you think? Seven times? And in a Jewish, in the Judeo-Christian mindset, forgiveness was not ubiquitous at all. And he thinks he's doing a favor to Jesus. I think seven would be good. And for those of you who haven't read the passage, Jesus said, no, 70 times seven. And if we wait for everyone who's wronged us to apologize, we'll never forgive anyone. And you've got to. And what is forgiveness? Ephemi, in Greek, it means to just let it go, release it, let it go, and just keep letting it go. And then the enemy will want to bring it back. Hey, I already let that go. I'm not going to go there. But we can talk about our pain like Paul did. We learn from it, but we don't live there either. And so that's what Paul reminds us. Yeah. I heard somebody describe it kind of like a knife when you're holding the edge of the knife and you're not forgiving or you refuse to forgive. You try to get that knife out, but the more you try, the more it hurts you. And so what you need to do is when you forgive, you basically let go. And then that way God can get that knife out of there. And then your hands are now open to receive the healing from God that God wants to give you. I love it. And you just. If I may, we actually have a quote. I just read The Weight of Glory. This is the C.S. Lewis image right there. So this is. Paul actually quoted this, but this is in the great sermon that Lewis gives in 1940. And he says, to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, which you alluded to. And so many of us have been hurt because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. And that's from The Weight of Glory. I'd encourage people to. It's one of the greatest sermons. Ever. Ever. I think one thing, finally, you got a few other FAQs as well. I love it. You said in Matthew 18, basically Jesus commands us. But I think also remind that Jesus showed us this as well. On the cross, while they're still mocking him, he says, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. So he not only commands us, but also he leads the way and he can look at us and say, I've experienced the same thing you have. And yet while they were still mocking me before they showed any remorse, before they ever asked anything, I still had a heart of forgiveness to them. Right. Right. So just know that Jesus knows how we feel and he led the way in doing this for us. Well, and that was a perfect segue to some show and tell I brought, Carlos, if you don't mind. No, I do not. You just mentioned something. Do you mind holding this, Carlos? I'd love to. This is actually in my book, The Jesus Discoveries. This is the condemnation. All four Gospels record that the condemnation, you just were talking about Jesus took it all on the cross. This is Jesus, Jesus, Nazareth, Oho, Basileus. You die on Jesus Christ, the king of the Jews. Then we see it in Aramaic and then we see it in Latin. And remember, Latin is on the bottom, Greek in the middle, then Hebrew would read right to left. This is so beautiful because this is the condemnation, the titulus. I have a chapter of in Jesus discoveries on this, but I wanted to show it to your audience because we just had this made because every time you want to feel condemned about being hurt by someone, I want you to remember this picture right here, because Jesus took all of our condemnation. That's why Paul could come back and say in Romans 8:1, there is now therefore no condemnation because we are in Jesus Christ. So every time I look at this condemnation, whether it's unforgiveness, whether it's a traumatic event, I know Jesus has handled that equation. I don't have to figure it out and I can trust him because he is the king who took it from me. And remember the Pharisees, they would come in and they said, no, you needed to write. He said he would. I was like, hey, what I've written, I've written. Wow. That's so cool. That's amazing. Thank you for bringing that. So on that note, if somebody's asking then, well, what do you do then when you do forgive, but then you still have pain coming back or bitterness is still in your heart and you're trying, you're like, man, I forgive him. And yet time goes by and then the pain is back. Right. Well, forgiveness doesn't equal immediate healing and forgiveness this doesn't ever equal reconciliation either. reconciliation takes both parties. I have a great story, if I can just share it briefly with you. If we could bring up the picture, I met this couple, I was speaking in Santa Cruz, the Wagners. If you can bring this up, Dan and Lynn Wagner, this sweet couple, they were serving with their two daughters, Carrie and Mandy, at a Luis Palau. You know Luis Palau, the great evangelist who's now in heaven. They're serving with their two daughters being altar workers at Beach Fest. They're at the church I'm speaking at, a great church in Santa Cruz, California. She walks up to me and she said, can I share our story of forgiveness with you? And I'm going to summarize it very quickly because it was so powerful. I heard it firsthand. She said, we were on our way home from serving at the altar at the Luis Palau Beach Fest rally. We never made it home. We were in our family minivan. We were buckled up and a woman named Lisa, who was both drunk and high on meth, plowed her Suburban into our vehicle. And she said, instantly, both of our daughters were killed. Dan, when I interviewed him and I put his story in the book, when I interviewed him, he talks about the fact that he was concussed. And if you've ever been concussed, his best friend, he had amnesia short-term. His best friend had to keep telling him both of his daughters were dead. And what I love about their story is they were so real. They said, hey, first, this happened shortly after 9/11. They said, first, we blew up Christmas that year. We just blew it up. You know, feelings, our feelings. But over time, it took about seven years. God spoke to Dan and Linda, Lynn, that they needed to forgive the driver of the vehicle, Lisa, who was serving in state penitentiary. They asked for permission to meet with Lisa. The judge allows it, but there's an armed guard there, because is this going to be an act of violence? What's going to happen? Talk about anger management. They walk up to Lisa, and they say, Lisa, through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, we want you to know we forgive you for killing our daughters. And through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, we'd kind of like to have a surrogate daughter. Would you like to be our surrogate daughter? Because we don't have any anymore. Lisa had come to Christ in prison. They now go to public libraries. After I shared their story in my Fox News op-ed, they went out to 29 Palms and spoke to all the Marines about the power of forgiveness. And here's the key. Here's where it all comes back to. Dan told me himself, I'm not living for the 80 or so years on earth. He said, I know I will see my daughters again because of the power of the resurrection. So I can forgive now, and I can live my life as well as I can. Now, do the feelings still come? Absolutely. But they, every time I want to think about forgiveness, they didn't feel like it, and it took time. So that's okay. If someone right now isn't ready, you don't have to just slam them. You've got to just wait, and the Holy Spirit will lead you to that point. That's right. And I want to give another C.S. Lewis quote. I don't have it on the screen. I'm going to paraphrase it. That's what happens, by the way, when you have two really smart people. They're just quoting C.S. Lewis like every 10 minutes. That's all I know. He was one time talking about this, and he made, because Jesus says, "Forgive 70 times seven." And so C.S. Lewis said, "Sometimes that 70 times seven may be for the same offense." Right. That's good. There you go. And so it's this idea that, hey, there's this initial forgiveness that you give. That is sometimes the hardest one. It's the letting go of the knife, Carlos, to your analogy. That is one of the hardest ones. Carlos: And then sometimes, whether it's because a memory is triggered or just something happens, you begin feeling those feelings of bitterness and anger come back over you. And that moment, you go back and you forgive again. And so I think just an encouragement, if someone's like, "Man, I've tried to, but it keeps coming back," you can keep forgiving. It may not be a one-time thing that you never feel again. It may be something that you just keep forgiving and keep forgiving and keep forgiving. Carlos: Yeah. You don't forgive and forget, but you do have an opportunity to forgive every time you remember. C.S. Lewis: That's right. Carlos: And so on that note, too, we say, "Man, God is faithful to forgive. We forgive because we have been forgiven by a good and faithful God." And yet, there's a question that comes up with this conversation. Is there anything that God will not forgive? Is there such a thing as an unforgivable sin? What say you? C.S. Lewis: Absolutely, there is, according to the Bible. C.S. Lewis: Yeah, tell me about it. C.S. Lewis: Let me pull out the scriptures for a minute. I brought my wonderful