Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're talking to Barry Cooper, the author of the new book Can I Really Trust the Bible?
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you with Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scriven.
SPEAKER_03Hello again, welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. This is the show where we delve into issues regarding sharing the good news, and uh we've got an interview today from Barry Cooper.
SPEAKER_07Barry Cooper, um Who is Barry Cooper? He is the face of discipleship explored, and he is uh the author of several books, co-author of some books as well, and he's just come out with a new one called Can I Really Trust the Bible? And it's a great little book, um very short, sort of seventy pages, but um something that's brilliant about uh establishing our own trust in the Bible and something to be read as a Christian and perhaps passed on to non-Christian friends.
SPEAKER_03Okay, and where did you sort of meet Barry Cooper?
SPEAKER_07Oh, I've known Barry since my time at uh All Souls Langham Place. So I I was working there in 2000. I think I sort of met him first around that time, and he's involved with Christianity Explored Ministries, which grew out of All Souls, so uh so we we go back a little bit.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And uh there's someone else, isn't there? Uh uh Nate.
SPEAKER_07Nate Morganlock, who is the face of Soul, which is the uh Christianity Explored for Youth um course. So if you've ever done that, you'll you'll know Nate, and uh he's he's brilliant, and um so they work together for Christianity Explored Ministries, so it was a great privilege to be able to catch up with them both at the same time.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well let's hear what they have to say then.
SPEAKER_07It's great to have with us uh author and speaker Barry Cooper. Uh Barry, you're on the line. Great to be with you. It's lovely to be with you. Um how's the weather where you are? Weather is very, very hot. We're in a stuffy studio with all the the windows are shut, and it it's an airless sort of uh heavy place. Yes.
SPEAKER_04And how about with you? Uh it's alright. Um I'm glad to be inside. I'm actually in a basement, so it's quite cool, and um I'm glad about that because the last time I went out of the house I got assaulted by flying ants. They've just seemed to have emerged, so it's obviously Flying Ants Day, which comes uh every year, as you know, um in London.
SPEAKER_07Is there a card? Are there are there greetings for the day?
SPEAKER_01There's a special collect, I think, in yeah.
SPEAKER_07And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Nate Morgan Locke, who is also with Barry. Uh hello, Nate.
SPEAKER_04Hello. And uh just to be clear, this isn't like Morcum and Wise, where we basically live in the same flat. It's that he's just visiting. He was just passing by. Yes.
SPEAKER_07It's not like the Mormons. Did you see the recent uh documentary on was it Meet the Mormons or something like that? That's good. Where they cannot for two years be apart from one another. Even like like they can go to the bathroom and shower separately, but apart from that, they must be together at all times. Uh Nate, uh, people might know Nate uh from the soul course. It's unlikely though, isn't it? To be honest.
SPEAKER_03Oh right, gloves are off now.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, you're just jealous of Nate's screen presence, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. And uh Nate, you also uh work in a church in the West Country, is that right?
SPEAKER_02Uh that's right. So I'm I'm based in Bath, so I'm a children's and youth minister there, but also working with this fella, uh, Barry, uh at Christianity Explored. So that's what I'm doing today.
SPEAKER_07Fantastic. And and Nate is uh Nate has preached one of my favourite sermons I've ever heard anywhere, and it was at St. Paul's Cathedral, actually. Well, it was on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. Do you mean do you remember this, Nate?
SPEAKER_02I do recall.
SPEAKER_07It was during Occupy London, and uh and I'm I'm not gonna do justice to it. You'll you'll have to you'll have to pick up uh the gist of what I'm saying. I'll I'll give you the gist. But but Nate sort of got up in front of all the sort of Occupy London protesters and said, I'm sick and tired of the bankers and taking our money and running, and I'm sick and tired of the police lying to us, and I'm sick and tired of politicians, and I'm sick and tired, and and got everybody like really amazingly on his side uh and kind of cheering for him, and and then brilliantly turned it in terms of and I'm sick and tired of my own heart, the sins and the lies that I tell, and I'm sick and tired of me and my own sin. And it was that was that was kind of your approach, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02It was. In fact, the guy who'd just been on the kind of uh open mic, I suppose as it would be beforehand, had been doing his sort of uh ABC of vitriol. So he'd been just going through the alphabet, naming things that began with various letters to the alphabet, and then being angry about them. Um and people seemed to like that, so I thought I'd just you know continue to surf his way for a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07And yeah, people were on your side. It was it was a really brilliant experience to be in the in the crowd, and as they were kind of yeah, bankers, yeah, and then you were yeah, kind of turning.
SPEAKER_02The best the most memorable thing for me that day was um that afterwards a group of people were um were standing around and doing some dancing based on um Do you remember this? They were dancing around singing in some kind of tri uh African tribal language and these sort of lovely people. And they said, Um, I said afterwards, what what were you singing about? And they sang, oh it's a it's about the walls of Jericho, when the walls of Jericho came down. Yeah. And I was like, What you were singing about the walls of Jericho coming down? Then they said, because like that's a good thing, isn't it? When walls come down, like when the Berlin Wall came down. I was like, that is that is a different leading um than I than I had uh had understood myself. So it was a remarkably bizarre day. It was, it was.
