51ÂÜÀò

Why did Jesus have such a big impact on history? How could one man so deeply influence art, architecture, history, music, and more? In this fascinating episode, Sean interviews cold case detective J. Warner Wallace about his latest book . This interview was first recorded on Sean's YouTube channel, which is in partnership with the 51ÂÜÀò Apologetics program.

J. Warner Wallace is a Dateline featured cold-case homicide detective, popular national speaker and best-selling author. He is an adjunct professor at Talbot School of Theology. He is the best-selling author of multiple books including Cold Case Christianity and Person of Interest.

Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: Welcome to "Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture", a podcast from Talbot School of Theology, 51ÂÜÀò. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, professor of apologetics. Today, we've got a bonus episode for you from a well known author friend of mine, a guest we've had in the show by the name of J. Warner Wallace. He is a cold case detective, former atheist who became a Christian when examined the Gospel of Mark through the lens of forensic science. Well, he has a new book out called "Person of Interest" where he makes a fascinating, fresh case for the truth of Christianity from the impact Jesus has had in history, in art, in architecture, in music.

This is a fresh, unique, fascinating approach to apologetics I think you're going to really enjoy. Now, I interviewed him first on my YouTube channel so you'll be able to tell this is longer than usual, and of course the setup is different, but once we get into this you're going to love what J. Warner Wallace has to say about why Jesus is a person of interest. So we hope you enjoy and will consider sharing with a friend.

Hey friends, we've got a great show for you today. We are live with my friend J. Warner Wallace, who makes a case as a cold case detective that Jesus is a person of interest without using the Bible.

You know Jim from writing "Cold-Case Christianity", we had a chance to co-write a book together called "So the Next Generation Will Know", he's been a dear friend, a mentor for me. Jim, I got to tell you I think this might be your best book, and I mean that completely sincere. I think it's brilliant, I think it's interesting, and we're going to jump right in because my wife saw the cover, which I'm going to hold here for a second, and she paused. She goes, "Ooh, that's interesting." You've got something not only in the cover, but the book that grabs people. So before we get into the content, how you make a case for Jesus, tell me first, what do you even mean by a person of interest which is what you use to frame this book?

J. Warner Wallace: You always ask the best questions. If anyone doesn't know Sean and I go back a number of years, but I'm indebted to Sean because I only wrote books because of Sean McDowell. He was the one who said, "Hey, you should write a book about this stuff." And that's what "Cold-Case Christianity" was. So, you know brother that although I know I'm a lot older, and yes I don't know why you would think I'm your mentor you're the reason I got involved in writing books to begin with. So this is all about you buddy, and I'm glad to be on your program because I've been watching all the people that you interview on this program.

And I'm thinking, my goodness, this guy's going to... So I'm just honored to be part of it. Now, let's go to "Person of Interest". Yeah, when we picked that cover, I was very interested in trying to get out, I wanted something that felt more like fiction, like a mystery that we could solve together

Sean McDowell: Okay

J. Warner Wallace: that I could teach some principles of thinking about evidence. I know I did that in "Cold-Case", but this is the exact opposite of "Cold-Case". So yes, by person of interest what I mean is that you could make a case for Jesus, but "Cold-Case" makes it from inside the New Testament. Are the New Testament Gospels reliable?

Should we trust what they say about Jesus? How do we know from a cold case perspective that we can trust eyewitness testimony? That's what "Cold-Case" does, and it works from inside the New Testament. This says forget about the New Testament, if there was no New Testament what would you know about Jesus just from everything outside the New Testament? And that's what I wanted to do here, imagine a scenario in which every New Testament has been destroyed, what would you know about Jesus? If every New Testament manuscript... This avoids the problem then about like, for example, well, what does Bart Ehrman say or any skeptics say about whether or not we can trust the New Testament?

This reason, or that reason, or this contradiction, or that contradiction, or this piece of manuscript evidence, or that piece, forget about all of it. Let's imagine all of it was destroyed, you're still stuck with Jesus of Nazareth and I think you demonstrate his doistery, and his deity without having to reference the New Testament at all. And that's what we're trying to do in Person of Interest.

Sean McDowell: Well, you do it well, and the way you use it is with three Fs, the fuse and the fallout which identifies the felon. Tell us what you mean by the fuse and the fallout, and then we'll start diving into some of the particulars.

J. Warner Wallace: Well, so I'm working on a case right now in Los Angeles and the district attorney there is there for old friend of mine. This is the first case he's worked in his career without me being the case agent, so I'm just working on the edges and working on the closing for him as far as it's almost ready to close in front of a jury. And as I showed this to him, and he's not a believer, so I'm showing him the evidence in this process and he's going, "Oh, I recognize that case. I recognize that case." Yes, but I'm hoping nobody else does, right? Because I'm trying to use the cases for my career to illustrate this process. Look, we've done a number of these what we call no body in missings.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

J. Warner Wallace: These are cases usually it's a husband who kills his wife, and then he claims that she ran off and she willingly left him and it's just a missing person's report. And that's how it's usually taken, and then a number of years go by and she never returned. And it turns out he sold the house remodeled it, there's never been a picture taken of the crime scene, there's never been anybody who investigated. Now it's been remodeled and completely destroyed, so how do I make a case in front of a jury when I have no body because her body he got rid of it and I can't find it? And two, I have no evidence from a crime scene, that's the process we're taking here.

Imagine we have no evidence from the crime scene of the New Testament, how could we demonstrate that Jesus is who he said he was? Now, in these criminal cases I typically tell a jury on the day she disappeared something horrific happened, and some explosive event if in fact we think her husband killed her occurred. But explosions are preceded by fuses, that fuse burns up to the point at which a bomb goes off, and then that bomb ends up providing shrapnel all over the blast radius. So we can make a case in front of a jury from just the fuse and the fallout, even though we don't know what actually happened on that particular day.

I've had cases where I can't answer the question how did he kill her? Exactly when did he kill her? How did he get rid of her body? How did he move her car? I can't answer any of those questions for a jury, but I still end up with convictions because I can and demonstrate the fuse and the fallout identified the felon. Well, could we do the same thing with Jesus? If we didn't have a New Testament crime scene evidence, if all we have is the fuse of history and the fallout of history, could we make a case for the Jesus of history? And that's what we try to do in "Person of Interest".

Sean McDowell: Well, let's talk about that. And one of the things you do in your book is you not only have years as being a detective, but you're an artist too and it's honestly brilliant. So people are going to have to get your book to see some of the visuals, but let's walk through some of what you call the cultural fuse. And by the way, for those watching we have two copies of Jim's book we're going to give away towards the end for the best question. And Jim, we're going to you to pick what you think those best questions are, free book we'll send to you.