side-by-side reading. And this is interesting because Paul, all four, all the gospels record the fact that we have this thing called blaspheming the Holy Spirit. And let me just make it really simple what the gospels say. The Holy Spirit is who convicts us of truth. He's our "hodego" in Greek. He's literally our truth tour guide. The Bible says he will convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment. When someone comes to Christ, they never come on their own. The Holy Spirit leads them to Christ. And guess what? He's really good at his job. He can be rejected. God is a gentleman. So, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, let me be very clear, that is not suicide. C.S. Lewis: Exactly. C.S. Lewis: That's not some kind of mortal sin. The sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit is rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ, plain and simple. C.S. Lewis: Because if you go to the original context, the way I like to put it sometimes is the only unforgivable sin is unforgiven sin. C.S. Lewis: That's good. C.S. Lewis: And the only unforgiven sin is sin that hasn't been covered by Jesus because you haven't repented of it and placed your faith in Jesus to forgive it. And so, if you go back to the context, what's happening here is the religious leaders are basically saying the miracle and the things that you're doing, that's Satan. You're actually Satan. You're empowered by Satan to do this. And so, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is these guys are so far gone that they've hardened their conscious to the conviction of the Holy Spirit by their own choices and actions. And so, they're beyond repentance. They're never coming back from it. And so, if they never come back from it, if they never repent of it, they'll never be forgiven of it. And so, we shouldn't picture it's like these guys later changed their minds and they come and say, "Never mind, we were wrong. We were wrong." And then God's like, "Too bad. You had one chance, and you blew it." It's not that. Instead, really what this is, is their conscience is so seared, they're never going to repent. And so, sometimes what I'll get is, "Hey, what does this mean?" But then a lot of times, maybe you've gotten this, is people will be afraid they've committed this sin. - Yeah. Oftentimes, this is not a theological question. This is like an anxiety, "Have I done this thing? Am I too far gone?" - And so, knowing then the background of what you shared and the passage and what I just said, I tell people, "Hey, if you're afraid you've committed it, I have good news for you. You haven't committed it." - Exactly. - Because if you committed it, you would literally think Jesus was empowered by Satan, and you wouldn't care about your sins at that point. And so, if you have any fear of this, you'd have no reason to be afraid of it because you haven't committed it. Otherwise, you wouldn't care. - And I've dealt with this a lot. I have a piece of God's study Bible. And I do want to say this, there's been spiritual malpractice in the Catholic Church, claiming. I cannot tell you. I've been working in ministry for decades. How many people have said a son or daughter, someone close to them, committed the unpardonable sin because they completed suicide? Because the church taught that that was an immediate hell sentence. Now, I'm not obviously. It's never God's will for anyone to take their life. I always think of Acts 19, we have a stopped suicide in the New Testament where Paul literally tells the Philippian jailer, "Don't hurt yourself." So, don't hurt yourself. Listen to the book of Acts. But we have to be so careful. And what I love about your podcast, you're not afraid to touch these touchy issues. And this is where I encourage Catholics who are watching, read the actual Bible. Don't go by Vatican II, don't go by dogmas, read what the New Testament says, and it will be made clear. And guess what? That's going to give you a lot of peace, too. - That's right. Jeremiah, one of the reasons why I love having you here, man, is because you. One, you always bring a show and tell, and we love that. - Absolutely. - Two, it reminds us that the Bible is not a myth. It is actual history. ♪ ♪ - Well, hey, before we get back to the episode, I want to tell you about something coming up at Lake Point that we're really excited about this summer. We're hosting "At the Movies," a four-week sermon series where we'll use movie clips and stories to illustrate powerful biblical truths. It's one of the most fun and creative experiences we do all year here at Lake Point, and it's designed for the entire family. And so, every weekend at our physical locations, we'll feature unique movie-themed experiences, fun characters in the lobby for both kids and adults, incredible worship and practical teaching from the Word of God, and of course, popcorn and drinks. So, whether you are here and maybe you're a long-time churchgoer, someone who's been away from church for a while, or maybe you're looking for an easy way to invite a friend, neighbor, or coworker to church, this right here is the perfect series for you. "At the Movies" is an in-person-only event and begins July 11th and 12th and continues through August 1 and 2. And so, if you're in the Dallas area, we'd love for you to join us at one of our campuses. You can find service times, locations, and more information by texting the word "ATM" to 2-0-1. Now, let's get back to the conversation. And so, like, you know, when we open up, if you grew up in church, you're probably used to listen to all these stories, and then there's a point where it becomes so familiar that you forget that these things actually happen. I feel like recently, I don't know if it's like in the last year or something, it seems like the idea of like archaeological discoveries and ancient relics, they're kind of becoming more and more popular. Obviously, the Stroud of Turin was a big deal this year during Easter. And it still is, obviously, because of everything that you shared with us in our previous episode. Paul, we're still working on that. That's okay. But, you know, generally speaking. That's the bonus episode. You get to watch our back-and-forth combo where you try to convince the other. There's believers and there's skeptics. You know, we're all welcome here. This is a safe spot here. Welcome, everybody. So, but then there's others, other relics, other quote-unquote ancient archaeological discoveries. I kind of was doing a little research. Some are contested. Some are not so much. Some are, there's a lot more evidence. Others are a little bit harder to prove. Apparently, somebody has claimed that they discovered the Ark of the Covenant, for example. You know, at some point, we need to talk about that. to talk about that as well. There's people that have said, hey, we found fragments of wood claimed to be from Jesus's cross, found the nails of Jesus, the spear that pierced Jesus's side, the crown of thorns, the holy sponge. I'm sure you know about all of these and how true or not true they are. But recently I bring this up because there was, again, what I mentioned at the beginning, this organization went super viral, led by researcher Andrew Jones, and they claimed, hey, we believe that we found the actual Noah's Ark in Turkey. And this is, we discovered it. And so this is what we're going to do in this episode right now. We're going to do a deep dive on the story of Noah's Ark and the flood. We got two geniuses here next to me and we're going to address this issue from a biblical perspective because we're Bible people, from a historical and archaeological perspective and a theological and pastoral perspective. So if somebody is new, because we do get a lot of people that are honestly new to the Bible and they're like, we don't want to take for granted. So here's what the story of Noah's Ark is about. This is Genesis chapter six. I'm just going to read the brief text. Genesis chapter six, verse five through eight. This is what it says. The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. Verse six, the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth, the human race. I have created and with them, the animals, the birds, and the creatures that move along the ground. For I regret that I have made them. Verse eight, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. So basically after that, God tells Noah, hey, build an ark, build the boat. His family joins him and animals as well. As we all know, God sends rain for 40 days and 40 nights. The Bible also says that waters burst forth from beneath the earth. We'll talk about that. And after many months, the Bible says God remembers, Noah and causes the waters to recede. The ark ends up on a mountain. Noah leaves the ark, offers a sacrifice to God and God establishes a covenant with him. We'll explain what that means. And he promises never again to destroy the earth by a flood. And the sign of the covenant in this case is a rainbow in the sky. Now here's where I want to start talking about this. We're going to have a clip from 2014, to be clear, from the theologian, Bill