The Resurrection with a Cold-Case Detective Part 1

Answering questions by Bill McKeever Gary Johnson deals with 36 commonly asked questions by your LDS friends and neighbors.

It's a great resource for Christians want to share their faith with friends and loved ones. Be sure to pick up your copy today at your favorite Christian bookstore viewpoint on Mormonism program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a biblical perspective viewpoint on Mormonism sponsored by Mormonism research ministry since 1979 Mormonism research ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's viewpoint on Mormonism welcome to this edition of viewpoint on Mormonism on your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director Mormonism research ministry and with me today is Eric Johnson. My colleague at MRM but were also pleased to have with us Jay Warner Wallace now would give you a little bit of an introduction. We had Jim on the show before, but we wanted to have them again and you're gonna find out why. But let me give you a little bit of a background Jay Warner Wallace is a dateline that's an NBC program is a dateline featured cold case homicide detective. He continues to consult on cold case investigations while serving as a senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian worldview in Colorado Springs, Colorado is also an adjunct professor of apologetics at Talbot school of theology in La Mirada, California and Southern Evangelical seminary in Charlotte North Carolina as well as a faculty member at Summit ministries in Manatee Springs, Colorado. Now Jim you also are a very popular speaker, a best-selling author, your works include cold case Christianity God's crime scene and forensic faith and those three books are also in a kids addition yacht for a 13-year-old agent really starts to habit nonpenetrating question that we want to make sure we have them over. Glad to have you wanted a Jim in the reason why is were going to discuss something that really isn't directly related to Mormonism per se, but with Easter coming up. We thought let's look at a booklet that you wrote.

It's cold alive. A cold case approach to the resurrection and the reason why we wanted to do this is because as we've mentioned on the show a number of times we see a lot of people coming out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for a number of reasons but primarily because of historical and theological things that they've run across that are shown them that Mormonism cannot be true. But what's sad about this. Jim is we've seen them leave not only Mormonism, which of course we want to see happen, but they don't even seem to give any time a day for the claims of Christianity. One of the most important claims of the Christian faith. Of course being the resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ which we find a little bit odd because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints officially affirms that they do believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ.

So what that tells us is that a lot of Latter Day Saints while claiming to be Christian as members leave. Apparently, what would you say Jim, never owning the resurrection of Jesus. What would you say that God a lot of it I think is due to the fact that you can't fool me once in our shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, and I think a lot of people discover that they've been lied to, are the different ultimate hundred and believe. Especially if it has such a robust expression in their own lives.

You know you went to get to the Lord every Sunday. If you notice of your parents believe, and talked about it something that is that included in your upbringing say is not true that you you probably thought I might be fooled again not trust any of that nonsense because if this thing.

I was so sure was true, isn't true, why would I step off in that direction. Again, I would look at this point if he had been raised by parents right and year now 25 years old and you discover that the entire life, you are there parents.

Your mom told you that that was. She was your mom, but she wasn't really your mom okay she's crazy she adopted you she raised you and you discover that the line you want. My birth mom would that can cause you to reject looking for your birth mom or knowing that there was a birth mom that maybe if you got good reason to believe you got a mom this person who told you that you like your mom. But isn't should not keep you from looking for your real mom and I think a lot of us look at this issue it would as far as you and II get it. My dad remarried after I was probably about four or five in his second life quickly became a morning I have six half-brother and half-sister are all rated LDS as they discovered some of them discovered it wasn't true to it. On May look neighborly. Went to a season of complete eight given agnosticism because they felt like nothing is true about God if this this version is not true about God, but then at some point I think is not good reason to believe that God existed and you're trying to figure out which of the views of God that are out there is actually accurate. You know I am a Christian because I was an atheist, 35, as I became interested in looking at Scripture to see if any of these will be work through.

I examine Christianity. At the same time, I examine Mormonism because I had Mormons in my family who brought me a book of Mormon, but for me I'm like thinking on the investigator that I am as I read through the book of Mormon doctrine and covenants progress.

I want to know all of it. I want to know what's what is every expression of this. I didn't know what time that was an atheist I didn't know any book of Mormon stunted relatively similar to the King James version of the New Testament without reading for the first time as well insight into the discernment so I just simply implied that test that I talk about inculcates Christianity to test that determines if a witness is reliable. I have wanted both to the New Testament gospel authors into the book of Mormon simultaneously and it really confirmed that the reliability of the New Testament gospel authors. At the same time that it deconstructed the story hopper by Joseph Smith and so I always said I became a Christian and 35.

