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Join Rusty George in this thought-provoking episode as he sits down with J. Warner Wallace to delve into the importance of Easter and the case for the resurrection. Can the resurrection be proven? Rusty and J. Warner Wallace explore the profound impact of Christ on history, science, and the modern world. Gain insights on how to engage the next generation in conversations about the relevance of Christ in today's world. Tune in for a fascinating discussion that sheds light on the evidence and significance of the resurrection.
Creators & Guests
What is Simple Faith With Rusty George?
Rusty George is the Lead Pastor at Crossroads Christian Church in Grand Prairie. Under his dedicated leadership, Crossroads Christian Church aspires to flourish as a vibrant community committed to guiding individuals in their journey to discover and follow the path of Jesus.
Beyond leading Crossroads Church, Rusty is a global speaker, leader and teacher focusing on making real life simple. Rusty has also written several books and can be heard weekly on his podcast, Leading Simple with Rusty George.
Aside from being a loyal Chiefs, Royals, and Lakers fan, Rusty is first and foremost committed to his family. Rusty has been married to his wife, Lorrie, for over twenty-five years, and they have two daughters, Lindsey and Sidney. As a family, they enjoy walking the dogs, playing board games together, and watching HGTV while Rusty watches ESPN on his iPad.
Jim Wallace_REPLAY
Rusty George: [00:00:00] Hey, I want to thank Courage to Lead for sponsoring this month's podcast. Courage to Lead is led by a friend of mine and my personal coach, a guy by the name of Sean Lovejoy. He has been a real estate developer, a church planner, mega church pastor, and a And now the CEO of a fast growing coaching and consulting organization.
Sean's been a guest on the podcast and I've gotten to know he and several of his coaches that help pastors and business leaders all across the country. And recently I was invited to join their team to be one of their coaches. Listen, I've just learned this over time. You can only get so far on your own know how and own intellect, wisdom, experience, and smarts.
Okay. You need someone that can coach you and help you see the things that you cannot see. And Sean has done that for me and their coaches have done that for countless leaders and pastors. And now I'd like to do that for you as well. So if you'd like to inquire about either me being your [00:01:00] coach or receiving a coach, contact me at PastorRustyGeorge.
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Following Jesus isn't always easy, but it's not complicated. Join us each week as we work to make faith simple, this is simple faith.
Hey, welcome to simple faith. My name is Rusty George honored to have you with us. Boy, a few years ago during the COVID [00:02:00] season, we had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with an incredible individual. by the name of J. Warner Wallace, Jim Wallace. And soon after that, Jim published some more books about his findings on the resurrection.
And what's really fascinating about Jim's faith journey is he was a person not of faith. He was an atheist. He was a cold case detective from a long line of cops in the Los Angeles area. And he was a guy that wanted to use his skills of being a detective to disprove the resurrection of Jesus. Well, as often happens in these situations, they is, these individuals become Christ followers, much like Lee Strobel using his journalistic skills to disprove the resurrection, he became a Christ follower.
So did Jim Wallace. Since then, he's released several books. It's talking about how he uses the evidence that we see from historical documents and from the scriptures and can actually prove the [00:03:00] resurrection and the fact that Jesus was God in the flesh and still is. So I wanted to have a conversation with Jim about all of this and I was so blessed by it.
I thought, you know what? Let's play it again. So many of you are new to the show and you might have missed this, and if you're living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, uh, Jim Wallace is gonna join us live around this time next year. We've already booked him for that, but I wanted you to get a taste of the way his mind works.
It's fascinating. He's a great guy, writes great books. His latest person of interest is just such a blessing to so many people. So here's my conversation with a former cold case detective that now can make. Believing in the resurrection a bit more simple. Here. He is Jay Warner Wallace, Jim Wallace. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.
I think last time we spoke was right in the throes of COVID. It was like Palm Sunday weekend or Easter week right before Easter weekend [00:04:00] of, uh, of 2020. So. What have you been up to? Tell us what's been going on in your life.
Jim Wallace: Well, that's, that's you're right about COVID really changed a lot of things for a lot of us.
I mean, if you're somebody who writes books like I do, it gave us a chance to write a book that was, would otherwise have been really hard to write because there's not a research that was involved, but. You know, we had like everybody else, we had several months there where we were just at home and it was a cold winter, not cold, you know, we're in Southern California.
So it was colder though. I remember we, we burned some wood in the fireplace and just spent the entire, every day just researching and writing this book. So that's really all that, uh, you know, this is the season you're in when you write a book like this. You just are in a season where you have to. Be focused and that's what I spent all of covid year doing for
Rusty George: sure I want to ask I want to ask you about that because here you are, you know A former detective.
Yeah, you follow the evidence. That's kind of what your training says, right when you're researching a book How do you do that? Do you just you follow your questions? Do you follow what questions your [00:05:00] research provokes? Do you follow what commentators or sources they had? What's your process there?
Jim Wallace: Well, I think a lot of it for me, uh, is a little bit out of the box because you're, you're kind of looking for like, that's so much has been written about Jesus, number one, but number two, when you work in cold cases, you know, a lot of the times you're, you're picking up somebody else's old unsolved, well, you are.
