The Proof You Need to Believe in Jesus Christ – II

John Fuller: This is John Fuller and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs, on a podcast, app, or website.
J. Warner Wallace: If Jesus is who you all think he is, are you really telling me that the only people who noticed this are four writers in the first century? Wouldn't you expect that if he's the rock you think he is, when you throw him into the pond, there'd be some ripples, wouldn't you?
John Fuller: That's detective J. Warner Wallace asking a pretty penetrating question or two about our faith and why we believe what we believe. He's back with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller.
Jim Daly: John, we had a great conversation with J. Warner Wallace, who had some fascinating perspectives about Christianity and why beliefs matter. As he shared last time, Jim was a sarcastic skeptic who had no interest in the Bible or God or faith. I love talking to people like that who did come to faith because the foundation is so rock-bottom hard. They'd gone through it. They denied it, and then they were convinced. Always fascinating people to talk to, and if you missed it last time, get the download or come to the website and make sure you hear it because I thought it was full of interesting insights. He also described a unique investigative methodology as a homicide detective, really concentrating on cold cases where there was no body. Think of the difficulty in prosecuting that kind of crime. And he's applied those concepts that he learned in that field to the existence of Christ, something he called "Fuse and Fallout," which are the events that lead up to the catastrophic bomb, the ordeal that occurs, and then all the fallout that is around it. Again, very interesting concept when you look at a guy from the first century and say, "We're still talking about him today." That's a pretty big fallout that we still talk about Jesus and his meaning to history. Jim applies that methodology to Jesus's life, and I would just say, get a copy.
John Fuller: I'd agree. And as always, we have more information about that resource and our guest at our website. Jim, welcome back.
J. Warner Wallace: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Jim Daly: It was so good. I just love this area because there's so many good thoughts that you can give to a non-believer to just make them think. That was what I expressed last time when I was in college and I came to this conclusion, I better read the Word of God. I'm reading these business books, I'm preparing myself vocationally, but this is the most important book to read.
J. Warner Wallace: I constantly will encounter people—and this is the skeptic in me, so I didn't have any Christians in my life growing up—that if you asked people why are you a Christian, the most popular answer I get is, "I was raised in the church." My parents were believers. Somebody raised me in the—that is the number one answer you'll get. The second most popular answer is, "Well, I've had an experience that demonstrated for me that Christianity was true." A prayer was answered. I had a certain experience after reading scripture. Yet, we believe as Christians that those other experiences do not actually point to the truth. So what I want to say is, look, we happen to have a worldview that's grounded in an historical event. It's not grounded in the wisdom teaching of a prophet or the wisdom statements of an ancient sage. Of course, Jesus makes these statements, but it's grounded in the resurrection. If that didn't occur, none of this is true. And that means we can test this in a way that other religious worldviews cannot test their claims. This is grounded in history. We ought to be able to say, "Yes, I was raised in the church, perhaps, or I've had an experience that demonstrates it's true, but I was able to test that experience against what I can examine and know is true evidentially." We're in the one place where we could do that. And by the way, I've got grown kids. One of my sons will tell you that there was a season in which he was wandering. But because he knew, and he was raised this way, that he knew it was evidentially true, there's only so far you're going to go.
Jim Daly: Correct.
J. Warner Wallace: It's kind of that rubber band theology. If you go too far, the rubber band snaps if you let go and it hurts a little bit. If you go even further, it hurts even more. So if you can help your kids not stray too far because they know it's true and you can only do so much with what's true, well, that's where I think we can make a difference.
Jim Daly: I love that very point. It's evidence-based, it's history, there's records both in the scripture and outside of the scripture about who Jesus was. And that pulls us back. We have new viewers and listeners today, Jim, so I want to recap a little bit on this idea of "Fuse and Fallout." It's such a powerful concept, and for most of us who do not work as detectives, it's helpful to hear how you apply what you learned in your vocation as a homicide detective to the truth claims of Christ. So give us that refresher.