J. Warner Wallace: Okay.

Sean McDowell: So the fuse are certain things leading up to the crime itself. You talk about a cultural fuse, now there's a bunch you go into your book we can't go into, but give us an example of maybe communication or roads of what you mean by the cultural fuse.

J. Warner Wallace: So we're looking at the fuse of that burns up to the appearance of Jesus. I think there are three strands to that fuse, and those strands are the cultural fuse, and the spiritual fuse, and the prophetic fuse. Now, the cultural fuse really talks about what is happening in the governments and empires that existed prior to Jesus, leading up to the appearance of Jesus. And of course, all of this is about how much territory around the Mediterranean was possessed by particular empires leading up to their Roman Empire. Because it turns out the Roman Empire occupies the largest section of the Mediterranean, really the known world at the time.

And it occupies all of this territory, it provides a certain infrastructure that makes the ability to communicate the story of Jesus possible in a way that was never possible before. What I mean is, if you look at the history of the Roman Empire in all of the civilizations that existed prior to the Roman Empire, you will see that it's only under the Roman Empire that we have the establishment of sufficient roads. All of those roads that Paul used to communicate the truth about Jesus to the world around him, were only possible after the Roman Empire, all roads lead to Rome.

Well, it turns out the Roman Empire had a period of time in which they had conquered everyone, and had a period of peace called Pax Romana. In which they could actually take those resources, usually spent on war, then they could spend them on infrastructure. And they built roads, and tunnels, and bridges, and improved the system of postal service in such a way that the message of Jesus as he appears in the first century was easy to communicate to the entire known world. The reason why Christianity spread at the pace that it spread is largely due to the fact that it happened in the first century during the Roman Empire.

Look, here's the point, is if you look at all of the cultural conditions that had to be in place before a message like the message of Jesus could be communicated to the known world, it turns out that the optimum time to appear would be during that Pax Romana. That 200 year period of time in which a peace had been established, and money was being spent on the infrastructure which allowed messages to travel. So there's an aspect in which you can kind of look at you see those scriptures where it says that Jesus came at the right time in history and you ask yourself, well, what would be required for it to be the right time in history?

Well, one of those things would be the cultural infrastructure that made the message of Jesus so easily communicable to all of the known world, and that's why we talk about that cultural fuse.

Sean McDowell: That makes sense. So if we look at it from a human standpoint, then we see all these things that are lined up to make this possible. But on the flip side if we look at it from a divine standpoint, you're saying if God is going to choose to reveal himself all of these things have to be in place. And Jesus comes in this narrow window with communication, with roads, with the Pax Romana, so there's this cultural fuse that's building, but you also give what's called a spiritual fuse.

And I love this because both you and I we've responded different ways to the claim that Christianity's a copycat religion, and the way you approach the idea that Jesus is a myth I think is fresh, and unique, and frankly brilliant. So explain what you mean by the spiritual fuse, and how you respond to the claim that Jesus which is cobbled together the savior from these other deities.

J. Warner Wallace: Well, it turns out that every claim that Jesus is similar to some prior mythology from an ancient people group, and that somehow that similarity, it works against the reliability of the story by Jesus actually works for the reliability of the story of Jesus. Here's what I mean, what you'll see is I examined all of the ancient mythologies, the significant ones where I mean, you could go on and on forever in all the details, but if not for COVID-19 this never would've happened. This book would not have been written because as I realized, as I was getting to the end of that year, where we spent probably nine months sitting in front of a fire, or in my study researching this book, I don't know how I thought I was going to make the deadlines.

If for the fact that every event got canceled in that year from about what? February to July, and it allowed me the time to do the really serious research on this. So I went through all of the mythologies that people typically say, well, look, that's similar to Jesus. Well, yeah, broadly, there are broad similarities, I found 15 broad similarities between all ancient mythologies, all of them. Now, not everyone has got all 15, usually it's like maybe the most is nine or 10, the least is maybe six. So somewhere between six and 10 of these 15 broad similarities are possessed by every ancient mythology, I don't care which one you're referring to.

So if you look at Buddha and you look at Attis, they're going to share some similarities. Well, why would you be surprised? When ancients think about the nature of God, they think broadly about similar categories. Look, if God is supernatural he's probably going to work miracles, that's the one common thing to all mythologies. He's probably going to appear miraculously. He may enter into the next world, miraculously. Well, these are the things I think that we would expect of God if God is God. So you see these ancient expectations of God being drawn out in the mythologies that people groups create, and then Jesus appears. And he appears, he's the only one who possesses all 15 of all of the expectations of ancient humans.

It's as if you understand this, and then you go back and you read Acts 17, and you look at the speech that Paul gives on Mars Hill you will read that with new eyes and new ears, because you will see that Paul is really saying what we've discovered. Is that yes, you people are all very religious and you all have certain expectations of God, but I am here to tell you that your expectation is either in large part, or in small part, or met in their entirety in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And again, why would this be the case? Well, I use an illustration in the book, and I use it on my live stage presentations that's probably a little more visual, but when I was working undercover I was dispatched, I mean, we worked undercover as a team.

I had really long hair, I had to goatee, I looked pretty bad, and I was working a case, we call these geographic surveillances. We don't know who the bad guy is, but we know that all these burglaries are occurring in our town in this neighborhood so we would sit in this neighborhood, right? And we would just wait and see if maybe we'll see a burglary. What are the odds of you actually? Not very good. Okay, so the odds of actually catching someone this way is pretty lame. And sure enough one day as I'm sitting waiting to see if a burglary occurs in front of me, I hear that the radio dispatch has dispatched a black and white unit two blocks away to a burglary that had just occurred.

Now, I'm sitting so close and I missed it by just a little bit. So I'm hearing this and I decided to jump the call, get to the call, get to the victim before the officer gets to the victim and take a report. So I drive over there, I'm in my plain car, I got long hair, I got a Raiders vest, shorts. I jump out of the car, I approach this guy who's waiting for a police car, and he won't even give me the time of day. I'm like, "Dude, I'm trying to get information because we got a surveillance team here we could actually maybe get out in the area and catch this guy before he leaves town. What did you see? Did you see a car? Did you see any suspects?" He won't even talk to me.

Then the police car drives up, this dude gets out with a uniform and he tells him the whole story. Well, what's the deal there? Well, see he was expecting a police car to come and take a report. He sees me, I did not meet his expectations, he would not give me the time of day. The better that the expecter or the expected rather meets the expectations of the expecter, the better the response. It's as simple as that. If God intended to come in a way that meets the expectations of people who are seeking him well, it turns out Jesus comes in the most robust way. Do you really think that the people who wrote the Jesus story, the eyewitnesses of Jesus knew the depths of Egyptian mythology?

