0:09

I don't know. I mean, does anyone really pay

0:11

attention to radio anymore? I'm

0:14

a cop you idiot. Are

0:19

you ready to examine the evidence for Christianity?

0:24

Welcome. To the ColdCase Christianity ColdCase,

0:28

the only Christian case making podcast

0:30

hosted by cold case homicide detective.

0:39

Here's your host, Jay Warner Wallace.

0:49

One hundred percent satisfaction guarantee.

0:55

So glad to join us here at the ColdCase Christianity

0:58

ColdCase. I am Jay Warner Wallace.

1:00

We are gonna this week talk little bit about well,

1:02

from last week, I was traveling, and I posted

1:05

a an interview I did with Frank Turic

1:08

last month, moved before last, in which

1:10

we talked about some observations

1:12

we made at CIA, the

1:14

cross examined instructors academy on how we

1:16

might become better casemakers,

1:18

Apologist, even in our lives as Christians.

1:21

And so we talked about that a little bit and I thought, you know,

1:23

this caused me to think even deeper about

1:25

some of these issues given how many emails

1:27

I get on this topic. And you

1:29

know what you think about how it is you're gonna contribute

1:32

and how it is you might move forward

1:35

in in a world where you like you have

1:37

limited time. I feel that way sometimes at fifty

1:39

two. But, hey, you know, time is short and we

1:41

need to work hard and and as much as we

1:43

can to to do the best we can to share the gospel

1:45

and to give people tools to be able

1:47

to think about their faith. Right? You you mean you all

1:49

wanna make some kind of contribution. I

1:51

bet you feel the same way, especially if you're listening

1:53

to a podcast like this. Well, I just want

1:56

to spend this podcast talking a little bit about how

1:58

to become a better one dollar. Apologies. As a matter

2:00

of fact, I wanna thank Mag Kuzac

2:02

is a young lady who actually

2:04

purchased the URL back

2:06

when I first started talking about this. I don't know how

2:08

many years ago. And she bought

2:10

the URL one Apologist

2:12

dot com for her

2:15

Apologist group on the East Coast in

2:17

the Lima East Coast is in a grand

2:19

rap Michigan. So she

2:21

bought this URL, and she started this club, and she had

2:23

my quote on the on the homepage of it. And

2:25

and this is maybe six or seven years ago. And

2:27

so she emailed this week and said, hey. You

2:29

know what? Would you like to have that u

2:32

URL? I'll I'll go ahead and transfer it over

2:34

to you, and she did that for me. So now, I

2:36

think that at some point, down the road.

2:38

I will probably do something more with this

2:40

idea of being a one dollars Apologist.

2:42

And as you know, if you listen to this podcast,

2:44

you know, I've talked a lot about how you

2:46

ought not rely on

2:49

million dollar Apologist to answer all

2:51

the questions your kids may have or

2:53

even the questions that you may have. Instead,

2:55

what we need are less million dollar Apologist,

2:57

we need a million one dollars Apologist,

2:59

people who are willing wherever they are

3:01

to step out and do exactly

3:04

what Peter tells us in first Peter three fifteen.

3:06

We talk about it a lot, but typically a

3:08

lot most of us don't do it. As a matter of fact, I

3:10

wanna read email this week and talk more

3:12

about how you can, you know, kind of think

3:14

through how you can better become

3:16

a good Christian case maker. What that

3:18

really means? And we talk sometimes

3:20

about to some passing, but I wanna dedicate this

3:22

entire podcast to it. So so just

3:24

hold on with me because I think I've got some tools

3:27

and some ideas that may help you right where you

3:29

are. Either be in a place where you

3:31

can become better at what you're already

3:33

doing. Or how about this? Be at a place

3:35

where you can step out maybe for the first

3:37

time and do what you haven't been doing

3:39

as of yet, wouldn't that be great?

3:41

And so that's what I wanna talk about. Now

3:43

we're gonna begin with an

3:46

email I got from Ben. And I've

3:48

talked to Ben and asked if I could read his email. He said,

3:50

yeah. Go ahead. Because, number

3:52

one, a good email. Lots of good issues are

3:54

raised. I wanna be able to talk about it longer. I knew

3:56

I couldn't, yeah, email him back and write in, you

3:58

know, all these I mean, this you

4:00

guys realized that in the last year, had

4:03

no idea what it would be like to publish a

4:05

book, had no experience with that,

4:08

knew though that I was heading different direction as

4:10

a as a, you know, as an apologized as,

4:12

you know, and I I hate these phrase. I just typically

4:14

call it as a Christian case maker. And

4:18

really, we're gonna talk about what that really means in

4:20

a minute and how you might be able to do something similar.

4:23

But I had no idea that in the first

4:25

year, I would do over fifty

4:27

events. And those are events where,

4:29

you know, they aren't just single talks. Sometimes

4:31

an event is a five day trip where you're

4:33

speaking at five different universities. Sometimes

4:35

an event in terms of how we calculate them,

4:37

how we measure them. When you, you know, I've done fifty two

4:39

of these I think so far this year. And

4:42

they are they are taxing. You know, they they take

4:44

you all over the country. And I

4:46

do a great number of them for free.

4:49

Because I feel like the the work is so important,

4:51

especially to college groups who can't afford anything.

4:54

You know, I want there to be value, and I want

4:56

them to see value in what we do.

4:58

I think I might have told this to you in past podcast.

5:00

It used to be I would go to some local colleges

5:03

and say I'll I'll be happy to speak for free.

5:05

And then you get there and and they wouldn't even do much to

5:07

kind of drum up a crowd because they realized

5:09

they were getting me for free. And so they you'd

5:11

be, you know, twelve people in the room. So

5:14

then I said, you know, tell you what? I'll come for free.

5:16

I'll I'll charge you

5:18

five hundred dollars to come.

5:21

Unless you can put fifty people in the room.

5:23

In which case, it'll be free. And

5:26

suddenly, we were doing events with at least fifty people.

5:29

And that to me is they see some

5:31

value on what we're doing. They

5:33

promote it in a way. They're excited about promoting.

5:35

They have a goal. They're trying to

5:37

reach. And fifty people get

5:39

to hear what we're talking about rather than twelve

5:41

because nobody even bothered to put up the poster.

5:43

And so I think, you know, there's ways

5:45

to kind of impact your world as

5:47

a casemaker wherever you are.

5:50

And I bet you there's somebody close to you,

5:52

some school close to you that could benefit

5:54

from your knowledge. And as a matter of

5:56

fact, I meet a lot of these people at

5:58

CIA. Where Frank Turk has done

6:00

a wonderful job of establishing a

6:02

place where people can go to learn how to

6:04

become better Christian casemakers.

6:08

And it's in the summer. It's

6:10

in North Carolina. It's

6:12

at SES. And we we get there

6:14

together and we go through the process of discussing

6:17

what it is. We're trying to argue for, how to

6:19

best present it, and then we evaluate each other and

6:21

how we present. Now when I was there

6:23

last year, I met the Brown family.

6:26

Mom, dad, and son went to the

6:28

training together. And boy, was that great to

6:30

see? Because all three are

6:33

wanting to get in the game at whatever

6:35

level they're at, wherever they are,

6:37

you know, the mom wasn't wants to get involved

6:39

in women's ministry. The sun Ben has

6:41

now written to me trying to get involved in the

6:43

college age ministry. Now let me read to you. He's a

6:45

graduate of Baylor. By the way, as Baylor having a

6:47

great year, we were teasing about Baylor UCLA.

6:49

We'll clearly Baylor is having

6:51

a phenomenal year, and we'll see how

6:53

how close to the top, you know, the possibility

6:56

of playing a championship game they get. But

6:58

as of now, they're undefeated in scoring an

7:00

outrageous number of points. You know, starting to

7:02

grab a trail here. Let's go back to Ben's

7:04

email. Here's what he says. I think

7:06

this email illustrates a lot of issues that

7:08

you may see if you haven't already

7:10

started to work in this, or you may

7:13

begin to see if you have start to jump out

7:15

and and serve in your local church. Here's what he

7:17

writes. Jim, how are things? I just thought

7:19

I'd give you an update on how things are going

7:21

down here, there in Texas. There

7:23

are two parts of this report. One regards the

7:25

apologetics ministry we've been trying to get down

7:27

going down here. In the other regards something of a

7:29

dilemma that I'd like your opinion on, and we

7:31

want Paul and get to that part of the email. But here's what he

7:33

says. You may recall back in September. I told you about

7:35

the college minister who wanted me to lead

7:37

an ministry through this college

7:39

ministry at at our church. And

7:41

you may also recall that I along with my friends

7:43

had begun meeting regularly every week to go

7:45

through. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, a

7:47

chapter at a time. Training each other.

7:50

Maybe I didn't mention this, but now they think of it, he

7:52

says. But well, you'll be

7:54

happy to know that yesterday, he has friends and

7:56

and and he managed to make

7:58

an open open up their own apologetics

8:00

group to the church where he's serving.

8:02

So here's what he says. College

8:06

pastor, let me make an announcement Sunday morning

8:08

to the college students that there's a group that meets

8:10

regularly every week to aid in a system

8:12

with questions or challenges they may have

8:14

about Christianity. With an

8:16

open invitation to anyone interested in

8:18

training with us regularly as well. After

8:20

months of trying to get this thing going, we've finally

8:22

gotten it kick started. And

8:24

that's about the end of the good news.

8:27

Our first official meeting was less like a

8:29

maiden voyage and more like trying to back a

8:31

car out of an icy uphill driveway without

8:34

tires or any experienced driving

8:36

cars. So this is what

8:38

he is now gonna say happened at

8:40

the first meeting. And I just as I read

8:42

this to you, I want you to just kind

8:44

of your your my heart goes out to Ben

8:46

because, man, I hear this story

8:49

over and over and over

8:51

again. So here's what he

8:53

said. We had

8:55

one fellow show up, which

8:57

left us a nice host to guest

8:59

ratio. Unfortunately,

9:01

this young man's goal was not to

9:03

train in apologetics, ask questions

9:05

about her offer encouragement for her cause.