Maher. And he is reacting to, at the time, if some of you guys remember this, the movie Noah came out with Russell Crowe. And he basically, Bill is reacting to this movie, especially because a lot of criticisms at the time from Christians was, hey, this is not a biblical movie. It's not true to the text. You know, the book was better kind of thing. And before we play it, he cites this 2004 ABC news poll that found that 60% of Americans believed that the Noah story was literally true. Meaning it happened that way, word for word. I did some research and that study was from 2004. I did not find any studies from recent years on that same thing, but I did find this 2022 Gallup study that said that only 20% of Americans say the Bible is the literal word of God, word for word, which is the lowest in their trend since the 1980s, which implies that likely, perhaps less people think this story in the Old Testament is true. So let's check out what Bill says in this clip. And speaking of cruise ships, you know, I don't mind that the Noah story is impossibly childish. Okay, I do mind. What am I saying? I mind very much. I mean, seriously, people, you believe a man, Noah, lived to be 900 years old. That's what the Bible says. And when he was 500, he decided to have three kids, just like Clint Eastwood. That's funny. I don't care where you're from. That's good. This part. And when he was 600, he and his three 100-year-old sons built a boat onto which, in one day, they loaded over 3 million animals, all of which were apparently indigenous to within five miles of the boat. But get this. What the Christians who are now protesting this movie are upset about is that it doesn't take the biblical story, literally, enough. They're mad because this made-up story doesn't stay true to their made-up story. But the thing that's really disturbing about Noah isn't the silly. It's that it's immoral. It's about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it, and his name is God. Genesis says God was so angry with himself for screwing up when he made mankind so flawed that he sent the flood to kill everyone. Everyone. Men, women, children, babies. What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie. Hey, God, you know you're kind of a d*** when you're in a movie with Russell Crowe and you're the one with anger issues. All right. That's the class. There's a lot. Yeah. There's a lot there. Talk about blasphemy. So, let me, we're going to go in order. We'll get there. So, if you're like, oh, what about this? We'll get there. So, let me start here. Jeremiah, did this Noah story really happen or is it a myth? The Noah story in the Bible is absolutely historical, 100%. And we don't have to appeal just to scriptures. The scriptures are our best source for it. But I do want to let our audience know if we could bring up the keynote, because I put together a slide that shows how wrong Bill is and how he, this is a very important slide that we know of the Genesis flood account from the book of Genesis. It's our best source. But look at this, you guys. We have a dozen or more other flood accounts, Akkadian, Sumerian, even as far as India. We have in China writings about the flood. We have Egyptian, of course, Babylonian. I give you the citations that you can read on the book. On your own. And what's fascinating about it is there are so many interesting parallels, but the Bible is the superior source which we can get into. And so all you have to do is go walk through the halls of the British Museum. I have a photo of the epic of Gilgamesh. I took this photo myself. Check this out. This is a story that parallels the story of Noah and the flood. And this is in cuneiform, probably from the second century B.C. Excuse me, third century B.C. So the 2000s and some B.C. And this is a story that in many ways, we actually have a document that parallels all the way. So it's not just the Bible talking about this global flood. It appears in at least a dozen other sources from all over the world. Yes. And I think on that, the way I put it is like this, because you have interaction with historians, have a little bit of a history background, and here's I like to say this, is that if we found dozens and hundreds of stories from different Native American tribes about a great fire that desolated the land, what, Jeremiah, would every modern historian conclude from that? There had been a fire. That there had been a great fire that happened and they would be right. And yet when it comes to the flood, even though there's dozens and some would even say hundreds of stories from everywhere, this great flood there, then their conclusion, like Bill is, oh, this is definitely a myth. And so it's just an example where there's a double standard here going on. Whereas, hey, there's so many different things that show, hey, if this is a common telling all across the world, it's probably because it actually happened. Another way I like to think of it, even to kind of play off of what you said, is if we found one day a preponderance of dozens of different counterfeit bills, we would still believe that there was a true bill out there that they were all counterfeiting off of. Right. And so, again, the idea that, hey, there's all these stories, well, hey, the most likely, the story, the most likely thing that actually happened is that there was a true event, and there must, therefore, be a true version. Because you don't counterfeit something unless it's real. So kind of what you're saying is, hey, all these counterfeit stories don't negate the story of the Bible. They actually prove that something happened and that there's a true story out there. And there's other things that I know you'll get to in a minute that show us there's other credible reasons why we believe that our story is the true story. Well, and this is why we have to be careful Christian thinkers. We can't be credulous. We can't watch, you know, so many people out there. And this is why I love the Live Free podcast. You're living on soundbites instead of living off substance. So get beyond the soundbite. Get to the substance. Go walk around the British Museum, and no one will doubt that there was a global flood. It's actually historical. The cool thing about the Genesis account is it's monotheistic. In fact, we know from history that the earliest civilizations go back to Ogobleke Tepe, which is in modern day Turkey, 10,000 BC. They were monotheists. Isn't that interesting? So polytheism comes much later. And the cool thing about the Genesis account is we see grace, where we don't see that. The floods with these other accounts, the gods are capricious. They're mad at you. They're kind of annoyed with you. Whereas this is a god of grace, believe it or not. We actually see the picture of grace. And let's not be too hard on God either. What I would tell Bill, Having had triplets, there are some days I identify with God that I'm greedy. grieved that I have so many children. Let's not be too hard on God. And we'll get to the moral argument here in a bit. We will. So again, let me put on my skeptic hat on because, okay, so you guys are saying that we find the same story in different civilizations in different parts of the world that obviously they did not, you know, collude with each other to agree on which story they were going to write. How do you know that, you know, somebody hears this story and they'd be like, Dr. Jeremiah, how do you know that that's history versus like, just that's a common story that people just told. And it just so happens that, you know, it's kind of similar all through all these civilizations. You're saying it's history. These are civilizations writing history and we have found these things. So it's not myth. How do you know that? Because we rely on the sources. We don't get in some kind of Christian religious trance. We don't privilege the Bible, even though we love the Bible. We actually see the text as artifact. And the earliest testimonies that we have in the Pentateuch, which I have some show and tell here in a minute for you, actually tell us that. And these are in the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are the greatest sources that you can have that discuss this incredible event. And it's mentioned as well by Jesus himself. So we should take it pretty seriously. The mentioning of the flood happens in a very important part. You might know of the Olivet Discourse. This is where Jesus is giving his epistle. And this is where Jesus is giving his epistle. other discovery. I mean, we actually know a lot more about the flood than we do of other artifacts that we really take a lot more seriously. Interesting. Yeah. So you mentioned. We apply a hyper-skepticism because the Bible's involved. It doesn't apply in the real world to any other artifact. Yeah. So you mentioned too, there's other stories. Obviously, somebody must have written those before others, which means, is it true that some of these stories were written before the Genesis story was written? And if so, I'm putting on my skeptic hat. This is not me asking. This is what other people might ask. Wouldn't that imply that the Bible basically just