Witnessing: Advice from An Expert with Eric Simmons, Part 2

Discover the compelling intersection of historical evidence and profound faith as Pastor Eric Simmons joins us once again to unravel the art of apologetic argumentation. We navigate beyond the surface level of belief systems, placing a spotlight on the resurrection—a cornerstone of Christian doctrine.

Venture with us through a moving narrative that showcases the transformative power of the resurrection in personal faith journeys. Listen to the story of a touching encounter with an unwavering atheist whose continuous dialogue with believers hints at a heart opening to reconsider faith. These stories embody the harmonious blend of intellectual scrutiny and religious conviction, reinforcing the notion that belief is not just felt but also reasoned.

We reflect on the tender and intricate process of guiding individuals towards faith, emphasizing  empathy and compassion in religious discourse. A dialogue with an atheist during a Sunday school session becomes a testament to the emotional and intellectual considerations that color one's path to belief. Through this journey, we emphasize that humility and repentance are not just virtues but the very essence of a vibrant spiritual life. Join us, Candi and Melody, as we unpack these profound topics, offering encouragement for those navigating the complex landscape of spiritual discovery.

Transcript

0:00:00 - Melody

Hi, I'm Melody and I'm Candi, and you're listening to Quirks, Bumps, and Bruises. 

0:00:08 - Candi

We have Pastor Eric Simmons with us talking about apologetics and arguing. Eric, give us some tips this morning on why arguing is necessarily a good thing. 

0:00:18 - Eric Simmons

What I tell people all the time when it comes to apologetics is in order to kill a tree, you don't chop its branches off. That's not how you kill trees. How do you kill trees? You go after the roots. Arguing from a rhetorical perspective is the same way. You don't get caught up in the branches because that doesn't kill anything From Christianity's perspective. The roots of the resurrection. Mike Lacona wrote a book called the Resurrection of Jesus.

0:00:39 - Melody

If you're listening, you can't see this book. But how many pages does that have? 

0:00:43 - Eric Simmons

It's like 641 pages. 

0:00:46 - Melody

Candi, honey, if it was said to you, in order to go to heaven, you have to read that you're in trouble. 

0:00:52 - Candi

Well, I just have to read it. 

0:00:55 - Eric Simmons

That's not the case right, yeah, so full transparency. I felt the same exact way the first time I got it I think I was in my second or third semester in seminary when I had Christian apologetics. 

0:01:06 - Candi

Shouldn't there be like a part one, part two. I feel like 600 pages should be at least two books. 

0:01:11 - Eric Simmons

Well, you do have 15 weeks to read it. 

0:01:13 - Melody

That's all. 

0:01:14 - Eric Simmons

Yeah. 

0:01:14 - Melody

Candi wants the cliff notes. 

0:01:18 - Candi

Yeah Well, DVD. 

0:01:19 - Eric Simmons

Yeah, right, no, I get it. 

0:01:22 - Melody

Do you love it now? Do you enjoy reading or is? Is it still kind of? 

0:01:25 - Eric Simmons

What's odd is that I enjoy reading things that matter. I have a hard time. I can't just read something that's like fiction. I've tried to read some of the additional Star Wars things that people have written in between them. 

I get like 15, 20 pages into it and I'm just like I just can't do this. For me personally it's just not relaxing. But when it comes to things that I feel like man, I'm going to be able to help equip Candi and Jacob to lead their children better. I will eat that book alive. I'll be able to teach people how to defend their faith in this particular aspect, meaning and purpose. Yeah right, I can do those books all day long. 

