Ankerberg Show

Narrator: Welcome to More to the Story with hosts Michelle Ankerberg and Jeff Palanch. Join us as we sit down with guests from the John Ankerberg Show to explore their salvation stories, faith journeys, and what's next for them. There's always more to the story. Let's dive in.

Jeff Palanch: Hi and welcome to More to the Story. My name is Jeff Palanch and with me is my cousin, Michelle Ankerberg. This is a time where we get to sit down with the guests that John normally has on our regular TV programs, but we get to hear from them in a little bit more personal way and hear some of their stories and research that we just can't always fit into our regular broadcasts.

Today, we have the great privilege of having with us the astrophysicist, Dr. Hugh Ross. He is a genius and somebody I just love listening to, and I think you will too. Hugh got his PhD from the University of Toronto in astronomy, and then he went on to Caltech where he studied for five years postdoctoral research on quasars.

So Hugh, tell us a little bit about what you do then at your ministry, Reasons to Believe. I'd love for you to explain to our viewers how they can get connected to all the resources that you and your team are continually putting out.

Dr. Hugh Ross: I've been the president of Reasons to Believe for 36, 37 years. Just a couple of months ago, I transferred that responsibility to another one of our scientists because our board said, "Hugh, you've been very diligent at trying to ensure that most of your time is devoted to research, writing, and speaking. We want you to spend all of your time on research, writing, and speaking." So that's the role I have right now. I've written 22 books. I'm working on book number 23 right now.

The way I've structured Reasons to Believe, we're an apologetics organization, but we're only going to do the apologetics that has proven or promised in bringing people who have not been raised in a Christian home to faith in Jesus Christ. So it's always apologetics for the purpose of evangelism. You see that in all the books I write, all the articles I write. In each case, I'm trying to provide people with the evidence they need so they can confidently put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the creator of the universe.

Some of my books are really heavy on the science, others are heavy on the theology, but I'm also committed to demonstrate to people that God has given us two faithful and trustworthy books: the book of nature and the book of scripture, and each book corroborates the other. I tell my scientist friends that the Bible is the key to doing efficient scientific research. You want to know where the scientific method came from? It comes from the pages of scripture. You want to know where the scientific revolution erupted from? It was Reformation Europe.

But I also tell my theology friends, if you look at science, you see that everything in the universe has been fine-tuned and designed to make possible the redemption of billions of human beings from their sin and evil. As it says in Romans 1, every human being has seen God and His attributes through what He created.

The message has already gone out through the book of nature. You just need to help them see how the book of scripture gives you the complete story in all the details of how you can come into a relationship with Jesus Christ. To put it another way, what we do at Reasons to Believe is use the emerging discoveries in the book of nature to bring people to the book of scripture and into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jeff Palanch: I think you mentioned when we were talking the other day that you have a weekly email where you give out information as far as new evidence that's being published?

Dr. Hugh Ross: I post something new every day on my social media, but every week I write an article called "Today's New Reason to Believe." I'm steeped in the scientific literature. If I actually had the time, I could write several articles a day because that's how frequently scientific papers are being published that are making a stronger case for the Christian faith.

What I do every week is I pick one out of the literature and say, "Okay, here's even more evidence for the Christian faith than we had the week before." When I speak on university campuses, I tell the skeptics in the audience: if you're not convinced today, wait one month. If the evidence goes up by a factor of 100 times, you need to seriously consider the truth claims that the Bible makes on your life.

Michelle Ankerberg: Do you see anything in the future that can change more with the steady science to really prove, especially to the skeptics out there, even more than what we've already seen? Is there anything that you see coming down the line?

Dr. Hugh Ross: One demonstration of that is a book I just released called "Designed to the Core." It basically focuses on the scientific discoveries of the past three years. I wrote that book basically to show people who are not yet believers that in just three years, we have an exponentially stronger scientific case for the God of the Bible than we had in all of past human history. It's accelerating that fast.

Actually, you see a Bible verse that talks about that in Daniel 12:4: "In the last days, knowledge will greatly increase." I think we're living in those days. With the technology we have today, in my own discipline of astrophysics, the knowledge base doubles every four or five years.

I'm really thrilled to be able to communicate to people that it's actually doubled, it's tripled, it's quadrupled. Let me tell you about the exciting things that have been discovered. But I'm also using that as a way to say: don't just be fascinated by these discoveries. You need to think what they imply.

Jeff Palanch: The recent launch of the James Webb telescope has been in the media quite a bit. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. What are you interested in as far as the research that will be done through it? What would you love to learn from that? What is being studied that interests you and how might that further solidify everything that's been found around intelligent design?

Dr. Hugh Ross: There's only a handful of astronomical images that have been released by the James Webb space telescope so far. I've been posting them on my social media pages and I've never gotten such a huge response. A quarter of a million views—that's unheard of, at least on my Facebook page.

I think it's not just the science that is revealing; people are impressed by the beauty. Everything that God creates is beautiful, and the James Webb space telescope is showing us the beauty of the heavens like no instrument before has. That's grabbing people.

It's an infrared telescope, and when you look far away in the universe, everything gets red-shifted. So the James Webb space telescope is perfectly designed to reveal to us what's going on in the early history of the universe. That's kind of the missing piece in the biblically predicted Big Bang creation model. What are the details?

We've got an idea what's going on in the early universe, but the James Webb space telescope has the power to image in detail the first galaxies that formed in the universe and may even give us some insight on the first stars that formed in the universe. So I'm convinced we're going to get a much stronger case for the biblically predicted cosmic creation model than we had before.

I'm just telling people to be patient and don't over-interpret, because the first images are revealing stuff that is easy to image. It's not giving us the complete story. The complete story is coming, but even what's been released so far is stunningly beautiful.

Michelle Ankerberg: What would you say to people who are skeptics right now? With all the evidence out there, what would you say to them as far as who God is?

Dr. Hugh Ross: When you look at the book of Job and the Psalms, the creation Psalms, they communicate a biblical principle: the more we learn about nature, the more evidence we'll uncover for the supernatural handiwork of God. So my challenge to them is, we're learning a lot more about nature. God's book of nature is accelerating in its revelation like never before.

See what it says about the increasing evidence for the supernatural handiwork of God and who that God is. The gods of the different religions are different. They're not the same. This new evidence is really making it clear we're dealing not just with a god, it's the God that's revealed in the Old and New Testament.

That God wants a relationship with you and is promising you eternal life in the new creation where there'll be no sin, no evil, no suffering. Don't you want to go there?

Narrator: Thank you for joining us on More to the Story. May the insights from today equip you to present and defend your faith with confidence. To learn more or view our TV program, visit jashow.org or subscribe to us on YouTube. Until next time, may God guide you in your pursuit of truth and empower you to share it with others.