SPEAKER_07When was Occupy London? Was it end of 2012 or 2011?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, wow, that's three years ago.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, maybe end of 2011. And uh, I mean, yeah, a bunch of us went up there and and I I took a whole bunch of uh of Romans. Um so I picked up a whole bunch of uh of Romans and and stood on the steps of St.
SPEAKER_02Paul's Cathedral and You mean the book Romans, but Romans. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Um I'm Australian. And uh I got up and said, St. Paul's statement. Here's St. Paul's public statement to the world. Everyone come and listen to St. Paul's public statement. And and like people flocked to here, and then I just read a verse from from St. Paul's letter to the Romans, right? And then offered free Romans to everyone. Everyone took them and started reading them. Like got into loads of conversations with with people who on biblical grounds were opposing usury and and interest being charged on things. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's not why uh I brought you all here. Um Barry, you have uh just written a book called Can I Really Trust the Bible? Um that's that's part of a uh a broader series, I think, that the good book company uh are doing at the moment. What's what's the idea of this series?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right. So it's called uh Questions Christians Ask. And um, so when Tim first um you know pitched the idea to me, he said, well, what we what we have in mind is that you're writing to uh primarily a Christian audience, but you're imagining that there's a there's a non-Christian friend standing at your shoulder listening in on the conversation. So the idea is that the books are are written, you know, in the first instance towards Christians, but hopefully with a kind of a uh an evangelistic edge and a and a sort of a sensitivity um to the sort of questions that non-Christians would ask as well. Um so that's the that's the idea. And the range, um, there's a few that are coming out at the same time as mine, which is um John Stevens, how can I be sure? And also um Jeremiah Rinney. Um is that how you say his surname? I've never met Jeremy.
SPEAKER_07No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_04I said I said Jeremiah, didn't I? But let's call him Jeremy, because that is actually his name.
SPEAKER_07Jesser, okay.
SPEAKER_04I've never met him, but let's go to Jersey. I'm sorry, Jeremy, if you are listening. Sorry on my behalf. I've not even met you, but I've got your name wrong. But Jeremy, um, he's written a book called How Will the World End, which is a very fetching shade of red. Um and they all sort of, yeah, they all fit nicely together, nice kind of con cover design, and they seem to be going well. The the big one so far, which is just you know, thousands of people have got hold of copies, is is Sam Aubrey's book, Is God Anti-Gay.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, and obviously Sam's got a particular angle on that, which is just fascinating and compelling and full of um full of integrity and wisdom.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it's a very good book, highly recommended. And I've also read your book and highly recommend it as well.
SPEAKER_04Um, many ways, Glenn. I'm glad you said that, because I think my book is the key book in a whole because and I'll tell you why, because mine is about the Bible, and if the Bible can't be trusted, then frankly, Sam Albury's book can't be trusted, nor can um John's, yes, nor can um Jeremy's. Yours is the capstone in some ways. I don't have to toot my own horn, I'm just saying that's an important thing to bear in mind.
SPEAKER_07Barry alone cornerstone.
SPEAKER_04Yes, that's sort of t-shirts printed up.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. And and so, like, can I really trust the Bible? That's interesting you say that this these are questions that Christians ask. Is that what you find? Like, surely it's non-Christians who don't trust the Bible. Surely all Christians just by default trust the Bible, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I think probably a lot of Christians probably entertain doubts which they uh perhaps wouldn't say out loud. I think there is some, you know, if you were to say to a Christian, well, this is the story of what happened to me. I mean, when I I I considered myself to be a Christian when I was uh what in my sort of teens, late teens, I was 18, doing my year-off thing, traveling around Southeast Asia and uh, you know, learning things and and you know being self-righteous. And I heard um, there was a guy I met in India, this is how the book starts, actually, and um this guy in New Delhi who was obviously phenomenally well read. He was quite a young guy, I seem to remember he was kind of not much older than I was, probably a couple of years. And he um we just sort of bumped into this guy and he just started holding forth about how you couldn't trust any of the biblical documents that they've been. And he was really, really companionable, like a lovely guy, super funny, super smart. He was the sort of guy that at that impressionable age I basically wanted to be. And but but what he said was, yeah, no, it's great. I mean, the Bible's great, some lovely stories, and you know, there is some wisdom in there which you can be, which you can glean, but you've just got to be careful not to go sort of too overboard on it or get too serious about it, because of course, you know, it's been transferred, you know, between um this sort of an oral, you know, lots of oral history in there which you can't really rely on, and obviously there's miracles in there, which you know you've got to sort of raise a bit of an eyebrow that because we we know better now that miracles don't happen. Um, and all this kind of stuff, which just and at that point in my life, I would have said very solidly that I was a Christian, but I just didn't have the ammunition at all to be able to turn around and say, actually, mate, you know, that's what you've just said there is very contentious, and here's why, you know. Um just didn't know. And so by the end of the conversation, and my memory of it was that the conversation lasted about uh I don't know, 20 or 20 or 30 minutes. But by the end of it, I I mean I was on the ropes during it, but I had no way of going, I just I wasn't sure I was a Christian at all by the end of it. Well, and actually I don't think I was at the time. So it was actually in God's providence, it was a wonderful conversation because it forced me to you know back to the Bible to go, okay, well, can you trust this? Because if you can't trust it, then frankly, what on earth is the point of you know trying to build your entire life on it? Just you're just wasting your life if you do that. Um, so it forced me to go back and really examine the questions, and I think that formed the foundation then of my uh my what we will call my official conversion, which was in my first year at university.