9:07

No. His goal was to

9:09

talk me out of it. I

9:11

won't bore you with the details. Let's just

9:13

say that this guy had a somewhat condescending view

9:15

of that I am now and

9:17

only now realizing all of the things

9:19

I should've, could've said that could've, would've

9:21

convinced him. I'm not gonna act like

9:23

it wasn't a little discouraging. I

9:26

was prepared for a no show maiden

9:28

voyage, but I guess I wasn't

9:30

prepared for people to show up and try to burn the

9:32

ship down. But hey, it's not on me. Right? I

9:34

just gotta trust God with this stuff and try to

9:36

learn as best I can. Now

9:38

I turned the corner here and he asked another question that's

9:41

unrelated to this first one, but I wanna stay right in

9:43

this part of the email where he's talking about

9:45

his experience and just share with you what

9:47

you probably have already experienced yourself

9:49

if you are trying to start an

9:51

Apologist ministry in your church. You

9:54

know what I discovered after

9:56

speaking all around the country for the first time.

9:59

In my life to be able to drive and to be able to

10:01

fly all over the place and meet with

10:03

Christians at all

10:05

different kinds of churches. And

10:07

I mean, we're talking about I mean,

10:09

saddleback. I was there last weekend. You

10:11

know, people go to saddleback. That's a huge church. And I've

10:13

been at churches where we were lucky to get twenty

10:15

people to show up. I've been

10:17

in churches in very rural areas, churches

10:19

in big metropolitan cities.

10:21

And I get to

10:23

see over and over again. Typically, I'm being

10:25

brought in by somebody who's got a passion

10:27

for Either a small group leader or a

10:29

ministry leader or the pastor who

10:31

wants to stray reached the church in this

10:33

way and even then what I see

10:35

over and over and over

10:37

again are Christians who

10:39

have no interest in

10:41

exploring Christianity from

10:43

the perspective of defending

10:46

it, from the perspective of

10:48

its truth claims. They

10:50

are more than happy to attend church.

10:53

And and and, you know, we

10:55

really if you ask them even the the

10:57

simplest question, the simplest pushback,

10:59

why are you a Christian, even if you

11:02

were to ask that question, why are you a Christian? I

11:04

think you'd be shocked to see what most Christians

11:06

would probably say. We've

11:08

got work to do. And the

11:11

work we have to do is not just to to

11:13

help people understand what the evidence

11:15

demonstrates, what the evidence even is. Is

11:17

to help people understand why they

11:19

ought to even take an evidential approach to

11:21

their faith in the first place. I

11:24

had to spend as much time making

11:26

a case for casemaking as

11:28

I do, making a case for

11:31

Christianity. Because

11:33

most people in the church, I don't think

11:35

get it yet. And this

11:37

is one of the reasons why I try to

11:39

write at a very accessible level.

11:42

You know, I you you know when you when you

11:44

first start working in any

11:47

field, in any

11:49

area of pertise and you you start to

11:51

write or you start to contribute, which you really want

11:53

are your peers, the people who you

11:55

respect. Isn't it great when they say, hey,

11:57

good job? You're doing a good job.

12:01

But here in this category where we're

12:03

working as casemakers, we have to be

12:05

less interested with what our fellow

12:07

casemakers that make. Then we are with

12:09

the impact we're having on those who don't

12:11

know anything about casemaking. In other

12:13

words, I've got to really

12:15

force myself not to write for people

12:17

who know this stuff. For

12:19

people who are even interested in this

12:21

stuff, you and I have to write for those who

12:23

have no interest and we have to find a way

12:25

to make it interesting and find a

12:27

way to get them engaged in

12:29

thinking about the evidences and

12:31

thinking about a view of Christianity

12:34

that is different. I mean, if you can just put it this

12:36

way, If you can take the

12:38

same approach to your faith as a

12:40

Christian that my Mormon family takes with

12:42

their faith as Mormons, something's

12:44

wrong. Now

12:46

you may say, well, look, I don't have these kinds

12:48

of issues. I don't have these kinds of questions.

12:50

I I was I I think that God has already

12:53

spoken to me on this. I've prayed about it.

12:55

I have a rich robust relationship with

12:57

Christ. I feel like I I

12:59

am satisfied that this is true. I know it's

13:01

true because my scripture tells me it's

13:03

true. Okay. I

13:05

God bless you. But you know that

13:07

every Mormon you know can say the exact

13:09

same thing. And we don't think they're right. We

13:11

think they're wrong. We think they're

13:13

wrong because they haven't put their scripture to the

13:15

test. They haven't put their

13:17

worldview to the test. They haven't put their

13:19

profit to the test. All

13:22

I'm saying is we're gonna spend some time

13:25

speaking to a culture, a

13:27

Christian culture, that for the

13:29

most part has been anti intellectual,

13:32

at least and the what I see. And, you

13:35

know, we kinda surround ourselves with folks who

13:37

read our blogs, who we kind of join

13:39

up with on Facebook clubs

13:41

and we're interacting with in terms

13:43

of our social

13:45

media. And we can get lose track

13:47

of the fact that for the vast

13:49

majority of Christians

13:51

and Christianity are just as

13:53

been described here. You're gonna have a

13:55

heck of a time convincing even your church

13:57

leadership that this is

13:59

worth it. And that the church leadership is

14:01

not really convinced in pushing hard

14:03

in designing their ministry to

14:05

to to pursue this goal, then you're gonna end

14:07

up with one person at your meeting.

14:09

And then when you get that one person at your meeting,

14:12

if he doesn't understand the value, if the

14:14

church hasn't been living a value of a

14:16

very intellectual rational

14:18

approach, evidential approach to what they believe

14:21

that is highly challenging

14:23

that that seeks to worship God with

14:25

your mind more than as as much at least as much

14:27

as with your your songs that you

14:29

sing in your prayer life. That's to

14:31

see this academic adventure,

14:33

this this leaning in to the the

14:36

the philosophy, the rich history, the

14:38

rich academic history of Christianity is

14:40

a way of worshiping God with your

14:42

mind. If you don't believe that, And if the church

14:44

doesn't believe that, then don't be surprised when

14:46

people will show up and try to talk you after

14:48

this. There

14:51

are lots of folks who do not believe evidential

14:53

apologetics has really any role in Christianity.

14:55

A lot of presuppositional friends.

14:58

I'd I'd written pretty harsh reviews

15:00

of my book because they're

15:02

not convinced that evidentialism on

15:04

its face has any value in anybody who

15:06

would write an evidential book. Is

15:09

misguided according

15:11

to this view. So so look,

15:13

here's what my my encouragement to you is

15:15

to Ben. I I get this happens. Now

15:18

at some point, I

15:20

realized that I was gonna have limited

15:22

impact in the church. Now, I'm gonna

15:24

give you an example of this. I I

15:26

actually decided to to serve an and this

15:28

is one that you can think about Ben. I mean, sometimes

15:30

what you have to do is if you start

15:32

out and saying that I am the apologetics

15:34

guy, and I wanna do something with

15:36

apologetics, then expect a

15:38

very small, modest response. If on the other

15:40

hand, you said, you know what, I'm here to

15:42

serve the youth group. And

15:45

the college group. Do you have a

15:47

need? I mean, just a need for, you know,

15:49

anybody to serve in any way. I mean, if you just

15:51

need bodies to to, you know, kind of help out at a

15:53

bigger event. If you need somebody to run a small

15:55

group for your high schoolers, do you need some

15:57

help at all? And if you need

15:59

some help at all, I'm willing to jump in and then

16:01

that's what I would do. I would I not

16:03

jump in right now as the apologetics

16:05

guy leading Apologist I'd

16:07

say, what's the age group I want

16:09

to impact? Oh, it's college. Can

16:11

I serve with the college ministry? And before long,

16:13

you'll be reading you'll be leading a group of twelve

16:15

guys in the college

16:17

group. And now that you

16:19

have that group, Under

16:21

your guidance, you can

16:23

become the casemaker you always wanted to

16:25

be and the group's already there. You

16:27

didn't fish with apologetics on the

16:29

end of your hook. You fished with

16:31

serving, just let me

16:33

serve on the end of your hook. And once

16:35

you have what the group that you are gonna

16:37

be given, now you can

16:39

begin to pour into them in a way that

16:41

makes a difference. And also, it's not

16:43

scheming. You're not doing this like a like a

16:45

like a plot, and we're gonna find a way

16:47

to tricked them into Apologist. instead

16:49

you're building relationships that

16:51

are so robust and trustworthy

16:53

that eventually students came to me

16:55

for kinds of these kinds of answers anyway.

16:57

So I took the ministry I had

17:00

and I turned it into an apologetics

17:02

ministry. And even then, Ben, I

17:04

realized that I only spoke to fifty people,

17:07

you know, had fifty students in my youth

17:09

ministry. That's not a bad sized youth ministry, I

17:11

guess, around the country, but here

17:13

in Southern California, you know, I spoke to a youth ministry last week

17:15

and they probably had a thousand students or pretty

17:17

close to it. So,

17:20

you know, this is, you know, small here in Southern California,

17:23

but I knew I was only impacting fifty. And

17:25

I also knew that in that fifty, probably

17:27

only ten. Were

17:29

really on the edge of their seats over these kinds of

17:31

issues. The rest were there because

17:33

a girl was sitting next to them or, you know,

17:35

any number of reasons that young people

17:37

get drug the youth ministries by their parents or whatever. You're trying

17:39

to, of course, pour into everyone

17:41

equally, but understand that even then with young

17:43

people who are coming with their parents, that's

17:45

just the nature of the game. So

17:48

I would spend time speaking

17:50

to fifty to reach the ten, and then

17:52

that night, I would rush

17:54

back to my computer and

17:56

bang out the message in a way that it was part

17:58

of an article. And I'd post it on, please

18:00

convince me. And you know what? Those

18:03

ridiculously poorly written hasty

18:05

articles that I posted on, please convince

18:07

me, are still being read all

18:09

the time. We have four times more

18:12

traffic. That please convince me

18:14

that I have at ColdCase Christianity. And

18:16

I'm trying to move everything over and

18:18

rewrite everything so it's not

18:20

quite so empathetic because that's what it is right now. It's

18:22

I mean, I realized that I you know, to how do you do

18:24

this? How do you I would start

18:26

usually on Tuesday research merging.

