Episode 171 – Paul’s Places – Part 12: Summary 2 Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script: With this letter I'm introducing Phoebe to you. She is our sister in the Christian faith and a deacon of the church in the city of Cenchrea. Give her a Christian welcome that shows you are God's holy people. Provide her with anything she may need, because she has provided help to many people, including me. Romans, chapter 16, verses 1 and 2, God’s Word Translation ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re very grateful for the chance to be with you today. For several weeks now we have been working on a series we call “Paul’s Places.” This is our 12th episode in this series and we are concluding it today. Anyone who has missed any of the previous lessons can find them on our website, crystalseabooks.com, or on their favorite podcast app. We wanted to do this series for one simple reason – to help people understand that the New Testament documents are historically reliable. In our last episode we begin to summarize some of the major points that we’ve covered during this series and we want to conclude that summary today. To do that, today In the studio we have RD Fierro, the author of a number of great Christian books and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, what’s on your mind as we close out our series on “Paul’s Places?” RD: Well, let me start by thanking our listeners for joining us here today. As you said the reason we wanted to do this “Paul’s Places” series was to help listeners think a little more deeply about the books that comprise our New Testament. If you open just about any internet news site these days on many days you’ll see a headline that says something like “facts about the most famous Bible myths” or “the truth about Jesus’ miracles.” Skepticism about the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, is pretty much the stock in trade for a great many peddlers of “click bait.” Well, here’s a question most people rarely think about. Why? Why do so many internet headlines claim to reveal a new “truth” or “fact” about Jesus, the Bible, or a Bible story or character? I mean there are a lot of books that one group or another claims to be the word of God. But you never see the names of those other books used in one of those headlines. There are no headlines that “what is the truth about the Bhagavad Gita (bah-gah-vahd geeta) or “where does the Book of Mormon get it wrong?” VK: I suppose the internet headline people would tell you that the Bible is the book that is the most widely known in our culture so it’s the book that sparks the most general interest. In other words, they would tell us that these headlines and banners are primarily a cultural phenomenon based on the historical basis for Western culture. RD: And I would agree that that is part of the reason those kinds of headlines are featured. But you never see headlines that are more generalized like “how we know all books claiming to be God’s word are false.” No. What you see in our culture in this day and age are repeated and determined attacks aimed specifically at the reliability of the Bible. To deny that the Bible is the primary, if not the singular, focus of the skeptics’ wrath in our culture would be to try to deny an easily confirmable fact. VK: So, why do you think the Bible is, as you say, “the primary, if not the singular, focus of the skeptics’ wrath?” And what does that have to do with “Paul’s Places?” RD: The reason the skeptics, critics, etc. focus on the Bible is because they know that it is God’s word. Other books that claim to be God’s word carry no peril for the skeptic or critic in our culture. But just as in the Garden of Eden the authentic word of God is always a threat to God’s enemies and rebels. VK: You’re thinking about the serpent’s very first words to Eve, aren’t you? Genesis, chapter 3, verse 1 actually records the second instance of a creature speaking in the Bible. “The snake was more clever than all the wild animals the LORD God had made. He asked the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must never eat the fruit of any tree in the garden'?" Before those words were spoken the only other creature we heard speaking was in Genesis, chapter 2, verse 23, when Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She will be named [woman] because she was taken from man." Both of those are from the God’s Word Translation. RD: Yes. The very first thing Satan did, in the guise of the serpent, when he confronted people was to cast doubt on God’s word. VK: So, really the internet headlines are just continuing a pattern that has been going on for over 6,000 years. RD: Yes. And in that odd, ironic kind of way that widespread attempt to cast doubt on the reliability of God’s word is a strange form of confirmation that the Bible is God’s word. The skeptics and critics can recognize, just as Satan did, God’s word. Why would they spend so much time attempting to debunk or cast doubt on a book that is actually a book of, as the critics often assert, “myths and fairy tales.” VK: Well, it is true you don’t see any internet banners saying, “The true details of Grimm’s fairy tales” or “where the Norse legends got it wrong.” But still, wouldn’t the critics say that the reason they have to spend all that energy correcting the misinformation in the Bible is that the Bible has so many people who believe it? And that is what offends them – that the Bible has so many people who believe in something that cannot possibly be true. RD: I’m sure they would say that. But the next legitimate question that the critic must answer is “what is it in the Bible that isn’t true?” When you ask that question all too often you get these vague, generalized dismissals such as “well, there is no evidence in historical records that a large Hebrew exodus from Egypt ever