Somebody else's old unsolved case. And it's not as though they didn't look in good places for, for, but, but some things change over time. So I can go back to the same places they looked and might be a little different this time. But also i'm trying to find those things that are outside the typical domino chain of things that fall.
I'm trying to figure out like, you know, what are the splinters that may may Reveal something because what we're doing with these cases is we're building cumulative Cases in front of a jury. So we want every single paper cut because only after you get a thousand of those, do you have a case? So, so we are looking for weird stuff.
And so a project like this, um, I was looking in places that I don't [00:06:00] think other people. Look, there's lots of stuff written about Jesus and his impact on history. I'm just trying to find stuff that maybe you overlooked and that's what this book's kind of all about. Okay.
Rusty George: So when I hear more about this, I've seen the book, I've read the book.
It's fantastic. Person of interest. Where'd this book come from? And why, why'd you write this one? So
Jim Wallace: there's three books that really just chronicle my journey. Toward, and I don't usually talk about it that way. I don't usually talk about it in terms of this book. I did, because people always ask me, well, what was your process?
You know what, what, tell me your salvation story. Well, it's in cold case Christianity. I mean, really that's, that's how I became a Christian. You know, it's not like another part of the story, but, but it wasn't just in cold case, you know, it took me months and months and months. And so I, it was all the stuff that's in the new Testament.
I needed to examine to see if it was reliable, all the stuff that's in the Outside the New Testament. That's the stuff in person of interest. So this is like, you know, 24, 4 years ago I did this research, the, the first time, and then all this stuff about God's existence. [00:07:00] It's a book called God's Crime Scene.
So those three books are really what the first year of my exploration will look like. I just broke 'em into three books. Mm. So you have inside the New Testament, outside the New Testament and the evidence for God. Those are the things I had to kind of look at to decide if Christianity was true.
Rusty George: So tell us about this latest one.
Walk us through kind of your process. What is it that you, you wanted to get really specific about? Is this book, I mean, you've kind of categorized how it's a little bit different than the other ones, but yeah, just for somebody who's never heard of it before, walk us through it.
Jim Wallace: So the idea here is, is that, you know, uh, I've had a number of these cases where you have what are called no body murders or no body missing persons reports where somebody, you know, kills somebody and then says, Oh, they just ran off.
You know, my, my wife, we had a fight and then she never came back. And meanwhile, she's buried someplace. We don't know where she is. And, uh, we ended up with the case 25 years later where they didn't even take photographs. You know, they thought it was a missing persons case, and then, you know, it was too late by the time they got on it.
So now how do you make [00:08:00] a case to a jury when you've got no evidence from the crime scene, not even any photographs of the crime scene? Well, you do it by saying, look, if this is a murder on the day she vanished, this was not just a normal day. This was an explosive day of anger in which she died. And so all explosive events are like bombs that have a fuse.
That burn up to the detonation of the bomb. Then there's all this shrapnel in the blast radius that's a result of the explosion. So what we do with these cases, we say, look, I may not have any photographs of the crime scene or evidence collected at the crime scene, but we have all the views. And all the fallout.
And we're going to make a case for what happened on the day the bomb exploded from just the fuse and the fallout. So if you know, I want to look at the scriptures because all that you can know about Jesus is found uniquely and solely on the pages of the New Testament. That's our, our, our base data. But if you're somebody who said, well, I'm not even interested.
Look, imagine a thought experiment in which every New Testament and every manuscript of the New Testament was completely [00:09:00] destroyed. And You could still reconstruct the story of Jesus in its entirety, just from the fuse and fallout of history. And that makes no sense at all, given who he was as a, you know, first century Jewish sage and a corner of the Roman empire.
And so I think there's some, there's, there's, this is another part of that cumulative case. It's not just what does the scripture say, but it's also what impact has this figure had on all of history? And it's like no other person who's ever lived and this is why, and this is, you know, right now, Rusty, you know, this, I mean, if you're paying attention to culture, uh, things are shifting right beneath our feet and really in large part, because of a COVID year and all the time, we've had a chance to kind of navel gaze during that year.
But what I'm seeing is that, you know, there's always been a group of us in America, for example, that has, um, distrusted the founding notions of the country. And it used to be, you know, I first started looking at this, people would [00:10:00] like on the Christian side would say, well, you know, the founding fathers were all Christians and atheists would say, well, no, they're not, there's, there's hardly even any believers in there, let alone Christians.
And there was an argument about whether or not the founding fathers had a Christian worldview. Well, now I see that the opposition is like, Oh, they're all Christians. And that's why we have so much racism, misogyny, homophobia, homophobia, all the stuff you can think of that they would say is bad, they are now looking at Christianity as the source of, there's an entire project called the evangelical deconstruction movement that is really trying to remove from the teaching of Christianity, the stuff that the culture finds offensive right now.
Right. In other words, I think there's a movement that says that. Jesus doesn't really represent anything good. And the stuff that comes out of Christianity is for the most part the stuff that we reject as a culture now. Right. And the moral teaching of Jesus we find offensive, um, things have changed this way.