18:28

And by Thursday, I'm starting to build the media. And

18:30

then by, you know, I'm banging it out

18:32

in terms of notes by Saturday afternoon. I'm

18:35

presenting it on Sunday come back

18:37

home on Sunday night and type it up a little

18:39

more formally and stick it on the

18:41

website. You know, that's a pretty rigid

18:43

schedule after a while. Stuff starts to look like it's

18:45

being bang together. I mean, I've got so

18:47

many typos alone on those pages. I'm

18:49

embarrassed. But worse than that, the

18:51

content I think has to be vetted has

18:53

to be better written. I mean, grammatically, it's

18:56

terrible. So I'm just spending time

18:58

kind of rewriting through the stuff on, please

19:00

convince me as I can. And

19:02

taking out what I think today, I would be more than happy

19:04

to stand behind in realizing that

19:06

a lot of the other stuff was it sounds

19:09

like guy is preaching it to a youth group.

19:11

Well, duh. That's, you know, so at

19:13

some point, that's actually not bad

19:15

because that that approach of of preaching

19:17

it to a youth group means I'm reaching a

19:19

level of folks who are is

19:21

accessible, the materials accessible because it

19:23

was really written originally to a youth group. As a matter of fact,

19:25

the entire book ColdCase

19:27

Christianity was really a

19:31

message, a series of messages that I gave

19:33

to my used Ruth Group that I

19:35

never even wrote down, but that Sean

19:37

McDowell saw me doing and said, you should write about

19:39

this. So I have and

19:41

all the research I've poured in,

19:43

of course, it doesn't It's not usually reflected in that depth in

19:45

a presentation you give verbally, but I was able

19:47

to go back and and make a book out of it.

19:50

I think that this is the goal, Ben.

19:53

Our goal is to get involved in ministry and serve

19:55

and then while we're there to turn

19:57

the ship. You can't turn this ship

19:59

though if you're just a tugboat on

20:01

outside trying to throw your line onto the

20:04

boat. You have to be in the boat behind the

20:06

wheel. And that's what I think

20:08

I wanna encourage all of you who may be

20:10

experiencing the same thing. Because you're going into your

20:12

church and you're saying, gosh, I wanna start

20:14

this new thing you don't think you

20:16

need. Instead of going into the church and saying, hey,

20:18

I wanna serve wherever you have

20:20

a need, And once I get there, I'm

20:22

gonna show you something fantastic. I

20:24

think that second approach

20:26

will turn more churches than the

20:29

first. So Ben, that's how I would go back and

20:31

reapproach this. And don't be

20:34

discouraged that there are folks who don't

20:36

get it. You know, I wrote about this, and

20:38

I think I talked about on the podcast about Peter

20:40

Bogosian's book, right, on how to

20:42

he wrote a book. This is the

20:45

Portland State University philosophy professor who wrote a book on a

20:47

training manual for atheists.

20:49

And, you know, he recognizes

20:51

the same problem that I recognize.

20:54

People in the church who are not willing to

20:56

assess the truth claims of Christianity

20:59

intellectually. Of course, he thinks if we

21:01

do that, we'll walk out. I think if you do it,

21:03

you'll stay in and you'll be even so committed,

21:05

you'll actually have a bigger impact on

21:07

Christendom. The evidence is on

21:09

our side. But we're

21:11

both trying to reach the same group

21:13

folks. Both the

21:15

aggressive, ambitious, atheist, and the

21:17

aggressive ambitious Christian

21:19

casemakers want to reach the mass

21:22

majority of Christians and Christian to

21:24

help change the direction,

21:26

change the emphasis. Now,

21:29

of course, how do we do it? I think

21:31

Ben one way is just to serve first and

21:33

then steer the boat second.

21:36

But I know you're probably getting frustrated with what you're

21:38

getting from from folks, but don't be surprised when people

21:40

who have been led in one direction are still

21:42

going in that direction. You need

21:44

to start leading and then change the direction. Alright?

21:47

So I hope that somehow that helps you kind

21:49

of think through the issues a little better. Well, take a

21:51

break. I wanna come back and add a few more thoughts

21:54

to this. I'm

22:01

sure by now you've heard that I've written a book called

22:03

Cold Case Christianity and I ignored because I

22:05

think there are some similarities between

22:08

working cold cases and examining the Christian worldview. When

22:10

you think about it, cold case detectives

22:12

investigate specific types of criminal events, events

22:14

that occurred in the distant past, and for which there

22:16

are typically no living eye

22:18

witnesses and or no direct physical evidence.

22:21

I've never had a case that I made by way

22:23

of direct physical evidence. These cases

22:25

are made by examining the nature of

22:27

circumstantial evidence and assembling a

22:29

convincing cumulative circumstantial

22:32

case. The claims of the new testament gospels can

22:34

be similarly investigated. I've

22:36

the gospels record events that occurred in the distant past

22:38

for which there are no living eyewitnesses and

22:40

no direct physical evidence. I think

22:42

the tools used by case investigators can

22:44

be applied to the new testament gospels to

22:47

determine if the facts they represent are

22:49

a true record of the life

22:51

of Jesus. Now, I I think cold case

22:53

Christianity will help you do three things. One will

22:55

provide you with ten principles of cold case

22:57

investigations to equip you

22:59

to use those concepts as you consider the claims of the new

23:01

testament gospel authors. They're simple principles,

23:03

and I think it will give you new insight in

23:05

the historic evidence for Christianity.

23:08

2II hope to provide you with a four step template

23:10

to evaluate the claims of the gospel

23:12

writers. Cold case Christianity will teach

23:14

you how to evaluate eye witnesses to

23:17

term if they're reliable. And then you can use this

23:19

template to examine the claims of the

23:21

gospel eye witnesses. And finally, I hope

23:23

to provide you with the confidence

23:25

and encouragement necessary to make an impact on

23:28

your world. As your evidential

23:30

certainty grows, I think so will grow

23:32

your your desire to

23:34

share the truth with others. Cold

23:36

case Christianity will equip you to

23:38

reach others with the truth. Now, I wrote

23:40

this book so I hope to help you understand and the

23:42

power of circumstantial evidence, and I I'm

23:44

gonna draw on twenty five years

23:46

of law enforcement experience of most

23:48

of which was spent working on homicides of one

23:50

nature or another. I'm gonna share my personal

23:52

journey with you from atheism to

23:54

Christianity, and I want to do it while I

23:56

describe these essential components of

23:58

eyewitness reliability, conductive

24:00

reasoning, and the rules of evidence, hoping

24:02

you're gonna come away with fresh insight

24:04

and the ability to articulate what you

24:06

already intuitively under Dan

24:09

from your cultural familiarity with homicide

24:12

investigations. I think you'll also be able to apply this

24:14

renewed understanding to the case

24:16

for Christianity So please go out today

24:18

and get a copy of ColdCase case

24:19

Christianity. I hope it'll change your

24:22

life. Okay. People

24:31

are always asking me. And I hear

24:33

them call Greg all the time on standard reason also

24:35

and they'll ask, you know, how can I do what

24:37

you do Greg? I wanna do I'm

24:39

interested in this. I get this all the time. People who

24:42

are really active online. I see

24:44

lots of you, and I'm so proud of the number

24:46

of people who are already working in some profession,

24:48

yet somehow every day.

24:50

Or every couple of days. They are

24:53

working hard to bang out articles

24:55

and blogs that make

24:57

the case for Chris journey and they're slowly

24:59

building an audience and people are paying

25:01

attention and they're having an impact on their church.

25:03

They're having an impact on Christians around the

25:05

globe that are reading their stuff. And you know who these guys

25:07

are because there are only a

25:09

few, really, a few Christian

25:11

casemakers that are riding

25:14

on a daily basis or contributing on daily

25:17

basis and really putting stuff out there on a daily

25:18

basis. Now there are organizations that do

25:20

this. Standard reason is one reasons to

25:22

believe reasonable faith. But in terms of folks who get

25:24

up every morning, and bang out

25:26

a blog contribute something. There are only a

25:29

few. And I read all of

25:31

them. And you probably do read a lot of them

25:33

too, maybe you don't. I don't know. But I'm

25:35

just really proud of people who take that

25:37

effort to do it. And there are usually

25:39

folks who are working, very few have

25:41

started a nonprofit, and are

25:43

somehow supporting themselves by

25:45

working as a Christian casemaker. Most

25:47

want to. Most

25:49

would desperately like to leave their day

25:51

job and do this full time. And

25:54

I I've struggled

25:56

with trying to figure out how to respond to

25:58

that. When people say, well, Jim, how did you

26:01

do it? Well, you all know how I did it. I did it accidentally. I

26:03

mean, I I didn't really plan to do this.

26:05

It was part of just the journey of

26:07

pastoring and and researching

26:09

and making a case professionally as a detective

26:12

and applying those tools to this this

26:14

side of the aisle and and seeing what

26:16

happens. And sometimes God just

26:18

orchestrates things you don't expect. And and then

26:20

before you know it, you're you've been entrusted

26:22

with responsibilities. You never

26:24

saw it coming. And and

26:26

that that's definitely what would

26:28

happen to me. And

26:30

so I it's hard for me to but I can tell

26:32

you that I did do some things intentionally. There

26:34

was a high value and most of you know it. I

26:36

just wanna I don't think I've ever really talked about it in as much

26:38

details I'm about to on this podcast,

26:40

but for me, money

26:42

drove everything. Because

26:44

I was such a skeptic when it came

26:46

to money. And as an

26:48

atheist, I just I just and it's been

26:50

the hardest thing for me now.

