Category: Deeper Waters Podcast

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/7/2013: Hook-Up Culture

What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I know some of you are quite curious. Why is the podcast about the show this Saturday coming out on Monday? Simple. I’m going to be heading to Atlanta tomorrow until Friday to visit my in-laws for our annual Labor Day get together. I do not plan on doing the blog then so I’m going ahead and getting this taken care of now. Therefore, no blogs the rest of the week.

So what are we going to be talking about? We’re talking about a favorite topic for many of us. Sex! Unfortunately, we have to talk about how a great thing has gone wrong in our culture and that is what is going on in the hook-up culture.

Now I’m not an expert on the medical side of matters of course, so I made sure to invite someone who is. My guest is Dr. Freda Bush. She is an M.D. who has been involved with women’s health issues for some time and seen the effects that the hook-up culture has had on people from a medical perspective.

We’re so often told that it’s just sex. It’s no big deal. Is that really the case? Dr. Bush thinks it is quite a big deal and I agree. Dr. Bush will be speaking about issues in relation to abstinence, the usage of condoms, teen pregnancy, and the spread of STDs.

But it will go deeper than that still. There will be talk about how this affects us all relationally. What does it do to a woman when she has multiple sex partners over and over? What impact will that have on her future? Will all that messing around in college be something that just stays in college or will it have long-term effects? Will it cause problems with them in a future marriage or maybe even make it difficult for a woman to get pregnant later on?

What happens to a woman in abortion? Is it really just a medical procedure or are there real effects to it beyond terminating a pregnancy? (Ugh. I even hate typing in that part.) Dr. Bush will tell us about these kinds of issues.

This is definitely a show that I urge you to listen to if you are wanting to protect yourself and those younger than you. If you are a parent, you owe it to yourself to listen to this program. Don’t tell me that your children are Christians and so the culture won’t effect them. If you really think that, you are only deluding yourself. Morally, the culture has declared war on our children and sexuality is a major contender in the battle for purity. Of course, in listening to a show like this, I advise parents to show discretion with younger children.

So I ask that you tune in this Saturday to the Deeper Waters Podcast from 3-5 PM EST to talk about the hook-up culture with Dr. Freda Bush. The link to the show can be found here. If you want to ask Dr. Bush a question, the number is 714-242-5180. I hope you’ll be there!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/31/2013: Jonathan Pennington

What’s coming up Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Many of us who read the Bible tend to avoid the gospels. Yeah. They’re about Jesus. There’s a lot we appreciate. We like to read the great miracle stories and events like that, but we just don’t really understand a lot of the gospels, well aside from the main events of Jesus’s life and oh yeah, He’s God.

What we tend to jump straight to immediately are the Pauline epistles. We want to know what Paul said because that is where most of our doctrine comes from. That’s where we get the most about justification by faith, for instance. That is where we learn about the life of the church. The gospels are often seen as the snacks that prepare us for the main course of Paul. The gospels give us the life. Paul gives us the difference.

On the show this Saturday, my guest, Jonathan Pennington, thinks we’re missing a great deal of what the gospels have to say to us and that is because we do not know how we are to read them properly. Jonathan Pennington is the author of “Reading the Gospels Wisely” and he’ll be on my show to tell us just how it is that we’re supposed to do that.

What are the gospels? What is their purpose? Is it more than just the life of Jesus and showing His deity? Why does Jesus speak so much about the Kingdom of God, a concept that seems to be hardly ever spoken of in our churches today? What difference does the background material that the gospels was written in make? In fact, most churches today are unfamiliar that there is background material. Jesus just came to a world like theirs, except not as technologically advanced. People thought just the exact same way after all.

If that’s a false belief though, we are not reading the gospels wisely. Are we missing out on a real meal in the gospels if we think that Paul has the full deal for us? This is not to undermine Paul, but in our valuing of Paul, let us remember that Paul did what He did because of what happened in the gospels and if we want to be people who value the epistles, we have to be people who value the gospels.

So we’ll be discussing how it is the gospels were written, what methods we should use when reading them. More importantly perhaps, what methods should we not be using when reading them. Why were they written and what is is that the gospel writers really want us to get out of the messages?