like stole this from other civilizations? The accounts in Genesis antedate all the other accounts. That's what I'm saying. The source material is Genesis. Oh, interesting. Okay. So it's. Because I've heard people say, no, well, you know, the Gilgamesh, that one's much you know. Earlier and then Genesis is later. What's that? What that usually is based off of is the assumption that the entire Pentateuch, the Torah was made up during the Babylonian captivity. Because there's such a great distance between, at that time, between Babylon and Israel. And so how they have learned that story? Well, they learned it when they were in captivity and that's when they made up the whole Torah. But you can maybe get into some of the main issues with that. But one thing I would even just say is, yeah, there's some common themes, which again, shouldn't surprise us. Because if there is an actual event that happened and then when you get to the story of Babel, where people are scattered across the earth, they then carry remembrances and stories they had heard and it becomes corrupted and all that kind of stuff. That shouldn't surprise us. But what you don't see is any very close, like word for word lifting from the Genesis account, from the epic of Gilgamesh. They're extremely different in a lot of the details. If anything, there's another account that predates the epic of Gilgamesh. I think it's the Atrahasis, where you do find almost word for word lifting of some of the things. So if anything, I could say it was. The epic of Gilgamesh that copied somebody else's, but you don't see anything like that. You see common themes, but not common wording. This is a little bit of detail I would add in. So who lifted from who? I think it's. And again, I could be wrong. So just Google this later and say, no, it's actually from this. I apologize. But it was the epic of Gilgamesh that lifted from another narrative like this that was the Atrahasis, which is, I think, from the second millennium BC. Okay. So it's history. That's helpful. In that case, let's go back to the story. It talks about a flood. Paul or Jeremiah, I know there are two different views on what does this mean as a flood? Was it a global flood or was it a regional flood? What say you? Yes. Okay. Yes. What we need to know about civilizations in this time period is that people did not travel or live very far from the Tigris and the Euphrates. And so you don't have people living in Britain at the time. You don't have people. People living in South Africa at the time, or in Alaska or Antarctica. What we can say exegetically and be true to the text is. And explain what? For people that don't know, what does that word mean? Exegesis. We don't do eisegesis. We don't foist our modern reading like Bill Maher does in his cruise ship analogy on the text. We let the Bible speak for itself. Exegesis means we actually read it in context. For your viewers, I've actually put together a six-question exegesis guide. I've been teaching this to my students for 15 years of six things we should ask every single passage. Because, hey, guys, it's easy to become a heretic. All you need is the Bible in no context and Jesus in no context, and you've just become a heretic. And so you read it in context, and then you apply the timeless principles from that text to your life. Or as I say in Jesus Discovery, CIA context helps me with interpretation, and then I get to apply the text to my life. Exegesis basically just means you start with the Bible, and you let the Bible. Lead where you go. Versus if you start with your own ideas and your own beliefs, and then you take your own beliefs through the Bible. And foist that on there, which many Christians do wrongfully, and they weaponize the Bible, therefore, or they twist the Scripture. That'd be eisegesis. We want exegesis. That's right. Great. That's great. So keep going. Okay. Where were we at again? I forgot the question. Was it a global arena? Oh, yes. You said, yes. Yes. So do I believe that all of humankind was absolutely flooded and knocked out? Yes, absolutely. But let me show you the. Let's keep going through my slides. I wanted to help our audience with how we see this. So what does the Bible actually say? This is where. By the way, it helps to know the original languages. And so we actually see the dove's point of view. This is in Genesis 8:9, 9:5, and 7:19. The dove finds nowhere to land because water is all over the surface. That's 8:9, yet four verses earlier. Again, we're reading the text. Now, this is the Bible. Four verses earlier, it says the mountaintops were already visible, even though the dove couldn't find anywhere to land. Both are true at once. Humanity has been knocked out. So under the entire heavens means the sky over Mesopotamia, where everyone lived. Let's move on. The Bible uses interesting words about the whole world. This is how we let Scripture interpret Scripture. I just picked this morning 1 Kings 10:24 and Romans 1:8, the whole world sought wisdom from Solomon. Does that mean every person sought wisdom from him? We don't want to apply an ultra wooden literalism that the original authors certainly didn't mean. There is. I always use this and I always like to talk about my favorite Kansas City chiefs. I saw someone on the airplane yesterday who had a Raiders hat. We hate the Raiders. So when I say I hate the Raiders or the chiefs killed the Raiders, I love it, but do I really mean that? No, I'm talking about victory in a football game. The Bible is about real people, real places, real events. And so look at this. I love this. Then we also interpret it next to Psalm 104. And by the way, this is where Bible study is fun. And this is where we have to do more than sound bites. We have to do substance. In Psalm 104:5-9, the promise then settles the question. Do you see this? The Psalm recalls the early earth, oceans once covered the globe, then the continents rose. That was day three. God says it's good on all of those days. Again, on the day he creates mankind, very good. We can talk about that if you want. And the waters gathered into their basins. It then declares that the waters, and I've highlighted this, never again cover the whole earth. This is the creation account. A global flood would break that word from Psalm 104. A flood to Noah's world does not. So I love this because Carlos, you thought you were going to pick a fight between us on this, and we ended up probably agreeing pretty much on this stuff. So backing up a little bit, because I'm like you, I'm like, yeah, it was global in the sense of it affected all of humanity. But the way a lot of people would put this backing up just a tad was some people think of global flood because when it says in scripture that the water covered all the mountains under heaven, I want to come back to that because you've got to read it in the context of how they used language at that time. People think, put it this way, oh, then the water covered Mount Everest or whatever at that time was the highest mountain. So some people believe it was global in the sense that literally it covered over the entire span of the earth to where there was nothing but like a water world, old Kevin Costner movie. You've probably never seen that, Carlos. And you probably shouldn't. It's a terrible movie. And so that's for some people, that's what they mean by a global flood. A little bit more of the traditional view. Then you have more of this idea of it's a regional flood, not in that people who have this, they don't believe that it literally covered every square inch of land all over the globe as we know it, but where people actually lived and in that place. And just so people know, people who hold to this view, but it just sounds like you hold more to this view, in which I think I lean towards it as well. This is not, oh, then you guys don't believe in the miraculous. No, we do. Everything in the story is still miraculous. I kind of try to narrow it down to two things of why people would hold more of a regional view. Number one, what is the main point of the text? The main point of the text is this is not a judgment against geography or geology, but against humanity. Sin. It's against sin. So if that's the main point, a regional person would say that main point is not to literally cover Mount Everest. It's to deal with the wickedness that was on the earth. So this view doesn't vary. The main point of the text and it calls into mind the language of the text and the language of the Bible. So it does say in Genesis 7, 19, that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. So this is one, and I'll try to be careful here not to name names, but that certain people say, well, if you actually have a regional view, then you have to contradict Genesis 7, 19. But let me read for you Deuteronomy 2, 25. It says that God will put fear upon the nations under the whole heaven of Israel. Mm-hmm. So does that mean that the Mayans were afraid of the Israelites? Yeah. No. Exactly. No, it means that the people right there that they're talking about in context were. So the thing I would say on this is because recently people have turned this