Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. For centuries, people have wrestled with life's greatest questions. Does God really exist? And if he does, can we know him through truth, science, and history? Today, we hear many voices in our culture insisting that truth is relative, science has made God unnecessary, and history cannot be trusted.

University professors, media personalities, and social influencers often tell us that faith belongs in the realm of personal opinion, not objective reality. But what if the evidence points in another direction? What if the universe itself reveals signs of design? What if the laws of science actually point beyond themselves to a creator? And what if the historical evidence for Jesus Christ is far stronger than most people realize?

My guest today is Dr. Frank Turek, co-author of the best-selling book, *I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist*, who has spent decades answering some of the toughest questions asked on university campuses around the world. Together, we're going to examine whether truth really exists, whether science and reason point to God, and whether the evidence for Jesus and his resurrection can stand up to historical scrutiny. If God exists and Christianity is true, that changes everything about who we are, why we are here, and where we are going. I invite you to join us for this edition of the John Ankerberg Show.

Welcome to our program. I have a question for you. Do you think that Jesus Christ, when he was living, actually said the words, "I am God. If you come to me, I'll give you everlasting life. I can forgive you of your sins"? We're offering a book that says, *I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist*. My guest today is Frank Turek. He wrote this book and answered many of the questions that skeptics on campus had. He came out of a skeptical background, was raised Roman Catholic, but didn't believe in God.

That was the key point. Can I believe in God? What do you need to believe in God? What are the objections to believing in God? How do you answer those objections? Did Jesus ever claim to be God? Do we have eyewitness testimony about him? All of that is in here. Today we're going to talk about the statement, "Did Jesus claim to be God?"

Frank Turek: While Jesus didn't come right out and say, "I am God" in English, he claimed to be God in a very Jewish way on several occasions. Probably the most direct time he claimed to be God was when he was on trial because he knew at that point his mission had been completed in terms of what he had to teach. Now he was going to give his life as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45 says the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So he's before Caiaphas, the high priest. Caiaphas is saying, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" And Jesus said, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man coming with power on the clouds in glory." Immediately, Caiaphas tore his robes. He said to his colleagues around him, "That's blasphemy. Did you hear what he just said? You must die."

What is Jesus claiming there? He's claiming to be the Messiah, and he's claiming to be the figure in Daniel 7, the Son of Man who is equal to the Ancient of Days, God the Father, who is going to judge everybody at the end of time. Immediately, Caiaphas knew what Jesus was claiming to be. He's claiming to be equal with Yahweh, and that was blasphemy. This is also recorded in Matthew and Luke.

The other very direct time he claimed to be God was in John chapter 8, when he's actually talking to Jews who believed in him. But at some point, he turns on them and he says, "If you believed in Abraham, you should believe in me, because I knew Abraham." And they said, "You're not even 50 years old. How could you know Abraham?" And he said, "Before Abraham was born, I am."

He's quoting Exodus 3:14, the burning bush. Moses said, "I'm going to Egypt and you're going to say, 'Take my people out.' They're going to say, 'Who are you and who sent you? What is your name?'" And this is where you get God saying, "I am." "I am" means the self-existent eternal one, the being that had no beginning, the being that will have no end, the self-existent eternal God. That being is who Jesus claimed to be. They immediately picked up stones to stone him because they knew what he was claiming to be.

It amazes me today that there are people who say that Jesus never claimed to be God. First of all, if he never claimed to be God, why are Jews picking up stones to stone him? Why is Caiaphas saying you must die for blasphemy? If he never claimed to be God, why did they kill him? Did they kill him for saying, "Love your neighbor"? Does that get anybody killed? "Love your neighbor, you must die." No, that doesn't get you killed. What gets you killed in a Jerusalem context and a Roman context is claiming to be God. If you claim to be God, that's blasphemy to the Jews, and it's sedition to the Romans because Caesar is supposed to be God and you're supposed to acknowledge the Roman gods.

Dr. John Ankerberg: When I spoke on campus, I used to like to use this little story when Jesus went to Capernaum. He went to this house and as he was speaking, the place was jammed up. You had Jewish leaders in the front row. So you had the opposition sitting right in the front row. You had his disciples around the side and then you had the townspeople beside them. While Jesus was teaching all of these people, there were four guys that had a guy that was completely crippled. They apparently liked this guy and they thought if we can just get him to Jesus. They got there and couldn't get in.