Do you really think they knew the depth of Persian mythology? Do you realize that Jesus even meets the expectations of the people on the South American continent who describe Quetzalcoatl? Do you really think that somehow these authors knew? No, it's just that Jesus meets the expectations of all of us most robustly because he is the God who inspired those expectations in the first place. So in the end, I think this is actually evidence for Jesus, not evidence against Jesus. And if you put that in a timeline, you'll see that it's kind of interesting. I don't if you remember or not, but you were the first person I ever showed that timeline to other than Susie.

Sean McDowell: I remember.

J. Warner Wallace: So when we were first looking at this Susie and I, I had basically a blogger sense of this red zone. In other words, we knew of opportunity that could occur and where would it occur? If you overlap the worship of all of these ancient deities, because they don't all end up being worshipped forever. Some do like Buddha is still being worship, but a lot of them like Attis is no longer being worshiped so you can mark off a beginning time of the worship of Attis and an ending time of the worship of Attis. If you do that with everyone, you will see that there is one place where everyone overlaps.

And then if you overlap on top of that the prophecies of Daniel about when the Messiah will come, and you overlap on top of that the Pax Romana where you have that period of peace, and all those roads are available, and you've got this great postal service available, you end up with a small area of overlap in which all three of these strands are overlapping. And if you see it visually in the book, you go, wow. I mean, I remember showing you in an airport in Vermont.

Sean McDowell: Yeah, that's right.

J. Warner Wallace: With Brenda Crouch. Remember we were seeing?

Sean McDowell: Yep.

J. Warner Wallace: We just done an episode of "Huntley Street", I went on "Huntley Street" for our book "So the Next Generation Will Know". And this is how long ago, this is 2019 I think and I mean, I'd been working on this book for about a year back. So I was just developing the visual overlap, and as I found it for Susie of course it was really about the Pax Romana and the prophecies of Daniel back in the day, back 24 years ago when I first became a Christian. Back then I had more or less a blogger's a sense of what the overlaps were investigating this, in other words I wasn't trying to write a book with case notes and footnotes and cited and all of that.

I was just scratching out what I thought I was discovering evidentially. And when I remember showing it to Susie it was like, ding! There turns out there's a red zone you'll see it in the book as I overlapped this visually,

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

J. Warner Wallace: between about 29 BCE or BC and about 70CE or AD. And it turns out that overlap from 29 to 70 Jesus appears after one third of it, and then he's crucified at two thirds. He's right in the middle of the red zone overlap. It's like crazy, and I thought to myself, okay. So it turns out that if I didn't know anything about what caused that difference when you see those letters BCE or CE, that Jesus would be a good explanation because he falls.

So if you didn't know anything from the New Testament, but you did have the timeline of history and you traced the fuse of those three things and developed a red zone, you'd go, "Wow something's about to happen right here." And by the way, I looked at every other potential cause in the first century, if you look at every other person who ever lived in the first century, all the big ones, the leaders of nations, the writers of poetry, the writers of history, none of them had any impact. You don't even know their names for the most part. Yet this little dude, this little guy Jesus of Nazareth, this nobody, this is the dude who changes all of history. And so to me that was like, wow.

Sean McDowell: Okay. So we're talking about the fuse that leads up to the crime, so to speak.

J. Warner Wallace: Right.

Sean McDowell: And we have the cultural fuse where in this history of the world, all of a sudden is the right communication, the right roads, there's peace, where a message could be widespread. There's the spiritual fuse where all these different stories of dying and rising gods that have pieces all come together. Jesus arises at that moment where there's a spiritual expectation. You also, the third one before we get to the fallout is what you call the prophetic fuse, and I love that you talk about clear versus cloaked prophecies because I think sometimes those get muddled together. So talk about the prophetic fuse, and make that distinction for us if you can.

J. Warner Wallace: I was never impressed with prophecy. I know that sounds terrible as a Christian, right? You got all this typically and all this stuff is used to make a case for the appearance of Jesus and the divine supernatural nature of Jesus, because you have all this prophecy that is predicting Jesus. And I remember being in this big church where I first heard anything about Jesus at all, and they had a guest speaker and I remember that guest speaker spoke about prophecy. It was the first time I had ever been exposed to this idea that Jesus had been predicted. So I listened and I traced along with him in the book, the Bible in the Old Testament, right?

What's he saying is prophecy? And I remember thinking I am unimpressed. In other words, he would cite something in the Old Testament, and I would read it and I would say, "I'm not sure that's even about the Messiah, let alone Jesus." I mean, it seems like this is David talking about David or this is... It didn't seem like it was specific to him so here's what I did. I basically started to separate out all of the things that I felt that make the distinction between clear and cloaked. So sometimes in a crime scene you'll have something that will point to the suspect immediately given the technology we have.

So for example, if I had your fingerprint at a crime scene, well, we have a lot of fingerprints in the system right now, a ton, way more than we have DNA. So if I had a fingerprint and you happen to have your fingerprint in the system because you are fingerprinted for any number of reasons, well, I can identify right away that's the guy I'm looking for because his fingerprint is in the crime scene. So those are clear pieces of evidence that point to a suspect before I ever physically encounter him or meet him. I'm going to know who to go knock on the door because I've got clear evidence identifying the suspect. That's one kind of evidence.

In the same murder scene I might have like a button or... A button's a good example because I don't always know when a torn button is laying in the crime scene. I can see the victim doesn't have a button missing, but maybe it came off a different shirt from the victim. How do I know that button is from our suspect? It might be, but I really won't know until I knock on the door of the suspect and do a search warrant and go through all of his shirts and see if any of his shirts are missing a button. If they are missing the same kind of button, although that's a piece of cloaked evidence that didn't point to my suspect from the onset, but in hindsight it will point to my suspect.

It'll confirm the guy who maybe the fingerprint identified, so that'll be used in trial. So I have clear evidence and cloaked evidence in any crime scene. I think that prophecies are kind of the same way, and so what I've done in the book is I've identified as it's hard to illustrate because so much of this is visual, right? And so I've done a 400 illustrations for the book. So these are ways of visualizing all of this, but you'll see in the book what I've done is I've separated it out and the end notes are a big deal to me. I mean, the end notes were two thirds. So this book one third is the actual book, two thirds are case notes, but we knew we couldn't put that in a book.