SPEAKER_07Okay, that's oh that's fascinating. And and so like give us give us the outline of the book then, like yeah.
SPEAKER_04So the basic overview is um I hope I'm not sort of um pitching this a bit too low, but one of my uh favourite books in the world is uh uh Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne.
SPEAKER_07So children's, you know, I love that's the level of all our lessness, that's good.
SPEAKER_04But good, I've I'm glad I found it. I I I I like books with pictures in, and so that um in there what happens is uh Winnie uh or I don't think you call him that, you call him Pooh, don't you really? So Pooh bear. Um Pooh um sees this jar on the shelf, um, but he's not sure that it's got honey in it. Um it says honey on the outside, but of course that's not enough. You've got to take the cover off, and Pooh sort of looks inside to see whether it looks like honey. And then finally, of course, to put the matter beyond doubt, uh Pooh has to sort of dip in his tongue and have a good old lick, and then of course he you know he knows for sure it's honey. So I thought, well, what about uh taking a similar kind of approach to uh you know examining whether the Bible really is what it claims to be? So the first couple of chapters are does the Bible claim to be uh God's word? So does it does it say God's word on the label, in other words? Um, and then the second two chapters are okay, so having established that, does the Bible seem to be? So if you take off the cover and look inside, does it actually look like honey? Does it look like um something that God Himself has uh put together and written um effectively? So there's that, and then the final chapter is the you know where the rubber hits the road and you say, Okay, well let's let's dip in and dip a finger into this and actually taste. So the emphasis in the third in the in the final chapter, the fifth chapter is taste and see for yourself experientially that this is honey, this is sweet to the taste, that it is truly what it claims to be and truly what it seems to be.
SPEAKER_07Yes. That's what I love about the book. It's always heading towards the taste and see for yourself kind of thing. Because I I mean I I always say to people in an evangelistic setting, well, just pick up a gospel for goodness' sake, shoot up a prayer and see see if God is speaking to you through this, and then you'll kind of well again that was very much my own experience.
SPEAKER_04So although I had years of claiming to be a Christian, and I would even go to the extent of when I was at school, I can remember trying to evangelize the school bully. So I would basically put myself in physical danger for things that I wasn't even sure I believed in. Um and the reason that I wasn't sure that it was absolutely trustworthy was because basically I hadn't put it into practice. So although I knew what the Bible taught, and although I there was a part of me that said, yes, this is you know, the Bible is God's word, you know, Jesus is God's Son, blah blah blah. I didn't really know that experientially myself in a sort of a uh existential sort of way, if you like. Um, and it was only in my first year at university when I started actually putting it into practice that uh it became obvious to me that it truly was what it what it claimed to be. So there were all kinds of areas of my life which excuse me, which which weren't uh I wasn't living out uh what the Bible taught, and as I did it, um it suddenly, you know, I it was as if a sort of a power had been unleashed um in my life which I'd never known before. And so I think that's what you know what Calvin talks about when he says um, you know, the uh the only way ultimately that you can know whether scripture truly is God's word um is when you have that inner testimony. He says, um he says, the testimony, I'm reading this, I'm not doing this from memory, by the way, just in case anybody feels at all intimidated. Um I'm just reading it. The testimony of the spirit is more excellent than all reason, for as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his word, so also the word will not find acceptance in men's hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the spirit. Um so he talks about you know the uh what each believer experiences within himself. And it seems to me that probably in maybe in super conservative um theological circles, people are a little bit uncomfortable in a way with sort of talking about personal experience. But it was very important to me as I wrote this book that um I say, you know, that look if this really is God's word, you'd expect it to actually practically, yes, experientially because you've met a person, yeah, you know, so that changes you. You know, so it's like if someone comes up to you and says, uh, oh, your best friend doesn't exist, you'd be like, No, no, he does. I've met him, I've spent time with him, I know, I know him personally. So the I the argument we would be ridiculous. And I think the same is true with with the Bible. If if my non-Christian friends say to me, Look, you know, you can't trust the Bible, um, deep down what I'm thinking is uh like I'm trying to be sensitive and kind, but deep down I'm thinking, yeah I know it is, I know it's true. Yeah, yeah. Because you know, I've met Jesus in it. Yes. Um He's utterly uh changed my life. I mean And so you'd say, Let me introduce you to my best friends.
SPEAKER_07Come and meet him, come and meet him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a slightly different claim, isn't it? To sometimes sometimes, especially in sort of debates with atheists, they might say, uh, you only believe the Bible is the word of God because it says it's the word of God. Yes. You know, like that that there is a verse in the Bible, many, many verses in the Bible that say, Thus saith the Lord, or that say that the scriptures are God breathed. Yeah. But Calvin's point and your point is is deeper than that, isn't it? It's not just that because God's because the Bible claims to be God, well we we trust it to be so, is it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right. It's not just it's not just because God says so. Yeah. Um although even there, and I have a bit earlier on where you know you anticipate that objection that many people have, which is, well, you're just using a circular argument, you know. Um you're saying, oh, the Bible, the Bible's true because um the Bible says it is. Um and then of course we so what I try to get into there is well, actually everybody uses circular arguments. So, you know, you can say, uh, so it's so if I say that, well, you know, the Bible says it is, and and they say, Well, you can't say that's a circular argument. I say, okay, well, what do you um what do you say? And then normally they'll say something like, Well, you know, from a rational point of view, doctor, I'll say, Well, hang on a minute, why why how how come we're leaning on rationalism all of a sudden?