One guy says, "I've got an idea," and he says, "Follow me." They went up to the top and it was pretty easy to pick away the thatch. All of a sudden while Jesus is talking, this guy's coming down in front of him. I love Jesus. The fact is, it didn't seem to bother him. Here's this crippled guy coming down in front of all these people and the Jewish leaders are sitting there too.

When Jesus saw the guy, what would you expect him to do? If he's never walked, he's crippled, and he's completely messed up, you would expect him to say you're healed or something like that and do that kind of a miracle. He didn't say that. What did he say? He said, "Son, your sins be forgiven you."

The Jewish leaders thought, you can't do that. Only God can forgive sins. Exactly, that's the point. Jesus said, "In order that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins," he said to the guy that's on the mat, "Take up your bed, take up your mat and walk." He said, "Which is easier to say, that your sins are forgiven or that you ought to take up your bed and walk?"

For them, they would say it's easier to say your sins are forgiven. Why? Because if I look at you and I say your sins are forgiven, you can't see sins being forgiven. But if I say to you and you've never walked, "Get up and walk," and you walk, but I had said your sins are forgiven, when I say that you can walk and you get up and walk, that means I did the other thing too. You have unbelievers basically sitting there watching this with the townspeople. I love this illustration because you've got people that are not in favor of Jesus and then you've got other people that are watching. Jesus says, "Not only can I do miracles and healing this guy, but the fact is I can also forgive sins." They were right, only God can forgive sins. Jesus said, "You're looking at him."

Frank Turek: If you look at the beginning chapters of Mark, the first several chapters of Mark, Jesus is depicted as God. In chapter one, John the Baptist clears the way for who? Quoting Isaiah, Yahweh. Yahweh's coming in Mark one. In Mark two, that passage right there, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" If you keep going, he tosses demons out. Who can do that? God has power over demons. Then he walks on water. Everything Jesus does in the chapters of Mark is depicting what God does.

Dr. John Ankerberg: When Jesus fed the 5,000, 5,000 men, they probably had wives so you've got 10,000. If they had kids, you've got 15,000. He says, "Anybody got any food here?" A guy had two little fishes and four loaves of bread. Jesus said, "Bring it over here." He blessed it, started passing it out. He fed 15,000 people while they were all sitting there. He did that in front of eyewitnesses, 15,000 eyewitnesses. They all ate it.

Frank Turek: That's what Yahweh does in the Old Testament. Yahweh feeds people from heaven, manna. Jesus does the same thing, and then he says, "I'm the bread of life." He's paralleling what Yahweh does in the Old Testament. He's doing it in the New Testament. So Jesus is depicted as God throughout the New Testament.

Dr. John Ankerberg: I want to talk to folks that think they're big sinners, that Jesus would never have anything to do with them. They've never been to church because people would laugh at them. I always think of the woman that they said was caught in the act of doing adultery. That's a pretty hairy statement, "caught in the act." So if they separated the two that were there, it's interesting they didn't bring the guy, they brought the woman. It was a setup.

They bring the woman and Jesus sees her. They said, "Jesus, what are you going to do? This one was caught in the act of adultery and the law says we ought to stone her." Jesus didn't say anything. He simply knelt down and he started writing in the sand a little bit. All these religious leaders are there and finally he said, "Whoever is without sin cast the first stone," and knelt down again.

I don't know if he was writing names of people and what they were doing and sins that he knew, but it says starting with the older ones, the older ones had a whole life to look back on and they knew they had blown it along the way. They started leaving first. They left and left and left until you get to the younger crowd and they finally left. He looks around and says, "Woman, there's nobody here apparently to accuse you." She says, "Yes, Lord." And he says, "Neither do I, but go and sin no more."

People in Africa cry when they hear that story because they feel like the woman taken in adultery. They've done all the sins you can possibly list. But Jesus is so loving and he's got the power and the love. He loves you and will forgive you. Now, how did he forgive all the sins of the world? People don't understand this. He went to the cross. He one time said, "I lay down my life, nobody takes it from me. I lay it down and I can pick it up again."

He said, "I am going to go to the cross and they're going to kill me." Isaiah 53 told all about it 700 years in advance. "All we like sheep have gone astray, we've turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." That was hundreds of years before Jesus' rise on the scene.

So he goes to the cross and, yeah, the cross was brutal. It was the worst punishment that's ever been designed to kill a person. It was so bad the Romans were exempt from it because they were Roman citizens. Only criminals were crucified. If you look at the film, *The Passion of the Christ*, you see a little bit of what they did. They whipped you at the whipping post so far that it lacerated your whole back and got to the organs that are in your back and your side, your stomach, the front, your heart, everything was basically exposed.