26:53

To to beat

26:56

somebody who's selling a book because I was

26:58

suspicious of any Christian who was

27:00

selling anything. And I always said, man, if I'm

27:02

gonna do this at some point, I wanna be able to do it

27:04

for free. And that's

27:06

a high value that I carried with me

27:08

all the way through pastoring. And when I

27:10

started the church, I started

27:12

what I call free church. That was the highest value.

27:14

I'm not a big fan of house churching,

27:16

but house churching doesn't allow you to do

27:18

it for free. And

27:21

so you find some form of church you can

27:23

do in which nobody's getting paid.

27:25

Now sometimes people will say to me and I

27:27

can tell you even when I came to stand a reason there

27:29

was this this book, you know, you need you to raise

27:31

support. I I didn't wanna raise

27:33

support. On principle, I didn't wanna

27:35

raise support. And I always go back to

27:37

first Corinthians nine. As

27:39

I think about this in my own

27:41

life. Do I believe that

27:43

those who teach, who leave the

27:46

church, deserve to be blessed by the church for the

27:48

work they do, of course. We're

27:50

not against pastors

27:53

or ministry leaders. Being supported

27:55

in a nonprofit or creating a nonprofit to support

27:58

themselves and supporting themselves on the donations of

28:00

others. I'm not I'm not opposed to

28:02

that at all. I'm

28:04

just not gonna do that myself because I have no need to do that. And

28:06

this is how I position it. I want to read just

28:09

read you. Really,

28:13

out of first Corinthians nine. What

28:15

Paul meant to read you a large part of this in order to

28:17

keep it in context, but just bear with me for a

28:19

second. First Corinthians nine, this is what Paul says

28:21

in verse one. I not

28:24

free? Am I not an apostle? Have I

28:26

not seen Jesus our Lord? Are

28:28

you not my work in the

28:30

Lord? If to others, I am not an apostle,

28:32

at least I am to you

28:34

for you are the seal of my apostrophe

28:36

in the Lord. He's writing here to

28:38

a specific group. Right? We're now going through the first

28:40

two verses. A group in Corinth

28:43

that he considers to be a group that he

28:45

planted that really are

28:47

his work his labor

28:49

as being as as being seen here.

28:51

Of course, God's doing all of it, but he's using

28:54

Paul to work with this group

28:56

in Here's what he says in verse three, my defense. To

28:58

those who examine me is

29:00

this, do we not have a right

29:02

to eat and drink? Do

29:04

we not have a right to take along

29:06

a believing wife even as the rest of the

29:08

apostles and the brothers of the lord

29:11

and cephas? Or do only

29:13

barnabas and I not

29:15

have a right to refrain from

29:17

working. Who at

29:19

at any time serves as a soldier at

29:21

his own expense? Who plants

29:23

a vineyard and does not eat the

29:25

fruit of it? Or who tends a flock and

29:27

does not use the milk of the flock?

29:30

I'm not speaking these things according to human

29:32

judgment. Am I? Or does

29:34

not the law also say these things.

29:36

Ford is written in the law of Moses,

29:38

you shall not muzzle the ox while

29:40

he is threshing. not

29:43

concerned about oxen, is he? Or

29:45

is he speaking altogether for our

29:47

sake? Yes. For our sake,

29:49

it was written. Because the plowman

29:52

ought to plow in hope and the

29:54

thresher to thresh in hope of

29:56

sharing the crops. If we

29:58

sowed spiritual things in

30:00

Is it too much if we reap material things

30:02

from you? If others

30:04

share the right overview, do

30:06

we not more Now look at

30:08

those first twelve versus, eleven

30:11

and a half versus really. And

30:13

is Paul making a pretty good case.

30:15

I think he is that, you know what, we

30:18

deserve to be

30:20

supported, as you supported

30:22

the other apostles. And

30:25

he's talking about himself in Barnabas who did this

30:27

work in Corinth. He's referring to

30:29

all the other brothers of the lords. Isn't that

30:31

interesting you can see from this verse for example

30:34

that James wasn't the only brother of Jesus who eventually

30:36

got on the on the boat and started working

30:38

in ministry. Everyone else

30:40

saw the risen Christ too and the other brothers of

30:42

Jesus where we're currently working just

30:44

as hard as James. And he's talking about

30:46

Peter here, Cifus. These folks are being supported

30:48

for their work. They they, you know,

30:50

the muzzled the the ox was not being muzzled

30:52

while he threshing, you're allowed to eat

30:54

from what it is that you know what

30:56

you are working. But

30:59

it's the next verse that got me when I first

31:01

read it. It's in verse twelve,

31:03

second half. Because he

31:05

says if others share the right over you,

31:07

do we not more Nevertheless,

31:10

we did not

31:12

use this right, but we

31:14

endure all things so we can

31:16

cause no hindrance to

31:18

the gospel of Christ. And

31:20

I thought that's interesting.

31:22

I mean, think about that

31:24

for just a second. He's

31:27

basically saying we have a right to

31:29

have asked you for support. I

31:31

mean, we just do. But

31:33

we didn't, not here in ninth because

31:36

we did not wanna hinder the gospel.

31:38

We had the right to,

31:40

but we didn't.

31:43

It says, in in the

31:45

NIV, it says, we did not use this right on

31:47

the contrary. We put up with anything rather than

31:50

hinder the golf stole of Christ. And

31:52

I thought that's gotta

31:54

be something that's that that's worth

31:56

something to me. Yeah. I

31:58

I could. I could definitely raise

32:01

support and and have done this by

32:03

either I had a nonprofit call. Please

32:05

convince me ministries for a number of years.

32:08

And I kept that open as we supported the church. And

32:10

we also used it to fund the website

32:12

and to fund anything we did that advanced the

32:14

cause of please convince me

32:16

com. We funded that with A501C3I

32:19

was the chief donor of that 501C3.

32:21

But if anybody else wanted to fund that cause no

32:24

no salary was being taken out of this. I didn't get

32:26

a dime from that. That was just to support the

32:28

the cause of please convince me dot

32:31

com. Okay. Well,

32:33

when I got ready to write the book, I said, we're gonna close it

32:35

down. So we closed it down a year ago, two years

32:38

ago because I felt like, hey, now

32:40

the book is gonna

32:42

bring income to me at

32:44

some point down

32:46

the road. Point is at some

32:48

point, hopefully, it'll bring some income. But

32:50

if it does, I don't want the nonprofit to be helping

32:52

to advance the cause of the book or anything that

32:54

was right. Because then it's not

32:56

really a nonprofit is I'm actually profiting from

32:59

what please convince me does as it

33:01

advertises for Jim Wallace who wrote a book, who now

33:03

is gonna sell some of the book, and now I'm

33:05

gonna get some proceeds from that book. I did

33:07

not want that. To me,

33:09

that's not really III shut down the

33:11

nonprofit. By the way, I never

33:13

took donations from people on the outside anyway. I just

33:15

had friends. Who supported the work like a

33:17

team. We kinda came together and supported this.

33:19

Right? But if you were to to write

33:21

to us through, please convince me to support the work, I

33:23

would have said no when I did that

33:25

many times. We don't take outside donations because I

33:27

just don't think first of all, we have the needs

33:29

covered. It's a very it wasn't that expensive to to

33:31

do it. So why take more than

33:33

you need? From the kingdom. That's

33:35

money that could be spent some other

33:37

way. And I felt the same

33:39

way as as Paul did here

33:41

with the Corinthians. I

33:43

again have a right. I think that you could

33:45

argue that within the church, this is a

33:47

valuable cause that should be supported by others.

33:49

But I don't want to hinder the gospel in

33:51

any way. Take something I don't really need. So

33:53

I took a very different approach to my

33:55

ministry life and to planning for

33:57

this chapter of my life.

34:00

And it all started with a visit to

34:02

our church by a guy who wrote

34:04

a book. His name was Bob Beaufort,

34:07

and I wanna talk to you about that right after

34:09

the break.

34:09

Want to connect

34:13

with Kim through

34:18

social media? Visit cold case christianity dot com and

34:20

click on any of the social media links at

34:22

the top of the

34:24

home page. You

34:27

can follow Jim on Facebook, Twitter, Google

34:29

Plus, Instagram, LinkedIn, and

34:32

more. Okay.

34:35

So let me tell you what what

34:37

was really important for me when I

34:39

first started thinking about

34:42

doing anything in in terms of ministry. And I

34:44

wasn't really necessarily planning on doing anything as a pacemaker. I

34:46

was really thinking I would probably church

34:48

plant and pastor. But we

34:50

had at at the church where I was attending,

34:52

we had guest speaker named

34:54

Bob Beaufort who was a guy who I think at the time that

34:56

may have been a partial owner or something of the

34:58

Dallas Cowboys. I I and I'm sure if that

35:00

was the case, but that seemed to be my memory of

35:02

it. And he wrote a book that

35:04

was football titled, it

35:06

was called halftime, moving from

35:08

success to

35:10

significance. And the idea

35:12

he planted in my head really

35:14

has kind of blossomed over the

35:16

years. As I've thought more about this now,

35:18

this is a guy who has

35:21

definitely started a ministry helping people do

35:23

exactly what he talked about doing.

35:25

His basic idea, the concert of the book

35:27

was this. Look, you know, he spent fifty

35:29

years or so as as a a guy

35:32

working in, you know, what,

35:34

what, thirty years at least, working in his

35:36

profession now he's middle aged and he was at the time

35:38

anyway. This like fifteen, seventeen

35:40

years ago. And he

35:42

had been very successful, wildly

35:44

successful financially. I think he got saved

35:46

late. And he realized, hey,

35:48

you know, he wanted to

35:50

give back. And he talked

35:53

about a half time taking the first

35:55

half of your life to to

35:57

build a future in which you could actually do

36:00

what it is you're called to do by

36:02

God. If you plan

36:04

carefully enough, you'll have the freedom to

36:06

do just

36:08

And that stuck in my head. I mean, I that was especially for a guy

36:10

who was has always resisted the idea

36:12

of being paid or the money

36:14

aspect, you know, to ministry can

36:16

I arrange my life in such a way? Like the commercials

36:19

for retirement investment funds. There's

36:21

one commercial out right now

36:23

that says, hey, retirement is that

36:25

time when you get to pay yourself to do what you

36:26

love. And I thought

36:28

that's exactly where I wanna be.

36:32

And it meant a couple of things. I meant having to get ready in certain way so

36:34

that in the second half of life, I

36:37

would have the liberty to

36:40

pursue things without any

36:42

financial need. And

36:44

and so so this is something I wanna share with

36:46

you because many of you are are will ask this

36:48

question, you know, how can I do what you

36:51

do, Jim? Well, you can do it, but

36:53

I don't look, aren't

36:55

we trying to say this to the to the

36:57

church? Aren't we trying to

37:00

say, look, the way we see

37:02

ourselves as Christians, as

37:04

cultural Christians, we're kinda Christians, the way we're

37:06

Californians, we talk about this all the time. Right?

37:08

Being accidental Christians, We want people

37:10

to become Christian casemakers.

37:12

We want them to see that this is the

37:14

calling that God has placed on our lives

37:16

in first Peter three, that not everyone is

37:19

gonna be shaped to be a pastor,

37:21

and not everyone is expected

37:23

to be a pastor. But

37:25

you are expected to be a Christian

37:28

casemaker. There there are,

37:30

you know, you may become a pastor, but the expectation

37:32

is according to Peter three fifteen, that

37:35

all of you will be able to make

37:37

a case for what you believe to give the reason for

37:39

the hope you have in Christ. That

37:42

doesn't seem to be an option. And if we're

37:44

saying that, hey, we want you to move in

37:46

that direction. We want to help Kristen

37:48

them move in that direction.

37:51

Then III can't do

37:53

it as a paid if I'm saying,

37:55

hey, there is no such thing as a Christian

37:57

who's not a Christian casemaker. Well,

38:00

I mean, what are you gonna pay me for that as a pacemaker?

38:02

I mean, you're basically paying me

38:04

to be what I ought to be

38:06

as a Christian anyway. You're not gonna pay me to be a Christian, so don't pay me

38:08

to be a Christian casemaker. Does

38:11

that make sense? No.

38:14

No. So so most of us who are working in this industry, and I

38:16

love every one of us who does this, who

38:18

are getting paid by a nonprofit.

38:22

Really, we're not being paid to be

38:24

a casemaker because what all of us

38:26

should be as Christians, we're being paid

38:28

to train others up. So that they can learn

38:30

to to to the value of this and

38:32

see why they ought to do this. So I

38:34

don't think really being paid as casemakers. I mean, that's

38:36

not what I want. I wanna be paid as trainer fine.

38:38

If you wanna do that, that's fine. But if you can't

38:40

do it, how do I get to a place where

38:42

the money is not important? Because

38:45

you know that once money enters

38:47

the game, some decisions at least

38:50

will be made on the basis of whether

38:52

or not

38:54

it's lucrative. That's why I think we see, you know, in any

38:56

corporation, you know, Microsoft's not gonna

38:58

share much with Apple, and Apple's not gonna share

39:00

much with

39:02

Microsoft. Why? Because each is trying to compete

39:04

for the same limited resources,

39:06

the same pool of potential

39:10

buyers? Money is now choosing to to to

39:12

actually shape their interaction

39:14

with each other because they don't

39:16

want to harm the bottom line financially.

39:20

You know this is true of churches. Right? You know that in every

39:22

city, churches feel as though they're after the

39:24

same target audience and they become very

39:28

protective. This is even true

39:30

on college campuses between

39:33

ministries. You know, Intervarsity

39:35

and campus crusade and and Russia,

39:37

Christie, all these groups that are

39:40

on. You know, Rochelle

39:42

Christie has a hard time kind of finding

39:44

footing in these campuses. It wants to

39:46

come along side the other ministries, but sometimes ministries

39:48

feel like, hey, we're competing for the same

39:50

student student groups. You know, we we

39:52

gotta kinda protect our own

39:54

here and we're not interested in

39:56

sharing with anybody. I mean, I hate to

39:58

say that, but I I do see it, not on

40:00

every campus, but

40:02

on many. It's because the money is again you

40:04

know, the the bottom line. How

40:06

do you measure success in anything?

40:10

You know, you measure success by sales. Right? In churches, you measure success

40:12

by either baptism, number of people in

40:14

the seats, or tithes. But you

40:16

put a tendency to want to quantify

40:19

things and to measure your success. I

40:22

just want to take all that

40:24

out. I'm not I I wanna help

40:26

every ministry I wanna serve for

40:28

every ministry who's willing to needs the help. And

40:30

if I can help in some small way I'm

40:32

in, do I need to be paid? No. Do I do

40:34

I wanna to worry about whether these ministries are competing with each other. not

40:36

competing with each other. We

40:38

want to just

40:40

contribute. Right? And I've been

40:42

blessed to be able to do that for the number of

40:44

ministries, but it's because I did

40:46

what Bob Beaufort suggested in

40:48

halftime. I

40:50

decided to work hard to to in the first half of life,

40:52

to get ready to do something in

40:54

the second half. And I did

40:56

it by taking three steps,

41:00

three important aspects of my life

41:02

that I needed to address in

41:04

order to be ready to be a good

41:06

Christian case maker, a

41:08

case maker, with the freedom and flexibility I was looking

41:10

for. First

41:13

is financial preparation. Actually,

41:16

I'll give you four areas that are important. The first

41:19

is financial preparation. You've got

41:21

to get yourself an order

41:23

financially. If you hope, to

41:25

have the kind of freedom you're looking

41:28

for. Look, the minute there's

41:30

a financial need that becomes your task master,

41:32

that becomes your

41:34

slave master. You won't make decisions that hurt the bottom

41:36

line because you have a family to support. Right?

41:38

Or whatever it may be. I was

41:40

looking for a way to be

41:42

financially disconnected from

41:44

my passion as an Apologist, as

41:47

a pacemaker. And when you're able

41:49

to make those decisions without financial

41:51

considerations, you're gonna have true

41:53

freedom and flexibility. And now, one

41:56

way to do, of course, is just to make a ton of

41:58

money, to do something that's really, you know,

42:00

really or and I didn't do that. Okay?

42:02

I was a civil servant. I worked as a cop. I didn't make a lot of money. But I did

42:04

well, if I'm honest with

42:07

you, I married right. I'm

42:09

married to a wonderful woman who's

42:12

never seen money as the thing worth

42:14

chasing or stuff as the thing worth

42:16

chasing. So we were able to live

42:18

very modestly. And we were able to save our money and live

42:20

on a a portion of our money. We never I think we never lived on

42:22

more than paid maybe seventy percent of my

42:24

income. We saved

42:26

the rest. So

42:28

we were in a position, right, to be able to do something

42:30

in the second half, not because we made

42:32

a ton of money, but because we didn't

42:35

live a certain way. And

42:37

and that's what we're able to do now. We're able to

42:39

kind of reinvest in the things that

42:41

are important to

42:44

us. The second thing you have to do is you have to prepare yourself educationally.

42:48

You know, you can't pour out of an empty

42:50

glass. So you gotta find

42:52

ways to supplement to fill your

42:54

glass, to supplement your

42:56

knowledge. You have to become a

42:58

lifelong winner. I don't think

43:00

that this has to me. You have to go

43:02

back to you know, you do an

43:04

MA program. If you can,

43:06

great. You may there's a number of

43:08

programs you could take. In the end, you have

43:10

to master the material. However, you get to a place where you master the

43:12

material. That's something on you. And that when

43:14

I first enrolled in in

43:16

seminary, I really knew that I wanted to take a

43:18

more formal process. I

43:20

wanted to walk through the classes that would teach me systematic theology

43:22

that would teach me what I thought I was

43:24

gonna need to have in order to be

43:26

a pastor. And I looked at process

43:28

and how many units it was gonna be. And

43:30

I I forget it was at seventy two or sixty. Whatever

43:32

it was, it was some ridiculously large number

43:36

of units. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, at this rate, it's gonna take me seven or

43:38

eight years to finish. But you know what? Who

43:40

cares? Those ten years are gonna

43:42

go by whether or not you get

43:44

an education. And they're gonna be you're

43:46

gonna be ten years old or ten years from now regardless. So

43:48

you might as well be ten years older with an

43:50

education. So

43:52

now is the time. If you're looking at distance education,

43:54

if you're looking at whatever you can do,

43:57

if you want to be able to do

43:59

what you hope to do. At

44:01

some point in the future, you're gonna have to prepare yourself financially, and

44:03

you're gonna have to prepare yourself educationally. The

44:07

third thing you gotta do is prepare yourself in an

44:10

experiential perspective.

44:12

You know, it's it's early it's

44:14

it's you know, when you when you go to school

44:16

and you think, you know, this is how I'm preparing myself. I'm preparing

44:19

myself by going to college or by going to

44:21

university or by going to some seminary on

44:23

some master's program. You've got

44:25

to that's I think we sometimes think that's the way we

44:27

we get ourselves ready. But a lot of what I've been able

44:29

to teach in the

44:32

second half I learned from

44:34

my career in the first

44:36

half. It wasn't all the edge and I

44:38

could God gone through and gotten a PhD in

44:40

something, but it's not

44:42

gonna matter. Because most of

44:44

the people who bring me in to talk about evidence, want to talk about

44:46

it from somebody who's spent

44:48

an entire career working with evidence.