Why should we be looking at a first century book from an archaic people group when, when we know so much [00:11:00] more about sociology and culture and all these things today. And so Jesus doesn't really matter, but it turns out that everything that you think matters, literature, art, music, education, science, and even all the other world religions that are not Christian.
is utterly dependent, is standing on the shoulders of Jesus and his followers. And so if you think those things matter, art and education and science and literature and music, well, guess what? They matter because of Jesus. Because the way you think of those five things. Is utterly dependent upon Jesus.
Maybe you never thought of it that way But that's what we're trying to demonstrate in the book that the fallout Demonstrates that Jesus still matters even in a culture that might reject Uh christianity or reject the bible altogether. It's
Rusty George: fascinating you say that i've often thought that you know Some of the things that people are arguing for you know, whether it's uh any kind of rights or He got a human rights and [00:12:00] they come after the church saying that we don't care about that I mean the only reason we have human rights kind of goes back to Jesus who nobody valued women.
Nobody valued kids Nobody valued the the dregs of society so to speak before Jesus He kind of changed all of that Is that the kind of fallout that you're talking about and kind of the the representation that you're seeing?
Jim Wallace: Yeah, everything you think is beautiful, really, about culture. If you love the arts and music, and you think that literature matters, well, then no one's been written about more than Jesus of Nazareth.
No one's inspired more, um, uh, authors, and no one has been kind of borrowed as an overarching story. And Christ figures we see all throughout. Uh, that's Jesus of Nazareth. I mean, this story is the greatest story ever told, and it appears in pretty much a lot of other stories that have been told. So, so the story of Jesus is compelling.
The figure of Jesus is compelling. You know, I was looking at the arts, and if you look at, for example, how Buddha is depicted, you will not find a much difference in the depictions of Buddha, say, in [00:13:00] India, as you would in, say, the Far East, or as you would in South America. Buddha looks like Buddha. But when you see the images of Jesus, depending on the culture and the region, he's usually the ethnicity of the artist.
He's usually depicted in the culturally and the artistic style of the artist and the culture. He's malleable. He's malleable in a way that no other religious figure is because he is seen as, you know, we are created in the image of God. We are brothers. We, Jesus is the first brother, right? He's, he's God and he is, we are, we are his disciples and we, we've, we contextualize him.
In a way that we don't, he's not otherly. He's, he's, he's one of us. And because he's one of us and comes directly to save us, we typically depict him like us. And, and that's one of the reasons why I think that if you look at an A to Z, it's not just a Western phenomena. Anywhere the story of Jesus is told, artists depict him and he inspires a movement.
And this is [00:14:00] why, if you look at, you know, the, the, all the genres of art through the ages, the different movements from say the antiquity, all the way through expressionism and, and, and Dadaism, whatever, whatever ism you're looking at in the last, you know, 2000 years. You will find that the artists in those categories have all been inspired by Jesus of Nazareth.
No other historical figure has had that kind of inspiration on artists. There isn't anyone. And you have to look at him this way. You won't even find another religious figure, a deity, a leader, who's had that kind of impact on art. So what is it about Jesus? Why is it that in all these categories, And including the sciences, I mean, people don't even realize that the sciences as we know them were founded in large part by Christ followers who under a Christian worldview were inspired to do the sciences as an act of worship.
This continues all the way into the modern era. I have a list in the book of all the people who are the fathers of scientific disciplines. The vast majority are Christians. [00:15:00] Even all the way to quantum mechanics. These modern scientific disciplines were founded by Christians. And they also wrote about Jesus, their faith and devout religion, their devout religious beliefs related to Christianity.
So if you just had the notes and the journals and the letters of the science fathers, you will learn more about Jesus than you will from the journals of the church fathers. That's the kind of impact he's had. So you're not going to erase, you can find him in nooks and crannies throughout all of history.
You have to do a lot more than destroy the New Testament to destroy the story of Jesus. You have to destroy really the foundational texts and journals of all the science fathers. You have to destroy the top 75 of the top 100 universities in the world today. which still bear the impressions of Jesus on their most ancient buildings.
You'd have to do a lot because it turns out that those things, art, literature, music, science, education are utterly dependent on the history of Christians who were inspired by Jesus.
Rusty George: That's phenomenal. Okay. [00:16:00] I've had these conversations with people before where I talk about how you can actually prove the existence, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus without even using.
the four gospels, which the four gospels are more Provable and accurate than so many other documents and you talk about that in other books and we've had that on podcasts before but Give me let's say you you're you know, you're called to testify and you get three pieces of evidence This is why I believe jesus not only existed but Um, died, buried, resurrected, um, and here's why I believe it, these three pieces of evidence and why I place my faith in it, and you can't use the New Testament, what
Jim Wallace: do you go with?
Well, okay, so first of all, you know, we all both agree that everything I'm pointing to in the fallout of history are people who had access to a New Testament and simply repeated the claims of the New Testament. Yes. But here's what I would say. I would say, look, you cannot find another fictional character.
In the [00:17:00] history of fictional characters. Who's had this kind of impact on humanity, art, literature, music, education, science, and world religions. You will not find one. And since you cannot find one, it's a reasonable inference that Jesus isn't something more than a fictional character. So there's something about this impact that speaks to the historicity of Jesus.