issue into, hey, if you deny a global flood that covered Everest, you are a heretic. Right. You have denied the faith. And I'd say, listen, there are credible men and women who have believed this in church history who are not. Like I'll just, Jeremiah, you and I would probably be called fundamentalists by most liberals. Yes. And yet we have more of a leaning, it sounds like, to a regional flood. So I would tell people, don't get too obsessed over this and make this the breaking point of fellowship. I'd say, hey, we still believe the main point of the story and we still believe in the miraculous in the story. And so I just wanted to say that because increasingly people have made this a you're saved or not issue or you don't take the Bible seriously issue. I hope you just heard for the last few minutes, Dr. Jeremiah takes the Bible very seriously and I do as well. And yet you can still hold to this viewpoint. And don't ever let anyone tell you this is an issue to divide over. There are fine Christians who believe it's global and they probably have great reasons for that. And there are fine Christians who believe like me. But the one thing I'm an expert in is exegesis. I have to let the Bible speak for itself. I do not let theological systems define me. I read the Bible in the original language and then I let the Bible interpret the Bible. And so even back to the same, I mean, Peter sees it in 1 Peter 3.20. He references God's. He references God's patience during Noah's time while the ark was being built. I love this. Noting that only eight people were saved, but God still left the door open seven more days. We know that from Genesis 7. And so if we're reading it through the eyes of Peter, he's not seeing a vindictive bully of a God. He's seeing a God that was patient and loving and kind. And I love this because in verse 8, but Noah found favor, ken in Hebrew. It's literally the first mention. It's literally the first mention of the word grace in all of Scripture. God found favor, or excuse me, Noah found favor. And it's not because he did anything great. I mean, he gets hammered when he gets out of the flood. I mean, this is a guy that got drunk. He had his flaws, as we all do. And yet only because of grace does God pick him up. And then he's remembered in the great hall of faith. And so this should give us hope today. Let's not minor, let's not major on the minors. And a lot of Christians are clickbaiters. Clickbait Christians. They want to clip this. They want to major on the minors and go pick a fight with someone. And you know what my problem is with that? They haven't shared the gospel with anyone in the last year. But they want to argue with you about, was it a global flood? And they want to use the Bible as a battering ram. And guess what? What I'm concerned about, what the New Testament is concerned about. There's 138,000 words in the Greek New Testament. And there are really concrete things, like I cover in the Jesus Discovery. Paul uses the Greek word protoise in 1 Corinthians. He says, it's the word we get prototype from. He says, these are the matters of first importance. And was it the global flood? No, it was that Jesus died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried. And on the third day, Hosea 6-2, he was raised from the dead. And then he gives the appearance tradition. That's the thing that the Bible is really focused on. So it's fun to have these conversations. And we should, because Bible study is fun. But at some level, they're very speculative. I mean, we could get into it. We could get really deep if you want. I mean, I could quote the Old Testament pseudepigrapha to you, where they believe Og, the giant, is hanging on to the rudder of the ark. And that's how Og survives as a giant. And when I say Old Testament pseudepigrapha, that means pseudepigrapha, fake writings of the Old Testament. We have Midrash, which is rabbinic tradition, that talks about the giants holding on to the flood, to Noah's boat. And that's how we have Og as a giant. Or Goliath. It's all totally dubious. But my point is, people have been discussing this for 4,000 years now. So it's fun to talk about. But let's make sure we get the things of first importance correct. There you go. I know you want to get to the moral problem of evil. But I want to hit something, because I think this is really important, especially in light of you writing books like this that talks about these different discoveries. On the historicity part, one thing that we didn't talk about is recently there was the story of, oh, we have found Noah's ark. Oh, yes. Thank you for bringing this up. And I think this goes into the historicity thing, because I think, as we talked about, we laid out some reasons that you can believe that this is historical. And yet when stuff like this comes out, you talk about sometimes Christians are clickbait, definitely on divisive issues. But also they can do clickbait on things like this, where there's discovery that confirms the Bible. And some of them could be legit, but then some are not. So I think you said you have a story in the picture. You're so kind. What? I'm just kidding. What do you know what you're talking about right now? Yes, I did. We have a photo here. So that right there is the photo that, that was shared. And this kind of, again, this made the news. This organization claimed that they found Noah's ark. And the reason that they said they did is because they have found that, what they would call the remains of a large wooden vessel matching the size of the ark in the Bible. They've also done scans that reportedly show, quote, linear features, right angles, corridors, and room-like chambers up to 20 feet deep. They will say that they see patterns that they interpret as support beams, walls, compartments. And they would say that's not random natural geology. And in addition to that, they did a soil chemical analysis. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. And they found what that, that they, what this is, is basically a decayed ancient wood or organic remains from man-made vessel. So actually, just to give people a sense of, can we put them up side by side? We have, this is from the Ark Encounter. Have you ever been there before? No, I want to go. I've heard great things. Yeah, I've heard great things. So this is a reconstruction of what it would have looked like. It's parked outside right now. Again, I was really hoping for a life-size replica. When I got here, we would have had to have filmed this from a football field. That's the Lake Point parking lot, by the way. Come to church this weekend. Yes. That'd be great. Yes. That's a joke, by the way. The last few weeks of rain, it has felt like that. I just, I want to clarify, that's a joke. Cause I don't want people to come here and be like, where's the Ark? We do not have a temporary Ark exhibit here. Yeah. Yeah. So going back, you can go back to pictures. So it's like, oh, like if you kind of put something like that and you compare to the original picture, it kind of has the same shape. So yeah. So Dr. Jeremiah, let's say you, is this a legitimate? Or is it something people should be wary of? Okay. I've talked about this extensively and I want to be kind. So this kind of reminds me of the early days of Babylon Bee, when my mom would share the Babylon Bee stories, not realizing that they were fake. There are a lot of credulous Christians and, and I don't mean this unkindly, but I think the internet is making the church dumber than all time. And we have, it shouldn't be that way. We have an abundance of Bible study artifacts. We should be the center. We should be the strongest Christians of all time. And yet we go to chat, GTP or Google. We don't go to God's word. And then we see this and man, that is an interesting looking mountain range. It's in Darunipar. It's in Eastern Turkey. And guess what? You can see very similar ones. I think I saw one outside of Las Vegas the other day from the airplane. I really mean that. And to get archeologists to agree 100% is truly a miracle. All archeologists agree. This is not Darunipar. This is not the site of Noah's Ark. Yeah. This is a UTR, ground penetrating radar. I'm very familiar with. It's fantastic for sand. If we're looking for different metals, it is notoriously unreliable for studying these kinds of mountain ranges. Every archeologist, including my dear friend, Scott Stripling will attest to this. And so what can we say factually? 