SPEAKER_07Because it's reasonable.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because it's reasonable. I say, Well, who's you know, who says it is? Well, because well, rationalism says it is. All right, so do you see that actually that's a circular argument as well? And it's something that we can't escape from, obviously, as human beings. So um, I think that's it is important to kind of shoot, you know, try and sort of deal with that kind of stuff. But you're right, the ultimate argument, undoubtedly, apologetically, is the moment when the Holy Spirit um comes into somebody's uh life uh and and comes to live in them um and and convinces them. So inwardly you've got that that still small voice saying, This is true, this is true. You can trust this.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, the God's God speaks in person in his word, that's what makes it God's word. That's not simply that the label is on it saying God's word.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. And very hard to argue against miracles incidentally when that happens.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because you go, Yeah, because one's already happened in me. So there we go. I am one, yeah.
SPEAKER_07I'm one. Okay, now let me let me bring in Nate now. And uh let's let's play let's play a little game. Uh I'm gonna I'm gonna throw out some uh questions that people often ask about the Bible, and and should we should we have a go at uh knocking them out of the park? I'm gonna set them up, you're gonna knock them out of the park, okay? Uh how about how about the whole Chinese whispers thing that you you talked about, um Barry? Surely, you know, one person's just copied from another, from another, from another, down through the line. How can we really trust that what we read today is really what Paul and Peter and Mark wrote?
SPEAKER_04It's I don't know whether you've ever had this experience, Glenn, but I always find after I've written a book and I've written it all down, and I'm and I'm very and I've internalized yeah, I've internalized it, and obviously I knew about it because I wrote it down.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um but then it's like the sort of short-term memory, you sort of completely forget. But yeah, the telephone thing's interesting. I think the the well there's two issues.
SPEAKER_07Yes, I did I did I say Chinese whispers? I think yeah, sorry, the yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Telephone game is the is the telephone game is the accepted snow. Yes, yes. Uh that's right. Um well there's there's two issues, in there. I guess there's the issue of kind of can we trust oral history generally? So if somebody says to me, um uh, you know, I like for example, I I know that my birthday's on the 4th of November, but I only know that because of oral history. I mean, yes, I have got a birth certificate somewhere, probably, but somebody could have forged that. Ultimately, the only reason I know that I was born on the 4th of November is because somebody told me, and I have to trust them that that is true. And I and I and people don't normally feel the urge to challenge me on that when I say, Yeah, I was born on the 4th of November. So there is that sort of thing you want to deal with is oral history um trustworthy? And I would argue that there's no reason why oral history necessarily needs to be less trustworthy than than history that's written down. Um, but then also there's the other issue, isn't there, of um uh you know, when you you've got documents which have been um transferred and written down by scribes, um, and there's the argument, well, when the scribes did it, they sort of introduced mistakes, and that's like the game telephone because the books that we have, the documents we have kind of a couple of thousand years on, um, they can't be like the original, because we don't have the original documents, do we, Barry? So, you know, you with your Christian belief, um, I've just shut all that down in flames. Well, yes and no, because um the the actually no, the issue is lightly better. I'm frazzled a little, but so I think there you'd want to say um that's where the whole textual criticism thing comes in. So I think Glenn, you you when you read over the manuscripts of the book, you um suggested this really good illustration by Dan Wallace, where he says that what we effectively have um uh with all of the the the huge, just the embarrassment of riches where it comes to the number of documents and and document fragments of um you know copies of the original uh original autograph, is that you can they're like having uh you've got to create a jigsaw, uh you're putting a jigsaw puzzle together, but you've got more pieces than you actually need to make the the picture on the jigsaw.