But you also will not find another mortal living human in the history of humans who's had this kind of impact. I looked at all of them. You look at all the people in the first century, ask yourself who in the first century has had the kind of impact of Jesus. These are world leaders. Nero had no impact on the history.
We live today, but Jesus did. You won't find another deity or religious figure. You won't find another person who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. You won't find another world leader in the history of world leaders who's had this kind of impact on those five most important aspects of human culture. So if you can't find another human living, human mortal, There's a good reason, a good inference is that he's something other than a living human mortal.
In other words, it's not just that this kind of [00:18:00] impact is unique enough to demonstrate his historicity. It also speaks to his deity, because it turns out, if he is who he said he was, now think about who he is. Okay, he's a nobody. He doesn't come of royal lineage, doesn't have wealthy parents. He's not born in an important city, a nowhere town.
Then he's raised in another nowhere town. Never travels more than about 200 miles to do his entire ministry. He only has three years to get that done. Not only that, he has no power, no money. He has no prestigious education. He has no family. Family that can support him or wife or children that can extend his legacy.
He never wrote a book, never wrote a play, never led an army, never led a nation. He was nobody of significance at all. And the people who were actually in power, they were hunting him. The religious people were rejecting him. His own family members, his own disciples were betraying him, were leaving him, were denying him.
Then he is falsely accused, brutally executed, and they have to borrow a grave to bury him. Okay, this is the most unlikely person to even have regional influence in the first century, let [00:19:00] alone global influence for the next 2, 000 years. There's something about Jesus that's different and you gotta ask the question, well, why?
Okay, it's not his teaching. I mean, his teaching is fantastic. It's exceptional. It's divine. But you can probably on the pages of other, uh, you know, Buddha and Confucius, you can find similar principles being taught. So it's not that it wasn't a stature, isn't it? He's not even unique culturally, socially, ethnically, nothing.
But what one thing is unique about him that nobody else can say is he rose from the grave and interestingly, he has unique unparalleled influence and he possesses the one unique attribute. And it's nothing to do with this. It's all about the resurrection. It's the only thing that separates him. And it separates a person who is clearly separated from everyone else.
So I think it's reasonable for us to say, okay, so that's why. This makes, in other words, if you said to yourself, okay, which of these three [00:20:00] scenarios make sense? He is just a fictional character that someone drummed up and really was popular. That explains all this? Or you say, oh no, he's just a, you know, kind of a wise ancient sage in the first century.
That explains all of this. There's a lot better, you know, a lot better known wise sages from the first, you know, century and before. Or, he is the man who rose from the grave, who claimed to be God, had the authority of God, and then demonstrated his deity with the resurrection. Okay, which of those three options leads to where we are today in terms of influence?
It seems to me of those three options, option three is a better explanation for what we have. Mm hmm. So if I didn't know anything about what the scriptures say about Jesus, but I understood the impact he had I mean it cracks me up as we go to these universities and these institutions and I went to ucla And I got my master's there in architecture And you know we think about these universities as a place where just they're the antithesis of of of faith They're antithesis [00:21:00] of a religious worldview But they're utterly depend remember the first three modern universities as we know them today are bologna paris and oxford Those were founded by christians they came right out of the cathedral and bologna monastery systems and the cathedral schools that eventually gave birth to those.
And those three Christian universities then gave birth to 24 daughter universities. And from those 24 daughter universities came the scientists and what atheists called the scientific revolution. Well, that revolution was entirely, well, with a few exceptions, Christian. And so I think in the end, the better explanation for all of this, and it's funny how we go to these universities now that deny Jesus altogether, but they were utterly dependent upon Jesus.
That was in their charter, and that was on their buildings when they first started. Their mission statement was to advance the name of Jesus, even though today they are denying the name of Jesus. Mm hmm. So, I think it's important for us to see, that's why if you aren't careful, if we don't write books like this, no one's going to know because I don't think anyone's teaching our kids.
[00:22:00] I don't think we're going to be able to go, even, even I don't see a lot of homeschool curriculum that would, would help you kind of mine out the evidence for Jesus in these little disparate areas. So I think that's why it's important for us to, this is why Jesus still matters. He matters because whatever it is you think matters as an atheist, well, that's because of Jesus.
So he still matters because those things matter to you. And even though you had no idea they were connected to Jesus, they are,
Rusty George: Hey, let me interrupt this podcast. And just remind you about courage to lead. com, a great organization that is helping leaders build killer teams. And I'm happy to announce that I am now part of their organization, helping pastors and business leaders.
If you'd like to learn more about me being your coach or. Finding a different coach. Just check it out at my website, PastorRustyGeorge. com for more information. All right, back to the show. Every time I've heard you speak, I've heard we've had you come into the church. We've had you on podcasts. We've had you video teaching.
I've seen you at a stand a reason before you [00:23:00] give such great information in such a compelling way, certainly because of your cold case background and the way in which you say it as a pastor, I'm sitting out there thinking, I just want to stand up and say all these things on Sunday. Now, two problems with that.
One, I'm not you. And two, uh, the people that often need to hear these pieces of evidence aren't even in the room. It's usually people that are already convinced. Yeah. What's the best way for a pastor or a church leader to take your story and your information and communicate it to his congregation, or more importantly, to their friends?