occurred” or “science has shown that the Bible is full of misinformation.” That is a form of fallacious argumentation called “elephant hurling.” And when you look closely at the Bible critics’ assertions you find that the sky is so full of elephants it looks gray instead of blue. VK: Ok. That’s an image I’m not sure I want to hold. I’m almost expecting a pachyderm to start falling into the studio right about now. What is “elephant hurling?” RD: “Elephant hurling” is the argumentative approach of throwing out a generalization out and making it seem like it is seemingly backed by a large and weighty body of evidence. The idea is to suggest that there is so much evidence in favor of the hurler’s point that it is useless to try and rebut it. Elephant hurlers say things like “archeologists have never found anything that confirms anything from the Bible,” or more commonly “all scientists agree that the earth is 4.5 Billion years old.” The elephant hurler wants to quash dissent by making it appear that all reasonable people must agree with them or appear foolish. But more often than not the elephant hurler does not even bother to determine whether the evidence actually supports their contention. They just hurl purported studies or volumes around under the guise that they all support their assertion – regardless of whether the study or analysis does. VK: And when it comes to criticizing the Bible you do find a lot of elephants being hurled – especially when it comes to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The critics will say things like, “Almost all historians say that there is no evidence outside the Bible that Jesus ever lived at all” or “Scientists will tell you that if people claim to have seen Jesus after he died it was a form of mass delusion.” Elephant hurlers don’t delve into the details because the real world gets a lot more confusing when you look at the details. That’s one of the reason we do series like Paul’s Places – to get into the details. The more you look into the details the more you find out that the elephant hurlers don’t have nearly as much evidence on their side as they would like you to believe. And when it comes to the Bible the details overwhelmingly validate the Bible’s reliability. RD: Yes. So, when you get beyond the elephant hurling we come back to the original point. The reason there are so many stories and articles all over the internet about the Bible is because the Bible is a book that communicates truth and our culture finds much of the truth the Bible contains very disagreeable. Most of the supposed analysis is really just disguised animosity. The Bible’s truth is an implied rejection of a great deal of contemporary culture. VK: The classic enemies of an authentic believer are the world, the flesh, and the devil. Well, the world around us right now expresses its enmity less by direct attack than by casting subtle doubts. People might resist or be alarmed by an outright attack but compromise by degree is far less likely to encounter resistance. But even subtle push back is still push back. And if the Bible were really just a “collection of myths and fairy tales” why would so much push back be necessary? The critics push back because no matter how much they dislike it the truth of the Bible continues to weigh upon their consciences. As Paul puts it in the book of Romans, chapter 1, verses 18 through 21: “But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks.” That’s the New Living Translation. RD: Critics may deny God exists but even their denials betray their awareness of His presence. No one publishes articles pushing back on Grimm’s fairy tales or ancient pagan mythologies because those things are self-evidently not true. They are not accurate portrayals of reality. No one spends any time pushing back on those things but they spend enormous amounts of time telling us that the Bible falls in the same category of fable and myth. But, if that were true, why do they treat the Bible so differently? They spend time pushing against the Bible precisely because they know the Bible is true. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. The Bible is an accurate reflection of reality. It’s an accurate reflection of human and world history. It’s an accurate reflection of the problems associated with living in a fallen creation. It’s an accurate reflection of man’s true awareness of an ultimate judgement and it’s an accurate reflection of God’s sovereignty over all the created order. So, the critics must try to dismiss it. It’s just that their strategies for doing so always simply wind up pointing back to the fact that the Bible is true. VK: Most of the criticism of the Bible is either based on faulty facts or faulty analysis. For instance, you often hear the criticism that God cannot exist because evil exists. It’s usually framed something like this: “A good God who is all powerful would not permit evil to exist. So, God is either not all powerful because He cannot stop evil. Or God is not good because He could prevent the existence of evil but He chooses not to.” But – and this is a huge but – the criticism presumes that there is a real difference between good and evil. After all, you can’t complain about God allowing evil to exist if there is no difference between good and evil. But, without God, how would such a distinction between good and evil be established? When we say that slavery and child pornography are evil we do not mean that we simply do not like them. That’s a matter of preference. We do not mean that they are inconvenient. That would be a matter of personal taste. When we say they are evil, and they are, we mean they violate an objective standard that should govern human behavior because there is a real difference between actions that are good and those that are evil. But the existence of an objective standard requires the