Then they made you carry your cross up to the place and then they put nails through your hand and in your feet, which had to feel absolutely excruciating. Then they left you up on this cross. From 12:00 to 3:00, darkness was in the land. There's been some evidence that's come out from different sources saying that right about that time there was a black spot that came over that whole land area and everything was blacked out.

What was happening biblically is that was when God took your sin, my sin, the sins of all the world, all of humanity for all of history. God gathered past, present, and future, all of the sins of the world, picked it up and he placed it on Jesus. So I was there, you were there, our sins were there, and God punished him. He put our hell on Jesus for all of us.

Jesus paid for it all. Finally, he said, "It is finished," and then he died. He rose from the dead three days later and he said, "Go out to all the world and preach the gospel." The gospel is simply this: that I paid for your sin and it's a gift. The gift of God is eternal life and it comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's what the Bible says.

God's opening his hand to people that are listening to this program all around the world. I don't care what your background is. I don't care how many sins you've done. If you think you've got a clean slate, is that really true? You've never made a mistake? You've never said a bad word? You've never done a bad deed? Come on, tell the truth. But I think there are more people that think Jesus would never have anything to do with me. No, God is so loving.

Frank Turek: A lot of people think Christianity is just a rulebook. You've got this book called the Bible and you've got to obey all these rules and by the end of your life, if your good deeds outweigh your bad, you're in. First of all, our own justice system doesn't work this way. You don't go into a courtroom accused of a crime and then say to the judge, "Well, sure I murdered the guy, but think about all the guys I didn't murder." Or you don't go, "Sure I murdered the guy, but I've been a pretty good person on this front and on that front." They'd say, "Sorry, you're still guilty."

All of us are still guilty. John Lennox says when he first met his wife, Sally, before she was his wife, and he wanted to ask her to marry him, he gave her a cookbook. He said, "Sally, if you can cook well from this book for the next 40 years, then I'll see about loving you. And if you don't like that, you can go back to your mother."

When he says this, audiences roar. They say, "You didn't say that." He says, "Of course I didn't say that." But why do we think God works that way? Why do we think God gives us a rulebook and he says, "If you can follow this rulebook for the next 40 or 50 years, then I'll see about loving you"? No, that's not the way it works. God loves you already.

John loved Sally from the beginning, and his love for her demonstrated and it freed her up then to be a good wife, just like it freed him up to be a good husband because she loved him. The love comes first. You don't prove yourself to God. He's already made you. He's already taken your punishment upon himself. As a result of that, you love him and will want to obey his commands.

In other words, you love Jesus because of what he's done for you, and then you obey his commands. Obeying his commands doesn't get you brownie points with Jesus. They don't give you forgiveness. He gives you forgiveness, and because he's given you forgiveness, then you obey his commands. So don't get that reversed. Jesus has already paid for everything you've ever done. If you simply repent of your sins, trust in him, you'll realize his love and then you'll want to obey his commands. As Martin Luther famously said, "You're saved by faith alone, but your faith is not alone." It results in good works. The good works come after you have accepted Jesus.

If you've never accepted Jesus, if you've never repented of your sins and accepted Jesus, you can do so right now by praying: Father, I am a sinner. I haven't lived up to your standards. I haven't even lived up to my own standards. Since you're a God of infinite justice, I deserve hell. I deserve punishment, but I don't want hell. I don't want punishment. Thank you for coming and taking my hell upon yourself. I trust in you now. I repent of my sins. I trust in you. Give me now your Holy Spirit so I can serve you and serve others and build the kingdom. Amen.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Some of you that are Christians, you've got friends that have never accepted the Lord and you're scared to talk to them because they've got questions. We're talking about *I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist*. We answer these questions. Why don't you buy two of these books? Keep one for yourself and give one and ask your friend to read it and then talk about it. You could be a witness for the Lord in your own city.

Now, I want to say thank you for being with us today. Next week, we're going to talk about "Did Jesus actually rise from the dead?" That's the capstone. What religious leader, what religion had a leader that actually said everything and then was killed, everybody knew he was dead, but he came forth from the grave? Someday you're going to die. You want to come out of that grave? You better trust somebody that proved it can be done and he did it. He says he can bring you out of that grave, and everybody that believes in him, someday he's going to bring those people out of the grave. We're going to talk about that next week. I hope that you'll join us.

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