What do you see in churches doing with the information and resources you provide?
Jim Wallace: Well, a couple of things. First of all, if you're a pastor listening to this right now, resist the temptation to ever compare yourself to a public speaker. Like I was in seminary, I went to Golden Gate Baptist and I had preaching classes and I also had a public speaking class.
And I remember when I started the public speaking class, I was like tapped out. I was in my last quarter and I was really not wanting to take the class. And I thought, [00:24:00] why would I need to take this class? I've already taken preaching classes and the teacher right away said, no, no, no, this is totally different.
When you're preaching, you're, you're, you're exegeting the word of God on a weekly basis, and you're going to get one chance to do that in front of your congregation. Public speakers, we perfect talks, and that's very different. Right. And so when you have a public speaker come in, you're having somebody who's coming in, who's had a chance to do that talk and refine it and work out all the bugs for public 50 times.
Right. So if you're a pastor, you're thinking, man, I wish I could say it like that. Well, so I wish I could say it like that every week. I, this, this is a process that anyone who applies himself to this process will, but that, but I'm not a pastor every week. You know, I can only do so many of these before I'm going to run out of things to say.
Yeah. Right. That's the difference. Now, when you're, as a pastor, I remember I was prepping to preach from scripture or on topics, whatever I was doing on a weekly basis, that's, that means you've got to kind of pull it back. And so what I would say to pastors is less is more, less is more, less is more. It's like, yeah, I'm writing a book that could have been 10 books in 10 chapters.
They could [00:25:00] have been 10 books, but I knew that I had to kind of. You know, this is not a evidence show in a trial. This is the closing argument. It needs to summarize, summarize, summarize. And so that's what we're doing in front of a jury, in front of a congregation, is we're not trying to present the 10 weeks of evidence.
When you get to that closing argument, you got a couple of hours to summarize those 10 weeks. You're not going to get 10 weeks all over again. And so it's okay if we are just flying at 30, 000 feet. And we are summarizing, making a closing compelling argument. Remember when you, in a jury trial, you have three stages, right?
You have the opening statement, the evidence show, and then the closing argument. The opening statement is not even allowed to be argumentative. It's just a statement of what they are going to see. But at the end, you can take what they've seen and argue for the best inference. That's a very different process.
And I think a lot of what we're trying to do in front of our congregations is not, I want closing arguments because I want to move [00:26:00] people to do something either to make a decision for Christ or to get off their hands. And be a difference in their world, be a difference in their family and their community.
So I think what I'm in the business of, and as a pastor, I was in the same business, is just to make closing arguments. Closing arguments for people who will then act, because you remember what we're trying to do with the jury is to get them to not only be so convinced that he's our guy, but to be so convinced that they'll go back and render a verdict in the first 30 minutes.
Cause you know, the longer we spend back there, it's not going to help us as prosecutors. So we want quick verdicts. We want them to be so overwhelmed and so convinced that this is just a matter of kind of checking the boxes and doing your due diligence and then returning a verdict. Yeah. And if you think about the people we're trying to reach in the congregation, we're trying to teach them something, but if it's just teaching, that's like a, that's like a class at college.
Right. We want to teach people and then motivate them to act on what we just taught them. So I think that for me, it's just about keeping it simple [00:27:00] and, and trying to provide the same thing I talk about in a book for, for Gen Z, um, called So the Next Generation Will Know, which I wrote with Sean McDowell, is that I always say that as a parent and as a youth pastor, I know that for this generation, I need to provide two whys for every what.
So that's the one piece of advice I would have for pastors. Two whys. for every what. So in other words, what does the Bible say about the Trinity? Okay, great. I need to be able to make, make, make that clear. What does the Bible say about the deity of Christ? Make the essentials clear. But then the next question, okay, so you told me the what, what does it say?
Now the question is, why do you believe that? And sometimes it's going to, that why is going to be, why do you think that's reliable? Why do you trust what they said about that? Why does this, and most of the time for young people, they want to know, well, can you support that outside of scripture? In other words, does the world around me also give me, it's not just special revelation, does natural revelation also jive with that?
If it does, I'm going to explain that to my congregation. That's the first why. So I've given you the [00:28:00] what, here's the first why. Why is this true? Give me the reasons why it's true. Second why. Why should I care? Yeah. Because you can do all this and you're a geeked out pastor who loves theology, but I don't really care.
It has nothing to do with my life and my job tomorrow is not going to be changed by this. So why in the world are you wasting your time telling me this? Right. That second why is what motivates Gen Z to actually do something with it. You know, if you told them that the triune nature of God is one of the reasons why they're miserable on Instagram, now I might pay attention to that, because it turns out there is a connection there, theologically and practically, and a reason why we, as social creatures, are I mean, we need to be able to help our young people to see that actually the Christian worldview can be supported evidentially, and it makes a difference in their lives.
It matters. And so that's why a lot of it is just trying to, and I think in every, if you're in, if you're in Mark one, I was just reading Mark one last night with my wife and we just love the urgency of Mark. I [00:29:00] can't tell you how many times. Yeah. That is in the first chapter like three times. Yeah, I love that.
