If You Knew That Christianity Is True, Would You Believe It?

Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Everybody, we have an absolutely intense podcast. It might be short, but it's probably short just to have you survive, because we're going to be getting together with our good friend Frank Turek. Get your brain ready. Get some a notepad ready, but you are going to be thrilled. Thinking about God, how do we know God's real? What's the existence of God? Is there proof for that? So get ready. Here we go with our good friend, Dr. Frank Turek. Hang on, let's dive in. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. Okay, then Frank, that leaves us to just dive in. It's this. What would you say are the two, if you had to narrow it down? What are the two great arguments that the Christian, the believer can put forth before anyone, atheist, unbeliever, spiritualist? What can you give the people, Frank, that is the two top responses that we should be giving to people? If we want to show the Christianity's true, Jack, we really only need to do two things. Because if these two things are true, everything else falls into place. It's like dominoes. The two facts you need to show is number one that God exists, and then number two that Jesus rose from the dead. Because if those two things are true, market down Christianity's true. If Jesus actually predicted and accomplished his own resurrection from the dead, then we can actually show the Bible's the word of God. Because if he did rise from the dead, then he's God and whatever God teaches is true. And Jesus taught the entire Old Testament who was the word of God, and he promised the New Testament. So the two facts are, does God exist and did Jesus rise from the dead? So listen to that. Okay. What would you say to somebody that would say to that, Frank? Okay, look, Turk, you're using the Bible to argue for the Bible, but I don't believe in the Bible. So your claims about the existence of God, I'm not buying it, and Jesus, I'm not even sure if Jesus was actually a real figure. What do you say to somebody who throws that back at you? Well, the first thing I'm going to say is let's deal with the God question first, because obviously Jesus couldn't have risen from the dead if there's no God. Okay. So let's deal with God first. And you don't need the Bible to show they God exists. I'm just going to mention three arguments. We don't have time to unpack them all, but three arguments that I use when I go to a college campus to show that God exists. The first argument is the argument from the beginning of the universe. Jack, do you know that atheists now are admitting that spacetime and matter had a beginning out of nothing? Now, they'll admit that. They don't have a cause for that. In fact, it was Stephen Hawking. You know his cause was Jack. I don't remember, but yeah, before Stephen Hawking died, he wrote in the book, The Grand Design, these words to explain the beginning of the universe. He said, because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing. Lawless. What? To which? Yeah. I mean, that's theological what he said. Right, to which John Lennox said, when brilliant scientists say nonsense, it's still nonsense. Because first of all, gravity can't create anything. Gravity just operates on objects that are already created. And secondly, gravity itself was created. It had a beginning. So yeah, can't explain the beginning of the universe. Okay. But here's the main point. Here's the main point. Wow. If spacetime and matter had a beginning, as even atheists will admit, of course, they don't think it's God, but my question is, what else could it be? Because if spacetime and matter had a beginning, whatever caused spacetime and matter can't be made a spacetime and matter, right? You know, it's got to be outside of spacetime. That's it has to be. Yeah. So it's got to be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful to create the universe out of nothing. Personal, why personal? Because to go from a state of nothingness to a state of creation, someone had to make a choice and only persons can make choices. Also, the cause would have to be intelligent to have a mind to make a choice. So Jack, I always ask people this question. When you think about a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause, who do you think of? God. It's God, right? Now people will say, well, Frank, how do you know it's the Christian God? And my answer is, we don't. Yet, I mean, this could be Allah or some other theistic or deistic God. But if we look at the evidence for the resurrection, Jack, and we discover that Jesus really did die and rise from the dead, then we can say that the same being that walked out of the tomb 1,992 years ago is the same being in whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing. Okay? You don't get all the way to Jesus with what we call the Cosmological argument. The argument from the beginning of the universe. But you get those six attributes, which could be the God of the Bible. Well, it's not a bad place to start because in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And you've often said, if you can get past the first verse of the Bible, the rest of it's easy. That's right. Because now you've got a God that is outside our realm who is sovereign and can do what he pleases. And it's interesting to me that so many people who want to deny the existence of God, it seems to me, Frank, that when they do that, they're doing it, they're doing it for very self-serving reasons, which remarkably enough proves to me, to me, not to them. But to me, the existence of God himself. Because no, God cannot be true because I want to live my lifestyle, the way that I enjoy it. And if he's real, then that gets in the way of what I want. Well, wait a minute. If he's real, if he's possibly real, just the possibility of being real, you're concerned that what you're doing is