SPEAKER_07You've got a thousand and fifty rather than nine hundred and fifty. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Exactly, exactly. And so as you put those together, um it's Becomes very obvious how the pieces fit together, and it becomes very obvious which which pieces are uh erroneous and and left over. Um, which I think is a that's a nice illustration.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think one of the other things when people are uh saying, Oh, what did Paul and Peter really say that, they're kind of forgetting the the the time and situation in which those things would have been written down. And to realise just how dangerous lots of these things would have been to say, and actually, you know, really how dangerous they are to say, you know, in this day and age. Um, but because it's got this sort of wash of of Christendom all over it, it seems like you know, well, the Bible's clearly a a power play to control the masses. Um when in fact, you know, when you look at these letters or or even the gospels themselves, I mean, this is stuff which is gonna get you killed. Um, and in this, you know, even today and um around other parts of the world, this is stuff that can get you killed. Uh, it's not a a great sort of um you know opium for the masses to control the people and and all that sort of stuff. This is um it's not sedative, is it? It's it's gonna get you killed. It and and why would anyone have written this kind of thing if it weren't true? Um they were you know they couldn't recant on what they'd they'd written. Um so I think what we tend to get with the questions non-Christians or I suppose even Christians might ask now is just um a failure to appreciate the the historical contexts in which various parts of the Bible were written and just how radical this stuff was because it's also apparently familiar to us, and it you know, someone will stick it on a picture of a sunset with the you know Jesus clowns or whatever. Are you gonna you're gonna go on a rant about it? I might do, I might not, but um it's it we indulg by familiarity with scripture and so to say to people, let's just really get stuck into it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh so that's that's partly, isn't it, sort of tying into this idea of when people say, Well, you can't trust the gospels because they've you know they've obviously it's a sort of an offshoot, isn't it, of the telephone game thing where people say, Well, surely there's there's there's there've been embellishments which have been put onto the gospel stories. So it's just you can't trust with it, you can't trust it. I think Tim Keller's really good on this. He has a three-pronged approach. He says the first thing is that um the gospels were were written too early to be legends that were made up. So if you look at Paul obviously writing about 15 to 20 years after the uh crucifixion, and in Philippians 2, you've got him quoting that that beautiful um uh uh hymn um which exalts Jesus as as uh the Son of God, um, exalted in glory. I think if he's if he's if he's quoting, you know, he's quoting a hymn, or presumably it's already well known to his readers, so that doesn't really leave much of a window of opportunity for you know the the the quote unquote legend, yeah. Yeah, the legend of Jesus to somehow have grown up, you know, like like sort of decades after Jesus died, it just doesn't leave.
SPEAKER_071999, starting yeah, somebody died in 99, and we start making up, you know, that's right.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. So I think that you know the gospel's written too early, and the second thing he says is that the gospels are too counterproductive. So this kind of taps into what Nate's saying, you know. Why would you, if you were making stuff up, why on earth would you present Peter, who is one of the obviously one of the you know the pillars of the church is one of the sort of leaders that um and then you you you write a you you fabricate a story in which he's basically a complete coward. You know, it just seems like a very strange way to go because how you're hardly going to respect a man who's who's been depicted in that way, unless, of course, it's actually true, it's actually what happened. And then the the third thing is um, you know, the gospels are too detailed. This is you know C. S. Lewis's point where he said, you know, a professor in Oxford and Cambridge of medieval literature, you know, his life has been about studying myths and legends. And uh, you know, he says, I've been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they're like, and I know none of them are like this. So there's an extraordinary by the way, I didn't make I didn't just memorize that either. I I read that one.
SPEAKER_02Um, but he but he but his point obviously is that Barry, you should be you should be Barry Cooper writer, speaker, and reader as well.
SPEAKER_07Well I just he does have a love.
SPEAKER_04I think it's an under that's it's an underrated, it's one of my underrated gifts. I can read. Um level. Yeah, exactly. Um so his point there obviously is that you know it's very easy as modern readers to to look at the gospels and go, oh yeah, well, you know, there's you say oh there's lots of detail in there, but that's just like a modern novel. Well, the modern novel, um obviously that modern novel novel form didn't even exist until about 300 years ago.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So the idea of a document that was written about 2,000 years ago that has this extraordinary level of granular detail about these little kind of seemingly erroneous, like not erroneous, seemingly kind of irrelevant details about things, um, all the way through the gospels. Um, again, just make there's there's no other ancient document that is remotely like it that claims to be history. Um, so that's quite compelling as well.
SPEAKER_07I often find that the the the lost gospels, so to speak, are just a brilliant compare and contrast, aren't they?
SPEAKER_06It's true, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Like if if you are going to fabricate a a religion from a great distance of time and and space, you'll come up with something like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, that kind of thing. The Gospel of the Talking Cross, um, where the cross appears, you know, outside the tomb and speaks for Jesus, saying, Behold the Lamb of God, or you know, like this is what happens when people try to fabricate stuff.
SPEAKER_06That's right.
SPEAKER_07Read read that stuff because it's so obviously nonsense, and it's so obviously different to you know, Luke's gospel beginning. You know, many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us. It's so different, isn't it? It's so different. Um so I yeah, I I often I often like when people bring up you know the lost gospels, Dan Brown sort of stuff. Um because they're they're a brilliant contrast with the Bible.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right. And also the the other issue there, of course, is that those the the quote unquote lost gospels were ones that were again written at a considerably greater remove um chronologically from the events that they purport to describe. So all of the New Testament documents basically written in you know in that first uh century. Um you can't say that about the um the so-called lost gospels.
SPEAKER_07In a language Jesus never spoke with doctrines of God and humanity and women that are just you know abhorrent to common sense, let alone the rest of scripture. Um and again, I I mean I I often sort of say taste and see with regards to those as well. Like, seriously, it doesn't take long to read the Gospel of Thomas. Sit down, sit down and read, and you'll see. Um okay, so we've uh knocked that one out of the park. What about um somebody saying, okay, it's a scientific age. Why on earth are we reading uh this Bronze Age documents? What could it teach us?
SPEAKER_02It's a good one. It's a good question. Do you know what I uh at this point I like to just come out all guns blazing and um just to try and expose some of the um the kind of arrogance of of that kind of position, which is um just the the you know, you get these the horns that sort of appear in Daniel and they kind of speak proudly and boastful words and all this sort of stuff, and you just think, well, you really haven't been around very long, and the kind of stuff that you might be basing your you know argument on, um, you know, they they feel in in many ways it's too soon to say. Um, you know, when Jesus says, you know, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Um, well, we're reading that, you know, this is 2,000 years removed from when he said them, and these are still words, and um it's it's still a text which is which is you know producing disciples, growing churches, changing lives. And yet a lot of people be sort of saying, Well, you know, I only believe what I've just heard in the you know the the most recent edition of uh kind of science magazine. And it it's it's it it seems a lot of the time people are coming from a um a misunderstanding of how science works. You know, really it it's not just a sort of um gradual building up of information, it works upon you know a building up of information which is then dashed and destroyed by a new discovery, um, you know, and the the types of sort of Copernican revolutions that exist within science on a range of different levels. So I think that's where I'd sort of put the you know, whatever it would be, the sort of burden of proof. Um because people don't tend to have to hand, and that's the great thing about scripture, is you you know, you can have it with you. Um they don't tend to have these, you know, pieces of information, these textbooks, these kinds of things. And so the the capacity to be able to open them up together and say, well, let's have a look at this. Well, you know, actually you can't really understand this until you've done three years worth of uh study at one of the best universities. And you just want to say, well, okay, we've got a Bible here, let's let's look into this and let's see what how it fares up.
SPEAKER_04We there is a real uh blind spot, isn't there, I think, for a lot of um a lot of modern um people. Do we talk about them as modern people or do we say postmodern or post-post-postmodern? I don't know.
SPEAKER_07Millennials. Should we say millennials?
SPEAKER_04Maybe we could just say people, maybe let's stop, let's put stop putting labels on people. Um apart from a legitimate label, isn't it? For a people. Um so there is that there's a grave skepticism about past ages, you know, like we know better. So this happened 2,000 years ago, but obviously, you know, we sort of we we smile at the we smile at the sort of conclusions they came to in much the same way as we might smile at a two-year-old who's you know just trying to work out how to access voicemail on an i on an iPhone, you know. Um, but actually, um, if we're skeptical about a past age, we it's very strange that we don't extend that skepticism to the age in which we live. You know, I think we have to there has to be a sort of a an awareness that we're speaking in a very particular moment in history. Um not only that, but also in a on a very particular place on the globe. So the sort of things which seem self-evidently true to us are not self-evidently true to people who are living on the other side of the planet right now. Um not only that, but you know, the sort of people who were in our place in our particular town, even a matter of what, 40, 50 years ago, um, also believe something completely different and and we're absolutely convinced that they were right. So I think that sort of knowledge surely ought to teach us a little bit of humility and the ability to say, actually, I could, I'm very culturally situated. Um, I'm very historically situated, which means that I have my own set of blind spots, and of course, them being blind spots, I don't know what they are. There's no way of me telling. Um, only history will reveal what those are. But that should teach us a bit of humility, I would have thought.
SPEAKER_07And that goes too for sort of ways in which the Bible might be morally out of step with our current you know ideas of what's good and true and beautiful.
SPEAKER_04Precisely, yeah, precisely. I think so. And that and that ties in, of course, with um if again, if the Bible really is God's word, you would expect it to to chafe a bit. Um you know, in some places. It doesn't matter uh who you are. The fact is that the Bible's been an equal opportunities offender of people um ever since it was first written. And you would expect that if it truly is God's word. You'd expect there to be it would be very suspicious if the Bible always said exactly what you wanted it to say. Yeah, it'd be very suspicious if the Bible never offended you at any point. Um, because God is, I mean, clearly by definition, if God exists, he's not like us. Yeah, uh, he's not gonna agree with us. That would make us God, um, which would be a sad lookout for Christians everywhere if I was if I was God.
SPEAKER_07Goodness me. Brand Barry up in the Tim Keller has that that great uh kind of analogy with the Stepford wives. Uh in which, you know, Stepford is this town in which you know all the wives are impossibly blonde and helpful and wonderful in the kitchen, and just you know, the the the dream women, and it turns out, of course, that they're all robots. Um, and they never contradict their husbands. That's what, in one sense, makes them good wives, because they've got a you know a microchip embedded in them because they only ever say what their husbands want them to say. But what kind of relationship is that with the Stepford Wives? It's no kind of relationship. Um, the one way you know that you're not dealing with a robot is is that you know they actually contradict you, they have the right to you know cross your will and that kind of thing. That's right.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. And what what many of us want deep down if we were to admit it is that we want a stepford God. Yeah, we want we want a god who's just gonna kind of basically please us and exist to serve us.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and a stepford Bible, yeah. Exactly. Um okay, wars.
SPEAKER_04The Bible is so warmongering. Um what's your favourite manga, by the way, Glenn? Genghis. I don't know. Oh, right. Oh, I thought you're going with that. I always thinking like, yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_07I think fish, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, cheese. Yeah, hasn't the Bible wars? I do you know what I found this really I was I had to preach through some of the conquest of Canaan. Um of the topics that you've looked at on the podcast. Um, so I didn't see. You listen to the podcast? Oh yeah. I think we all do then.
SPEAKER_07We are the ones, okay.
SPEAKER_02Everyone who's listening now listens to the podcast.
SPEAKER_07Of that we can be sure.
SPEAKER_02All of us. Um, and one of the things I sort of said was so you get this bit when um they point out how the anarchites in particular were kind of destroyed and and within the land and and not living there. And you you get people to sort of read that bit and they kind of go, Well, you know, how how can God do this to the anarchites? That's oh, it's so that's awful that you could do this to those lovely anarchites. And it sort of feels a bit like someone coming in at the end of Star Wars and saying, What are they blown up that Death Star for? Yes.
SPEAKER_07That is just yeah, like in clerks, yeah, the film.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like, yeah, what's that Death Star ever done to anyone else?
SPEAKER_07And it's you sort of give the construction workers working on the Death Star innocent, imagine them, you know. Just trying to earn a crust.
SPEAKER_02You go back and you've you've got to say, look, if you've been following the story properly, you've seen exactly why the Lord wants to, you know, kind of bring his judgment, his righteous judgment on the Anakites, and that he is prepared to use his people in that particular time uh to make that happen. And I think we we sort of come in with a an awful mixture of arrogance and ignorance into a lot of those situations, and we say, you know, we're more loving towards these people groups than the God who created them, who sustained them, who's who's given them food and shelter for their entire lives. And we'd never even heard of them before this sort of thing. So I think again, it's one of those situations where we tend to be a bit puffed up with our own sense of um compassion and our own sense of what justice is, um, that we don't actually allow the Bible to tell us where we are in the in the story um uh and in the history of of those particular nations.
SPEAKER_07Um in in terms of the the place in the story, yeah. Because it it's it's not as though the New Testament endorses us to to go down and do likewise.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, exactly. That's right.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but there's another question, isn't there? I don't know whether that's it's partly what you were getting at, Glenn, is that there's there's there's the question about okay, what about the wars and the the the the sort of the the killing that that have you that you see in parts of the Bible? Um but then there's the other one which is um well, hasn't the Bible been used to justify wars and violence? Haven't people kind of stood on that? Um and I think on that one, I would typically say, well, there's no doubt about it, people have um quoted the Bible, use the Bible to support their particular um agenda, whatever that may be. And sometimes um, you know, that it's been absolutely horrific what the Bible has been used to to try and justify. Um, but the problem with that, of course, is you then also have to, if you're gonna be even-handed, you've got to say, well, what about the the people who've been tremendous forces for good in his good in history who've also um taken the Bible as their uh agenda and you and and and stood on its authority? So you think of you know Wilberforce, or you think of um, you know, Martin Luther King campaigning for civil rights, racial equality, or you think of uh Corrie Ten Boom, um, you know, the Dutch Christian helping Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust. Um so where do you go with that? I mean, is the Bible good because those people trusted it, or is the Bible bad because some other people trusted it? And I think ultimately you've got to say it's like a it's like the sharpness of a knife, you know. Um what makes a knife wonderful is its sharpness, and and um, but of course that's what can make it very damaging in the wrong hands. So if you use it for the wrong reasons or use it in the wrong way, you shouldn't be judging the knife. You shouldn't be saying, Oh, you know, knives are bad. Um but you should be saying actually the person who wields it um holds a lot more responsibility than you than you're letting on. Yes.
SPEAKER_07And but but we're not saying therefore uh that those who went on the crus on the crusades have one valid interpretation of the Bible.
SPEAKER_04No, that's right. Yeah, that's right. You've always got to come back and say actually, what does the Bible say? Does it give people, does it give did it give them a warrant to do what they did or not?
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_04Um, but of course, um I think a lot of the time people just assume that uh unquestionably that the Bible did do that and does do that.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_04Um but again it comes from a sort of a place of not really being willing to actually read the Bible for ourselves.
SPEAKER_07Yes, and if at the heart of scriptures is is one who died for his enemies rather than kill them, precisely exactly, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I and I think that's that's you know the key point. One of the great illustrations, my dear friend Barry Cooper, uh I'm assuming stole from somewhere else. Uh which isn't so well in that sentence, wasn't it? Um so the idea of a radio with with 66 different stations all playing the same piece of music but in different styles. It's my illustration. No, it wasn't. Is that yours? No, it wasn't that.
SPEAKER_07No, go on, no, go on. I I don't think I've heard this.
SPEAKER_02But just in that in that sense of you know, where does you know each of these events or perceived atrocities, or you know, which of course as as those who trust in Jesus, we we still sort of take a moment you bow your head as you hear when God brings uh has brought his judgment at various times. But you s you need to see that within the scope and within the uh the meta-narrative, um, which of course is is all pointing to and finds its fulfillment in in in the gospel of Jesus. And so I think that's where when people sort of you know jump in and sort of say, I've read some of this bronze age, you know, retributive justice that that's going on, and you sort of say, and and how do you think that showed us what Christ is like? And that tends to sort of wrong foot them because they say, Well, of course it's nothing to do with Jesus, because you know it was written thousands of years before he even existed. And then you say, Well, if he says these are the scriptures which testify about me, yeah, yeah, um, that tends to make them sort of think, Oh, maybe I have been kind of handling this a bit.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I mean, Jesus, Jesus says, put down your sword and take up this book. And this book's got all sorts of stuff about swords back in the Old Testament, and it's it's about holding on to the both those things, isn't it? That we we don't like a progressive evangelical or you know, want to cast off the Old Testament like we're some modern-day Marcion and say we don't we don't like the bloodshed, let's get rid of the Old Testament, we're just into the Jesus thing. Yeah, we do have to hold on to Christ's book, but he also says, Lay down our your sword, and it's sort of realizing that those wars happened in that place in the story. Yes, yeah, and that's yeah, Christ's New Testament people are those who die for their enemies.