Yeah. And then right away he did this and then like, it just, it was like, he just cuts out all the nonsense. You know, it starts off, you know, John the Baptist was already in custody before you know it. Okay. It's like that whole episode is gone. So, so I love that immediacy about Mark and, and, and we need to help our young people.
It's okay. So the, so what does he, what is he saying in chapter one? And then, okay. So why? There's this, there's actually some good support, uh, corroborative support in the first century to make clear, cause you know, John's mentioned by Josephus, there's a, there's support for this. Why do I trust that this actually happened?
Well, we got, let me show you why then the next thing is, okay. So I don't, so why does this, none of this, what does this matter to me? Just because some old guy did this 2000 years ago, how does this apply to me? And so that two whys for every what I think does turn the corner and turn your sermons into clothing arguments that people will act on.
Rusty George: I love that. That is brilliant. The two whys to every what, and here's my question. [00:30:00] When talking with Gen Z, do you have to start with the second why? In other words, are they more interested in why does this even matter before you even get to the evidence? It seems like with the Xers and the Boomers, it was more about the evidence.
Uh, it was logical. So, now it seems like, why, don't waste my time, why does this even matter? Do you have to start with that and then move to evidence?
Jim Wallace: Well, you know you do and here's why. If you watch YouTube, we've learned this, right, like, like, I, I'm still, I, my YouTube channel is just, for me, it's like, um, a spiritual discipline, right?
Like, it's the discipline of, I read Bible, we pray, and I create videos or create content about Jesus. This is my way of, it's like a spiritual discipline on a daily basis. That's what I do. I've got no other goals than that. You know, I don't want to be, I'm now 60. I'm not looking to be, uh, create a career as a public speaker.
I should know, you know, I mean, we're trying to kind of, this is I'm on the backside of this. So, so I feel like this is just what I do, but I've noticed is that [00:31:00] most YouTubers when they start, they, they know they've got to capture you in the first. 15 seconds. Yeah. Because the drop off rate on YouTube videos is pretty quick.
Yeah. And so the same, and because that's true, that either reflects the nature of young viewers or it's creating the nature of young viewers, but either way you look at it, you know, if not like you're trapped in a room. But the problem is for most of us, we bring these glowing rectangles into the church with us.
And then you have the challenge of trying, I remember, uh, make it visual, uh, for a visual culture. What makes this so compelling is the visual nature of it. So make your sermons visual. That's number one. I would say that, uh, make it clear why this matters. The same way you wouldn't a video in the first four or five minutes, forget that first 30 seconds, you're going to have to make it clear why this matters, get to the point, and then you almost kind of kind of tease them that at the end of the video, I've got this payday coming.
So I think sometimes we're going to have to say, Hey, the first story is going to have [00:32:00] to be something that they can connect with and live as a cliffhanger and promise to solve it. And then spend the next 30 minutes solving it through, uh, you know, going through scripture. And then look, I, I do believe that we ought to be in context a lot of times in scripture.
So let's say you're somebody who's more topical. Great. And this is going to be easy to do if you're not well, every passage, every chapter of scripture will present you with something that you can talk to your young people about. Yeah. Uh, and by the way, I think that's a noble cause because it turns out that if you look at what's happening to our young people, that's the future.
I think they should be our target. I think they should be our target in every congregation. I think they ought to be our target even if you've got mostly older people in your congregation, they all need to say, Hey folks, are we all on the same page? Our target is that person sitting next to you who's in high school or lower.
Because that is, if you look at this polling, as a matter of fact, they just released polling, I think, a couple days ago, people who identify as transgender or LGBTQ, and if you look at it from the oldest [00:33:00] generation amongst us, it's about 1%, to the youngest, it's about 21%. Now, that is either that there's less constraint on our kind of base fallen nature with the regeneration, or that the culture is succeeding in teaching each younger generation something that's not true.
So we're going to have to make an effort to focus on those folks, because we see what's happening generationally. And if you're 60 and you're a Christian and you're in the church, you're probably not going anywhere. If you're six and you're in the church, you probably are. So it's important for us to focus, if we care about the future, the future is not people my age.
So everything I'm trying to do is I'm thinking, Hey. I'm focused on young people. So I, you know, I did a, uh, an event in Michigan one time, uh, maybe a couple of years ago. And at the end of the first service, someone came up and said, I want you to know my husband for the first time in church. And many times he didn't fall asleep.
And I thought, Oh, wow. Okay. That's, I guess, I don't know. I thought, okay, I can, I followed that away. Well, the next [00:34:00] service, I had a mom come up and say, Hey, I just want you to know my two teenagers were with me in the church service. And for the first time in a long time, they didn't look at their phones.
Wow. Okay. So that's the goal, right? What are we doing that is passionate enough and visual enough? And so I've just converted everything to, I'm just narrating a visual experience in my talks for audiences because I'm trying to kind of capture like an episode of Dateline, right? If you don't do it on Dateline, I tell people all the time when I'm teaching this, don't do it.