44:52

Now, you may not be a cop or detective, but you've

44:55

got some life experience from which you

44:57

can draw. Don't underestimate your

45:00

life. Don't underestimate

45:02

the ways you've worked and the experiences

45:04

you've had. You will reach people I

45:06

can't reach because you've got a life

45:08

that's different than mine. Start looking now

45:11

for opportunities to learn something

45:13

from the life you're living that

45:15

you can teach later. Start

45:18

journaling those things, start

45:20

blogging about those things.

45:22

I actually made career choices at

45:24

the police department that were dependent

45:27

on my being able to to become a better learner, a

45:29

better teacher. And so III

45:32

actually denied

45:34

myself opportunities to promote. And that was hard because,

45:37

you know, again, you measure success.

45:39

How do you measure success? Well, how much, you know,

45:41

it caps walk in? Well,

45:43

you know, guys walk into a party and they wanna know

45:45

what what do you do for a

45:48

living? Well, they're asking that question because they're

45:50

thinking their mind, how much money does this

45:52

guy make? I mean, I hate to

45:54

say it, but we measure each other almost immediately based on income. What kind of car are you driving?

45:56

What kind of house are you living in?

46:01

And and as I got to that point, maybe 567

46:04

years into my career where my buddies were starting to

46:06

promote and take the sergeant's exam. And

46:08

then later in the lieutenants, I have got friends who I

46:10

worked with who are now chief and

46:12

all the captains or guys I started with.

46:15

I didn't do any of that.

46:17

I stayed as an officer all

46:19

the way through. And there

46:21

were times where I knew I could I could

46:24

compete. I knew I could

46:26

promote. I became the best

46:28

friends of the that I there are

46:30

two chiefs in a row that I've worked with that

46:32

that they have called me in alongside them to

46:34

develop ethics programs for

46:36

our department. I knew I had the ability to

46:38

sit in that chair if I wanted

46:40

to. But I also knew there

46:42

was no way I could do that and pass her

46:44

as I

46:46

have. And study as I have, and to prepare

46:48

as I have. The career I have

46:50

as a coal case detective is ColdCase

46:52

groundwork from which I speak to

46:55

anything. It's the reason why you would call me in. It's the reason why

46:57

you would wanna listen to

46:59

this podcast probably. And I

47:01

had to forego other career choices in

47:04

order to stay in that chair

47:06

as a cold case detective for all

47:08

those years. I don't think

47:10

I'd have near as much to

47:12

offer you as the chief of

47:14

police as I do today as

47:16

a twelve year homicide cold detective. So

47:19

you have to

47:21

make choices now in

47:24

this part of your experience, wherever you're employed.

47:27

Looking forward to how and that

47:29

you may make a career choice, you

47:31

may make a do a promotion because it

47:33

it may actually help you in your ministry in the second half. All I'm

47:36

saying is whatever

47:38

it is, You need

47:40

to do it thinking about the second

47:42

half and how it is you will serve the

47:44

kingdom there. Financial

47:47

preparation, educational preparation, experiential preparation. The last segment,

47:49

of course, is about if

47:52

influence platform.

47:55

You know, it's almost impossible to teach

47:58

without students. You can't speak

48:00

without listeners. You can't write without readers. I

48:02

mean, it's easy to write a

48:04

book. That's the easiest part, the hardest part

48:06

is getting someone to read

48:08

it. I have spent so much

48:10

more time after having written

48:12

the book trying to

48:14

get people to notice the

48:16

book. And that sounds

48:18

selfish. I realize, but nobody writes because they don't want to be

48:20

written. I mean, be read. I mean, people write

48:22

because they hope it'll have an influence. You wouldn't

48:24

write something if you knew in advance no one's

48:26

gonna read it. What's the

48:29

point? We do these things, hoping that at some

48:31

point it'll be powerful in someone's life that God

48:33

will use this work in some way.

48:36

How much he uses it? That's on God and what he's

48:38

gonna do with his plan. I'm not concerned, but

48:40

just the fact that he would use it at all. I know

48:42

there are some things I can do to have

48:44

greater influence. You know

48:46

that too. If you

48:48

wanna have an effective second half, you're

48:50

gonna need to understand that role, the role

48:52

of your own personal leadership. And

48:54

the necessity of influence. Don't underestimate leadership, your ability to

48:57

lead a charter course to be entrepreneurial,

48:59

and the necessity of

49:02

developing what Michael Hyatt calls a tribe, what others have called

49:04

a tribe too. But he writes about it brilliantly in a

49:06

book that I is the one book I recommend more than

49:08

anyone else for people who are interested in

49:12

Christian case making its platform. It's a book called platform, get

49:14

noticed in a noisy world. That's

49:17

a book everyone

49:20

should own if they are to a impact.

49:22

And they should listen to what he says.

49:27

You know, when I was still employed full time,

49:29

that's when I started, please convince

49:32

me. I started to build

49:34

an audience. And that audience was in

49:36

place before I ever stepped

49:38

out. Now, it wasn't as big as I would

49:40

have liked. Platform

49:43

wasn't that large. And in the last year, certainly a

49:45

lot more people have kind of heard of what, you

49:47

know, what I do. And Certainly,

49:51

we've increased our listenership at this podcast by thirty

49:54

percent since we started

49:56

all that. And

49:58

there's probably people who now the platform's bigger for the second book. Okay.

50:00

Great. I mean, that's that's that's just the way

50:02

it works. But the point is, you have

50:06

to work at being at increasing your influence in that first

50:08

half, so you can be effective in the second half.

50:10

Now maybe you're not thinking I wanna wait till one fifty to

50:12

do anything. I wanna do it now.

50:14

You're thirty years old. You wanna get

50:16

started. Okay. Fine. But the point is, there's some preparation work you must do

50:18

before you can accomplish any of this. And if you

50:20

can do it without financial,

50:24

need. Trust me. You will be in

50:26

the driver's seat. To do what

50:28

it is you feel called to do.

50:33

When someone says, hey, can you come out and speak? I can get you out

50:35

here, but I can't pay

50:38

you. Okay?

50:40

You can evaluate it and say, well, this is something that maybe guys calling to do. Go.

50:44

It's harder to do that. If you're not

50:46

gonna give up three or four days,

50:49

and you really need income in that week. Right? Because you

50:51

gotta pay bills. It's easier to do that

50:53

when you don't have the need for income. When I

50:55

first started with standard reason, you know, they said, well, you're gonna

50:57

have to raise support. No.

51:00

Actually, I've got a pension. I did

51:02

those things we talked about. Prepare yourself

51:04

financially, educationally, experiential, influential. Prepare

51:07

yourself in those areas. And now I don't need I

51:09

can actually come to stand a reason and say, you know

51:12

what? I don't

51:14

wanna volunteer. I wanna now

51:16

I'm volunteering my services at any

51:18

number of places because there is no

51:20

financial need. You know,

51:22

sometimes you'll I I first started writing for breakpoint.

51:24

Right? If you write anything over a

51:26

thousand words, that's an article. That's a

51:28

featured article. It's not

51:30

a blog. They pay

51:32

people for articles over a thousand words. Why

51:34

don't I want that to be the limit? I don't want people to look at the

51:36

stuff I'm doing. If I happen to go over a thousand

51:38

words, great. I wanna give that to you. I don't I don't you to look that

51:40

and say, well, yeah, but then I gotta pay him for it. So

51:42

maybe I don't wanna take this one because it's

51:44

too long. Stick it in the

51:46

blog I I that's fine with me. I

51:48

don't need that. I'm not writing it for the

51:50

income. I just couldn't get that thing down less than a

51:52

thousand words, you know. So that's how it

51:54

happened to

51:56

turn out. Again, if you can find a way to prepare yourself in

51:58

those four areas, you'll be able to

52:00

contribute in

52:02

a in a way you can't even imagine

52:04

in the second half. And so you

52:06

can contribute to any number of

52:09

ministries. Right? And just be a

52:11

blessing, and it won't matter

52:14

how success or unsuccessful you are because there's no

52:16

financial component anyway.

52:20

That that this frees up everything

52:22

because now

52:24

writing because you want to. You're you're speaking because you want to.

52:26

Not because you have

52:29

a financial need. Okay.

52:31

Now that so for some of you who have asked, well, where

52:33

do I stand on that? And why do I stand there? That's

52:36

why stand there. A lot of this comes out of my

52:38

own personal

52:40

bias against you know,

52:42

Christians when I was a a non Christian

52:44

because of the financial component I thought

52:46

was there. And I still carry that

52:48

over. Okay. I

52:50

just do. A lot of it is because I've seen so much corruption in the kinds

52:52

of case work I do when money is gets involved

52:54

and when it gets involved. It's like, you

52:56

know, sometimes I see the same

52:58

kinds of things happening in

53:00

Christendom. Like, really?

53:03

Gosh. Here too. It's just it

53:06

every time you've seen, you've read something in

53:08

the paper about someone falling, how

53:10

many times is it driven by

53:12

financial greed? I just

53:14

needed to take that

53:16

out. There are other ways I'm gonna

53:18

stumble. Okay. We all have something that that

53:20

we screw up on, but I didn't want

53:22

money to be the thing for

53:24

me. So if you want to be a

53:26

Christian pacemaker in the second half, prepare in the first.

53:28

And if the second half just means from age of thirty on. We'll

53:30

just start preparing before you get to thirty.

53:32

Get to a place where you have this kind of

53:34

freedom, you'll see an amazing and in the

53:36

meantime, you can be

53:38

very effective. Without having

53:40

to do this full time for a living last year,

53:42

I was employed full time. I had

53:44

two jury trials and I still did

53:46

thirty events and did all the illustrations for

53:48

the book. Wrote the book the

53:50

year before while I was working full time, had another trial,

53:52

you know, you you can do stuff.