So what Mike Lacona did Dr Lacona is. This is basically his doctoral thesis. He said that a lot of times. Whenever we try to prove the resurrection being true, he said we use a lot of things that are faith-based which the world can easily just discount because, like well, I don't believe the way you do so. It's false, kind of end of discussion. What he decided to tackle with his PhD is, he said you know what? I'm going to do this the way the world does it. He said I'm going to do this the way the world does it. He said I'm going to go after what's known as historiographically. A historiographical approach is the way we do history in general, the way we figure out what Caesar did back in the day. It's the way we figure out how wars actually happened, how things really took place, and there's all these different things that you use evidence for. And so what Dr Lacona did is he said I'm going to find what he called historical bedrocks All historians, secular and Christian, will agree with. I'm going to pare it down to these things like only historical facts, no supernatural stuff that's brought in through faith, traditions, necessarily, but just what I can get historians to agree in general upon. 

And he came down to four historical bedrocks, and the first one was that Jesus's death by crucifixion. The reason why that's important is because, in order for Jesus to be raised from the dead, he has to die Right, and that's a big one. Right, because the Islamic faith they hold to what's known as the swoon theory. The swoon theory is is that Jesus never died. He was beaten within an inch of his life and he was taken down before he died. And then he was put in a tomb. Three days later he was able to roll a stone away, overcome a Roman battalion and then present himself to the disciples, all beat up and banged up, like, hey, this is your hope in the future, and they are willing to lose their lives now and die a martyr's death. Based on that and it was just is not the case. Based on what? The way Jesus died? Even modern medicine couldn't have turned him around in three days in a way that would have presented him as like hey, this is it. But so that's one of the first things Jesus's death by crucifixion. History shows that this guy, Jesus of Nazareth, died by crucifixion. 

The second historical bedrock is the appearance of the disciples, and so what all historians will agree with is not that Jesus did appear to his disciples. They'll agree with the historical fact in their world that there's no doubt the disciples were convinced that he had appeared to them. You see the difference there. Secular historians, specifically, will not agree with Jesus did appear the disciples, because that would be admitting to the resurrection. But what they will say is that history is very clear the disciples of Jesus believed fully that he had appeared to them post-crucifixion, post-death. That's a historical fact. 

The third historical bedrock is the conversion of the church persecutor, Saul. You know, Saul of Tarsus was a real man. He existed in history. There's records of him existing in history. There's also records of him persecuting the church, and these are records that exist outside of the Bible. It's not just the Bible, outside of the Bible. There's records of this, and the fact that he converted to the very faith or religion that he was trying to stamp out is very powerful. That's a historical bedrock, is very powerful. That's a historical bedrock. 

History supports evidentially that this guy, Saul of Tarsus, who was a persecutor of the way which was what they called Christianity in the early days, ended up becoming a Christ follower and dying as a Christ follower. And then the fourth historical bedrock he has which this one's not the biggest of the three, it's still there, but it's not the most powerful is the conversion of James, who was the half-brother of Jesus. Yes, history shows that this half-brother Jesus, James, that he did exist, that he was a pastor of the largest church at the time, the church in Jerusalem. He was converted as well. Where a lot of the disagreement happens is on how he died. 

Some people say that you know how he died was, you know, legend. 

It's not reality, and so there's some skepticism there around that and that's why Dr Lacona is like he'll put an asterisk next to that and he's like, hey, it's here, but it's not the most powerful. So what he says is that a majority of critical scholars writing on this subject grant the conversion of James as a result of what he perceived was a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to him. What's very important that Dr Lacona tries to get across is that what we're trying to prove here is not that the resurrection is true which is a different tactic is true, which is a different tactic. What he's trying to prove is that there's substantial evidence that is factual, that's objective, that gives reliability to the resurrection. Because what he's going to say is, when we look at history and we try to talk about history, all you can present with history is theory. We can take what we know to be true based on evidence that we have and this and that, and then we have to reconstruct what we believe happened based on what we know to be true, factual.

0:06:40 - Melody

Right. 