Don't do PowerPoint. That looks like PowerPoint. You're doing an episode of Day Line. Yeah. And if I'm a detective, of course. That's why I'm saying that, but Right. But I mean, wherever you are, look, yeah. Look at the thing that works. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And you know. You know, for example, um, if you look at like, um, Dennis Prager, his stuff is visual, right?
I mean, it's very visual. Um, if you look at the PragerU stuff, or you look at some of the William Lane Craig videos that have been done where they're animating what it is William [00:35:00] Lane Craig is saying. Well, I'm going to tell you that's, that's for, you're doing that for a reason because look, this, the talking head listening to me, watch me talk.
Who cares? I mean, I, I subscribed to several platforms where I either listened to the podcast or I could watch them on the video, say the exact same thing they're saying on the podcast. Why in the world would I watch the video? Right. So that's part of it. I think too. Right. They've done studies on this. I mean, between millennials and Gen Z, there's like a six second drop in attention span, given that it's only, it was like 18 seconds to begin with.
That's pretty significant. So, so that's why I think you've tried to stay visual. You try to do two eyes for every what. And you try to stay at 30, 000 feet, realize you've got weeks and weeks to cover the material. I have, as a speaker, one opportunity. So I have a tendency to kind of jam a lot and do a little.
But if I was doing it every week, I wouldn't feel that, feel that way.
Rusty George: So with the resources you provide, there's a lot of great stuff people can do in groups. Uh, you can watch talks. Uh, so much of this stuff you can [00:36:00] find, uh, cold case, coldcasechristianity. com. Is that right?
Jim Wallace: Yeah. And you know, I, I'm a big believer in trying to provide resources.
So we, we built a 525 slide PowerPoint for this book just to show the impact of Jesus that is available at person of interest book. com. Okay. And yeah, you're right. We've also provided videos. You can kind of see here's how I'm doing it. And I've noticed now I see on YouTube almost every day, someone is posting.
Preaching through this at a church and all they're doing is not trying to do the whole section Not trying to even do a whole chapter They're finding the one nugget in the chapter that will fit within the context of their preaching sermon series And they just put that in. I think that's what really, that's, that's, that's what we're trying to do, right?
Is to, to, to, you know, I think it is important for you to stay, whatever it is God has called you to, to, how to preach through that scripture. And I wouldn't, I'm not, you know, a fan of trying to change something that works. [00:37:00] So the question then becomes, well, how do we, Provide material that maybe will supplement what you're doing.
Yeah,
Rusty George: I love that Okay, i'm going to ask you about thin blue life talk about that a little bit.
Jim Wallace: Well my whole journey Uh ended up being encapsulated in this website called coldcasechristianity. com and that was Just taking a look at the Christian claims, the Christian worldview from the perspective of an investigator or a detective or a police officer, somebody who's, who's investigating claims about the past.
Okay. So that's really what cold case Christianity does. What the thin blue light does is it flips it. Instead of taking a look at Christianity from an investigator's perspective, it takes a look at law enforcement from a Christian perspective. Because I think what my discovery in working in law enforcement was that you'd be surprised how few members of our law enforcement community are believers.
Mm hmm. And how that might change everything if they work. So I, for us, what we're trying to do with that website is just [00:38:00] provide an opportunity to examine the struggles that police officers have, especially given the COVID year where it seemed like every bit of press that came out was bad press. And when someone's telling you they want to defund your position, that really does speak to whether they think your position has any value at all.
Right. And not only that, we have, you know, across America, we have district attorneys right now that won't even file cases once you take someone to jail. So it's really, that speaks also to whether they think you have any value, because whatever it is you are doing is either you're trying to eliminate it or to minimize it.
So there's a sense for a lot of officers that, Hey, this is what, why am I even in this business? Right. Especially given what it pays. Why am I doing this? Right. And I, I see this happening. We've seen a departure of people from law enforcement, largely because they, you know, it's not like it pays a lot. And then what's the, there's too much downside.
There's a risk to look, here's the battle that every cop has. Um, go to work every day. Um, wanting desperately to, to fulfill your mission, which is to risk [00:39:00] your life for the benefit of your community. Right. The second goal every day is to come, come home alive. And these two goals are often in conflict with one another because sometimes the very thing you need to do to serve your community is may not let you go home that night.
And so this is the challenge that officers have and I think that's really the kind of challenge that is ripe to hear the gospel. And so that's what this website does is it and we're really just trying to reach and it started for us because I got involved in marriage counseling for police officers through the Billy Graham Association Hmm, and I just wanted a resource so that when I'm done for that week, we spend together that Officers have a place to go to kind of continue to hear the truth about Christianity
Rusty George: Well, it's so great and what a great opportunity for people.
It's called www. thethinbluelife. com Thinbluelife. com what a great great resource. Okay, last question. [00:40:00] I'm on an airplane Yeah, talking to the guy next to me. Yeah We get past, you know what I do for a living and all that let's just say it's anybody. Yeah, hypothetically Yeah, and they start talking about faith.
They start talking about Thinbluelife. com Maybe God or whatever that they they open the door to talk about spiritual things. They find out you're a believer and They say why in the world would you believe in that? You don't have all day. It's a short flight It's LA to San Francisco Yeah, top three reasons go
Jim Wallace: Okay.