existence of a Standard Maker who has the legal capacity to set standards and who can judge and hold accountable violators. So, the person complaining that the existence of evil means that God can’t exist rebuts their own basic premise. They wind up providing an affirmative demonstration that God must exist. RD: So, all this is why we did the Paul’s places series. The elephant hurlers’ arguments lose their power when you start looking at the flying pachyderms more closely. When they pass overhead at a distance they look imposing. But once you examine them you find out they were just balloons filled with hot air. You quickly find out that rather than there being no solid historical evidence for Christ’s life, death, and resurrection that there is an abundance of evidence. And you find out that the Bible, rather than being filled with myth and fable, when it addresses matters of human history contains history that is reliable, reasonable, and verifiable. It has been said that one of the strongest lines of evidence for the reality of the resurrection was the appearance and “stickiness” of belief in the resurrection after Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. VK: What you’re saying is that prior to Jesus’ life there was no widespread belief in physical resurrection even among the Jews. In fact, at the time that Jesus lived the Jewish sect that controlled their governing body outright rejected the entire concept of life after death. RD: Yes. During Jesus’ lifetime the Sadducees controlled the Sanhedrin – the Jews’ governing council. And the Sadducees rejected many of the supernatural aspects of the Jewish faith such as the existence of angels. And they firmly rejected the idea of life after death. The Sadducees chief opponents, the Pharisees, did accept the idea of life after death but even they had a very poorly defined concept of what such life looked like. None of the major Jewish beliefs held to the idea of a physical resurrection of a body. That’s one reason even Jesus’ own disciples had such a hard time with what he told them about what would happen to him. VK: Neither the disciples, the common people, nor the Jewish leaders ever envisioned their Messiah dying much less coming back to life after death. The general idea of the Messiah was that he would be a conquering hero would crush Israel’s enemies militarily and establish a golden era of Jewish prosperity. So, even though the disciples had heard Jesus say that he was indeed the Messiah they had no real concept of what he was talking about. The disciples thought Jesus was going to defeat the Romans. Jesus knew that he was going to defeat a much more difficult enemy – death itself. RD: Right. So, it is easy to see why the disciples were so devastated when Jesus died on the cross. Jesus’ death wasn’t just the death of a man it was the death of an entire set of hopes and dreams. VK: After all, if they had believed that Jesus would die on Friday only to rise on Sunday they would not have exhibited the utter devastation that they did. They might have been grieved over what Jesus had endured but they would have said to themselves, “but once Sunday arrives he’ll be back.” But they didn’t believe Jesus was coming back. That illustrates that the Jews simply did not have physical resurrection as a plank of their belief system. And even after Jesus returned they still had a hard time integrating the enormity of what had happened into that thinking. We think of Thomas saying, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” That’s the gospel of John, chapter 20, verse 25 in the New International Version. RD: Yes. So, this reluctance to believe wasn’t just present among the disciples. It was present among all the Jews and of course the larger culture surrounding them. Paul, when he was still Saul, shared in this disbelief. It wasn’t until he personally encountered the risen Christ that his life changed. And it was in the culture of disbelief that Paul then had to minister and testify. VK: But minister and testify he did, as did the rest of the Apostles and first converts many of whom had also seen the resurrected Jesus. And evidence of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection is that those early believers were so convicted that despite persecution and martyrdom they held to that belief for the rest of their lives. Church tradition tells us of the original 11 disciples who believed only the Apostle John was not martyred. And even John endured exile and maltreatment for maintaining his conviction. Judas, of course, who had betrayed Jesus committed suicide before the resurrection. RD: It has been said that the biggest loser of all time was Judas – not because he betrayed Jesus – even Peter denied Jesus when it counted most. Judas is the biggest loser of all time because he hung himself without waiting for Sunday and the resurrection. Had he waited he would have seen the risen Christ who would have forgiven him. VK: Now that is eternal death. Judas was less than 36 hours away from obtaining eternal glory. Instead he is condemned for all time. That will give you something to think about. RD: In an odd way we live in an era not too dissimilar to the era in which the Apostle Paul conducted his ministry. We live in an era when skepticism about religion abounds. In fact, we live in an age where skepticism about truth is widespread. Just about every institution in the U.S. has become hostile to Christianity and government power has been used to both suppress Christians and their faith. In America we worship the “separation of church and state” far more than we actually worship in church. VK: The phrase “separation of church and state” has become a slogan and rallying cry of American officialdom to mean Christian influence must be eradicated from the public square. Yet, ironically, when Thomas Jefferson used the