And I didn't want an academic book in that style anyway, so I kicked out all of those case notes to a PDF file. So when you buy the book, you'll see the link, you can go to the PDF file and download the PDF file. You'll see that it's two thirds, it's twice the size of the book, and that is really talking about all of those prophecies. I have separated them out, all the ones that are clear and point to our suspect before we ever identify them, they point that even Jews would say, "These are Messianic prophecies." And then I have all the cloaked prophecies who really you could argue that's not even about the Messiah, but turns out after the fact the button matches the shirt and you're going, "Okay, this makes sense."

Now, I will tell you a story Sean. I'm not going to mention the names, but you and I have a good friend who's involved as an evangelist and a member of his staff reached out to me who was de-converting, right? He was saying he was no longer a Christian, and the reason he was saying he was no longer a Christian was because he felt like the authors of the New Testament had abused and misused versus from the Old Testament that they claimed were prophecies of the Messiah. And every time he would land on one, sure enough he would land on one of these cloaked prophecies. So I spent time on the phone with him just trying to show him the difference between clear evidence and cloaked evidence, and although the cloaked evidence won't necessarily identify your suspect from the onset, it will confirm your suspect from hindsight.

And that's what I think is happening here with a lot of these, so I'm very careful when I communicate, "Oh, there's these prophecies". I separate them into two bins. But I also in the book try to do another separation where I say look, I've had informants that I've used on cases, especially when I was working undercover we made a living using informants. And some of these informants are deemed reliable, so they're RIs reliable informants, and some are deemed confidential reliable informants, CRIs so we have these different ways of identifying informants. And reliable informants in terms of court proceedings are simply those informants that have already demonstrated their reliability by accurately telling us some piece of information that we confirmed.

If they say, "Oh, this guy here, he did this crime over there." And then I go back and I find, oh yeah, he did do that crime. Now, if he says that same, guy's about to do a crime next week, we have a reliable and good reason to believe he's telling us the truth because he was reliable about the first piece of information why would I not trust about the second?

Sean McDowell: Okay.

J. Warner Wallace: Well, you could actually divide prophets the same way, you could take a look at the prophecies and say, you know what? Some of these are more reliable than other. Not to say that all of them can be reliable, but what I mean is some make predictions about historical events and those actually occurred so I would separate those out. And so here's my whole point, the reason why I separate out we can look at a lot of prophets in the Old Testament, not all of them make predictions about historical events that actually occur. Ezekiel does, Isaiah does, Daniel does. Okay, great.

Sean McDowell: Yup.

J. Warner Wallace: Now, here's what I would say, if you're skeptical about prophecy okay, I'm with you. Tell you what, just for sake of argument, just for sake of argument now let's throw out all of the cloaked prophecies, get rid of them. Okay, I don't trust anything that the New Testament authors, some of those things in the New Testament are in the gospels are an author citing a cloaked piece of evidence to say, "Hey, the button fits the shirt." Toss that out. Fine. Not only that, let's go ahead and toss out any prophecy made by anyone other than somebody who also predicted something historical that came true. In other words, a reliable prophet. Well, now you're down to like four prophets, and you're only down to half of their prophecies because only half of those are going to be clear.

Tell you what, you have still got way more than enough reason to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. So what I tried to do in the book is separate that out and show you that I don't care how you cut this pie, you're stuck with Jesus and the prophecies from the Old Testament about Jesus are still strong. Even if I was willing to toss out two thirds of them because they're either not from a reliable prophet or they're again, when I say reliable, I mean, previously tested by historical prophecies, or they're cloaked toss all that stuff out for sake of argument, you're still stuck with significant prophecies that describe.

And what I tried to do in the book, and this is why you need to see it, is I don't know if anyone else has done this... No one does anything new under the sun so I'm sure somebody else has done it.

Sean McDowell: Sure, sure.

J. Warner Wallace: But what I tried to do was to say, hey, if I put them in a timeline and showed you where isn't that interesting? I thought this was like one of the answers to the question why does Jesus show up when he does? Does come down to prophecy. And if you look at the timeline, have you ever seen anyone list prophecies not based on who said them, but on when they were said in history? Well, it turns out if you did that, if you broke them down and placed them on a timeline, you would realize that if you're trying to answer the six investigative questions of what, when, where, how, why then finally to answer the who question, you don't have the answers to the first five until you get to Micah.

And then you have the answer, or to Malachi, and then you have the answer to the last one. So you'll see that yeah, if you stopped halfway in the timeline, you can only have a couple of questions answered, but if you keep on going the prophets answer all five of the investigative questions leaving you with the who. Well, there's a reason why Jesus comes when he does, because he comes at the end of that history of prophecy which now has completely identified, located, and giving you the timeframe because Daniel gives you the time frame of when he's going to show up. That was interesting to me just to see that yeah, this is why he doesn't show up seven centuries earlier.

If he showed up then there's not enough prophecy to even identify him. Whether you go get a little further, a little further, oh, all these dominoes fall in place, now it's perfect time to show up.

Sean McDowell: All right. For those of you watching, I want you to visualize that you have a fuse leading up to a crime scene, and the crime scene here we're talking about is the coming of Jesus as the Godman, and then the fallout that comes after it. So the fuse is what you talked about culturally, communication, roads. Prophetically, certain expectations from the Old Testament, and this spiritual fuse that there's this expectation even outside the Jewish religious community at that time for a spiritual figure like Jesus. The fallout is certain evidence you look after the crime scene.

Now some of this, this section just blew me away, I can't imagine how much research and time this took, but talk about some fallout for Jesus. For example, actually talk about how fallout matters for a crime scene first, and then we'll tie it to Jesus.

J. Warner Wallace: Well, and you know this, right? Because you're a professor and you know how much you trust your research assistant, and so I've never had a research assistant until this book, but I just felt like even with all the time we had in COVID-19 I needed help. And I could give direction, a lot of it was just about sifting through a bunch of dust to find fingerprints, right? So I did hire two research assistants and said, "Hey, here's what we're looking for. Let me know what you can find." And I credit them in the beginning of the book. So in the end, I think that was what made it possible.

Now, as far as fallout goes, right? Look sometimes after a crime our suspect will do certain things that he shouldn't do necessarily. The case that I'm working right now in Los Angeles, it's pretty clear that if you're going to destroy all of the property of the person you say just took off and you're going to destroy that property in the first week, well, why would you do that? If you think she just ran away you would expect her to come back, right? Unless, of course you know she's not coming back in which case you're going to feel like you have the liberty to destroy all of her property.

So when I see that happening early, I'm not trying to give you tips about how to cover up your murder, but the point is if I see that early, I'm going to say, "Well, why would you do that? Why would you speak as though she's never coming back if you aren't quite sure if she's coming back?" There are things that happen in the fallout after a murder takes place that can tip the hand of who's involved. Well, something similar happens with Jesus, right? Something happens if you didn't know it was Jesus, but something's going to happen in that first century that's going to change all of history.