53:56

It's got a deeper impact on your family. And that's another

53:58

reason why the second half is a little bit easier

54:01

because my kids are grown. So

54:04

be patient. You may not be able to do

54:06

everything you've imagined. Everything you dream about while your

54:08

kids are one and two. But when the time

54:10

they're they're they're thirty one and

54:12

thirty two, you're gonna have great

54:14

freedom. It's just a

54:16

matter of being patient through these seasons. There's a

54:18

season of parenting that takes your time

54:20

and boy, If you don't have a

54:22

wife like I did, it was willing to take up the slack. It was amazing.

54:24

Then it's harder for

54:28

sure. So something to

54:29

think about as you move forward and kind of think

54:32

about how you can contribute. To quick break, I wanna say

54:34

one more thing before we close out

54:36

this week.

54:46

Have you checked out the new

54:48

cold case Christianity Energy website? It's

54:50

packed with all the great resources

54:53

you've come to

54:54

expect. You can read Jim's Daily

54:56

blog, explore the collection

54:57

of articles, watch baby news, listen to

54:59

podcasts, download free

55:02

bible in certs and

55:04

more. Cold case christianity

55:06

dot com is growing rapidly with

55:10

at least six new

55:12

resources each week. Be sure to visit often.

55:17

You know, you guys never know what's gonna be

55:20

popular when you write something or you just you do a

55:22

podcast. And so today this morning, I've just

55:24

posted a real quick vlog that ends up being the most

55:26

popular vlog I've probably posted in two weeks. So I just

55:28

wanted to kinda cover it with you a little bit because on

55:30

Wednesday night, I had the opportunity

55:32

to speak at Rochelle

55:34

Christie at San Jose

55:36

State University. Very low budget organization

55:38

that is doing amazing. If you saw what

55:40

they're doing at San Jose State

55:42

University at

55:44

Rocio Christie, and the number of speakers they've been able to tap into

55:46

creatively. Find a way if you're up there for

55:48

some other reason. Find a way to grab the speaker who

55:50

can donate

55:52

their time. You wouldn't believe the number of speakers that have been able to donate their time to

55:54

this ministry on the campus of San

55:56

Jose State University. I was

55:58

impressed with the model that Jane Pontague

56:00

has actually

56:02

developed there. You know, she is a full time missionary. She is raising

56:04

support through Rochelle Christie at a

56:07

very young age as a

56:10

a trained with a master's degree in apologetics from Viola.

56:12

She is making an impact at a

56:14

state university, and I've seen

56:16

a lot of Rochelle Christie chapters. I'm impressed.

56:20

And so she brought me up there on Wednesday night to do a

56:22

talk about biblical reliability. And, of course, we have

56:24

a q and a. That's always the best time. Right? The q and a

56:26

afterwards to me is one of I

56:28

I sometimes I'd be careful not to wanna rush to the q and a because it's to me,

56:30

one of the best times we have is to talk to

56:33

people about where their doubts really are.

56:36

And A young man came up a skeptic who she's been visiting

56:38

with for a number of months through Rochelle

56:40

Christie came to the microphone and asked

56:44

a question. Said, yeah, I get the fact that there are some reliability

56:46

issues you can determine, and I

56:48

understand how you measure reliability and

56:50

all of that. But that

56:52

if if Jesus really was God,

56:54

why didn't God or Jesus or

56:56

somebody in the old testament or the new testament,

56:59

say something that would have verified for all of

57:01

us something so spectacular,

57:04

something so amazingly anachronistic,

57:06

so far ahead of its time.

57:09

That it would have demonstrated the divine nature of

57:11

the text. In other

57:14

words, tell us something

57:16

about DNA. Long before

57:18

anybody knew it. Tell us something about the

57:20

structure of the solar system or the

57:22

universe. Tell us something about the

57:24

biological complexity of molecular,

57:26

you know, structures or cellular structures. Just tell us

57:28

something that then now we would go, wow,

57:30

there's no way that has to be from God

57:32

in order to

57:34

say that. Means now that prophecy is something you say that then comes true

57:36

and Okay. That's a

57:38

very good, I think, question to

57:40

ask. And

57:42

I've thought about it myself a little bit, and and

57:44

definitely not encountered this question yet

57:46

in the q and a sessions.

57:49

And I think it's a great question. I'm surprised no one everyone doesn't

57:51

ask that question. So I wanted to be able

57:53

to respond to it and I did respond to it. I think basically

57:55

in the same structure I'm gonna onto it today,

57:57

but I did write more about it. In this

58:00

particular blog post, I posted today became very

58:02

popular. It's now been reposted all over

58:04

the Internet. So let me just kind

58:06

of cover, I think, a response to

58:08

that. Because I think that

58:10

to to

58:12

expect that God or Jesus would have said something either God

58:14

through a prophet or Jesus himself would have said

58:16

something that is anachronistic. In

58:18

other words, that is

58:20

out of order in time. In

58:22

other words, it shouldn't be

58:24

known at the time of its

58:26

utterance, but that would demonstrate

58:28

somehow a a certain kind of

58:30

divine knowledge. And why isn't why isn't Jesus do

58:32

that? I think you have to understand the

58:34

nature of what the gospels

58:36

actually are

58:38

go first. You know, these

58:40

are eye witness accounts. And and if

58:42

you doubt that, I mean, that the first

58:44

believers saw them as eye witness

58:46

accounts. Well, then you have to really,

58:48

I think, not be reading carefully in the scripture. I

58:50

think if you read that the author, even if you deny

58:52

that John is the author

58:54

of John. It's pretty clear from the end

58:56

of the gospel of John that this guy, whoever write it, whoever's writing it, thinks that he's

58:58

writing an eyewitness account. It's

59:02

and if you don't if you deny that that John is the author

59:04

of first John, and if you deny Peter is the

59:06

author of second Peter, well, that's pretty clear of

59:09

the authors of those accounts. Saw

59:11

themselves as eyewitnesses and described

59:14

themselves as eyewitnesses, whoever they

59:16

might have been. I don't deny the authorship. I mean,

59:18

some people do. It's also

59:20

clear that Luke thinks he's talking to

59:22

true eyewitnesses when he's chronicling the stuff. He

59:24

puts in the gospel of Luke let Rechapter

59:27

one of Luke. And I think Mark, according to

59:29

Pacias in the first century,

59:31

is scribing for the apostle

59:33

Peter. From what he believes were eye

59:35

witness events, eye witness

59:37

experiences that Peter was having with Jesus and was

59:40

preaching about in Rome in the first

59:42

century. So the nature of these accounts to begin with

59:44

are eyewitness accounts. They are

59:46

eyewitness testimony. Okay?

59:48

And and as typical, eye witnesses

59:50

testify to the things

59:52

they saw. They're not inventing this stuff.

59:55

They're not according to not inventing clever

59:58

stories. And the gospel

1:00:00

eye witness accounts are recording the life

1:00:02

and teaching of Jesus in the context

1:00:05

of what This is the case with every eyewitness account.

1:00:07

It's recording an event in the context

1:00:09

of when it actually happened. In this case, it's

1:00:11

the first century. So let's make sure we

1:00:13

understand the context of this. In

1:00:16

other words, scripture, biblical

1:00:18

scripture, new testament gospels

1:00:22

are not provobial wisdom statements. It's not a collection

1:00:24

of, like, Bahala laws,

1:00:26

proverbial statements

1:00:28

of wisdom. Or

1:00:30

even the gospel of Thomas where you seem to have

1:00:32

a series of statements that Jesus might have said.

1:00:36

Instead, you have a

1:00:38

a record of a historic interaction with a

1:00:40

specific group in history. So

1:00:42

in other words, you can't help but read the

1:00:44

gospels and ask yourself, where did this

1:00:46

all happen? Instead of reading

1:00:48

the gospels and saying, wow, there's some smart

1:00:50

stuff bands out there. These are like, you know, like

1:00:52

Proverbs. This is not

1:00:54

like Proverbs. This is a

1:00:56

gospel account. It's it's basically

1:00:58

a chronological account of something that

1:01:00

happened to a specific group

1:01:02

in history. Now that's important because I'm now gonna talk about what the group

1:01:04

is because you have to understand the nature of the

1:01:06

gospel accounts and then the nature

1:01:08

of the ancient audience that's being

1:01:10

described in

1:01:12

the gospel accounts. It's the context of that ministry of

1:01:14

Jesus. Alright?

1:01:16

It's defined by the nature

1:01:18

and limitations of his audience.

1:01:22

Keep that in mind. It's easy for us to forget that

1:01:24

and and look at it and say, well, gosh, if

1:01:26

he's trying to impress us, he

1:01:29

should have said some stuff that really would be powerful for

1:01:31

us in the twenty first

1:01:34

century. Really? We gotta

1:01:36

examine this from the perspective of the

1:01:38

first hearers and the first readers. Just

1:01:41

let me illustrate the point by

1:01:43

asking you to imagine yourself as

1:01:45

Jesus. Okay? You're you're on

1:01:47

the Earth and it's the first century, and you've

1:01:50

got three years to demonstrate

1:01:52

your divinity to all the folks who are

1:01:54

around you in the first

1:01:56

century. Now, you gotta take an approach, some approach to do this. What would you do? okay.