sinful. Where does that logic or thought come from? Thus, you say there cannot be a God. There cannot be a God as you sleep around or do whatever you do. All the while, you're actually sinning against your own intellect. You're sinning against your own internal knowledge that I'm covering this up because this God could exist when down deep inside, you know, you're sinning, which proves the existence of God. Yes, that's right. Well, that's actually the third argument for God, the moral argument. But I want to say one thing to what you just said related to that. That's why on college campuses, I always ask people, if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? I love it. I love him to do that. And Jack, a lot of times people say no because they're being honest. It's not a head problem. It's a heart problem. They don't want it to be true. They don't want there to be a God because they want to be God over their own lives, right? They're not on a truth quest, Jack. They're on a happiness quest. That's it. And they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy. The problem is you can make yourself happy over the short term, doing a lot of fun, but ultimately selfish things. But over the long term, it's a disaster. And everybody watching or listening to us now, Jack, who's over 40 years old knows what we're talking about because many of us have tried this ourselves. You know, I'm going to live life my way. I'm going to do things everything my way. No, you're not. Not very long anyway. Who's going to put up with a meme monster forever, right? What's going to happen to your life if you just follow every impulse? If you just do everything you want every time, you're going to wind up addicted, divorced, broken, alone, and probably prematurely dead. So the only way to get contentment and eternity with God is to go straight through truth and Jesus is the truth. Frank, I talked to a young man, 27 years old, last Sunday at church, 27 years old. Check this out. The guy was talking. We're talking. And he loves the Lord. And he was just expressing his love for the Bible. And I said, tell me your story. And he's had a tremendous life at just at 27 years of age. But he came to Christ because there was a void in his life. Now, look, that's easy to say. And people might say, yeah, yeah, I kind of understand that. But wait, wait, wait a minute. This guy went on to tell me that he had, at his young age, he had all the girls, he had all the cars, he had all the attention. Frank, this guy told me he makes $50 million a year in his career, what he does. Empty, directionless, burned out, and all of that inability for the world to bring satisfaction and meaning led him to Christ. And truly, we talked about, it's the goodness of God that leads a man to repentance. That's exactly what happened in his life. And you think about the power of that. Now, somebody might say on the scientific level, I can't prove that. I can't put that in the lab. I cannot test that. No, maybe not. But you cannot deny someone's experience. And you hear it over and over again. And of course, at the pinnacle of these types of conversion experiences that are sustained or people like Paul the Apostle. Remarkable, remarkable conversion. And you know, change the course of human history. But what's amazing to me, Frank, your arguments and people, I want all of you to get, and I'm not just saying this because Frank is a friend. Frank actually became a friend because I read so much of what Frank has written and listened to what Frank has produced that I reached out to him. And we were able to share in ministry. That's how Frank became a friend of mine. So I'm not saying that because he's my friend. I'm saying this, get his books, get his materials, go to crossexamine, is it dot org or dot. Yeah, crossexamine dot org. That's right. Start listening to these things. Look at his debates. And you've got to start thanking everybody. You got to start thinking because watch this. The believer, the believer is still standing where the believer has always stood for 2,000 years. Notice that it's the atheist that keep moving around all the time. You know, like a pinball machine. And yet at least, hey, at least they've been moving closer toward the truth. They're not, they're not explaining themselves further away from the truth. They're trying to actually so to speak, get along with us, but redefine things because they're starting to wake up to realization that one engineered designer architect seems to make sense to all that we see. Absolutely, Jack. In fact, that's the second argument for God. We ought to talk about, we talked about cosmological, right? There's got to be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent mind out there. But the one that the atheists have the hardest problem with actually, Jack, is what's called the design argument or the teleological argument, the fine tuning of the universe. And just to give you an idea of what kind of precision we're talking about, that if the universe were different by just a hair's breath, we wouldn't exist or life wouldn't exist or the universe wouldn't exist. I'm just going to give you one out of dozens of parameters about our universe and unpack what it means. The ratio of the strong nuclear force to the gravitational force is so fine tune, Jack, it's fine tune to one in 10 to the 40th power. Now, what's one in 10 to the 40th power? That's one part in one with 40 zeros following it. Frank, I can't get my head around that number. Okay, here's an illustration. Take the entire North American continent from Central America all the way to Greenland, the 51st state. That's right. And stack it in dimes all the way to the moon. That's 238,000 miles. And do that on a billion other North American continent. Oh gosh. Stack them in dimes all the way to the moon, Jack. And then take all of those piles of dimes, put them in one humongous pile mark, one dime red, mix it in, throw a friend on that pile blindfolded, ask them to pick one dime. The chance you would pick that one marked red dime is one chance in 10 to the 40th power. Is he going to pick that dime, Jack? That is absolutely awesome. He's not because that's fine, too. That's just one out of dozens. Change any one of them. We're not here. This shows that there is a designer beyond any doubt. There's a designer out there, Jack. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, this is cool. This is so cool because if someone's watching us right now and listening, they're saying, no, you know, I'm evidence-based. I'm evidence-based. You Christians, you check your brains in at the door when you go to church. Okay, but so evidence-based, so are we? This God that Frank is talking about in the fine tuning of his creation. There is a guy Frank way back when, at least then I had the honor to actually host him at our house one time, Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith. I've heard of him. Yeah. Yeah. From Inegan, Switzerland, the guy had seven earned doctorates. He a remarkable man of God. He wrote many books, but one of the books was he who thinks has to believe. And I love that book, but one of the things that he argues about is that even if you do not have a Bible, and I thought he was crazy when he said this, he said, if you don't have a Bible, God has given you another Bible that I went like, what? And the other Bible he went on to say is the witness of creation. Jack, you point at that out in your new book, which I'm reading through right now. You point out, Romans 1 says that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is true, you know. You're good, true. Well, thank you. I didn't know you were going to plug my book right now under the podcast. So hey, I'm taking a bold stand, friends. You ought to get Jack's new book. Here it is. Hey, I got it. I went amazon.com. I did a pre-order to see if it worked. But yeah, it works. Also, friends, I do not have enough faith to be an atheist. One of Frank's great, great books. But please, again, get everything you can. But yeah, but just the thought of that, when he said that, it shocked me. And then I've realized, wait a minute. That's exactly the witness of Romans 1. Even for people who don't have a Bible, there is the witness of God's scientific, and I mean science, real science, you'll follow the science. Yeah, why don't you follow the science? And if you keep following the science, you're going to do what Sir Isaac Newton did. And you're going to bump into the existence of God. But the God of the Bible and the God of science, they don't contradict each other. They're in complete harmony. Yes. Because it's the same author. You know what contradicts Jack? The Bible and science don't contradict what contradicts are some interpretations of the Bible and some interpretations of the natural world. You need to unpack that. But we've established that there's a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent mind out there that not only created this universe, but designed it in Jack. You notice how atheists are always like harping on Christians. Oh, you believe in a virgin birth. Yeah, we do. We have an answer for the virgin birth. You believe in the virgin birth of the universe and you have no cause for that. We have a cause for the virgin birth of the universe and the virgin birth of Jesus. You have a cause for neither. Okay. So they have no problem with the virgin birth of the universe, but they got a problem with the virgin birth of Jesus. Come on. So good. I think it's Stephen J. Gould. He was the former director of Goddard Space Center. I think he wrote one of his books. I forget the title of the book. I don't know. You're talking about Jastro. You have it in here. Oh, Robert Jastro. It's Robert Jastro you're thinking about. Robert Jastro. Yeah, Jastro. He was the Goddard Space Institute guy and he said, he said for the, for the, yeah, for the field, for, for the field. Um, I got, I got hang on. I just got to start to quote. And I'll remember it. He said, for the scientists who has lived by his faith and the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He scaled the mountains of ignorance. He's about to pull himself over the final rock. When he gets there, he sees a band of theologians who've been sitting there for centuries. You just pulled that out of your head. Yeah. That's a famous quote. I, I didn't verbatim. It's close. I, I left out a couple of words. I can't think of them now. But Jastro basically, he's, Jack, he was an agnostic and he said, when you look at the evidence from the natural world, Genesis 1, 1 appears to be true. That's the point. Yeah. Yeah. In the beginning, God created heavens and the earth. Yeah. So Frank, hey, um, yeah, well, I just think that I can live my life the way I want to because if Frank, there is this God that you talk about, uh, doesn't he want me to live my life by whatever I want? He wants you to live a life that would cause you to know him better to be conformed to the image of a son because you're just not here for, you know, a few decades. You're going to live for eternity. By the way, do you realize you're going to be dead a lot longer than you're going to be alive? Yeah. So you're, you're here to make a choice and to be conformed to the image of a son. And when God puts moral boundaries around us, it's not for his benefit. He's, he's infinite. He doesn't get anything out of us obey in his laws. It's for our benefit. When we stay within his moral boundaries, we're the ones that benefit. When we break outside of those moral boundaries, we're the ones that that that get hurt. So they're for our benefit. I mean, we tell our kids, you know, don't touch the stove. It's not for our benefit. It's for the kids benefit, right? Right. I mean, wow. So that's the third argument, Jack, the moral argument. Look, everybody in the world knows that murder is wrong. Why is it wrong? It's only wrong because there's a standard beyond us that were obligated to obey. And, and that standard can only be God's nature. If there's no God, then you can't say Hitler was really wrong because there's no authority beyond you or Hitler. It's just your opinion. And yet we know that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. We know that murder is wrong. We know that rape is wrong. We know that theft is wrong. Those things are wrong. Not just because we want to have a society that functions. They're wrong because they violate God's nature. And God's nature is the standard of goodness that's out there. Any deviation from goodness is what we call evil. If there's no standard of goodness, then nothing's evil. Everything's just a matter of opinion. So with that, I got to ask you something. I'm just playing around here with the time that we have left with what you just said then. We know that that is theologically dishonest of an individual to think like that. We know that it's intellectually dishonest for them to think that way. It's morally dishonest. Yes. And so I used a quote from you or I actually drew from a book that you wrote. I'm forgetting because I'm an old man, the title. But I was in an argument, just recently, I don't mean an argument. We were debating. It was a reporter regarding some horrible legislation in California here. And the reporter asked me, do you think it's the Christian's place to legislate morality? And I immediately thought of Frank Turek instantly, instantly. And because of you, I had an immediate answer. And you know what he did. He got nailed. Right. I mean, I got him because because of the great Frank Turek, I got him. And of course, he just pivoted it off and went under a different topic, which is evidence that he got nailed, which was this. I said, you know, when you post the speed limit on a highway, that's legislating morality. It's immoral to go over the speed limit. But I was borrowing from you. Well, because life, even speed limit, you're right, because a speed limits imply that life is valuable. That's why we have speed limits. So people don't kill themselves or others, because life is valuable. That's a moral precept. All laws legislate morality. The only question is who's morality? And Jack, I don't want to impose my morality. I don't want to impose your morality. I want to impose the morality. Amen. The one Thomas Jefferson said with self-evident, the one the apostle Paul said, the Gentiles and out of the law have the law written on their hearts. If you read through the book of Romans, Jack, have you ever done that? If you read through the Romans chapter two, chapter two was like several years ago, Jack, you may have forgotten it. That's where he says it. You know, that's where he says it's written on our hearts. It's written on our hearts because it comes from God's nature. And that standard of rightness is written on our hearts. Now we can be talked out of that standard by bad education or by culture or by sin. But that, that standard is written on our hearts by God. And that's the third argument for God, by the way, Jack. Yeah. First argument, beginning the universe, second argument, design of the universe, and the design of life. We haven't had a chance to talk about that. And the third argument, the moral law. So what do we get from those three arguments, Jack? We get a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful moral, personal creator who created all things and sustains all things. Jack, this is the God of the Bible. We haven't even opened the Bible yet. Isn't that awesome? Yeah. We haven't even opened the Bible yet. In fact, let's keep the Bible closed. Yep. And let's talk about, you mentioned about life, about, please expound. Okay. Well, let's just take the, let's say you're walking along the beach down there and hunting to Jack. And you look down in the sand and it says, John loves Mary. What do you assume? The crabs came out of the water and made that message. The waves made that message. No, you're going to say that there had to be an intelligent beam writing John loves Mary because we know natural laws don't do that, right? Right. Well, you know, the longest word we've ever discovered is in every one of your 40 trillion cells. Yep. That's right. It's 3.2 billion letters long, Jack. That's, that's the DNA. That's your genome. Yep. Every living thing has DNA. And if John loves Mary requires a mind for that, for that message, doesn't a message that's 3.2 billion letters long also require a mind? Yep. Yeah. The answer is yes. Wherever there's a program, there's a programmer. A very big mind. That's right. That's right. Isn't it, is it A.W. Tozer or is it C.S. Lewis that says that when we try to contemplate God, it's more, it's better for us to approach him more as a mind than as a physical being. Oh, totally. Yeah. That's a heavy thought. In fact, here's, I do this in stealing from God, Jack. In fact, I ask people to, to forget the word God for a second and just think of this. Who is the source and sustainer of all things? Who is the source and sustainer of all things? Whoever that is, that's what we mean by God. Exactly right. Wow. Because you know, I'm not the source and sustainer of all things. You're not the source and sustainer of all things. Who is? Yeah. Wow. You know, it's amazing because being here in California, I'm predisposed to think a certain way in the sense of this. Neither is government God, which is a really hard thing for some of our California politicians to come to the conclusion that they're not God really frustrates them. But just the overwhelming witness, and you know, you mentioned something that caused me to think up the word eschatological, the eschatological witness of God's word, where otherwise known as Bible prophecy. You could prove the existence of God if you could say, did wasn't written down in advance a thousand years before it ever happened that there would be a man that would be on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. And that he would be crucified in his hands and his feet, right? That's right. And David prophesied that a thousand years before Jesus was born. Now, you might say, well, that's one verse. Okay, you're right. That's one verse. But 743 years before Jesus was born, Isaiah said that he would be born of a virgin. In Bethlehem, Micah 5 verse 2, when you start friends, when you start to accumulate the claims of the Bible, and you're a lot of, let's be honest, Frank and I have a really hard time with people who spout their mouth off without researching. Oh, you can't trust the Bible. There's a bunch of flaws in it. Can you find one, please? Will you produce one? Write a book. You make a billion bucks. You can't do it. You know what, Jack, even if they could find a flaw, that wouldn't negate the overall truth that Jesus, the God exists in Jesus rose from the dead. And even if they could, and they did find a flaw, it would be a translation flaw. Yeah. Not that God's got some deficiency. You know what, Augustin said about that, Jackie said, if we think we found an error in the scriptures, there are three possibilities. Either the manuscript is faulty, which could be, right? Because the original is what is inherent, not the manuscript. The manuscript is faulty. The translation is bad. Or number three, you just don't understand. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So, so listen, with a few moments we have left, tell people what's going on? What's next? I mean, your ministry has never been bigger. You're impact. It's just awesome. God has really, God has really raised you up in a national, international level. Tell us about the ministry. And where's it going? Crossexamine.org, Jack, what we do is we go to college campuses, high schools and churches, and we present the evidence that Christianity is true. Largely from this book, I corrode with Dr. Geister, called, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. And we go to a lot of college campuses. I'm doing some work with Charlie on that too, Charlie Kirk. If he goes to college campuses as well, he's getting great audiences there. And we do that. We have a podcast called, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. We do two of those a week. We got a TV program. And we're now, Jack, we've taken the best apologetics material that we have and other apologies have had. And we've put them so far into 13 different languages on websites all over the world. We're translating them into Arabic and French and Afrikaans and Chinese and Russian and Ukrainian. All of these different languages, because people outside of the United States, and that's 95% of people, Jack, need to hear the evidence for Christianity too. So we're spent a lot of time with AI to do that. So we are 501c3. We need donations to do this because it does take a lot of money to do this. We've got people all over the world now who are helping us translate this stuff. So if they go to crossexamine.org and click on donate, they can help us out. A hundred percent of their donations go to ministry zero percent to buildings. We don't have any buildings. We're virtual all over the world. Yeah, listen everybody. Please, I don't usually do this, but I've known Frank for years personally. I know his family, their lifestyle. I can promise you this. What he just said is 100% true. If you want to join in the great commission, then you're going to want to throw everything you can in his direction. Because look, you may not have the ability or the footprint, but you can support someone who does. And here's the beautiful thing about advancing the cause of Christ in the name of Jesus. Some of us are goers. In this case, Frank is a goer. Some of us are goers. And some of us are senders. But one thing is certain, we're all in this thing together. I can't generate a platform. Maybe you're not supposed to, but maybe you're supposed to send money to this direction. And in this day and age, everybody, I think you know this already. In this day and age, it's getting really hard to support a humble, biblically based, Christ-centered, authentic ministry. But when you find one, get behind it. I do believe that it's one of the responsibilities of we, the believers, to search out reliable ministry in such as Frank's and get behind it. So I know that you're on the real life network, but we're going to be bringing a lot more of you on. I know. That's right. That's populating that with more of your content as well. But you guys cross-examine.org, follow Frank everywhere he's at. You'll be thrilled. And I got to say, get your junior hire early on, your high schoolter. Send links to your college kids because they've got to start thinking. We got to train our kids to think critically. It is a must. And Frank, you are leading the way on that. I'm so proud of you. I love you so much, and you and Stephanie are just dear to Lisa and I. And we just think the world of you guys, and we love what you're doing. Cross-examine.org, everybody. Frank, final words. Jack, you blessed me so much, brother. Love you and Lisa and your family and the church. But what a great church. We just love Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. They love you. A lot of that, it is the Lord, Jack, but it's also you because you set the right tone. You're so enthusiastic and you're so eager to share the truth of the scripture with people. It's not just fire insurance. You're not just preaching about fire insurance. You're getting people sanctified to make them disciples. That's what we're here to do, Jack. And we're both in the fourth quarter. We have to pick up the pace, bro. Let's go it. I'm sleeping around. Let's go. All right, man. Love you and we'll talk you soon. I love you, brother. God bless. Thanks. God bless.