And it turns out that afterwards every significant aspect of human history has the fingerprints of who? Oh yeah, Jesus of Nazareth. And so it may be that Jesus of Nazareth is the reason why all of that history turned on a dime. So I looked at those areas and I was very specific about this, I was interested in two things. Number one, because there's lots of books out there and I have them sitting back here on my shelf and I've quoted those in my footnotes. There are lots of good books that are written by people who are talking about the impact that Jesus... Susie wrote one recently, there's a bunch of these out there that talk about the impact that Jesus had.

But none of them attempt to sift through that impact to see if there's evidence we could use to reconstruct the story of Jesus.

Sean McDowell: Gotcha.

J. Warner Wallace: Remember I'm saying that Jesus had such an impact on history that you could reconstruct his story in every detail from history. So I'm only looking at those aspects of culture. I'll give you an example of this. It's clear that Jesus has had an impact on the way that we think about medicine, and the way that we think about serving the poor and serving those who are underserved, medically, right? But I'm looking for those aspects of culture that I could actually reconstruct the story of Jesus through them, not just the areas where he's had huge impact.

So for example, I include the medical sciences in my science chapter, but here's my point I think there are six areas of culture that not only were forever changed by Jesus, but bare his fingerprints. And so from those fingerprints, you can reconstruct the story of Jesus. They are the literature, the visual arts in music, education, science, spirituality. They are literature, visual arts, music, education, science, and spirituality, those are the six. Those six, I think are the most important aspects that I revered of culture as an atheist. So about halfway through this book I stopped and I said, "Ah, man." Look, I write apologetics books. This is what I do. I make a case and I try to stay in my lane."

You know that for example, I don't often talk about cultural issues, in the next book I'm going to start to branch out in that little bit, but for the most part I'm making a case for Jesus and for Christianity from the evidence that's on the table. And so I know I'm doing that, but I got about halfway through this book and I read it back to my publisher and I said it strikes me this is really more a book about why Jesus matters. And I wanted to change the subtitle, which we did because it turned out that those six things or five of those six things, literature, music, visual arts, education, and science were the things that I most revered as an atheist having no idea that we wouldn't be anywhere we are today in those five areas, if not for Jesus and his followers.

So he mattered to me even before I knew he mattered because the areas of culture he impacted mattered to me, and it turns out I was indebted to Jesus. I remember I was in architecture, I have my master of architecture so I'm in Germany with my wife visiting her family, because she was born in Germany and they used to make fun of me. I was there for a month, it like was church, castle, next city. We would go out every day, driving around in my little Volkswagen, white Volkswagen Beatle that I rented and we would go to church, a castle and the next city, another church, another castle, a next city. I was looking at the architecture. Well, it turns out the most spectacular architecture I was looking at was in churches.

And it was all from Christ followers inspired by Jesus featuring Jesus yet I'm just like that doesn't matter, I'm looking at the structure and the beauty of this really. So it turns out that these areas of culture are so deeply... And you might say, "Well, that's in the west, Jim". No, no, no. If you're doing science anywhere in the world, you're indebted to that area in the world, European Christiandom. Yeah, I get it, and there was a scientific revolution in Europe, people were all Christians, but it didn't have to happen there. There were more people everywhere else in the planet than there were in that tiny spot called Europe, okay?

It happened in Europe under a Christiandom for a reason, the worldview that was being represented by that population was a Christian worldview and it ignites the sciences in a way that other worldviews don't. So yeah, I get it, you can say.... But look, if you're doing science anywhere, in Asia, if you're doing science in Persia, if you're are doing science anywhere in the world, anywhere, it turns out you're still indebted to the fathers of science who came out of a Christian worldview and the vast majority of the science fathers of every discipline from astronomy, chemistry, quantum mechanics, computer sciences, those are Christ followers.

I mean, get over it, they are. The Nobel Laureates in the sciences are dominated by Christians 2:1. The next group coming down is guess what? Even a more amazing group, Jewish believers or at least Jewish, people identify as Jewish are the next group at about one half or a little less than half of the Christians. And then it drops off significantly. There are six times more Christians involved in the sciences as Nobel Laureate winners than there are atheists and agnostics combined. I mean, we had a tendency to think that I cannot believe in supernaturalism, that a man rose from the grave and still be involved in the sciences.

Really? We have always been that, we've always been, we've always believed those two things. Christians have dominated this. By the way, Muslims were involved and were heavily involved in this.

Sean McDowell: Yeah, that's true.

J. Warner Wallace: From the middle ages and then drop off the map. Why? Theological reasons, I think, and there's a book called "The Closing of the Muslim Mind" that tries to parse that out,

Sean McDowell: Sure.

J. Warner Wallace: but the reality of it is, is that we have to make a choice as Christians. If we don't know our involvement and how important Christ and his followers have been to the sciences, and we now think well this is not a Christian endeavor, shame on us. Young people need to be involved, young Christians need to be involved in the sciences. One of the things that catalyzed the sciences under Christianity was this view that yes, while the written special revelation of the New Testament and of the Bible is closed.

The natural revelation and what we learn about God from the natural sciences is still open. It's never going to contradict the special revelation, but there is more to be discovered. And you get a chance to write in that book, the book of a natural revelation if you're a scientist worshiping God with your mind.

Sean McDowell: Let's jump in through these and just give maybe some quick bullet point answers so people get the broad argument that you're making here. You're not necessarily saying this makes Christianity true, if I understand you correctly. You're saying if God did step into history, this is the kind of fallout we would expect, and we see it with Jesus and not even close to any other figure who's ever existed. Does that sum it up correctly?

J. Warner Wallace: Yes. You did a great job of that because I think reality of it is we can make a case for the historicity of Jesus just from history. The historicity of Jesus is connected to reality and we have a reality in history that demonstrates the historicity of Jesus.

Sean McDowell: Okay

J. Warner Wallace: But beyond that, I think that the expectation I would have that this dude, think about this dude, you watched "The Chosen" in the last couple of years, right? We watched this series called "The Chosen" and we're all going, "Oh, this is great." Again, I want you to put yourself, at least that visually gives you a sense of the part of the world, and the group he's leading and the nature of who he would... You expect that guy to have this kind of impact on history?

I just think that's remarkable, and I talk about this in the book. I make a list of all the other people in the first century, forget about that, I make a list of all the other world leaders most of whom you won't recognize, and they didn't have this kind of impact on history. I made a list of all of the religious leaders and deities. No, not like Jesus of Nazareth. I mean, a list of all the other people who claim to be the Jewish Messiah, and there are a number of those. You don't even know their names because they're not the Jewish Messiah. So it turns out that this guy has an unparalleled impact on history that makes no sense at all if he's just a ancient sage in the first century in Jerusalem, but makes perfect sense if he is the God who created all of us.

If God stepped into the world as a man, you would expect him to reorder history, that all of history would align for his arrival, and then afterwards the huge impact would be like no other person in the history of persons. That's why he is a person of interest. Now, I do think this unparalleled impact should at least make us say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe I should read the New Testament." That's why I wanted to write a book that was like the companion piece to "Cold-Case Christianity", right? Because that's everything inside the New Testament, this is everything outside the New Testament.

Sean McDowell: So give us the quick Twitter thoughts on the effect in the fallout for music, because when you first show me these slides it was pretty remarkable. So paint that picture quickly for us down. I want to jump to universities.

J. Warner Wallace: Okay. So two things, impact and then reconstructing the story. Impact is unparalleled, it's not just in Western culture. You'll see if you are a big fan of music today and you made a list of the top 150 artists in pop music, rock, rap, country, whatever it is they're available right now on Billboard Magazine, they're available at Rolling Stone, it's available at IMDB. I made a list of all of those, it was about 150 artists, all but two have sung a song about Jesus.

Sean McDowell: Interesting.

J. Warner Wallace: Not necessarily a nice song, sometimes it's pejorative, but the point is you cannot say that about any other historical figure or any other God deity, or religious leader, only one person draws that kind of attention.

You can say, "Well, that's Western music, Jim." Oh really? Not necessarily. It turns out that Western music has had a global impact. If you listen to what known as K-pop, Korean pop music, pretty cool actually. But it feels like boy bands from the '90s. But the point is, if you listen to that, they're emulating the genre of music that Jesus followers or people who sung about Jesus, whether they were followers or not. One of my favorite song is by trying to remember who did this, the song was "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk". I forget his name. So I thought this is awesome, right? I mean, people use Jesus as a source of inspiration or infuriation in all of their music.

No one has had the impact on music, and by the way the history of music, I looked at all of the significant milestones in the history of music, like when did we move from just monotone chants to harmonies? Oh, a Christ follower did that. Oh, when did we move from memorizing and communicating melodies by memory from one person to another to actually writing down melodies on musical scale? Oh, a Christ follower invented that. Oh, when did we move towards... It turns out every significant advancement in the history of music is not only made by Christ followers, but it's typically done in a Christian setting. So it turns out that if whatever you're listening to today, if you were to draw out the rough structure of the music, are there's harmonies involved?

Are there major and minor skills? Well, those who are created by Christ followers. If it is using certain kinds of instruments, a very good chance those who were created by Christ followers. If you just look at what's being done in music today, even though you may not have idea that that's where it came from, that's the kind of impact that Jesus had. Why? Because the worldview inaugurated by Jesus was a singing worldview born out of the Judeo-Christian Jewish culture. As a matter of fact, you'll see that the Psalms that were sung by David in the Psalms, most scholars think those are the same songs that were sung for example, by Jesus at the Lord's supper.

And it turns out the rich tradition of music, if all you had were the hymns sung by Christians in the first 400 years and not only have I identified those for you in the book, I've gone through every one of those hymns and I'll tell you what you can pull out of each hymn. You can reconstruct the story of Jesus and the rich theology of the Christian worldview if all you had was the music of the first four centuries. That to me is a huge impact and it helps us to establish... Again, you could destroy the New Testament, but unless you're willing to also destroy the history of music, you will not erase Jesus.

Sean McDowell: That is to me, one of the most interesting things from your book. When you look at the fallout for movies, you can reconstruct the life of Jesus, the fallout for music, reconstruct the life of Jesus, art in the early century scenes and life of Jesus, architecture, universities, scientists, and their writings. This doesn't prove Christianity's true, but what you're saying it's the kind of fallout we would expect if it were true which should make us pause and think, wait a minute, why did this guy have such a transformative influence on world history?

Especially when you think about the fact that he traveled by foot, had no political power, his family was insignificant, he wasn't married, had no military power. "Why him?" is the question you're asking in this book, and I think Christians and skeptics should read it with an open mind. Now, one more question then we're going to shift and take some live questions.

J. Warner Wallace: Cool.

Sean McDowell: I see some questions, I see some pushback, which is great, which I know you enjoy, what about the fallout for other religions? And you go into depth on Hinduism, Mithraism, Islam, we don't have the time to go into each one of those, but talk about the influence Jesus had on other religions and how it's unique compared to any other religious figure.

J. Warner Wallace: Well, what's fascinating is that everything that follows Jesus, of course, you would expect at some point to hat tip or acknowledge Jesus, and that's true. If it's Islam, or Amadiya Islam, or if it's Baha'i, or if it's new age spirituality. Anything that follows Jesus in the timeline of established world religions, those folks, the leaders of those groups, or even their own scripture will acknowledge Jesus in some way. They'll find a place that'll emerge, mention or modify their religious beliefs to accommodate Jesus. But what's interesting is that there are a number of religions that preceded Jesus, like Buddhism and Hinduism and the worship of Attis and Mithras, all of these preceding religions also end up merging Jesus in in some way.

Well, how can that be? They preceded Jesus. Well, because they existed then on the other side of the timeline for at least a short period of time, so although they started before Jesus, they extended into the Common Era. And once they get into the Common Era, they're like, "Ooh, we got to do something with this Jesus guy." So you'll see that leaders in the Buddhist movement or Hindu leaders, they will make room for Jesus, they will say that Jesus can be described in a way that's consonant with their religious beliefs of that system. They will describe him as an enlightened man or as another manifestation as the Baha'i faith does. They will find room for Jesus in their system, even though many of these preexisted Jesus. Now, that's interesting to me, right? Here's why. Jesus doesn't do that in return.

Sean McDowell: It's true.

J. Warner Wallace: He comes in the middle of that timeline of all these spiritual worldviews and he never says, "Oh yeah, we can accommodate Buddha," or Buddha precedes him, no, we can accommodate Indra, no, Krishna, no, Zoroaster, no. He doesn't accommodate anyone who precedes him and instead he says I'm the only way. I'm the way to the father, except through me, you ain't getting there. Isn't that interesting? Everyone wants to hat tip and borrow from Jesus, but Jesus doesn't borrow from anyone else. And that to me, I think is interesting to see that. So that's why when we say typically, if you're interested in spiritual things, you ought start with Jesus, because it turns out you could reconstruct the story of Jesus just from the way that non-Christian religions describe him.

Because they often will admit to certain characteristics of Jesus in order to incorporate them into... So here's what's interesting about that. I have a map in the book where I show all of the places where non-Christian traditions have touched the global map. It turns out you would know something about Jesus and all of those far corners of the world where Christianity is not dominant, just because those world religions make room for Jesus. That to me is fascinating. That's the kind of impact that Jesus had even on systems that are non-Christian.

Sean McDowell: All right Jim, let's take some questions and when we're done, I'm going to let you pick the questions you find most helpful, most interesting for whatever criteria you want. So if you have a question for Detective Wallace, please place it in here, brief, succinct to the point. Let me start with the one that I think is interesting from Pine Creek, a skeptic who watches my show. I hope you'd use that term and that's fine. He says, "Did Christianity ever hurt the progress of science?"

J. Warner Wallace: So usually the story that's used in describing the way that Christianity, Christianity now has somehow hindered science is typically formed in the person of Galileo, right? Because Galileo's story, here he is as somebody who is heliocentric, he believes the universe, our solar system earth rather, is revolving and centered on the sun and that the earth is rotating around the sun. Well, look at the time, I have a whole part of my chapter on this, the Pope who was in power at that time actually argued for a geocentric solar system in which the center of the solar system is earth and everything rotates around the earth.

So this story about how Galileo was treated by the Catholic church and how he was actually under house arrest because he held a view that was opposed by the Pope, is something you have to dig in the weeds here a little bit. Because it turns out the Pope was actually somebody who accepted the science prior to Galileo, because the science prior to Galileo through Aristotle and through Ptolemy, was for a geocentric solar system. So it's not as though that what was happening here is you've got Galileo against the church. First of all, it's not Galileo against Christianity regardless, the most you could say is that Galileo was opposed to Catholic leadership. That's all you could say, right?

But it turns out that the Catholic leadership at the time advanced the cause of the scientific consensus of the time, which were for geocentrism. So what you really have is a science versus science. This is always the case, right? Now, it turns out that if you look at there were many, there was a couple who preceded Galileo, who also believed in a heliocentric universe, solar system, for example, Copernicus was somebody who believed in that. So if you look at now, why were those people not under the same condemnation, let's say as Galileo? Well, if you read through the history of Galileo, Galileo had a personality issue, okay? He not only held this view, but he also would take jabs at the Pope and he wrote a book in which he really mocked the Pope pretty openly.

And a lot of what you're seeing between the Pope and Galileo has to do with Galileo's presentation of his ideas, rather than his ideas themself. As a matter of fact, nobody contributed more to the advancement of astronomy and the sciences than the papacy, than the Roman Catholic papacy, because they had a vested interest in this. No one was exposed to more about cosmology than people in the middle centuries when they were exposed under Catholic formed universities that were teaching the sciences. So it turns out that yes, that iconic story that people sometimes point to, to say, "Well, look Galileo was trying to show the truth about the heliocentric solar system and the Pope opposed him."

Well, remember the Pope actually supported the view held by scientific thinkers prior to Galileo, and at some point of course, science always turns over science. We learn more, we discover more about the natural realm and we embrace those discoveries, and no one has done more for the advancement of the sciences than the modern universities. Well, who formed those? Oh yeah, Christians. Turns out Bologna, Paris and Oxford, the three modern universities... Now you can say that were there learning institutions before those three? Yeah, but they weren't the modern university you and I know in which there's a body of students, a body faculty who are awarding diplomas to people who graduate after meeting certain criterias, that's a very modern idea of education.

That is uniquely Christian, it comes out of those three universities. As a matter of fact, if all you did was look at the top 15 universities in the world today, they were all formed by Christians. They may not be teaching Christianity, they may not be favorable to Christianity today, but if you went back to those universities and examined their campuses and looked at the buildings and the images and verses of scripture that are on their buildings, the original buildings, you could reconstruct the story of Jesus just from the physical campuses of the top 15 universities in the world. And I did that in the book.

Sean McDowell: Tina Lynch has a question for you, says, "Which evidence would you say is the most important one that leads to the existence of Jesus outside the Bible?Music?"

J. Warner Wallace: I don't know which is the most important, but I do know this I was surprised to find so here's wat I did. In every one of these categories, I reassembled what could be known about Jesus from literature. In the first three centuries, I looked at every voice that is available out there in ancient history in the first three centuries of the Common Era, both Christian non-Christian, Jews, Greeks, Persians, Romans in the first three centuries. And I went that far because I felt okay, look, this is all prior to the edict of Milan and the edict of Thessalonica. So these are prior to Christianity being comfortable in a power structure that might corrupt the message of Christianity.

So we're going to look at only those voices that are speaking about Jesus and the up and down cycle of persecution, intolerance, and disruption that was experiencing in the first three centuries. Once I get to the third century, 325, I stopped because then I think you can make an argument that... So I looked at those voices, you can reconstruct the story of Jesus from those pretty powerfully. From the church fathers, the ancient non-Christians, the non-canonical authors, you can reconstruct the story of Jesus. I looked at that from music, I looked at that from the arts, surprisingly the most robust reconstruction possible is from the personal writings of the science fathers.

Sean McDowell: Interesting.

J. Warner Wallace: Those fathers of the sciences, who also wrote about Jesus in their personal journals. So if all you had was the history of science and you wanted to know more and you might think, oh, well, he's talking about Copernicus or he is talking about somebody like the 13th century or the 15th century. No, it turns out we still dominate, you can find living scientists today who are Nobel prize winners and are prize winners in every other, there's a ton of, by the way, scientific prizes

Sean McDowell: Sure.

J. Warner Wallace: I got list of those in the book. And you can find that those winners of prizes most of them are Christ followers, and they even today write about Jesus. So if you'd have to erase the history of science to get rid of the truth about Jesus.

Sean McDowell: That's awesome. Here's one for you that I wonder if you've thought about, Andrew Green says, "Is there a runner up for most influential historical figure? And how would their influence pan against the case for Christ?"

J. Warner Wallace: Really good question. I'd like somebody to answer that question other than me, I can't think of anyone who comes close. If you just look at the number of books written about historical figures, the gap is pretty great, right? I'll never get it up in time, Sean. It's in my case notes on this book, but if you look, the gap is huge. So in terms of historical figures that have an impact on literature, that it's a huge gap and there's nobody even close. What I can tell you though, is if you look at my list of people in the first century who lived, historical figure who lived, most of you will recognize a couple, but just a couple.

To be honest, there's nobody who's had that. If all you said, is it fair? Well, I said, even if you looked at the entire list of important... I just Googled it, right? Because I'm thinking, hey most of... Here's why I say that. I love using Google sometimes and Wikipedia as a source. Why? Because it's not very friendly to Christians. And most of the time, if you're a scientist and you're on Wikipedia they have scrubbed your Christian identity altogether. Now, if they do admit that you're a Christian, it's like whoa so I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg because it turns out that most of these histories of scientists, for example, they've had their Christian identity removed and it's hard to get back to that.