0:06:41 - Eric Simmons

It's what they do all the time when they're trying to investigate murders and stuff like that. They can't go back in time, but what they can do is they start trying to provide explanations for certain pieces of evidence and then they present an argument that they believe is the strongest argument for what actually took place. And then the fifth historical bedrock not one of the most powerful ones, but it's still there is the empty tomb. It's hotly disputed, but when you look at research from a host of scholarly historians, you know they grant the historicity of the empty tomb, but the doubt from them is its emptiness resulted in Jesus's bodily resurrection. And again, that's the key, like they'll agree that, yeah, that tomb's empty, but they're not going to agree that's because of the resurrection. They're going to give some type of other agreement. And so what Lacona does here, thinking through these five things, is what he says these are historical bedrocks, something that we know happened. Historical scholars agree, secular, non-secular, they agree these five things happened. And so his whole point is he said now we have to provide a theory that explains this the best. What is the strongest theory that we can do, that we can give to explain this? 

He goes through and he provides basically what's known as like an argument to the best explanation, provides basically what's known as like an argument to the best explanation, and it's the idea of what theory provides the greatest explanatory power, which makes the most sense. Basically, that covers what has the explanatory scope, what covers all five, or covers the most, what seems to be most plausible based on what we know to be true in the world. And then what is what's known as less ad hoc, what has less explanation that's not factually supported. Ad hoc is whenever somebody just throws out something Right, something that's just not supported by evidence, and they give the explanation to it. He says you know, history proves, history demonstrates Jesus died by crucifixion. The disciples believed that he appeared to him post-crucifixion, that Paul converted the church persecutor Saul, the conversion of James, which is the skeptical brother of Jesus, half-brother of Jesus, and then the empty tomb. He says these things have to be explained, they have to be. This is what we do in history Basically. The short of it is is that he goes through seven non-resurrection theories that are all provided, and he breaks each one of them down and demonstrates why they're not as powerful as the world wants to be. 

The Bible has never been proven wrong. Whenever it's been interpreted correctly, it's batting a thousand percent right now. Matter of fact, science is still trying to catch up with it, which I think is glorious. Right, the Bible spoke about molecular theory and the reality of atoms and molecules before science was even quote-unquote invented. The things that we see are made up of things that are not seen. Welcome to molecular theory, right, we know that it's here At the end of the day. Here's the reality. 

Does the resurrection speak powerfully to Jesus dying by crucifixion? Yeah, in order to have a resurrection, there has to be a death. Does the appearance to the disciples? Does the resurrection speak to that very powerfully? Yeah, because if he was raised from the dead, they would have seen him like that. That's pretty simple, right, you know. Does it speak to the conversion of Paul? Absolutely Right. Paul's out here persecuting people because of Jesus, and then Jesus decides to reveal himself to Saul, who absolutely is overwhelmed as I can imagine anyone would have been and then all of a sudden just transforms his life. And why is that so powerful? Because it's much more powerful when an enemy of you begins to agree with you. Paul was killing the way. He wanted it gone, and then, after this conversion, now, all of a sudden, he's one of the ones being persecuted and held in chains, willingly for the cause of Christ, proclaiming the very thing that months ago, it shows there's no one too far gone. 

0:10:22 - Melody

He was trying, absolutely Right I love that. 

0:10:24 - Eric Simmons

So it speaks to that. Does it speak to James's conversion? Yes, James was skeptical of Jesus, right, who wouldn't have been in the family, but James ends up dying, however, he died. What's considered legend is how he died. Not that he died, right, he was martyred for his faith, but, again, a skeptical brother of Jesus, half-brother of Jesus, who ends up dying basically for Jesus. That's powerful, right, you know? Then the last one, the empty tomb. Well, in order for the tomb to be empty, then whoever was in there had to leave, right? So when you look at those five historical bedrocks, there's only one theory and I put theory in quotations, right, because for those in Christ it's not a theory and for Lacona's purposes, he's trying to go 100% secular to prove this true. And he does Because, basically, the resurrection theory is the most powerful explanation of these five historical bedrocks and, again, you can't dismiss any of them because they've been proven to be actual facts or evidence in history that we have to account for. 

So it's powerful because the resurrection again Paul says it If Jesus hasn't been raised from the dead, then we're still dead in our sins, then we're still. There is no hope for us. We should be the pitied of, we're doomed Most pitied of all, Right. And then again he gives that first YOLO statement. If this is the case, then we should eat and drink, because tomorrow we die, right, and then that's it. That's right. And if Christianity in itself is also false and professing Christ followers should stop wasting their time. Yeah, because it's not worth it. 

What I think Lacona demonstrates factually outside of the Bible, right? The Bible in itself. It doesn't need validation, right? So I don't want us to hear what I'm not saying. But what he did is he went after the world and said hey, listen, I'm going to show you. Without necessarily using the Bible explicitly, he uses it throughout the book to demonstrate the historical accuracy of it. He says I'm going to prove to you that the resurrection is the absolute best theory based on what we know historically. And he does that. And then he goes after all of the non-resurrection theories and shuts all of them down. The beauty of that is is that, for those who profess faith in Christ, is that I can walk boldly in my faith, because I know that. 

0:12:41 - Candi

Eric, we have a lot of questions about different faiths, different religions. Let's talk about atheists. 

0:12:48 - Eric Simmons

Atheists are atheists because of something that happened to them in their past, and then they did the research and then were persuaded to go a different direction. 

0:12:56 - Melody

Have you ever talked with an atheist that later became a believer? 

0:12:59 - Eric Simmons

Yeah, not explicitly. There was one who was a very prominent atheist, wrote a lot on atheism, attacking Christianity, made a lot of snide comments. I actually responded to one of his articles one time whenever my firstborn, we were in the hospital and I was working on stuff and I was looking for articles for research and I came across one of his articles. Basically it said something to the fact that you know, anyone who has any kind of education wouldn't be a Christian. You know, obviously me chasing an advanced degree is like well, wait a minute. I found this dude's email and sent him a nice email. It's funny is he's located up in Chicago and about an hour and a half later I receive a phone call and my iPhone says Chicago, Illinois. Oh, how does he know mine? Like I was wigging out here and then I realized I emailed him from my church email, which has my name, my email address and my phone number right. 

Yeah, you know, I listened to the voicemail, ended up sending him an email back. We started engaging back and forth. I ended up using him as one of my interviews for Christian Philosophy, where we had to interview an atheist and he was coming down. He was a multimillionaire. No-transcript either. 

0:14:33 - Melody

I agree. 

0:14:34 - Eric Simmons

You know, basically, the points he was bringing up. I don't know. You know, I think that's a valid point and I don't have an answer for that right now. I gained more respect with him because of that very phrase, right? 

0:14:43 - Melody

there. 

0:14:44 - Eric Simmons

Not necessarily. I don't know that. I don't have an answer for that right now. He had a very horrific experience in the past. He was a very inquisitive person, had a lot of questions, was actually striped and disciplined for having so many questions. So he turned to the atheistic world, which are okay with questions Fast forward. 

We kept in contact this whole time through seminary and I get out of seminary and I'm going to preach a revival in Nebo, Kentucky, right in the middle of nowhere. It's like a seven-and-a-half-hour drive, I think, from Chicago or something like that. And this particular person he had offered for me to come to Chicago over and over and over and I just couldn't make it work with my schedule and everything. I was going to Nebo and I was like, hey, man, this is probably the closest I'm going to get to Chicago. I just kind of like threw a bone out there, right. He's like man, I wish I could. He said but I've got this meeting and I'm on the board of this and I just I don't know that I can make it work. 

So Sunday morning shows up and I'm there the week before Easter 2013. We pull into the church that morning and what I'm doing that day right. God is amazing how he lines this stuff up. What I'm doing that day, what was planned like seven or eight months in advance, was I'm going to basically all Sunday school classes were coming into the sanctuary and I was going to give them an apologetic for the resurrection Everyone in the entire church. We pull in to the church parking lot and it's like 815, 830 in the morning and I see an RV. 

0:16:09 - Melody

Wow. 

0:16:10 - Eric Simmons

Very familiar and it was his. He got out of the meeting at 11 o'clock at night. He drove seven and a half hours Wow to come to Nebo, Kentucky. 

0:16:17 - Melody

That man was curious. 

0:16:20 - Eric Simmons

Very much so. So he shows up and it just so happens that he is getting ready to sit through and apologetic for the resurrection. But now remember our first conversation. I'm like four semesters in the seminary, maybe not even that long. The second conversation, now potentially, you know, in route for a PhD working, going to work on a PhD. Now I have a lot more answers than I did before and a lot more ability to reason. 

0:16:44 - Melody

Did it still make you a little nervous that he was there? 

0:16:46 - Eric Simmons

It made me excited, okay, but just the reason why is because only God can plan something like that. 

0:16:51 - Melody

That's amazing yeah. 

0:16:54 - Eric Simmons

That's only God there, because we intentionally planned that seven or eight months in advance and I didn't think about asking him to come because it was so far away, and then you can do it Until two days before I was going, I you can do it. 

Until two days before I was going, I was in Chattanooga visiting with my parents. On my way up there and I was like you know what? I need to make an honest attempt here and just let him know, just that way he doesn't find out that I was close, closer than I am in North Carolina, and didn't even reach out to him, right that's not what friends do. Right, he showed up and I actually got a little giddy. 

0:17:21 - Melody

Because you knew God was doing something. Here it is, yeah, right here it is. 

0:17:24 - Eric Simmons

So he comes into Sunday school and he sits down and what's amazing, is the church about I don't know 150 people. Maybe the most prolific and prominent atheist in the state of Illinois is sitting in the midst of them and none of them have a clue. 

I give the apologetic we get done with Sunday school and I'm just talking to him and I can't believe you drove down to his RV and we basically engaged in the same conversation we had in Greensboro like five years prior, but this time you had answers, this time I had answers and this time I had tactics of how to handle rhetoric and do things and was addressing his concerns for about 45, 50 minutes of us kind of just going back and forth and having this conversation. He's like man, I've got to get some sleep, like I drove all night and I've got to drive back. So we kind of ended the conversation there and, you know, stayed in touch with him. I don't know that he ended up dying in a plane crash. I don't know that he ever came to faith, but what I do know is that the man that I met in 2009 was not the man whenever he passed in 2015, December of 2015. He had some genuine Christ followers now in his life. He was asking the right questions. Yes, he was becoming more sympathetic towards the Christian faith. This pastor stayed in contact with him, flew up several times to Chicago to do lunch, and so God just did this amazing thing. I don't know explicitly if he ever came to faith. What I do know is that he had all of the tools to be able to do it. He looked a lot different in 2015 than he did when I met him in 2009. 

But here's the difficult part, and something we need to keep in mind, or encourage us to keep in mind, for a lot of unbelievers, people that are atheists, and things of this nature. A lot of them have built their lives around the worldview just as we have, and it's not as simple for them just to change it, and it wouldn't be as simple for us either. Right, right, realize what we're asking. Like we're asking an atheist who believes that there is no afterlife, there is no god. That you know, and, let's say, their parents were atheists too. This is what we're asking them. Hey, you should believe in Jesus and come to faith in Jesus so you can believe that your parents are separated from god for eternity and will suffer misery for the rest of all time. 

0:19:22 - Melody

That's what you should believe well, it'd be like someone coming to me to get me to not believe that's right, because I'm so steadfast in my belief I'm not going to change my mind and so we shouldn't be so quick to be like well, they're just obstinate, they're just hard-hearted and it's like, well, if somebody came and asked you, you know, the only explanation you had is like maybe your mom or dad suffered a horrific life and the only hope you have is that they, they died in. 

0:19:45 - Eric Simmons

And somebody was like, no, it's all fake, we wouldn't be so quick to be like, oh yeah, right, but it's even worse on their end, right, because it's like Pascal's wage. Pascal's wage is this idea that you know, hey, if we're gambling here, it costs you more to not believe that Christianity is true and end up being true than it does for me to believe it's true and end up not being true. 

0:20:06 - Melody

Yeah. 

0:20:07 - Eric Simmons

So the idea is, I'm asking them to do a lot more than they would be asking me. 

0:20:12 - Melody

I've always said like but what if you're wrong? If you're right, you're right, but what if you're wrong? 

0:20:17 - Eric Simmons

And that's Pascal's wage. That's, that's the technical term. That that's what his argument was. In his whole life Again, the most prolific atheist in Illinois he literally sued the government time and time again for violating separation of church and state. It's how he made his millions. His daughter became the youngest person in the state of Illinois to sue the government and when you know his son had made a lifestyle that was very contrary to the Bible. I mean he built this whole world in atheism. 

0:20:42 - Melody

But that one day, eric, when you enter heaven, he's right there. I hope one day, eric, when you enter heaven, he's right there, I hope he is too. Wouldn't that be a beautiful reunion, hugging each other and you know? 

0:20:50 - Eric Simmons

Yeah, the first time we met, whenever I told him I'd be praying for him, he was like whatever, and he said I'll just be up front with you. He said, if heaven to kind of quip that back, he's like, but you're a little bit more tolerable. Thanks, yeah, because you were kind. So we went from that mentality to prior to him passing away. He had a whole host of people in his network now that were genuine Christ followers, people that he called friends. 

0:21:23 - Candi

So who knows yeah? 

0:21:25 - Eric Simmons

So my hope is and that's all I can have my hope is is that he came to faith in Christ and was trying to work through what that was going to have to look like in his life without losing his entire family. 

0:21:37 - Melody

He had a lot to lose personally, and so I don't know. That's amazing. You can't help but think, though, that God orchestrated that so beautifully for it not to return some kind of fruit. 

0:21:48 - Eric Simmons

There's a lot of people that have been deeply hurt by the church. As soon as you enter the conversation and you throw the gospel out, you have a chance of just completely destroying any hope of them, because you're no different than the rest of them and I know that some of us are like, well, that's not on me, well, it should be. That should bother you, it should bother you that people are going to hell? 

0:22:04 - Melody

My husband and I were just talking about it this weekend. We've just lost our. We really have. I think a lot of people have the mentality it's your choice and we should be weeping for those that are going to hell. We should weep for those. 

0:22:19 - Eric Simmons

So I would say it this way We've lost our passion for the lost because we've lost our passion for the Lord. 

0:22:24 - Melody

Those two go hand in hand. 

0:22:25 - Eric Simmons

They go hand in hand right. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, strength and soul. I can't love my neighbor appropriately if I'm not loving God properly. And as I love God properly, my heart will change to love my fellow human appropriately. And the problem is is that we're not loving God properly? He's not the king on the throne. He may be on the top shelf, but it ain't just him up there. 

0:22:45 - Melody

No, we got a lot of other kings that are up there with us that we place before him. 

0:22:50 - Eric Simmons

Here's one thing that I finally come to just kind of accept in my life. I think there's going to be a lot of people in heaven that are going to really surprise us, and I think there's going to be a lot of people who aren't in heaven that's going to surprise us. I'm not 100% convinced that everybody sitting in our churches, including some people behind pulpits and some people in bodies of leadership, got it. 

0:23:08 - Melody

I've said that. Kenny's heard me say that a lot. We have people sitting possibly years every Sunday in a pew that do not know the Lord. 

0:23:16 - Eric Simmons

That's right, there's a mission field, inside the church as much as outside the church. I don't think that your Christianity is defined by what you get right. I think your Christianity is defined a lot by how you handle it when you get it wrong. I think that's where your faith really lies, because it's easy to get it right. Biblical humility leads to repentance. Right Scripture tells us that and I think those two things right there are a key marker in one. Who has it, I think it's all the difference. 

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