I hope you’ll be planning to join me on the show this Saturday from 3-5 PM EST to discuss “Reading the Gospels Wisely” with Jonathan Pennington. The link can be found here. The call in number if you want to ask Dr. Pennnington a question is 714-242-5180. I look forward to this show and I hope you’ll be there to appreciate the wisdom of Dr. Pennington as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/24/2013: Andrew Pitts

Was that NT book really authored by the person whose name is on it? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Last year, Bart Ehrman delivered another work to shock the popular audience out there that the church has not been equipping with a book called “Forged.” In it, Ehrman sought to show that a number of NT books are not by the person’s whose name is on them. The arguments he made were arguments already familiar to NT scholarship and he hardly interacted with the secretary hypothesis, but still, the splash was made and while many people read the side that makes the news, they don’t bother going out to hear what the other side is.

My guest on the Deeper Waters Podcast is not like that.

My guest is Andrew Pitts who has done extensive research on this topic. He is an up and coming scholar in the field and expect to hear much more from him later. While he has a number of areas of expertise to speak on, the one that we have chosen to do is to address the charge that the biblical accounts are forgeries.

Of course, there is something at stake here. To say the Bible contains forgeries would be to say that the early church fell prey to lying and deceivers and did not do their fact checking very well. While a case for the resurrection could be made on the books of the NT that are not disputed, it still is important to quell doubt in the minds of those who might think that Ehrman has a case.

We will be discussing how we can know who wrote what in the NT and for that matter, how can we know who wrote what in the ancient world. After all, while we are usually told that the gospels are anonymous, what is not mentioned is so were many other works in the ancient world just as anonymous. How is it that we know, for instance, that Plutarch was the one who wrote the books that are attributed to him?

What about secretaries? Those do make a difference and this gets problematic for the presentation of Ehrman since books that are undisputed to be Pauline are in fact written by a secretary, such as Romans. If a secretary wrote a book for an author, what does that do to authorship? We could even discuss how this would work with the inerrancy and infallibility questions risen by such a situation.

In the end, I hope that the show will leave people assured that they have yet another reason that they can trust the NT and that it is accurate even on the question of authorship.

Do you want to be a part of the discussion? I certainly hope that you will be! The show is on at the same time as always, Saturday from 3-5 PM EST. If you want to call in and ask a question about NT authorship, the call in number is 714-242-5180. I hope I will see you there. The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/17/2013: The Mormon Research Ministry

What’s coming up Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters!

There you are sitting at home perhaps enjoying reading a novel or one of your favorite TV programs (Yes, it’s always during your favorite TV program) when there’s a knock at your door. You look out the peephole and see these two nice looking gentlemen in white shirts with black name tags on that identify them as elders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

That’s right. The Mormons.

Who are these people? Well, there are few that will dispute that Mormons are some of the nicest people that they meet and they seem to be sincere and they say they believe in Jesus, so surely we should count them as Christians. Right?

Or maybe not.

Not according to my guest this Saturday, Bill McKeever, who runs the Mormon Research Ministry. Bill has spent decades studying Mormonism and when it comes to those who want to read the best critiques of the Mormon worldview, I point them to the Mormon Research Ministry.

If you think that the Mormons are just another branch of orthodox Christianity, I hope you’ll be listening to this show. There are many beliefs that many Christians don’t realize that Mormons have. In fact, it could even be that there are many beliefs held in orthodox Mormonism that many Mormons don’t know are held to.

Naturally, something that must be discussed is the story of how Mormonism came to be. What is it that really happened to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism? Is he really the kind of person that we can trust? Did he have any aspects to him that could cause us to be suspicious of him? Are the charges true that he practiced polygamy? Did he raise up his own army? Important for us Christians, since he claimed to have visions, what makes him different from someone like the apostle Paul?

What about the Book of Mormon? Is it really a testimony to events that happened here in the Americas several centuries ago? Has it been handed down reliably? Is there anything to the charge that racism existed in the original BOM?

We can also discuss what about Mormonism and their views on God and Jesus. Do they believe just what Christians believe about both, or do they hold to views such as the idea that God was once a man as we are and became God through eternal progression? Is Jesus really the spirit-brother of Lucifer?

And of course, a great one to discuss is McKeever’s point about the impossible gospel of Mormonism. What must a Mormon do to be saved and if they go that route, is it really going to be possible for them to be saved?

I hope you’ll join me for this episode to learn much about this group that could well be on its way to being the next world religion. The show time is 3-5 EST on Saturday, August 17th. My guest is Bill McKeever, and the call-in number is 714-242-5180.