At the same time that I became a not Mormon because I knew that process led me in one direction and protected me from error in the other. You know you say in your book alive under the heading investigating the resurrection and you talk about your atheism. He said I was a committed atheist when I first heard a pastor preach a sermon that described the resurrection of Jesus. This pastor seemed actually believe Jesus rose from the dead and was still alive today, I assumed it was just another example of quote" blind faith. Another well-intentioned church leader believing something for which he had no supporting evidence. Worse yet, I suspect that he possessed an unreasonable faith and trusted something in spite of the evidence. Now you talk a lot in your books about your background as a detective and using evidence and to draw conclusions from that evidence. I wish I wish so many Latter Day Saints who have come out of their church would do the same thing.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is how can we use something like what is in this booklet that you've written alive and hopefully try to convince the Latter Day Saints that abandoning the Christian faith is not something they should be considering we want, and in view of the world that describes the world the way it really gives us insight that allows us to use as a filter when making decisions when trying to determine what is the nature of humans where the nature of like the most important worldview questions we all have. How do we get here. Why is all messed up and how we fix it. Those are important worldview issues and admonishment similar to Christianity in the sense that it makes a claim theistic claim about God that is rooted in an event in history. This is unusual. Think about it. I was like that of the high and I was reading the writings of Baha'u'llah. These are like wisdom. Statements like the proverbial wisdom statement that I can either accept or reject based on what I got that they resonate with me. If I understand there's some spiritual connection to the words, but there's nothing about the history of Baha'u'llah. What is going to confirm his deity or confirm his prophetic authority looked in our view, an event occurred in history is not like fortune cookie County is in this is an event that we could cast because it it's connected to an event locked in history. The resurrection not Mormonism also hinges on the resurrection of Jesus didn't rise from the grave.

That's not true in the entire thing is a farce, but it adds an entirely new set of facts. Write an entire thousand year history in the North American continent and so I would say is I would test all of it, discover, for example, is that you can confirm and verify facts and ideas and notions and claims in the New Testament in a way that you cannot verify them in the book of Mormon and that directed me like how much layering should I accept here.

There is a lot of people who after the apostles made their claims as eyewitnesses about Jesus who added to the text entire Gnostic history of the noncanonical gospels for the fourth fifth century, in which people were already changing the story and adding details to the story.

It was up to those who are investigating these claims determine which other core facts are true and which is the step is just fallacious late additions stuff going on for 2000 years within the habit of the book of Mormon. Yet another additional set of data built on the core claims and just like those Gnostic noncanonical gospels that occurred early in history we have to build a stable, none of that stuff that we added late and I can't trust I had to build trust. The stuff that is closest to the real action dated the earliest and written.

The closest to the region in which the event occurred because of the four canonical Gospels. Anything else that added later is written either hundreds or centuries later, having hundreds of years or on thousands of years later as you see, even people to date in a whole new movement of progressive Christianity, which tries to change the gospel so that it no longer has the meaning it has them originally but is now being morphed toward all kinds of either social justice or whatever it is that your inclination as people try to twist the gospel toward their means. So I guess I'm saying is, in the end, yet have a detective's perspective like it if someone is telling the truth about what happened on the crime scene and 10 years later someone comes up until July. How my able to discern between the original truth claims in the late lives and be reflected in the fact that there are late lies did not mean I should ignore the original truth claims like okay that I can't trust anything I can feel a separate allies from the truth that he would do that.

By the way if it was anything else to sell you a car and they were the third owner you try to separate the original truth claims from the late lies and I get to do that in our Christian worldview is entirely appropriate. Do not abandon the endeavor altogether, but instead work is required to separate truth from error. Jim, you wrote a booklet they were talking about from 2014 and is titled alive.

A cold case approach to the resurrection, and we've ordered three cases of those they come in sets of 10, my wife is going to be handing those out to some of her coworkers were pretty excited about being able to do that with your booklet. But why do you think taking a cold case approach, the resurrection is going to work for people like yourself and many others who are base enough truth on the evidence, but what I wanted to offer a strategy of deductive reasoning were to use in every death scene to determine what kind of death.

We have begun seeing that a murder scene.

I buy lots of time to collect the debt. Seems like it at all because it is not a debt is not a murder. It suicide a natural or accidental is something that is not can require an criminal investigation, but you don't know that at first you get there to get a dead guy laying in a room and yet I figure out okay while I how I noticed the guys didn't die one of the other three ways that are criminal shall use a process called abductive reasoning. If Marshall were going to continue this thought because this idea of abductive reasoning is a major part of your booklet alive and I think it's something that's very intriguing and something that our listeners really need to know. So tomorrow are going to continue our conversation with Jim Wallace he is the author of the booklet alive, as well as the author of cold case Christianity, a detective who uses his skills in showing that the biblical message is worth leaving.

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