So I, I always say that, you know, I'm, I, I think people think it's funny when an investigator or somebody believes in something like Christianity because it isn't belief the thing you do when there's really no good reason to believe it. Like then you have faith, true faith is like, Hey, you got no good reason to believe.
No, actually it's not. It's not. It's not. I always tell people I believe in Christianity because of the evidence, not despite the evidence. [00:41:00] Again, in every jury trial, you take a step through all the evidence and then you have a bunch of unanswered questions still, but we'd ask jurors to step across the end of the evidence trail to what we call a verdict.
Yeah. Christianity has got lots of evidence that demonstrates it's true, but at the end, you're still going to have unanswered questions like every worldview has. And I just learned to step across those unanswered questions as called a step of faith, but it's like rendering a verdict. So I think the Christianity is true because I analyzed it as an eyewitness account, four reasons why an eyewitness is reliable, right?
Were they really there? Can they be corroborated? Have they changed their story over time? And do they have a bias that would cause them to lie to us? That's how we evaluate eyewitnesses in criminal trials. When I evaluated the gospel authors in those four categories, they passed the test. So what am I supposed to do with this now?
So I just did what, you know, anyone would do if I had presented a witness to you in a trial and asked you to render a verdict, you might have some open questions still. But there's more than enough reason to believe that [00:42:00] this is true, even though you may not believe everything that can be known about this truth.
And that's where I was. I knew there was enough reason to believe that it was true based on the evidence. Now the reason why I take that approach, because I think it'd be, if that person doesn't ask you then, well, what's the evidence? Then you know he's not really interested. That's okay. That's good. Right?
This is just a, this is a way of kind of baiting out whether or not someone's interested. Now, if you say you're a Christian because of the evidence, the first question someone should probably ask is, well, what's the evidence? Now you have a chance to share. Now that can be a deeper conversation. But if you say, I believe Christianity is true because of the evidence, they don't even follow up.
Well, that's nice. Okay. Then, you know, they're not, and I'm not in the business of trying to beat people with the truth, right? It's not a stick. We want to, uh, we want to woo people toward the truth. Not push them toward the truth, or that wouldn't be a real step of faith anyway. So, so for me, I just want to say I believe it because of the evidence, and then that should provoke the follow up question.
Now, here's the reason why a lot of people don't take that approach, though. Because they don't know what the evidence [00:43:00] is. That's not why they're a Christian. They're a Christian for the reason that almost everyone's a Christian. They were raised that way, or they had an experience that demonstrated it was true.
Which is why Mormons are Mormons too and why Buddhists are Buddhists and Muslims are Muslims and everyone's whatever they are We actually could make a case for the evidence and you couldn't do that as a Mormon No, you can only do that as a Christian, right? So why wouldn't we try to write the problem is most of us didn't come that way now I can tell you that everyone In the first century, who became a Christian on the basis of what was being told to them by the disciples in the book of Acts as they're preaching the gospel, became a Christian on the basis of evidence because an eyewitness, that's called direct evidence, was telling them about the resurrection.
So there was a generation at one time of people who became believers on the basis of direct evidence. Hmm. We have just moved away from that. Because of course the witnesses aren't around anymore. I get that, but we can still examine the [00:44:00] eyewitness accounts. We just don't do it. And once the eyewitnesses died, we, we changed the way we accepted the claim.
And that's where we got to be careful because we're in a culture right now that is, doesn't even believe in objective truths. Everything is a matter of subjective opinion. So therefore they have no problem saying good for you. Yeah, that's your truth. Yep. Good for you. Good for you. But the number one reason why should you embrace that?
Because there's no such truth that is objectively true. It transcends both of us that I need to embrace. Everything's a matter of perspective, culture, history. In personal opinion, so therefore I good for you, not not good for me, I don't really care. Okay, well, so there's why I think we have to be able to get an evidential approach, because if we stay in our experiences, everyone's going to cite their own experience.
Rusty George: That's so good. Jim, it's always a pleasure having you on. I can't wait to have you back at real life in the flesh rather than just, uh, on video. I know your schedule is probably filling up again. Thank you for what you do for not just Christians, but for non Christians, for [00:45:00] your heart, for people that were like you, atheists without reason.
And then you found evidence and found reason for faith. So thank you for that. And thank you for this new book. It's fantastic. I can't wait for our
Jim Wallace: people to read it. Well, thanks so much for having me. You know, I'm always up for your first on my list. So just please have me back. I'll be happy to come.
Thank you so much.
Rusty George: All right. Talk to you soon. Well, thank you so much, Jim. You're always a welcome guest around here. We just love what it is you have to share and pray for you and your ministry. Looking forward to having you out to the Texas area in about a year. Uh, for everybody else, I just want to thank you for, uh, listening to the episode.
Want to have you share it with somebody else. And if this is new for you, go ahead and hit subscribe. Next week, we're back with brand new content. I have a conversation with a former pastor and now. A business leader by the name of Gavin Adams, who talks about what do you do when you have big shoes to fill?
How do you replace a legend? Well, that's what he's going to talk to us about next week, and I can't wait for you to hear it. So have a great week and we'll talk to you next [00:46:00] week. And as always keep
Jim Wallace: it simple.