J. Warner Wallace: Sure. If we've got a case where we've got no evidence in the crime scene, we have to make the case a different way. I typically will tell jurors that every case occurs in a timeline. There's a time before the crime and a time after the crime. On the day of the crime, if it was a murder, instead of she just ran off or she just vanished and she's out there somewhere living her life, well, then that is an explosive day. And that bomb was preceded by a fuse of tension that was rising until something happens bad. And then after that bomb explodes, you've got fallout and shrapnel all over the blast radius. Look, if you didn't have any information from the New Testament, imagine this thought experiment where every New Testament had been successfully destroyed by some evil future regime. If I didn't have a single manuscript or a single Bible, it turns out from just the fuse and fallout of history, you can reconstruct in its entirety the story of Jesus. You could be saved with the information you would just get from the fuse and fallout. So even if every New Testament had been destroyed, this is the kind of impact that Jesus has. There's a reason why we call this the first century, even though it's not the first century. There were a bunch of centuries before the first century, but we keep calling it the first century because something explosive happened. And with that explosive thing, if I didn't know anything from scripture, I could reconstruct what that was just from the fuse and fallout of history.
Jim Daly: So in that fallout section, because we covered a lot of the fuse last time, where can we see how Jesus transformed our world in those remarkable ways? What's the evidence?
J. Warner Wallace: I'm looking at two things. Number one is, does he have outsized impact? Impact that makes sense only if he is who he said he was. In other words, he's either a fiction, or he's a regular old sage in the first century, or he is the God of the universe stepping back into his creation. So the question is, am I going to see the kind of impact that makes sense? That only could be explained if he is God stepping into his creation. So impact was number one. But number two is, is his impact so dramatic and so unique that his story can be reconstructed from the impact? And I'm looking at those areas that were important to me as an atheist. Those are literature, art, music, education, and science. Those are the things that I thought were the most important as an atheist. There's a sixth category, which is world religions. Jesus has had so much impact on literature, art, music, education, science, and world religions that his story can be reconstructed from those aspects of our culture, even if every New Testament was destroyed. And that makes no sense at all unless, of course, he is who he said he was.
Jim Daly: What about the skeptic that might say those were all manipulated things from an emerging European perspective? That this was all forced on humanity by these people that were trying to shape and manipulate people.
J. Warner Wallace: I was that skeptic. That would have been my claim. For example, one of these claims is made about the outsized impact of Christians with a Christian worldview in the sciences. People don't really understand that, but it turns out that the scientific revolution was dominantly Christian and it's happening in Europe under Christendom.
Jim Daly: And let me just add—because I'd like your response to this—that the basis there was they believed in God, and therefore they could know the universe that God has created. That was their premise.
J. Warner Wallace: Part of it was that they believed in a singular, orderly, rational God that is distinct from his creation. If you're in a pantheon of disorderly, debaucherous gods that are constantly stealing your spouse and doing all kinds of drunken debauchery, why would you expect that the created order would be reasonable and rational? But we believe in an orderly, rational God that is not actually in creation as part of it but is distinct from the creation he creates. The point is, on planet Earth, Europe is a small part of it. There were many more people who weren't living in Europe than were. On planet Earth, there were many more people who were not Christians than were. Why doesn't the sciences catalyze and take off in Asia, or in North Africa, or in India, or other places where cultures had impact? It happens under Christendom in Europe because the Christian worldview acts as a catalyst for what was originally called natural philosophy and then became called science. And this is what you see. As a matter of fact, I traced all of this. If you look at the scientists who founded their disciplines—these are called the science fathers, like the father of modern astronomy, the father of modern chemistry, the father of quantum mechanics—more fathers of scientific disciplines are Christ-followers than all other groups combined. As a matter of fact, if you look at the science fathers who also wrote about Jesus—the church fathers wrote about Jesus, and you could reconstruct the story of Jesus from just the church fathers—it turns out you can reconstruct more of the story of Jesus from the science fathers than you can from the church fathers. I think people just don't realize that it's not just that he had huge impact, it's that his story can be reconstructed from the history of science.
Jim Daly: Again, the book is chock full of these observations, which is why people need to get a copy. Let me ask you this. You mentioned your father was a policeman and you went into the arts and into architecture. How did those disciplines help you as you swerved back into law enforcement as a detective?
J. Warner Wallace: I can tell you the first several years working in law enforcement—and when I was in the arts, Susie and I were together probably about ten years. I remember working in a firm in Santa Monica and just telling Susie, "I don't see us here. I don't see any other couples who are having families." I had very conservative views about marriage and family even before I was a Christian, and I just didn't see anyone like us there. So my dad—this is a noble profession, it's a calling, before I even knew what a calling was. I followed him into law enforcement. I was 27. And I can tell you that for a long time I struggled. I felt like I needed a creative outlet. I had no creative outlet. I started a police band. We played music for a while and then eventually, because I was involved in architecture, I was constantly getting asked to draw the murder scenes before I was even assigned to homicide.