100% of archeologists agree that this is not Noah's Ark. Secondly, we've known about this site since 1959, the lead person who I'm sure is a wonderful Christian man. I have nothing against the man. He's not an archeologist. So this is not his area of specialty. It'd be like me saying, you know, this scroll is really cool, but I've never actually been trained in it. So I don't mean that to be unkind, but as Christians, we have to appeal to scholars. We have to appeal to archeologists, we have to appeal to truth. And so 100% of archeologists who are even atheists agree that that's not the spot. Yeah. I can go on more if you want. but that's really kind of-- - I think that's so helpful. covers it so well and i think where this matters is because some come back to original conversation although again i wanted to explain to people i am not saying that there's this same amount of evidence between this and the shot of turin that was actually one of the points like hey it's not that the point is sometimes when people look at this confirms i'm like y'all hey it's in this case with this thing with the arc it's bunk it's not it's not true and number two even if it was you didn't need it to already believe in the history of it and so instead for things like this you got to think about it like this is if you share this especially on social media and then it later is debunked if someone who is not a follower of jesus sees you share that and then also sees you in other places sharing things on the history of our faith they're going to say oh this must be in the same thing it's basically like the boy who cried wolf and so i say to christians everywhere like be very careful when you see stuff like this about instantly jumping on it and instantly sharing it let time play out i think that's part of the argument that you'd make for example with trout of turn it took me three years things it takes years and there's decades there's still division but so it's like there's been decades for stuff to sort out when you see this stuff just be careful because you actually don't want to harm your witness by sharing something that is later debunked that's a great practical word of advice and we have to know that when it comes to how we do history it's never certainty it's based on probabilities and so we don't have a video camera of the past and so we have to base everything off of probabilities whether it's you know our two best sources for alexander the great are arian and plutarch they write 400 years after alexander the great nobody questions alexander the great we have far better resources for jesus of nazareth than we do for caesar crossing the rubicon no one questions that we we do this hyper skepticism on the bible and then as a historian yes i can grade the evidence in different ways like this is a a plus piece of evidence this is b it's like have you all ever been to israel you know you go on the bible lands tour as well we haven't is this one oh you haven't not yet but we will and we're very excited pay you to say no i didn't i know we are very excited for the opportunity in the future okay well i'm excited but mostly paul is excited well let me i'm using the analogy those who've been to israel other than you two will know that there are some places we take people in israel that is like this is 100 the spot where this happened lazarus's tomb for instance is an a plus spot i've filmed in lazarus's tomb and bethany unfortunately it's in west bank many christians don't go there jews aren't allowed but then you go to a place like the traditional side of the upper room definitely not the spot okay you go to the garden tomb definitely not the spot where jesus rose from the grave that's happened at the holy sepulcher now that will cause some comments right there but even the director of the garden tomb agrees with me and i have a 2600 word chapter in my book body of proof on the site so we can you know again we can know certain thing was it really jacob's well we don't know but it approximates it yeah that's helpful now the steps going up to caiaphas's home 100 jesus walked up those steps on the on the night he was betrayed does that make sense makes a lot of sense i want to give you a chance i don't know if you brought uh any other things that you wanted to share let me give something that is so cool to you i want you to hold this i want to show the audience this is a we've been talking about torah the flood account is in the torah okay it is in the pentateuch right the first five books of the old testament and i am holding in my hands right now a 800 year old scroll that reflects a 1 000 year scribal tradition you begin remember at the right and it be this is numbers 30 to 33. we see yahweh's name yad hey vav hey right there wow um moses is commanding all that yahweh the lord told him to say i want there's one mistake actually on here if you're a hebrew scholar down here where they actually fix the colophon they fix the the they say oh it was of the land it's on the they write it on the very top i love that it's so cute to me because it shows like the scribe probably fell asleep he gets to the very end of the parchment okay he gets to the last line and he made a mistake oh no it was of the land and he has to write in the word of so this was still acceptable because it was only one textual variant on it again very variant not error yeah wow you know you actually have in the scribal tradition um the the scribes not all of them are christians by the way and some of them are like this is so boring recording the bible when are when do we get a lunch break like like they because they had to be so accurate so i want you to hold this in your hand and well while you're holding it i want to explain how it was donated to our ministry and again it begins up here on the right you're reading right to left and do you just feel that so that's bovine material and again jesus quotes wow so much from the torah he quotes from the book of deuteronomy the most he also if we look at tanakh he quotes from the book of isaiah and and the writings then he quotes from psalms psalm 110 the most and so it's not amazing to hold this in our hand this was donated this was smuggled out of iraq during saddam hussein's ethnic cleansing it was smuggled out in army rubber tires and then it was given to a man who donated it to our ministry and so often um um when i'm speaking i'll actually pass it around um the audience yeah absolutely especially when the music people get it you know you want it it'll vanish you know i was at the pastor the pastor's conference the other day speaking all these pastors i said you know i want you to hold the word of god in your hand wow and you can see again it's not a codex this is a scroll and there's writing on only one side explain that jeremiah when you say it's not a codex yeah thank you for normal people out here so this is a codex okay the church did not event it but the only time the church has ever been ahead of the technological curve is when the church said hey this is really expensive and there's only writing on one side and you have to unroll it they started using a codex or the plural is codices all that means it was in book form and there's writing on the front and back of the page okay this and that's generally the earliest that we have is on papaya Tyrus fragments, not parchment. This is parchment. And do you see the seams? So imagine how long the book of Numbers would be. This is just three chapters. It begins Numbers 30, verse 1. My man gets all the way to the end, makes that one. Do you see the mistake at the very last line where he writes, of the land, darn it, but it's still past. And this is so powerful to me because it shows the preservation of God's word. I mean, do you realize that skeptics of the Bible claim that Isaiah 53 did not exist, that it was made up in the empty, the Masoretic text. And then we have the greatest discovery of all time, Qumran K4, 1Q Isaiah. And there it is. It's 200 BC. It's a thousand years older than the Masoretic text. And there on column 44 is Isaiah's prophecy of 53. So I want to give a preview, Lord willing, when I'm back at Christmas and we talk about Messianic prophecies, I'm bringing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Come on, coming soon. And it's 24 feet long. So make sure you don't miss it that day. I'm not going to miss it that day. You said 800 years. Yes. And it's a thousand year old scribal tradition. So how do we date things? That's another thing that I love to talk about. You have to learn how to read paleography and codicology. We date things by studying handwriting. And so I was actually studied in the Griffith Papyrology Lab under a woman named Danielle. Who taught me how to read not a composite text, which is a composite text is like a Greek New Testament that it's been printed and it has put all the manuscripts together. Reading an actual fragment is much different. I had to learn what a lunate sigma was, but it was so powerful for me, you guys. I was holding a third century gospel of John fragment in my hand and I was reading it. And this is where the Lord spoke to me, not audibly, but in my heart to say, you've got to do Christian Thinker Society because, we've got to raise up an army of people that love God with their heart, soul, and their minds. So isn't it inspirational just to know that, you know, 800 years ago, a Jewish scribe wrote this Torah because, and it's relevant to the conversation because that's the flood account. Jesus appeals to Torah. And I just wanted you guys to hold that in your hand to feel it and also see, yeah, it would survive given the right conditions. So don't believe the Bible skeptics who are like, oh, we don't have, you know, the word of God is very stable. That's the technical term. I would use, we have a stable