The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/3/2013 Robert Gagnon

What’s coming up on this edition of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

The news has recently been talking about the striking down of DOMA and what it means for the future of marriage in our country. Right now, there are several people who are in favor of redefining marriage and unfortunately, a lot of them are Christians. For the church, it is said that the Bible really doesn’t say anything clearly on this issue.

Robert Gagnon disagrees.

Dr. Gagnon will be my guest and is an informed speaker on this area, having written the book “The Bible and Homosexual Practice.” This is one of the most thorough works if not the most thorough (And certainly the most thorough I’ve read) on the matter of what the Bible has to say about homosexuality.

Gagnon doesn’t even begin with Scripture but rather begins with the ancient society that the people of the Bible lived in. How was homosexuality viewed in their culture? What did the other societies do in relation to homosexuals or even to simple accusations of homosexuality? How did Israel behave in comparison to them?

Then, there’s the looking at the biblical texts and even texts that some people would think at the start have nothing to do with homosexuality. Does the story of Noah being shamed by his son have anything to do with homosexuality? It just might.

Of course, there is then time spent on accounts like Sodom and Gomorrah and looking at any argument against that being about homosexuality that can be found. Certainly, Gagnon takes us through the arguments of the holiness code in Leviticus and argues why it should be treated as a prohibition and explains why eating shellfish would not fall in the same category.

What about the writings of Jews outside of the Bible? Gagnon also looks at the positions of Philo and Josephus for instance to see what they say. Now some could say “Well Jesus never says anything about it?” According to Gagnon, Jesus in fact does say something about it and we’ll be definitely looking at that this Saturday.

Then we come to the NT and especially the passage in Romans 1. Is this a condemnation by Paul of homosexual behavior? Is it true that Paul knows nothing about loving and committed homosexual relationships? Do modern studies on sexual orientation change anything that Paul has said?

For those who want more, Gagnon also looks at modern discussion on the topic and even scientific studies on the matter. We’ll be discussing what the implications are of accepting the redefinition of marriage and why it is so important that we win this battle today.

I urge everyone to listen in and please be willing to call in and ask your questions, though I’m suspecting that some that champion tolerance in calling in might reveal themselves to be people who are in fact only tolerant of that which already agrees with them. In other words, intolerant. If you want to call in, the number is 714-242-5180. The time is 3-5 PM EST.

The link can be found here

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters 7/27/2013: Chris Winchester

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters podcast this Saturday? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters!

As readers of yesterday’s blog know, Allie and I celebrated three years together yesterday. When Allie and I got married, I sought to include as many of my friends as I could. One of those friends was someone I met at Seminary who is now working overseas to get a further degree in study of the NT and I am convinced is an up and coming scholar in the field. I’m not just saying that because he’s a friend of mine. I’m saying that because he’s an excellent researcher on a variety of topics. (And to add, he’s a good groomsman, even if he was about to pass out.)

Chris especially has had a lot of fun with the mythicist crowd, although he is now getting a bit exasperated, as well as critiquing the writings of several non-Christians such as Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier. In the case of Carrier, this even includes interactions with Carrier himself on his blog.

I can say that whenever Chris decides he’s going to research anything, I find that he consistently throws himself into it and seeks to get the best information that he can. This has included everything from political conspiracies to alien abductions. There’s no such thing as Chris doing just a little bit of looking into a topic. He looks entirely at what he’s doing.

As a good researcher, Chris is constantly asking questions and this is something that we do back and forth. There are many times that I will come and ask him a question and want to know what he thinks about a topic and likewise, he will come to me and ask me a topic. This is the way that we have iron sharpen iron. We can find each other to be invaluable allies when we are working together in a debate. (Yet perhaps he should consider trying to fight against me some when we play Smash Brothers together. Just a suggestion.)

While at the Deeper Waters podcast I have wanted to highlight the work of scholars, I want to also promote those who I think deserve to be promoted and that includes Chris will all that he has done in the area of research. I know that when I have been climbing up the ladder in the apologetics community, that it has been helpful to have other people be willing to showcase my work and since the show gives me a platform to do the same, I want to be able to help out in that way. That’s what friends are for anyway.

Therefore, I invite you to be listening in this Saturday to the Deeper Waters Podcast to hear a good friend of mine. We will be focusing our talk on the historical Jesus and discussing problems with mythicists as well as Chris’s interactions with Richard Carrier online. Show time is from 3-5 EST this Saturday. The call in number to the show as always is 714-242-5180. The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/20/2013 Tim McGrew!