phrase, “wall of separation between church and state” in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 Jefferson’s point was that the government should stay out of the church’s business not vice-versa. Jefferson held church services in the White House. He would have never recognized the application of the phrase as it manifested itself in the 20th and 21st centuries. RD: Yes. So, in an odd way the Apostle Paul’s epistles take on a unique role for Christians in the western world today – actually a dual role. The content of the Pauline epistles shows us that they are authentic letters written to groups of believers living in and around the Roman Empire in the last half of the 1st century AD. Their unique characteristics demonstrate that and confirm both their authenticity and their historicity. They are both historically appropriate and historically informative. The Pauline Epistles have always done that – and will always play that role. VK: The Pauline epistles are no less God’s Word than any other part of the Bible. They are God’s communication to man in the same way as the law that God gave to Moses. And it was Jesus himself who said, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” That is Matthew, chapter 5, verse 18 from the New International Version. RD: But the Pauline epistles can have special meaning for believers today because we testify to a culture that is very similar to many parts of the culture that was present in the Roman Empire. The city of Corinth was economically vibrant but morally degenerate. They literally worshipped the goddess of sex and pleasure. The believers in the region of Galatia were being harassed by agitators who wanted to pervert the simplicity of the gospel by adding extraneous requirements. How often in the church have we heard legalists who have insisted that you cannot be a Christian unless you follow a particular set of rules none of which are present in scripture. The church in Colossae was located in a region where mystery religions flourished and the practitioners of those religions claimed to have unique insights that were available only to them. In our culture there is a tsunami of groups or people who have claimed to possess “codes,” “secrets,” or “special revelations” that communicate the hidden wisdom of the universe or tell us “what really happened to Jesus or his disciples?” VK: What you’re saying is that beside the Pauline epistles containing abundant evidence of being true, the truth they communicate is more important than ever to current believers. In a culture where a widespread consensus on the truth Christianity has been abandoned we can learn from the Apostle Paul’s approach to witnessing. Paul witnessed in a culture that bears striking similarities to our own. In the Roman Empire emperor worship was mandated. In our own culture we have so elevated our opinion of ourselves, and the cultural devices we have created, that we are perilously close to an identical idolatry. The Romans tried to create gods out of men and we have created gods out of various ideologies and purportedly “scientific concepts.” RD: Exactly. But we can take heart from Paul’s experiences. In Acts, chapter 19, verse 26 we hear one of Paul’s opponents, a silversmith named Demetrius lead a riot and proclaim, “You see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but almost all over [the province of] Asia, this Paul has persuaded [people to believe his teaching] and has misled a large number of people, claiming that gods made by [human] hands are not really gods at all.” That’s from the Amplified Bible. So, one of Paul’s most ardent opponents inadvertently gave an amazing testimony of the effectiveness of Paul’s ministry. And as we have talked about frequently in this Paul’s Places series Paul always kept his testimony and teaching focused on the crucified Christ. Paul knew that the crucified Christ was foolishness to many and a stumbling block for many others but that did not deter him. The gospel’s power is in its truth and it was persuasive to the first people to hear it like Phoebe who we heard about in our opening scripture. And that truth is just as persuasive today but we must proclaim it. The simple truth is that Jesus died on a cross and paid the price for our sins. That’s a simple historical fact that has a profound spiritual implication. Well, if all Jesus had done was die we would have no hope. But it is also a simple historical fact that Jesus walked, on his own power, out of a sealed tomb, witnessed to hundreds, and ultimately ascended back to His eternal throne. That is a simple historical fact but it is the most profound spiritual truth of all time. VK: Well, that’s a good place to end for today. This “Paul’s Places” series is all about helping people see more clearly that the Pauline epistles, the letters contained in the New Testament written by the Apostle Paul, are exactly what they claim to be. They are letters written by one of Christianity’s first evangelical preachers to convey important truths to those who had begun to place their trust in Jesus. Those letters most certainly assert Christ’s divinity but far from that assertion being some kind of myth it is backed up by solid historical evidence and testimony. Let’s close with prayer as we always do. Today let’s listen to a prayer for our friends who have yet to begin a saving relationship with Christ Jesus. The smallest prayer of the most frail believer when heard by God is more powerful than we can possibly imagine. ---- PRAYER FOR THE SPIRITUALLY LOST VK: Before we close we’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes in this series or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Opening Bible Quotes from the God’s Word Translation) Romans, chapter 16, verses 1 and 2, God’s Word Translation paultanner.org/English Docs/SpecialArt/Pauline Chronology.pdf