text. That's good. That's amazing. Thank you for bringing this. We'll keep it. This is another giveaway. Write Jesus and number 38, we'll get this. I know we're probably going to get to the moral part. Yeah, that's right. So we're going to do this. We're going to do moral part real quick. And then I got a couple of things to share as well in terms of like, man, the whole Bible is about Jesus. So real quick, to address Bill's question, why would a good God kill everybody? Yeah. Well, here's what I want to back up and say contextually. Every time God creates, He says, it's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. Then when He creates mankind, it's very good. But guess what? Sin has to be dealt with. Yes. And God is gracious. This same kind of questions pop out during the conquest. You know, why does God allow the Amalekites, the Canaanites to be wiped out? Well, God had waited 400 years for these people to repent. And then finally, judgment comes and it tells me that my sin is a serious offense to God. And can you imagine how evil the world must have been. And we have a slide actually, because one thing that I find myself asking is society without God. And this is what it looked like in the days of Noah. And I just would ask our audience, are we kind of living in a similar time right now? What does it look like without God? It turns out it becomes law of the jungle. The first thing and more than one half of the world's governments have turned their back on God in the last 70 years. And this is what happens in every case. Like look at Cuba, what's going on right now in Cuba. Well, immediately you have inequality. Why? Because the Bible brings equality. We have moral relativism. That means I decide what's right. If I'm in China and I say, if you're under the age of 18, you can't go to church and we're going to put artificial intelligence on the podium and we're going to make sure that you're not in church, that's moral relativism. Then we have humanity dehumanized. We literally dehumanize people. We enslave them. Guess what? It's a lot easier to enslave people when we try to kill God. There's a really fascinating book called The Plot to Kill God that a professor at Baylor wrote. And it talks about how the Soviets tried to kill God and how, guess what? Every negative category increased: suicide, divorce, despair. It turns out we're really terrible at leading our own lives. We self-destruct. And so you see this, no concept of individual freedom, no purpose, and that big one, no ultimate meaning. Here's a great mental health checkup for everyone watching. How are you at your relationships right now? How's your physical health? And do you wake up every day living on mission for a purpose? I just saved someone $300 seeing a psychologist. How are you with your closest relationships? Are you caring for those? How are you doing with your physical health? And then, listen, do you wake up every day on mission? I have to sleep at night with a legal pad next to my bed because God wakes me up and just gives me ideas. I wake up every day. I couldn't wait to get to this podcast today. I'm living on mission for a purpose. So if you haven't given your life to Christ, do it right now and say, "Jesus, I give my life to you." I want to live on mission for a purpose. But the other question we need to ask, we can talk all about the days before the flood, but when I see that, we may be even worse right now. Yeah. Yeah, let me get back to that, guys. I think that's such a good point of, I don't think when people hear the story, because honestly, like, Maher, like, he didn't know. He did a big injustice to the text. Number one, like you said, he was blasphemous. Number two, he really pulled some things because it wasn't just a few people he had a problem with. Right. He says all of human society was so wicked. It was awful. In fact, but leaving this for a second, but going to another place that people often have problems with when you have the Canaanite conquest, when people go in. Exactly. There have been archeological sites where what they have found is the people that were there before the Israelites went in would burn infants alive. Absolutely. Sacrifice. And women alive. Yeah. And so you're telling me that if that were happening today, you would just be fine with sitting back and having people do nothing about it. And my point about that is to say, okay, if it was that evil at that time and God didn't reset the whole world, how much worse would it have had to have been in Noah's time? And it literally says, and he's not mad, it says he is grieved. Yes. He's grieved that he doesn't. So he's not happy about it. He's grieved. He says he's grieved at the wickedness. So if it was that bad for the Canaanite conquest to happen, how bad must it have been now? So I think that is just one thing we have to remember of how evil it must have been. Now, here's a few things I want to say specifically to Christians, and I do want to give a few thoughts if you're ever interacting with a non-Christian on this issue. For Christians, I'd say, hey, you've got to remember some guardrails because a Christian may read the story and they may really struggle with it. You have to remember a few things. Number one, God is perfectly good. He's perfectly good. All of scripture attests to that. Number two, he's perfectly just. And part of being perfectly just, you've said earlier, Jeremiah, is that he must punish sin. If we had a judge who didn't punish sin, he wouldn't be a just and good judge. So therefore, if you put those two things together, all that God does or allows is good and right. Now, that doesn't mean that he can do whatever he wants. We have to call it good because God is also a moral God. But it does mean that I have confidence that if he is always good and always just, and if something happens or he allows it, something happens or he allows it to happen, it must in some way be good, even if it doesn't seem good to me. Now, then that produces the last point that I want to make. And then I'll give maybe just some answers to some things to think about, especially around when Bill Maher's big thing is around. You mean he drowned infants and things like that. I want to give some thoughts, even though it's a hard thing to deal with. God's knowledge infinitely exceeds ours. So that's the last guardrail I'll give. What that means is, is that while you have some of these other guardrails, you're going to get to a point where you may not understand God. And guess what? Yeah, he's an infinite God and you're not. So there's going to be some things that you don't understand. And here's what I say is, is that no matter what you say to some unbelievers like Bill Maher, at the end of the day, they're not going to be satisfied with any of the other answers I'm going to give to help. Because at the end of the day, if they put their cards on the table, they think they could be better at being God than he is. Right. That's the issue. And there's nothing you can say to convince them. So that was mainly more for the Christians to say, God is perfectly good. He's perfectly just. And therefore, anything he does or allows is good. And right. Even that's the last point. If I don't understand it. And then I'm going to ask myself if there is a gap between what I understand and who God is and what he allows. What am I going to fill that with? Well, if I'm a Christian, I'm going to fill it with trust. I don't have to perfectly understand God to perfectly trust him. I think it's a great analogy. And two things I'll point out, just I can't improve on it. I would just say, let's read it like Peter did. That's why I quoted. I got ahead of myself. 1 Peter 3:20. Peter, if he were on the podcast, would say, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? God was so patient. In my Shawn Ryan show, I went deep into the Nephilim. Yep. I mean, you you you had and it's the earliest part of Genesis is the weirdest part of the Bible. The earliest verses in Genesis six, because we only we don't get that much information. We know that there could be likely was this hybrid demonic race. And God needs to deal with that. He has to deal with what he cannot believe what's happening with angels and females. And he has to deal with that. And so that to your point, he has to deal with sin. But God was patient. And that's very important to point that out. Another analogy is Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember, God said, hey, if there are ten righteous people in this city, I'll hold back my hand of judgment. There was only two will really one lot at the end of the day. And so God is a God of grace. And we have to read the Bible in its full art, because guess what? What I liked. You said we're going to bring up Jesus. God ends up and he pulls out all the wrath, all the sin of mankind on himself. Yeah. Yeah. And his son comes and he bears it on the cross for you and me. So let's let's make sure we read the whole narrative of Scripture. That's right. This is why it says, but God demonstrated. I said this to Russell Brand recently. It's because he's a movie guy like God is constantly on a