SPEAKER_04And the thing is, the the Bible is hard. Yeah, you know, it's it's rich, it's muscular, it's sprawling, it's if we you know, if you put the Bible in front of a modern day sort of editorial panel, they'd take it to pieces and they'd be like, This is this is way too complicated. We need to simplify this down. And I think that that's quite intentional on God's part, that it's meant to humble us. You know, we're meant to come to it and be broken by it. We can't just come to it and look at a look at a paragraph out of context and then say, oh, well, that's what the Bible's about. Um the the only the only way you can possibly even begin to get a foothold in the in the in the foothill. of the the wonderful you know mountain grandeur of scripture is to take is to really you know devote a lifetime of sitting under it and learning learning from it yeah um in order to to try and make sense of it I think that you know God in his um infinite mercy and wisdom wants us to be um wants us to be broken by and it's a little bit like you know if we want to go to the Bible and expect it to to give us easy pat answers um it's a little bit like the person who goes to the gym and expects to get very buffed up um without actually sweating you know the Bible does demand that we sweat a little bit and I think that's um it's very good for us.
SPEAKER_07And that brings us sort of full circle back to the the whole taste and see come into the world of the Bible put sit yourself under it for a bit at least for a bit and yeah and hear it on its own terms. Yeah that's right maybe you'll see that it's God's word. So Barrett like last question what what hope do you have for can I really trust the Bible?
SPEAKER_04My hope is that um people will fall in love with scripture and that they will turn as quickly as possible from my um little offering um scripture yeah I I want them to put down my book and start reading um the Bible and I think in many ways that's probably why the Good Book Company asked me to to write this particular book because in my view no other Christian author writing today is more likely to make his readers stop reading put down put down my book and read something anything else really I imagine that's probably what they'll be thinking they'll be thinking I can't wait to put this down and move on to something else.
SPEAKER_02So that's part of the reason they made it so short was that it would give people less time to go through that thought process and I don't want to carry on reading this and and yet and yet many people have said to me that um you know you although it was a short book probably wasn't short enough.
SPEAKER_04Could it have been shorter yeah yeah in many ways I kind of as I was reading it I thought I wish this was shorter. You know I uh you know the in some ways I I live my life by the maxim you know always leave them wanting more but perhaps in this case I've left people wanting less that might be the case yeah there's there's an epitaph for you brilliant well thank you so much uh Barry and thank you Nate for helping as well um perhaps we can this again you never know but uh yeah no I have read uh Can I Really Trust the Bible I recommend it heartily it's a great book to read and pass on to friends and uh yeah I hope everyone can can get it how can they get it it's it's being launched next week is that right well actually they they brought it forward so it's uh it came out this very day um it's launched so you can get it on the good book uh website which is thegoodbook.co.uk or if you're in the uh United States of America you can go to thegoodbook.com and then there are kind of Australian outposts and New Zealand outposts as well so you can find that and order that there.
SPEAKER_07Brilliant and how can we find you online as well Barry? BarryCooper.com is my blog future perfect present tense I'm not the most prolific uh blogger um but one it's quality but I've but the pa the people have spoken they've said they want less so they get less that's what they've got you're very defensive Barry just put it out there trust it um brilliant well thank you so much for your time uh and we'll put those links uh onto the show notes for the program um but uh yeah hopefully speak to you again soon but thanks so much for joining us fantastic thanks for thanks for having us Glenn speak soon God bless bye bye well that was really good uh so you uh you recommend this this book then uh can I really trust the Bible I definitely recommend the book it's uh a a short read and it I I really love the focus on taste and see and uh everything about the book is heading you towards that direction that the way that the Bible authenticates itself is as you read it and the Lord speaks to you personally. So that's that's where it's all going it's it's it's too easy just to trot out this explanation of this argument and this argument. At the end of the day you've got to taste and see and that's that's really what the book does and and I love hearing you know from Barry that that what he wants people to do is put down his book and pick up the Bible and uh and and delve into into it for themselves.
SPEAKER_03Great. So where is it available then?
SPEAKER_07Uh so the good book company is the publisher of it so I'm sure it's available at all good book stores.
SPEAKER_03But uh is it uh electronic?
SPEAKER_07Uh I think so go to thegoodbook.co.uk if you're in the UK.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. We'll try and put a link to it on the uh on the show notes that'd be good. Okay so if you want to go to the uh web address for this episode you'll find it there it's revivalmedia.org slash tep62. Thanks very much for listening to the Evangelist podcast and uh we'll see you next time.
SPEAKER_04See you like multi schoolboys we've been writing notes to each other.
SPEAKER_07Have you?
SPEAKER_04Well not like that normally just we've been scrabbling around desperately trying to think of something clever and intelligent to say so we're just we're trying to help each other.
SPEAKER_07Say that Calvin thing. Google that's Calvin