Jim Daly: Oh, interesting.
J. Warner Wallace: Eventually, when I got to doing jury trials, I started to help the DA visualize this for jurors, which is why this "Fuse and Fallout," that's a visual model we'll put on the screen for jurors to see how this works. That has always colored the way I look at these investigations. Here, I wanted to look at the arts because it turns out that from the arts alone, every episode of the gospels has been painted, or sculpted, or etched, or drawn by an ancient. So that the story of Jesus can be completely reconstructed from just the most ancient forms of art. You'd have to destroy more than the New Testament to get rid of the story of Jesus. You'd have to destroy many, many buildings and surfaces in which that image has been imaged. Jesus is the most imaged character of all historical figures. And the reason why I think that is so, if you look at him, he changes based on culture. If you're Chinese, you're drawing Jesus as Chinese, probably. You're probably using an artistic language that is local to your nation, to your region. So if you look at Buddha as he's imaged in China compared to India compared to South America, he's imaged pretty much the same.
Jim Daly: Huh.
J. Warner Wallace: But if you look at Jesus and how he's imaged in those three locations, he looks radically different because he looks like the people group who sees him as their personal savior. And that's why I think he inspires so many arts.
Jim Daly: That fallout effect too—and you mentioned this and you're touching on it—all the arts, but also architecture. You touched on that with the churches and what has been built.
J. Warner Wallace: You knew I was going to have to do that given I had an architectural background. What happens is the arts needed a studio in which to develop, and many Christians were artistically inspired. But if you think about how we first met in the mud-constructed small residential homes in the Middle East, think about that. That was a dark, cool environment because it's a hot environment, but they were dark, small environments. We had a desire as a group to reflect the nature of Jesus, who is not described as the dark, he is described as the light. We also had a desire to think about our salvation in the heavenly aspirations we have as a people group. It turns out those two aspirations, to reflect the light of Jesus and the heavenly aspirations of the gospel, impacted the way we started to change our environments. If you look at Saint Peter's and Michelangelo's great dome there, you'll see that the engineering feat to create some of these spaces is pretty remarkable. Then we also needed to make those walls lighter to allow light in. So the Gothic movement, in which the structure of churches is forced outward to allow for glass walls to come on the inside membrane, well, that ends up creating spaces that are ridiculously beautiful. But what is the effort here? What's driving it? It's not just, "Hey, we want cool buildings." What's driving it is that we want to reflect a space that reflects the light—Jesus as the light—and our heavenly aspirations. It's about the Savior and salvation that drives the shaping of these spaces. And that drives an entire movement in architecture and continues to do that. But again, of all the historical figures, who else has inspired more movements in the arts, literature, music, education, and science than Jesus of Nazareth? If you think there's somebody else out there who has not only had the impact of inspiration, but also whose story can be reconstructed from this inspiration, tell me who that is.
John Fuller: The worldwide impact of Jesus is outsized, and you can learn more about what our guest is talking about today in his book, *Person of Interest*. The author is J. Warner Wallace, and you can find this book at our website. That's FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast or give us a call at 800-A-FAMILY.
Jim Daly: Jim, just to further that discussion on music, music is really interesting to me. Of course, Bach talked about the beauty, the orderliness of it, how it reflects God. I've heard others talk about how it's a distinct attribute of human beings that this is the creative source. This is what gives evidence that we're made in the image of God, that we're able to create music and enjoy music. It's a really interesting concept. Speak to Jesus's impact on music a little deeper.
J. Warner Wallace: Think about that's a good point because we sing about the things we care about most deeply. We sing about what we worship.
Jim Daly: And it moves people.
J. Warner Wallace: It does. And it turns out from the very beginning, the Christian worldview has been a singing worldview. Jesus sings a hymn at the Last Supper, right? That hymn is often thought to be one of the Psalms of David. We've been singing the Psalms of David for thousands of years. As a matter of fact, if all you had was the music sung in hymn form of the first 300 years of the Common Era, you could reconstruct the entire story of Jesus from just the songs we sing about him. You'd have to destroy more than the New Testament, but also the history of early music in the Common Era. Now, what's interesting about that is where else in the world is there a worldview that puts singers on a stage every week singing in front of a live audience? That's called the church. And we do this all the time. And so we have advanced the cause of music. We have the words of the hymns and the words of the psalms, but wouldn't you like to know what the chords they were playing were? Wouldn't you like to hear what the melody was? It turns out the reason why you can hear a melody today is because a Christian invented musical notation. There was no musical notation, harmonies—we invented these things. The major scales, minor scales, most of the instruments you're playing today were created for the purpose of advancing music in the church. And so we contributed not just to some great music, but also to the history of music-making in a way that is really unparalleled. This is because Christians wanted to sing. As a matter of fact, I did a search of all of the pop music. We have an entire Christian music industry, of course, but aside from the Christian music industry, there's the pop industry, the secular music industry. I did a search of all the Rolling Stone database, the IMDb, the Billboard magazine—like who are the top 100 artists in the last 150 years? Well, it turns out there's lists of these things. So I just took the entire list, put them together. It's about 160 artists. And I wrote about this in the book. I looked at their personal catalog. All but two of these secular artists have sung about Jesus of Nazareth. All but two. This cannot be said of any other person who claimed deity or any other religious leader or any other historical figure. No one has sung about anyone as much as they've sung about Jesus in the oddest, strangest places. Frank Zappa's got a song called "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk." It's not a positive song, it's a negative song. But the point is, Jesus is going to either infuriate you, inspire you, move you in some way positively or negatively. You cannot get away from the influence of Jesus on music. Whatever you're listening to, if it's pop music, if it's country music, if it's hip hop, whatever it is, it's built on certain structural forms that are utterly dependent on Christians to invent them over the years so that today you have those structural forms in place so you can listen to the kind of music you like. Well, that's because Christians probably invented it.
Jim Daly: When we look at all the great people in human history—kings, queens, conquerors, explorers, inventors, philosophers, and everybody else—what is your conclusion about their impact on the world compared to the impact that Jesus had?
J. Warner Wallace: That's what's so remarkable about Jesus of Nazareth. It's really hard to explain because we're calling this the first century. And why are we calling it the first century? I just challenge you to look at every significant figure in history who lived in the first century and go from as far east as you can to as far west.
Jim Daly: It's hard to go beyond a couple.
J. Warner Wallace: Honestly, I made a list, I put them in the book, because I think most of you will look at it and go, "I don't know any of these people," because they had no impact on history the way that this guy, this sage from this small part of the Roman Empire, this guy who really had three years. He's born in a nowhere town, raised in another nowhere town, only moves about 200 miles from start to finish. He only has three years to accomplish his mission. The people who are religious reject him, the people who are powerful are hunting him. People said they love him, end up denying or betraying him in some way. He's got no established family of merit, no education that would really cause this. No kids to extend his legacy, no wife, doesn't write a book, never leads a nation, never rules an army. This is the guy who then eventually is falsely accused, brutally mocked, humiliated, executed, and they have to borrow a grave to bury him. This is the guy.
Jim Daly: It's not the story you would write of a great conqueror or a great king.
J. Warner Wallace: This is so upside down in terms of what your expectations would be for someone like this. But if you take all of the leaders—and I just get beyond the first century—look at every historic powerful leader in history, ask yourself: who has impacted literature, art, music, education, science, and world religions so deeply that his story can be reconstructed from those aspects of human culture? I'll wait, because you're not going to find anyone. It's Jesus of Nazareth. That to me is remarkably unexpected. But that's what would be true if he is who he said he was.
Jim Daly: We're coming in, maybe only a couple of questions left, and one I really wanted to cover especially for the person who's watching or listening that may be where you were at when you were 35: hard-charging criminal investigator. What was the tipping point? What opened your eyes to spiritual things versus the facts and nothing but the facts?