loop. It's one of two places. It's in the continuous in Greek. It would be like the movie never ends. God is constantly showing us how much he loves us. Because he sent his son who's perfect. When we were at our worst. God sent his best. Yeah. And that's what that's why it's so great that we have no condemnation in Christ. Let me let me landed it here. So one, everything you just said. Yeah. Like a hundred percent. And at the cross, Jesus took the wrath of God upon him. That's not fair. That's grace. Right. He took our place. By the way, grace doesn't make sense. We always want to try to make sense of the equation. It's too good to be true. That's how you know it's grace. Pardon my interruption. No, you're good. And so I would say too, as we continue to finish this conversation, a lot of people don't know this, but the flood is actually the reversal of the Genesis one creation. So if you think about it real quick in Genesis one, there's a separation of waters and dry land appears in Genesis seven. When the flood happens, what has come back and dry land disappears. Genesis one animals filled the earth and humans multiply Genesis seven animals die and humanity is wiped out. Genesis one. God creates birds, animals, and humans. That's the order in Genesis seven. The text says that what perished was. Birds, animals, and humans. But then to your point, Jeremiah in Genesis one eight, the Bible says, God remembers Noah. That's covenant language. And what that means is basically God is faithful when you and I are not. And so after that verse recreation starts to happen. And so in Genesis one, in creation, the spirit of God, what the Bible says was hovering over the waters. The word for spirit is the word Ruach, which means wind. And so that's Genesis one. And in the flood, God sends a wind. A Ruach over the earth and the water receded. In Genesis one, the Bible says that the spirit of God hovered over the waters. The word hovered, it means to flutter like a bird. In Genesis eight, after recreation starts and the flood receipts, Noah sends out a dove over the water. That's new creation, which is interesting because in Matthew three, Jesus gets baptized in water. And what happens? There is a dove coming as the spirit. Again, that's a, that's, that signifies a new creation. In Christ, different conversation. I'm digressing back to the flood. The flood happens. There is chaos. There's a new creation happening. In Genesis one, God is creating everything. And he says, let dry land appear. After the flood in Genesis eight, the Bible says that as the waters went down, dry land began to reappear. In Genesis one, animals filled the earth. In Genesis eight, after the flood, the animals leave the ark and they filled the earth. In Genesis one, God tells Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply. In Genesis nine, after the flood, God tells Noah, be fruitful and multiply. In Genesis eight, after the flood, the animals leave the ark and they fill the earth. In Genesis nine, after the flood, God tells Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply. In Genesis nine, after the flood, God tells Noah, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth. Now this is really interesting. Adam was created from the ground. The word ground is Adama. In Genesis nine 20, the Bible calls Noah immediately a man of the Adama, which means a man of the ground, a man of the soil. Noah is created from the ground. is the new Adam because both Both Adam and Noah are the fathers of this new humanity. Both are given dominion over creation. Adam is in a garden. Think about this. Noah, after the flood, he plants a garden. The Bible calls it a vineyard. Adam is associated with the fruit. Noah is associated with fruit. But in this case, it's wine. Adam takes the fruit and sins after creation. Noah takes the fruit and sins after recreation. The Bible says he got drunk. Here's the point. The flood removed sinners. It did not remove sin. Why? Because our greatest issue is not our environment out there. Our greatest issue happens in our heart in here. We need our creator to step into creation and recreate something in us. And this is what this means. Like you said, the gospel is God becomes man in Christ, receives the judgment that you and I deserve on the wooden cross, and offers salvation to those who trust in him. And here's what happens. In the ark, God's judgment was avoided through the ark that God provided. At the cross, God's judgment was absorbed through the cross of Jesus and God provided. In the ark, God saves Noah and his family by trusting in the wooden ark. At the cross, God saves all who today trust in Jesus who died on a wooden cross. In other words, we can trust in Christ. That is the gospel. That is good news. And back to your question. What is exegesis? What you just did. What you just did. Letting scripture interpret. Letting scripture. Can I end with a warning and also a message of hope? Yes, please. So, Audrey and I, my wife and I, recently went to a concentration camp. We went to Buchenwald. Yeah. And if anyone has ever doubts, because you have the relativists like Bill Maher who say that sin doesn't exist. We can all just, you know, that's your truth. When you go to a concentration camp, you see the wickedness and the evil of mankind. Yeah. And there's this, it almost makes you physically, it can make you physically ill. And I was driving away and there was a scholar with us and he said, "Do you know what's very unfortunate? The Bible says it will get even worse than this before the second coming of Jesus Christ. So, thank God that sin has been dealt with." So, that is a warning and it is a warning why we need podcasts like yours to be bold for Christ. And I do want to mention one thing about the Bible. I was with a very learned person two days ago who has a very informed knowledge of Bible sales because you were talking about biblical literacy. More Bible. More Bible sold last year than they have in the last 200 years. So, that we're seeing a resurgence of Scripture among young men buying Bibles. That's right. And I have the details on that. The final thing I want to say is I want to actually end where we began, Carlos, with your permission. I have a photo I want to show people of a bridge because often the hardest person to forgive is yourself. People struggle with this and it turns out, Paul and Carlos, we're all far more dangerous to ourselves than we are to other people. Yeah. I used to live in Oxford, England. This is Golders Green, North London. If anyone knows anything about crossing the street in London, you know they do not stop for pedestrians. If you've been in England, they'll run you over. So, giving it a little context, this is one of the busiest intersections in all of London, Golders Green. And this is a man who had come to the end of his wits and wanted to take his life. Strangers are walking home from work. Everybody walks in London and they see something that doesn't look right. One of these people know each other and they stop and they protect and save this man from himself. Look at the picture. Carlos, do you see the guy who's holding onto the belt? I see him. I see someone who's crouching, "Hey, I've got him by his calf muscles." I see that man, he's probably whispering something, grasping, saying, "You're going to make it. You're going to be okay." You don't believe in God's providence. Someone has a rope coming home from work that day. How do you explain this? They lasso him. And guess what? This is a picture of God's forgiveness for us and we need to accept it. God, His love is literally, Jude says, we should be caught up in the atmosphere, we should be enveloped in His love. And so, I want to encourage you because of this series you've had on forgiveness, you probably need to watch it again. And you need to accept the forgiveness that God's already given you. Amen. And remember, we need people around us, so this is why you need to be at Lake Point. You can't do it alone. And you know what? The grace of God, it'd be every one of us on that bridge right now. That's right. Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, would you pray for us? Thank you, Jesus, for the power of your truth. Thank you for Paul and these incredible insights you gave to him. Thank you for Carlos and just the intertextuality he just shared. Things, Lord, I've never heard before and learned. Thank you for Pastor Josh Howerton. Thank you for the power of his voice through this podcast. Thank you for all the people who are listening and watching. And Father, we pray that we would be truth addicts, that we would know the scales of truth tip in our favor. We spell truth, J-E-S-U-S. And Lord, I pray all of this would cause us to fall more and more in love with you, Jesus. Not to walk out of here to try to be the smartest person in the room, but to be the person who's most in love with Christ, who is most eager to share the truth of the gospel with someone else. Bless this podcast to make a huge impact in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Let it free, brother. Let it free. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go.