1:01:58

Maybe you could reveal these

1:02:00

yet unknown scientific facts

1:02:03

to your audience. You know, talk

1:02:05

about DNA and and the anatomy of the solar system and, you know,

1:02:08

cellular molecular machines. And

1:02:10

you could do that. But

1:02:13

let me ask you, how do you think your first century audience

1:02:15

is gonna react to that? How would they

1:02:18

ever confirm whether or not your statements

1:02:20

are true to begin with? I

1:02:22

think that claims of this nature

1:02:24

that cannot be confirmed

1:02:26

are gonna be unimpressive. To

1:02:29

a world that does not have the ability to assess them. You'd probably better

1:02:31

off by saying, you know,

1:02:34

my mind tells me now you're

1:02:36

holding the

1:02:38

ace of spades. And sure enough, you

1:02:40

can confirm immediately. I am holding the ace of spades. Card tricks would probably have better

1:02:42

impact on a world such as this

1:02:46

than making statements that are vast in their

1:02:48

scope and acronistic and cannot

1:02:50

be verified within the

1:02:52

lifetime of

1:02:54

the hearers. Yes, two thousand years from now, you're gonna discover this. Well,

1:02:56

it doesn't help me today. This guy's a nut

1:02:58

job. Let's go. Let's find somebody who can do a

1:03:00

card trick.

1:03:02

I mean, this is really where you are in the first century. Right?

1:03:04

I think any combination of

1:03:06

those claims with any other So

1:03:08

let's say you did a demonstration, you

1:03:11

worked a miracle. Or you made other claims prophetic claims

1:03:13

of the temple will someday be destroyed right

1:03:16

here. But you also

1:03:18

said and there's this thing called

1:03:20

DNA and getting all this complexity about DNA.

1:03:22

I think your audience is still going to

1:03:24

think you're a

1:03:26

nut job. Half of the stuff Jesus says seems like it might come, you know,

1:03:28

some of the stuff is true, but the other half is a bunch

1:03:30

of nonsense. I'm not sure we

1:03:32

should trust

1:03:34

that guy. You see the problem? There

1:03:36

are ways you could establish

1:03:38

your deity in front of a first century

1:03:40

audience though.

1:03:42

Right? But I don't think you can do it with these obscure esoteric

1:03:45

claims that I can't

1:03:47

be verified for a millennia. That's

1:03:50

probably the least effective approach you're gonna

1:03:52

take. So instead, this

1:03:54

is the third point. You understand

1:03:56

the nature of the gospel accounts, the nature

1:03:58

of the ancient audience. And finally, the ancient of the the

1:04:01

nature of the miraculous evidence, the

1:04:03

nature of the miraculous evidence,

1:04:05

because Jesus chose not to

1:04:08

provide hidden knowledge that can be

1:04:10

discovered in the millennia. He chose

1:04:12

instead to demonstrate his

1:04:14

deity through miracles. Supernatural

1:04:17

behavior, divine behavior.

1:04:20

And he spoke openly about

1:04:22

the vow you of the miracles, the evidential

1:04:25

value of the miracles. He said

1:04:27

that those miracles were intended

1:04:29

to prove his deity so they

1:04:31

would believe. His audience would believe that he was who he said he was.

1:04:33

He says this in John fourteen eleven. He

1:04:35

says it again in John ten thirty

1:04:37

seven to thirty eight. He

1:04:39

made a point of saying if you don't believe what I

1:04:42

claim, at least believe the evidence of these

1:04:44

miracles. Miracles were

1:04:46

the perfect tool to reach observers

1:04:49

in the first century. They were immediately

1:04:52

accessible. They were immediately

1:04:54

verifiable or falsified way I knew

1:04:56

that guy who was blind for his entire life

1:04:58

and Jesus gave him sight. I can verify or falsify

1:05:00

this now.

1:05:02

And unlike the obscure statements that

1:05:04

you're gonna confirm over two thousand years,

1:05:08

those very diverse miracles demonstrated

1:05:10

the robust and diverse

1:05:13

power of Jesus. To both

1:05:16

that contemporary audience that saw him

1:05:18

in the first century, but also to

1:05:20

those in the future. This is the

1:05:22

one way. You can demonstrate your deity in both the present and the

1:05:24

future. Because unlike

1:05:26

those anachronistic wisdom statements, miracles

1:05:28

have the ability to validate the

1:05:32

divinity of Jesus across time. So

1:05:34

I I think we've gotta carefully

1:05:36

look at the gospels as an account

1:05:39

of Jesus' activity in

1:05:41

the first century. They record his interaction

1:05:44

with that audience,

1:05:46

providing them with the kind of evidence

1:05:49

they would find persuasive, but just back

1:05:51

up for a second. One of the

1:05:53

things he did, I think

1:05:56

would be powerful in any

1:05:58

generation, which he rose from the dead.

1:06:00

If he actually did that,

1:06:02

that ought to persuade you.

1:06:05

I had

1:06:08

one blogger post on this

1:06:10

article and say, you know,

1:06:12

I don't think anything he could have done would have been enough. If he

1:06:14

said something about the solar system, somebody would probably

1:06:16

say, well, that's pretty primitive. He could

1:06:19

have said more. We we

1:06:22

might think he should have said something that would be powerful

1:06:24

to us in the twenty first century. But what's

1:06:26

gonna happen in the thirty first century?

1:06:28

They're gonna say, well, he's speaking so primitively. I mean,

1:06:30

you know, we know a lot more. What at

1:06:32

what level of of

1:06:34

revelation would you be This

1:06:37

is the problem is that

1:06:40

revelation's gonna be pretty

1:06:42

time specific. It may be powerful in

1:06:44

one century and not another. But I

1:06:46

guarantee you, If you arise

1:06:48

from the dead, I don't care what century you're in when

1:06:50

you do it.

1:06:52

That's powerful. And

1:06:54

if you're gonna reject that, I don't think you're anything else

1:06:58

anyway. I think it's something to

1:07:00

think about. As

1:07:02

you assess this issue, why didn't Jesus

1:07:04

say something? Reveal something about

1:07:06

scientific facts to demonstrate his deity?

1:07:09

Well, I think it's because you have to understand the nature of

1:07:11

the gospel accounts, the nature of the agent audience, and

1:07:13

the nature of miraculous evidence in the first place. And

1:07:15

once you do, you'll realize he

1:07:18

did more than enough to demonstrate he

1:07:20

was God. Alright. That's it

1:07:22

for this week. Now I wanted to say to you

1:07:24

before I check out for this week that

1:07:26

there is an event coming up that I wanna start

1:07:28

talking about because it's a ministry that I

1:07:30

love. And I loved it when I got a chance to

1:07:32

speak at the the event

1:07:34

at standard reason for our twentieth anniversary. Right? We did a

1:07:37

big conference at Viola. That was great. We

1:07:39

had a wonderful time there, and

1:07:41

now something similar. That I think is

1:07:43

just as important has has been planned

1:07:46

for cross examined. As you know, all of us

1:07:48

at standard reason, we all work

1:07:50

with Frank Turek at the CIA, the cross examined

1:07:52

instructor's academy. And so he's been

1:07:54

gracious enough to ask me to help him

1:07:56

with a donor banquet and silent

1:07:58

auction, which is

1:08:00

gonna be December third twenty thirteen. It's coming up in just a couple of weeks,

1:08:02

and it's at the historic Palmer

1:08:04

building in Charlotte, North Carolina. So,

1:08:06

really, it's only for

1:08:08

those folks who are in the area of Charlotte who are close enough to come

1:08:10

by. But he's opened up a

1:08:12

limited number of tickets to anybody

1:08:14

who thinks they would like to see the work

1:08:16

of of cross examined

1:08:18

and support the work of cross examined. Here again is a ministry

1:08:21

that doesn't

1:08:24

own buildings everything goes to ministry.

1:08:26

It doesn't it doesn't go into the, you know, covering overhead. So

1:08:28

I think in some ways, this is

1:08:30

you should at least look at and

1:08:34

it's a great place like standard reason

1:08:36

to to to give your kinda endy year

1:08:38

giving. Now, the fact that I would

1:08:41

not personally charge or wanted to to be supported by donations

1:08:43

does not mean that I don't give

1:08:48

to other ministries, of course, I do. It's just that I

1:08:50

know I myself have positioned myself in a way that I don't have to ask

1:08:54

for that. But I'm I wanna donate my

1:08:56

time, money, resources to those

1:08:59

ministries are having a

1:09:03

kingdom impact. And I bet you do too. And that's why I'm gonna

1:09:05

be at this donor banquet and I've found a

1:09:07

way to get books

1:09:10

donated by so I

1:09:12

can give everyone who attends a

1:09:14

free book. If you're in the area of North Carolina and

1:09:18

Charlotte, at December third,

1:09:20

for A7I want you to check

1:09:22

my Facebook page. You'll you'll see it on my Twitter page. You'll certainly see it at cross examined dot

1:09:24

org on the home page.

1:09:27

You'll see the link. To

1:09:30

the the interior page that tells you more about the donor banquet and silent auction. Get

1:09:32

over there. Join me on

1:09:34

December third at six PM for

1:09:39

the silent auction and at seven PM for dinner. I'll be doing

1:09:41

a short presentation and I I think it's

1:09:43

gonna be worth

1:09:46

your time. I'm certainly looking forward to it. Alright. That's it

1:09:48

for this week at the Christianity

1:09:50

Podcast. Looking forward to getting back to you.

1:09:53

And next week, I'm at ETS. So I'm trying to

1:09:55

figure out, maybe I'll bring a recorder and just do

1:09:57

something. Well, we'll see. I may

1:09:59

have to skip a week on the

1:10:01

pod guess if I can't find a way to

1:10:03

record at ETFs. But who knows? Maybe I'll get a chance to actually record somebody at Wouldn't that

1:10:06

be cool? It's all.

1:10:08

Be talking to you right back here

1:10:10

next week on the

1:10:11

joining us at

1:10:14

the cold case Christianity. Be

1:10:16

podcast.

1:10:17

You can learn more

1:10:19

about Jim, follow

1:10:21

his daily vlog, download

1:10:23

free

1:10:23

materials, and watch his

1:10:26

videos at ColdCase christianity dot

1:10:32

com. Show is over

1:10:35

for now. And that's all

1:10:38

I have to

1:10:43

say about that.