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it!

I am quite excited about this podcast! Our prior guest had to cancel and will be back later, but right now, our guest is going to be Tim McGrew! Tim McGrew is a name more of you should know! He is one of the most brilliant men I have ever met, yet incredibly humble and an excellent friend!

Tim McGrew will be talking to us about many various topics. In fact, we’re not entirely settled on what it will be since it was last minute, but he is a storehouse of information in many different fields! These includes Bayes Theorem, historicity of the gospels, epistemology, etc. (I’ve also learned recently that this includes Star Wars, much to my shock)

Tim McGrew is also an advocate of reading the old books, and there are times I wonder if there are any that he hasn’t read! It is important to take our modern times and have them tampered by reading the works that came before us. What is often unrealized by many modern skeptics was that their charges were already answered, usually a century earlier!

McGrew also favors undesigned coincidences. These are ways that one detail given by one gospel writer coincides wonderfully by providing missing details of another writer, and in ways that most likely were not planned! In each case, it lends more credibility to the gospel accounts.

Tim is also one of the most prominent members of the Christian Apologetics Alliance, a well-known group on Facebook, and if you’re wanting to study apologetics and you’re on Facebook, it should be a group that you belong to! We could talk with him about that as well!

What about the traditional authorship of the gospels that Bart Ehrman argues against? Tim McGrew would like to get a chance to take that on as well! He has not been as impressed with Ehrman as a number of our skeptics. I have been assured that McGrew will be polite, but he will by no means be gentle.

And what about mythicists like Richard Carrier and others? For these, McGrew finds their position completely ludicrous and he wants to say something about Carrier as well, which could definitely include his ideas about the usage of Bayes Theorem. If anyone is an authority on this, it is McGrew.

Friends. This really will be an astounding show and Tim McGrew is something you definitely want to know about. I hope you will be as impressed with him as I am and especially come to appreciate his love for Christ and concern for the well-being of the apologetics community. I am pleased not only that Tim McGrew is my guest, but also that he is my friend.

Call in number will be 714-242-5180! The link can be found here. The show will air on the 20th from 3-5 PM EST and I invite you to be ready with your call in question for Tim Mcgrew! I look forward to having you in my audience!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/13/2013

What’s coming up on this Saturday’s podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I’m not a Calvinist. I hope none of you stopped reading at that point, though I suspect some might. I have many Calvinists who are good friends of mine and we never make it an issue whatsoever. There has never been a debate about it. On the other hand, I have known some Christians in the public eye who are Calvinists and make everything be about that and have a high air of superiority about them.

However, there are also some who, like my friends, are incredibly humble and Christlike in their demeanor and I am proud to call them a friend. That’s why I am especially honored to get to have one such friend be my guest on the Deeper Waters Podcast this Saturday.

Some of you might be familiar with Credo House ministries. My guest is C. Michael Patton from there. He writes also at the Parchment and Pen blog. It is a Calvinist blog that I as a non-Calvinist am happy to say that I feel just fine posting in and not having to be on the defensive with my position.

What I like so much about Michael is that he is a very down to Earth individual. You don’t get any nonsense from him. He is often a voice of reason in any debate and has a real heart for helping people who are struggling with theological issues.

When I have read a post from him on a controversial issue, even if I have not agreed with everything in it, I have found it to be a fair outlook. For instance, I have been pleased to see a post that he has done on the subject of Halloween and how he thinks that Christians should be responding to it.

The approach one gets from Michael is that he seeks to be a real Christian but he also seeks to be a real human. He’s all about bringing the issues down to the man on the street and giving an objective look at them and isn’t just going along with the crowd.

A more recent work that he did that I was quite happy with was on issues that don’t make or break Christianity. There were a lot of people disagreeing with him when he wrote about inerrancy and the inspiration of Scripture not being essential. Michael has held his ground. He talked instead about meeting an atheist and telling them he was going to forget about inerrancy and just went to 1 Cor. 15 instead and the approach was quite effective.

Michael will be joining us then to talk about what goes on in Credo House and to deal with these kinds of issues. We will also be discussing the issue of doubt as Michael has a real heart to help people who are struggling with doubts concerning the Christian faith and about their experiences as Christians.

I urge all of you to listen in to this podcast with my guest and friend, C. Michael Patton. The link to where the show is broadcast from can be found here.