J. Warner Wallace: I always get asked that question, but here's what I do. In my cases, I'm working cumulative circumstantial cases. Now, that doesn't mean it's bad evidence. Circumstantial evidence is anything other than an eyewitness is called indirect evidence. Even DNA is circumstantial. Fingerprints are circumstantial evidence. So I'm looking at cumulative cases. In other words, 80 things point to this guy. It's the weight. It's death by a thousand papercuts. It is really that that one thing doesn't seem like much, but when you have 80 things pointing to this. So I got to a point examining what's in the New Testament and then all of this impact outside the New Testament, where I finally said, "Okay, I trust that the New Testament is telling me something true about Jesus." But that does not make you a Christian. The devils believe something is true about Jesus. The demons believe this, but it doesn't mean they're a Christ-follower. That took me about nine months, and there was no aha tipping point moment there. But I did get to the point where I told Susie, "I think this is telling me something true about Jesus, but I don't understand why God would have to die this way and come in this way. Do you get that?" And she's like, "I don't get it either." So here we are. We've already vetted the New Testament and I was examining it to see what it said about Jesus. What changed for me was when I started to read the New Testament to see what it said about me. That's when you start to have the aha moments. Because it's reading through Romans, it's reading through 1 Corinthians—the spiritual man and the natural man—that no one ever truly chases God, we all reject God. This is really what I realized, that Paul was talking about me. That's when you start having aha moments. At some point I realized that that person he's describing who's in need of a Savior, that describes me. But because I'd already done the homework to know there was a Savior, I was able to connect that dot pretty easily. What I would say is this, and I wrote about this years ago. I used to work homicides, and I also worked officer-involved shootings. I had an officer-involved shooting one night where we come out and we interview the officer who got involved in the shooting. He stops a car for drunk driving. He gets a drunk driver out. And the drunk driver actually ends up wanting to kill the officer because he's on parole and he does not want the officer to discover he's got a gun in his waistband. As he gets this guy out of the car, the guy turns on the officer and he's pointing the gun at the officer. He made a decision that night he would rather kill the officer than go to jail. The officer survived it and I'm now interviewing him. And he tells me that at that moment, he knew, "What am I going to do? It was a millisecond. I can jump, I could try to—" He just said, "I knew I was wearing my bulletproof vest and I had seen that vest stop bullets in the range because we shoot at them. And so I knew that it was going to hurt, but if I could just tense up my muscles, I could take the first couple rounds and get my gun out and return fire." He stood there calmly and eventually survived the shooting. That's pretty harrowing and pretty courageous. But the reason why he was able to stand calmly in a difficult situation was because he already knew evidentially that that vest could stop the bullets. And if you know something is true evidentially, when you're in a tough spot, you will end up defaulting like muscle memory to what you know is evidentially true. So I want my kids, as I raise them, I hope that they know that this is evidentially true. You're going to have a tragedy, you're going to have a tough time, and you're going to be tempted to say, "Where's God in this?" But if you know that this worldview can stop bullets, you will stand in the gunfire. I think we have to help our kids understand that this is not just my wishful thinking or one of many options that will make your life better, but this is actually true and it will stop bullets.
Jim Daly: One of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you, again, it paralleled my experience in my 20s, just getting the head knowledge and the confidence that this was real. And then all the evidence that you've outlined that I didn't have at the time—I wish I had your book—but it just helps open your heart to the reality of God. That combination needs to happen. You can't just believe with your heart. Your head has to be involved.
J. Warner Wallace: It's a both-and for sure. I'm not against the experience. I just want the experience to be tested.
Jim Daly: Right. And I just think that's the most powerful—I think of Paul that way. He was a brilliant man. It's funny when he went to Mars Hill and they said, "Who is this babbler?" I'm thinking, man, he's one of the best communicators I've ever seen, but they referred to him as a babbler.
J. Warner Wallace: I know. But isn't it interesting that he was willing to engage people on Mars Hill? This is what we have to realize. Everyone notices sometimes if in a dog yard, the most yappy dog is the chihuahua, the quietest dog is the Great Dane. Well, we happen to have the Great Dane of worldviews, but we often end up sounding like chihuahuas because we don't know how strong our worldview is.
Jim Daly: Well, that's well said. We totally understand the point. And Jim, this has been terrific. I'm going to take a couple of copies home for my boys because I want them to read it—*Person of Interest: Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible*. Get a copy. This will equip you to talk with people, too. It'll give you lots of information about the reality of Jesus. I can't think of a better resource outside of scripture itself to support the truth claims of Christ. Here's the thing. We want to equip you in your faith and in your witness to the world. That's why we produce programs like this one and distribute resources like this amazing book. And John, there is a cumulative effect in the ministry having impact. We heard from a woman in Texas who contacted us and said, "I was spiritually unanchored until I discovered Focus on the Family. Your broadcasts opened my eyes to the cultural lies I had absorbed. You helped reshape my understanding of marriage, motherhood, and God's design for the family." I hope that motivates you to be part of this. It's not just us sitting here getting this work done. You need to join in. And when you make a gift to Focus, these are the things we're accomplishing. I love that she was unanchored and then found the anchor in Christ through Focus on the Family. That's what we're trying to do every day. Let's do it together.
John Fuller: Make a monthly pledge if you can, or a one-time gift of any amount to support Focus on the Family today, and we'll send a copy of that book, *Person of Interest*. Our number: 800-A-FAMILY (800-232-6459). Or online, donate at FocusontheFamily.com/broadcast. And thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.