So whatever I'm pitching trust me, it's far stronger than what I'm pitching because I'm only pitching the stuff that comes from the most skeptical sources possible. And I try my best to limit myself to the most skeptical sources and provide you with links. So if I'm telling you this dude is the father of whatever, of microbiology or he is the father of quantum mechanics, I'm providing you with the link to go to... It's basically a secular source where they're calling him the father of quantum mechanics. So it turns out, I mean, I'm trying to be as neutral as I can on that. And that's where I told my research assistants to focus.

Sean McDowell: So you'll use a source like that to start and get attention and then track down the real source itself?

J. Warner Wallace: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: That's a beginning point?

J. Warner Wallace: So you start off by somebody... I just need a pointer. And once he's pointed, well, then I got to find the books that are out there that actually support that case. But here's the problem, there's a bunch of people I'm sure who are listed in the sciences, for example, on Wikipedia, who I can't even start as a pointer because they've removed their Christian identity. So if that's okay, because when you see the list of 950 of the science fathers, you'll think it's enough.

Sean McDowell: Jim, one last question for you then going to let you run, I want to respect the time. This one doesn't relate directly to what you've been presenting, but I think it's an interesting one to end with. I've never asked you this, myself this come from the MythVision Podcast.

J. Warner Wallace: Okay.

Sean McDowell: Could J. Warner Wallace be wrong about Jesus? Is it even possible in his mind that Jesus did not rise from the dead?

J. Warner Wallace: Yes, absolutely. Anything and everything is possible. So is it possible I'm wrong? Of course. Give me a break. The standard of proof though is not beyond a possible doubt. It's possible that you're not even watching this right, you're dreaming the entire thing. It's possible that we aren't really in two different rooms or any... It's all kinds of things are possible, but it turns out the standard of proof on any case is not beyond a possible doubt because I'd never reached that. I've never reached beyond a possible doubt on any case. There's always questions I could offer that I can't answer. There's always are.

So is it possible I'm wrong? Oh yeah, but I'm not aiming at that standard. I aiming at beyond a reasonable doubt. By the way, none of us live a life in which we are living at beyond a possible doubt. If that's the case, did you brush your teeth this morning? You realize that sometimes people have actually died of toothpaste poisoning and you brushed your teeth? And did you plug anything into the wall? People are electrocuted every day by bad wiring. Did you start your car? Cars explode every day, all over America for one malfunction or another. Did you drive in the air? In other words, if you had the standard that I have to be absolutely correct beyond a possible doubt, you would not leave your house.

You would be paralyzed. It turns out what we do every day is we live in a different standard. Yeah, it's possible that could happen to me, but it's not reasonable so I want go do it. It's possible that I could be wrong about what's in this glass, but it's not reasonable so I'm going to drink it. We don't live, and express, and move in the world with the prohibitive standard of it must be true beyond a possible doubt. As a matter of fact, judges tell juries that you don't have that standard about anything and you should not use that standard in this case because judges will say in California, I could offer a possible or imaginary doubt about anything.

So I never worry about well, do I have opening questions about Jesus? Yeah. Is it possible I'm wrong? Yeah. I don't think it's reasonable that I'm wrong. I think I'm beyond a reasonable doubt, but I could never get beyond a possible doubt. And so that's why I think we, we have to get to a place where we say, hey, when is good enough good enough? And that's really the question, is when do I reach a point where I'm like, okay, and yourself this question, what's keeping you up? Are you on the standard? By the way, you don't hold that standard for anything else so why are you holding that standard for Jesus, that standard for God? You don't hold that standard.

It's possible right now your spouse is cheating on you, been cheating on you for five years that's possible. Are you going to be paranoid and checking your text messages? No, you're going to let your reasoning capacity tell you what's beyond a reasonable doubt, and you're going to live that way because otherwise you're a paranoid danger to the world because you can't live beyond a possible doubt. So I think this understanding what is the standard of proof is huge, which is why I spend a whole chapter on it in "Cold-Case Christianity". So if you can't get beyond that, but be honest, be fair, you don't hold that standard for anything else, but it comes to God oh now suddenly the standard's a lot higher. Really?

The highest standard in criminal trials is beyond a reasonable doubt, that's a high enough standard for anything. That's good enough for me.

Sean McDowell: I love it. Well, we've got a few minutes over, so we got to give away copies of your book. By the way, I don't feel bad because you gave long answers, so it's on you.

J. Warner Wallace: I know. I know. You know me already Sean, you know I can't give short answers.

Sean McDowell: I'm just messing with you.

J. Warner Wallace: Hey, I'll tell you what? If you had Greg Koukl on this thing right now, you and I both know, okay? You'd be on question number one right now, all right?

Sean McDowell: Maybe. Yeah. Right, right. That's awesome.

J. Warner Wallace: Okay.

Sean McDowell: Okay. We're going to give two copies of your book to "Person of Interest", and I hope I didn't miss any I wrote down, there were four questions. Actually two non-believers, two I think who are Christians and you just pick whichever one you think is most interesting. One was about what was-

J. Warner Wallace: I don't know who's on the Zoom with us.

Sean McDowell: Well, it doesn't matter who, it matters the question and we'll send it to them.

J. Warner Wallace: Yeah. I thought the last two questions were really good, so I don't know who people are or if believers are non-believers, but the last two questions. That's who I would give it to.

Sean McDowell: All right, we'll take it. So MythVision you got yourself a copy of the new book by J. Warner Wallace. This is awesome.

J. Warner Wallace: I'm really sorry Sean, but at some point there'll be a four hour video on why I'm an idiot, but that's okay I'm willing to take that chance.

Sean McDowell: That's awesome. I appreciate it. So MythVision and Andrew, you also had the second to last question. I recognize Andrew Green, you've been in a bunch. Thanks for joining us. If you guys will email into apologetics@biola.edu. Apologetics@biola.edu, we will send you a copy of Jim's latest book. By the way, those of you that joined us make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some fascinating interviews coming up. Next week we have Lee Strobel, talking about his new book, "The Case for Heaven".

J. Warner Wallace: Oh, that's going to be good.

Sean McDowell: I have a story coming up soon, interviewing an expert on the story of C. S. Lewis from atheist to Christian apologist. Have both Craig Keener and J. P. Moreland coming on to talk about the modern case for the miraculous. So make sure you hit subscribe, you're not going to want to miss some of the shows we have coming up. Jim, hang on one minute afterwards so we can chat, but to the rest of you we will see you very soon. Have a wonderful evening.