Call in number to ask Michael your question live is 714-242-5180. Show time is 3-5 PM EST this Saturday!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/6/2013

What’s coming up on this week’s podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Our boys in blue have always been known for putting away the bad guys behind bars and protecting the populace. While most of them go after physical crimes, there was one that decided to also take his skills of investigation and go after intellectual crimes, that is, false ideas floating around concerning Christianity. This was as a result of his using his detective skills to answer the greatest cold-case of all time. Did Jesus rise from the dead?

That should be enough to tell you who my guest is this week. If you don’t already know and you’re enthused about Christian apologetics, then this is someone that you definitely need to know. He is the newest member of the Stand To Reason Family. He is the producer of the Please Convince Me web site and podcast. He is the author of Cold-Case Christianity.

That’s right, my guest is Mr. J. Warner Wallace.

I’m quite excited to have him as a guest on the show as I’ve found him to not only be a great defender of the faith, but a good friend as well. J. Warner Wallace is a really down to Earth guy who has a passion for what he does and that passion extends especially to the youth of today.

As many of you know, the youth of today concern me greatly. So many of our Christians are falling away by following just one click. A young man can be on YouTube listening to his favorite Christian video and see a link to an atheist video in the related links and there gets that objection he’s never been told about in school.

All it takes is just one click.

It’s for reasons like this that J. Warner Wallace wrote his excellent book “Cold-Case Christianity” which we’ll be spending a good deal of time talking about. Cold-Case Christianity is one of those entry level books that is going to be for this generation what Case for Christ was for an earlier generation.

Cold-Case Christianity has the advantage of not only giving you good information, but also about giving you proper thinking tools when examining evidence. In other words, you don’t just get the answers, but you get told how it is that one is supposed to be able to reach those answers and what mistakes to avoid.

The book is so good that when I begin teaching through Skype for a church up north this month, it’s going to be the textbook that I’ll be using.

The Deeper Waters Podcast, as I hope you know, airs from 3-5 PM EST on Saturday. Our show will be live so we welcome your calls. The call-in number for our show is 714-242-5180. I urge you to listen live to the show, but keep in mind that you can always download a podcast and listen to it later on.

So please join me this Saturday as I welcome on my fellow apologist, and even more importantly, my friend, J. Warner Wallace.

The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast: Michael Licona 6/29/2013

What’s coming up on Saturday’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast. Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Some of you have been wondering I’m sure when Michael Licona would show up on the Deeper Waters Podcast. Most readers of this blog and listeners of this show know that he is my father-in-law so it would seem natural that he would be an early guest. Mike has a schedule like everyone else. We had hoped to have him earlier this month, but there were difficulties involving his mother’s health. Now, we’re ready to go.

Some of you also know about Mike from the controversy that arose back in 2011 over his book “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.” If you are, I think if you were one who sided against him, you should listen in and hear his view and let it be given a fair shake. There are many misunderstandings of his position and unfortunately, many people will already be convinced of Mike being liberal in his position to Scripture. He is not.

Yet of course, there is much more to this than Matthew 27. We need to talk about the resurrection itself. Mike has written the book that is now the authority on the topic and anyone who wants to give an argument against the resurrection of Jesus had better be capable of making a stand against the arguments in this book. I predict in reality that too many people will handle it the same way they do with Keener. The “too long, didn’t read” applies here.

We’ll hopefully be talking about the methodology as well of historiography. It’s not just about knowing the facts but knowing how it is that you get to the facts. Mike found in his research that many schools teaching history are not teaching historiography. What difference does that make?

What about the problem of miracles? Mike has a chapter in his book on this entirely. Of course, you should know that Craig Keener will be our guest on August 3rd to give us a much fuller treatment, but Mike will have to deal with that objection answering the position of Hume as well as answering modern advocates of a Humean position, such as Bart Ehrman.

Then we get into the facts themselves. What are the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus? Can we really know anything that would allow us to make a case? Do we have more than just “The Bible says so” in order to show that Jesus rose from the dead?

Finally, there is a section in the book dealing with counter-theories. Many scholars avoid offering theories on the resurrection, but some do. Mike interacts with those theories and gives his reasons for thinking that they do not add up, all the while even commending them where they do meet the necessary criteria of historiography.

I am excited about this interview and for those of you who have questions about the resurrection of Jesus, this is the guest for you! Feel free to call in! Our number for taking questions during the show is 714-242-5180! I hope to hear from you!

The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters