Homicide Detective Uncovers PROOF of the Bible’s Validity | J. Warner Wallace | Kirk Cameron on TBN

Detective J. Warner Wallace joins Kirk Cameron to share how he found faith in God by applying legal logic to the Bible. He examines the direct evidence found in the many eye-witness accounts in scripture and discusses the reasoning that helps prove their validity. Don’t miss this insightful interview here on Takeaways with Kirk Cameron on TBN!

Join Kirk Cameron to discuss pressing issues Christians are facing with compassionate, well-informed guests. Together we will find actionable takeaways that we can use today, this week, and this month to bring more of Heaven to Earth.

You’re looking at Christianity through the lens of a homicide detective.
There’s difference between possible and reasonable.
Uh, I’m I’m open to possibilities, but in the end, I have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
That’s just not a reasonable explanation.
Jay Warner Wallace is an award winning detective who has been featured on Dateline more than any other homicide investigator.
He’s the best selling author of numerous books, including cold case Christianity, Person of interest, forensic faith, and god’s crime scene.
He’s an adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola University and a senior fellow at the Holson Center for Christian WorldView.
And he’s a faculty member at Summit Ministries. Jay, thanks so much for joining me on takeaways.
So glad to be with you. So glad to be.
A homicide detective. Now what led you into that profession?
You know, my dad was, uh, police officer for about 30 years before I came on the job.
He has my name, made the same name. And my son followed me on the job with the same name.
So we’ve been at that agency for 62 years. So I just followed my dad’s footsteps.
At age thirty five, if I understand correctly, you were an atheist. Mhmm. You were, uh, happiest could be.
You had a meaningful career you have a loving family, plenty of friends.
You made a big change in your life
Mhmm.
Away from atheism. Why? Was there something else missing?
What was what was wrong? Uh, nothing missing. Uh, just my wife was interested.
We weren’t raised around Christians, so I didn’t no one invited me to church growing up.
I didn’t have friends that, you know, were Christians.
I just, uh, I think my wife was more willing to ask the question. Now that we’re raising kids,
Should
we raise them with some set of structural, you know, beliefs? And I thought, well, my dad’s the same way.
He’s not a believer. He he would have been happy to go to church, though.
With a spouse who wanted to go to church, you just go as a non believer.
And so I thought, well, I’ll go.
And and this this pastor, that 1st day we went to church, He pitched Jesus in a way that I could catch him.
He just said that Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived. You know, the most important historical figure history.
I mean, whatever he said, I remember thinking, is that true?
Tell me, what was the moment that brought you to Christ out of atheist?
I had more cold cases primarily. Right.
It is accumulative case of a thousand pieces of what might not seem like the biggest deal, but in in isolation Collectively.
They are powerful. And so that was how I built the case for Christianity. Boy, it took me a while.
What are some of the similarities between investigating cold cases homicides and investigating the claims of Christianity.
Okay. So in in cold cases, typically, I’ve got a case on notebook.
I open up, and some detective went out and interviewed and I went and that witness is no longer available to me because this case is forty years old.
Unfortunately, that witness is dead. Can’t talk to that guy. Can’t talk to the witness.
And sometimes the officer took the report is also no longer available to me.
So now I’ve got a report in which I have no access to the witness or the report taker.
Well, that’s the gospels. Luke is writing a report allegedly from the eyewitnesses and servants of the word, but I have no access.
And it’s a cold case because it happened so long ago. It’s not a fresh hot case.
Right. Well, one thing for sure, you’re gonna sample these cases the same way.
They’re on the basis of a cumulative collection of evidences that point to the same reasonable inference. Okay. Alright.
Alright. So that’s how I built it. I just needed to know.
And, look, we test eyewitnesses with a certain process, and I don’t trust eyewitnesses. Witnesses lie.
And that’s often I’ve I’ve been caught in in jury trials where a guy said something all the way till we get to trial, then suddenly he changes his month.
No. No. No. So I don’t trust anyone, but I test them.
If they pass the test, well, then I trust them.
So I simply applied that test to the gospel authors to see if I can trust what they were saying and what Jesus?
What’s what’s the text? Well, it’s based on on, in our state, 13 jury instruction questions that we allow jurors to think about when they’re listening to eyewitnesses, but it comes down to 4 broad categories.
The one rule 1, where they’re really there to see what they said they saw.
Number 2, can they be corroborated in some way? Number 3, have they changed their story over time?
And number 4, do they have a motive to lie to me, a bias?
Uh, to some reason to tell me a lie.
If I can get them through those 4 hurdles, well, then I know I can go to trial with those witnesses because they are really telling me the truth they really were there.
They could be corroborate in some way, and they don’t have no motive to lie to me.
So that’s what I’m looking for in eye witnesses.
And I thought, well, if I like, I didn’t have any other way you know, for a lot of years, I thought, doesn’t every Christian do something like this?
Like, like, why would you believe Christianity is true Yeah. Without going through this process?
But a lot of it was just just the way that I examined these kinds of things.
Which I think is so fascinating and helpful. It’s intriguing to me.
I tend to look at many things in my life through the lens of of a production. Right?
I mean, even, like, you know, what
I decide to put on
in the morning, I think, uh, you know, does the wardrobe department, uh, would they approve of this?
Yeah. Exactly.
Or that I’m directing the plan that I have for my marriage and for my family, and each of the people in my family are playing a very significant role.
And, uh, I often have lines and plot plot plots scripted out for us.
And if we all just follow the director, things will go well.
That doesn’t always work well in in in marriage.
So I have to take that lens off at times and put on a biblical lens. Yes.
Right? Yes.
Of of compassion
of Yes.
Of, uh, submission and other things. But for you, you’re looking at Christianity through the lens of a homicide detective.
I think that’s fascinating. Well, in
a lot of it, you’re right about him to take off certain attributes of our job.
So for me, a part of the thing I’ve got is a is a really deep rooted skepticism that I have about everyone.
Yeah. Because you’ve seen the worst of the worst, and people lie to your face and that can be devastating if you don’t catch it.
Right. And so I’m always assuming that everyone’s a liar until I prove it otherwise.
And I assume the same thing about the gospels when I first opened them up.
So it’s just practically, um, powerful for us as detectives to assume the worst in people.
And most of the time when people ask me a question, what they’re really asking is, Jim, What what am I missing here?
What’s the what’s the lie that I’m missing? I can tell you this.
We the same way you have to take off that production filter that actor filter to to to put on a biblical world view, we have to do the same thing as cops.
Right? So, sadly, often what we do, especially working homicides, is you draw a very tight circle around the people for whom you’re willing to cry.
And so that’s the struggle, I think, for a lot of us who are working in this job is how do we how do we, uh, wear a biblical lens
Jay, you talk about how you were trained in forensic statement analysis as part of your tools to be able to determine, you know, who done it.
Right.
Uh, so how does that apply to the witness statements in the gospel about Jesus?
Well, so every word matters in in Physics statement analysis, not just the words you might say, but the words you could have said, but chose not to.
So I’m looking at options. So I’ve always looking at the words that are optional words that don’t need to be said so that for most part, adjectives and adverbs are optional words.
You never need to use them. So if I have a clicker for my computer and I tell you, okay.
This is my gray clicker, what am I really telling you? I’m telling you I have more than one clicker.
Because why am I using the optional word gray? I don’t need that word gray.
I just say this is my clicker.
You can see it.
You can see it. Who knows how many I have, but this was the gray one.
So when you’re examining the words that people use and how they compress time and extend time and how they use personal pronouns, how well how am I describing you?
How are you describing me? That tells you something about the intent of whoever is talking.
I just took that process and I applied it to the gospels and looked for those words that would give away a perspective, perhaps, you know, like, for example, in early history, there’s a a a church father named Papius who says that Peter was preaching in Rome and that Mark was his scribe, was sitting at his feet, listening to Peter’s preaching, and he from that, he wrote the gospel of Mark.
Okay. So I said if that’s true, I should find Peter’s fingerprints in the gospel of Mark, forensically.
So that was one of the very first things I started to do is to look and see if if I could trust that this was really from Peter, because who’s Mark?
Mark was not an eyewitness. Why should I well, maybe he’s scribing for an eyewitness?
Well, how would I know that? Look at it forensically.
So a lot of it for me was trying to figure out. Number 1, did this really happen?
Are these really eyewitness accounts? Number 2, Could I test them in a way to make sure they haven’t had facts added or or additional details added?
Like, how do I know these are the same stories that they were originally there in the 1st century?
That kind of thing. How early were these written?
I needed to know that that kind of stuff before I could I could step off and say and by the way, that does not give you belief in Jesus.
That just gives you belief that
in the credibility of the eyewitness.
Yeah. Just gives you So should I even
listen to these people who say that they’re eyewitnesses and is this lining up and is there credibility?
That’s right.
And and then you talk about how you need to actually determine whether or not the explanation they’re giving for the events is the most believable explanation.
She just really did rise from the grape. That’s that’s that’s a difficult one to believe.
And you talk about uh, and and and expand on this for us, uh, feasibility, straightforwardness, and exhaustiveness. Yeah.
Okay. So it’s just about abductive reasoning. Right? We do this for every jury.
We we’re gonna offer a a version of what we think happened. It’s the defense may offer a version.
You’ve got a different explanation. Same facts, different explanations.
That’s right. So what I always say, you two lists. One’s a list of all the evidence.
The other is a list of all the explanations.
And then you’re referring back and forth between your evidence and explanations crossing out the explanations that don’t really work Yeah.
Given the evidence. I did the same thing with the resurrection. Look.
There are certain data points we could look at.
Uh, like, we, you know, what do you believe is really true?
The very minimal data points, yes, that Jesus lived that maybe he died on a cross that people said he rose from the grave, well, then how do I explain that phenomena?
Well, there’s, like, 7 ways to explain it, and 6 are not Christians. Yeah.
One is just a lady lying about it.
Well, he’s lying about it.
He’d be a man.
His father later made the whole story. Exactly.
So I looked at all those and just said, okay. Which what makes the best sense?
Now every explanation has strengths and weaknesses. This true even when I have the true defendant in a trial. Yes.
My case is strong, but it has weaknesses. Well, this is true for even the truth.
So the Christian explanation, I think, is by far the strongest, but it has a weakness.
It requires a resurrection to occur. And for me, that was a step too far I was a philosophical naturalist.
I could believe all of the things in the Bible that don’t require a miracle. Yeah.
But once we get to miracle stuff, I’m out. But then I had to ask myself, okay.
This is why I simultaneously was investigating the evidence in the universe.
Do I have good reason to believe that there is a god that is capable of a miracle?
Before I start reading the gospels.
And if you look at the evidence in the universe, the fact that we are in a universe that has a beginning already forces us outside of space time and matter to look for the cause of space time and matter.
That’s right. That’s not my claim. That is a claim in Genesis 1. But it’s a claim of cosmologists.
The standard cosmological model is still big bang cosmology that everything all space time and matter came from nothing.
Now whether you accept or reject that? As an atheist, I that was my view.
That I believe that the the evidence demonstrated that everything in the universe came from nothing.
Well, so, well, hold on then. So how do I explain that? I need a cause.
The only question is to cause personal or impersonal.
Yeah.
If it’s a personal being, then the most amazing miracle in scripture is Genesis 1. Everything from nothing.
All the new testament miracles are small potato miracles compared to Genesis 1.
So I just knew I had to read that text with an open hand.
That’s such a good point you also talk about the need for the explanation of the facts.
We’re talking about the gospels again and cold case, uh, homicides, to also be, um, an explanation that is logical and is superior to the other explanation.
Yeah. But the resurrection is not it defies logic as we think of it naturalistically. Yes.
But it’s only logically consistent. If you’ve know there’s a being outside, actually, you do that then merely. Entered. Yeah.
Now it’s within the range of reasonable because you’ve already and that’s why, you know, I think there’s actually 8 attributes of the universe that can only be explained by personal being outside of space, time, and matter.
So when as I got to that point, I thought, okay.
Now I now I need to read the gospels through that lens. A little differently.
That doesn’t mean that god did it. That doesn’t mean Jesus rose, but now it means I can’t exclude those
That’s right.
As possible causes and something that would make possible Yes. This Christian explanation for the
fact that Okay. If it were if the room is the natural universe, all space, time, and matter.
Can I explain everything that’s in that room by staying in the room? If I can’t
I know.
I know.
No. You cannot. You cannot.
And it here’s a there’s 8 things. There’s the beginning of the universe has to be explained.
Uh, yeah, the fine tuning we see in the universe has to be explained.
The appearance of life from non life in the universe has to be explained.
The appearance of design and biology has to be explained. The fact that we have consciousness, we have a mind.
A mind outside. Yes.
And we experience free agency.
There is software and program. Right?
That’s right. Also, we have a standard of righteousness that we measure evil against. Yeah.
And and finally, we have moral objective moral values that we all embrace. Okay.
So how do I explain the can can I get that stuff a space time matter of physics and chemistry?
Right. No. Being inside the room of the universe when we explain where these things come from.
No. You can’t. And the the most of people will say the most I would have said as a non believer was, well, I can’t explain it, but someday science will be able to.
That’s right.
And we’re not gonna leak to the god option because that’s just fairy tales and, you know,
if you’re if you’re leaping to a future explanation, if if it’s not god of the gaps, it’s science of the gaps.
It’s the same, and you’re leaping to something you don’t have access to.
That’s right. And you’re building your worldview on a miracle that is far greater than anything, uh, of the of the magnitude of a resurrection or a virgin.
But that’s talking about the universe coming out of nothing. Yeah. You’re saying nobody times nothing equals everything.
And you’re standing on that as an as a philosophical nationalist. Yes.
And you’re trying to make all your decisions on that basis when a universe clearly doesn’t care about you at all.
There’s no right. There’s no wrong. So it’s not like I’m jumping to god for no no.
He is the, by far, best explanation for the genetic information.
Jay, what did Jesus think about evidence versus that just sort of feelings based blind faith?
Okay. So let me just say this. Jesus is a master evidentialist. And how do you know this?
Because he says, like, in the gospel of John, if you don’t believe what I’m telling you folks, At least believe on the evidence of these miracles.
That’s right.
He points to both direct evidence, which is eyewitness statements of the father and John the Baptist. That’s right.
He is the direct evidence. Right.
Points to the indirect evidence of his it spends 40 days with the disciples after their resurrection showing them many convincing proofs and the word proof in the Greek is where we use for evidence.
Showing them 40 days of evidence.
And then he assigns who gets to talk about Jesus in the book of acts? Who’s an apostle uh, eyewitnesses.
Eye witnesses. As a matter of fact, they replaced Judith with another eyewitness in acts 1.
Somebody had seen the risen Christ all the way from the baptism to the resurrection.
That Sonae witness as direct evidence. Now here’s what I would say about it. Yes.
So there’s a step we call a step of faith. Here’s what it is.
I get in front of a jury, I tell the jury all the time.
I’m gonna tell you everything that you need to know, but not everything that could be known.
Because even I don’t know always why he killed her, or how he killed her, but I can demonstrate that he killed her.
So I will say this to the jury.
I’m not gonna be able if you have to make a step across your unanswered questions, Here’s what I’ll do for you, though.
I’m gonna give you an evidence trail that’s gonna point right to the defendant.
It’s not gonna point a foot to the left or a foot to the right.
It’s gonna point it right to him, but it’s gonna stop short because those are all of our unanswered questions.
We all have them. I have them. You have them. Right.
But I’m put I’m gonna lead you right up to them.
I’m gonna ask you to take a step, which we call rendering a verdict.
When it comes to Jesus, same thing. We’ve got more
than a matter of verdict.
It doesn’t point a foot to the left or a foot to the right.
But that step is called a step of faith, and it’s gonna be across your unanswered questions.
But trust me, there is nothing for which you don’t already have an unanswered question.
What is the difference between circumstantial evidence and direct evidence? Okay. So you can get people sell all the time.
There’s no hard evidence for Christianity. No. There isn’t because hard evidence is not a category.
There’s no hard evidence for anything.
We don’t talk about in in criminal trials, hard and soft evidence, Those aren’t categories.
There’s only 2 categories of evidence, direct and indirect. Direct evidence is an eye witness account.
Somebody who saw it happen Right. Indirect evidence is everything else.
Indirect as DNA, gunshot residue, uh, blood spatter evidence, fingerprints. Those are all indirect evidences.
Now it turns out there’s another word for indirect evidence. It’s called circumstantial evidence.
So if it’s not an eyewitness, it’s circumstantial. DNA is circumstantial evidence.
It comes to direct evidence, it’s a matter of, well, can I test the eyewitness?
And that’s what I had to do with the gospels. Indirect evidence.
The question is, do I have the most reasonable inference from the indirect evidence?
What do you do when your witnesses contradict each other as it appears to be the case in the Bible when you’ve got Luke’s saying there’s 2 angels at the tomb for Jesus, and you’ve got Mark saying there’s one angel at the tomb.
Right. Right. Is that a contradiction of witnesses?
It might be, or it might not be.
Now, of course, in scripture, I think that you can resolve these alleged contradictions because this is not uncommon.
I don’t have access to the witnesses to ask good follow-up question.
That’s right. Because it’s a cold case.
It’s a cold case. It would happen all the time, though.
Have to deal with these when you finally get to trial, believing that defense attorney’s gonna make a big deal out of these differences.
But the reality of it is wherever there’s, you know, wherever there’s 2 angels, there’s also one.
And if all of my point in this gospel yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But you just said that wherever there’s angels. There’s always one. Right? There’s one right there.
There’s one right there. Yeah.
So if if I’m only talking about the one I was speaking to, so I I came up and I spoke to this angel, may be in a second angel there, but why wouldn’t I mention the second angel?
Well, this is so common in eyewitness accounts.
A lot of what we bring into the account is our set of desires, our experiences, our personal Right.
Where you’re for where your focus is.
What our focus is. So, for example, I’ve got a set of eyewitnesses and I’m interested in what is that guy wearing precisely, I’m probably not asking the guy.
I’m probably asking the female witness. Because sometimes they’ll notice details that a guy won’t notice.
When people say, well, yeah, but then how could this be the inherent word of god? Okay.
If what god was trying to do was give us a set of 4 accounts that utterly could be tested as eyewitness accounts.
He did a great job because that’s exactly what we have. Everything is reconcilable.
In in their own unique way.
That’s right.
Telling the same story from their perspective. Unique perspective in their own language.
Does the fact that some of these eyewitnesses laid down their lives willingly, does that add credibility to their testimony?
For you and I, if we said as Christians in
this century that we are willing to die for what we believe is true about Jesus.
It would have zero evidential value because lots of people are willing to die for what they don’t know is a lie.
But if if this is the 1 generation, the 1st century eyewitnesses, who wouldn’t know if it’s a lie.
If they are willing to die for, it has high evidential value.
Why would they know it was a lie.
Well, because they were allegedly said they saw this.
They saw if they didn’t see it. Right. If
they if they didn’t really see it, they’re just lying about it.
And why would you dive back? But you know that.
Like it one, to do that, but this is what’s amazing about this.
There’s a history of martyrdom within the early church, which is pretty, uh, well described.
It’s in the book of acts, So you see it early in pages of scripture.
You see it, uh, in the accounts that follow scripture of all the martyrdom’s debt, all the, uh, hospitals deaths, and you see it in the early, uh, lives of the followers of the apostles who who said wrote that, yes, I’m willing to die for this because I saw the eyewitnesses die for it.
So that tradition of martyrdom in the early church, I think establishes It’s only one piece, though.
I would never say, well, that’s the reason. No. It’s not that’s not the reason.
It’s that plus all of the other stuff
Yeah.
So you’re making a cumulative case on those four legs.
Is it early enough to have been written by an eyewitness?
Can it be corroborative to any number of external and internal corroborations has it changed over time, and do they possess a bias, a reason to lie?
You know, motive.
Yeah. Motive is a big deal.
There’s only three reasons why anyone lies. The first one It’s it’s it’s it’s money, greed, sex. Yeah.
But that third one, the pursuit of power, actually, is the stuff that even you and I, we have to protect ourselves against that.
Yeah. Pride, authority, respect, achievement.
Yeah.
Yeah. These are the things that move us
And and lay laying down their life, that that wasn’t getting them
power. Some skeptics would say, well, yeah, but they were nobodies.
And then they started saying they saw the risen question. They came somebody’s, it’s a thing. Well, hold on.
So Paul, who wrote most in the new testament, he starts off in a position of authority power and respect with a larger group called the Jews with all kinds of at the bet.
One of the best teachers was his teacher, and he had the authority to draw papers against Christians.
You’re telling me that one day he wakes up and he says, you know, I’m gonna jump out of this position of authority power and respect that I have right now.
I’m gonna join a smaller group where I’m gonna basically get beat up for the next 30 years all over the Right.
Hoping someday to return to what I already have.
That’s right.
That to me is is it possible? Look, there’s difference between possible and reasonable.
Uh, I’m I’m open to possibilities, but in the end, I have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
That’s just not a reasonable explanation.
Because you have seen some of the worst of the worst things committed by people knowing as a Christian that there is a god in heaven who has observed these things happening on his watch.
Has that ever made you doubt your faith in god?
No. Because I wasn’t raised with the faith in I had to come to my belief in god through those doubts.
In other words, that was that was the guy on the other side saying if there’s all
this evil in the world, how could there be a break?
But it turns out there’s lots of reasons why any murder occurs. It’s a collective case.
All these circumstances took the lineup before that young person died. I get it.
Well, in explaining any active evil that’s a collective, why would god allow this?
There’s a series of reasons why he might I’ll say one of right away from me.
As an atheist, my idea of life was a line segment. You’re born, and then you live till you die.
That’s a line segment, 2 dots, birth, and death.
But if I was wrong, by the way, all evil, if I got sick halfway through and died of cancer, I would be a because that would be evil.
Why would god allow it to happen to me? What if life is not aligned segment?
Instead, it’s array that starts at birth goes to that point called death but then extends infinitely into the future.
Well, it turns out that every year on the other side of the second dot, now that space called 90 years, and the line segment seems shorter.
If you’re a 1,000,000 years into eternity, that 90
years is
just a blip. Whatever experience we had that we’re calling evil has to be measured in the context of the ray of eternity.
That’s just one of, I think, maybe 6 or 7 reasons why why you I can land. Yes.
I can I can understand why god would allow this?
The god it’s not just the god’s all powerful and all loving.
Is there’s a third dimension they always leave out. He’s also all knowing.
He understands how everything that happens in our lives is connected to the other butterfly effect over all of the history of humanity.
That’s right.
I don’t understand.
That’s right. He’s the great author, and he’s the blessed controller of all things, working all things together
good for those love him
and are called according to his purpose.
How do you explain the most innocent man, the most morally perfect man being crucified on the cross unjustly and say that that was good.
We call that good Friday as Christians because The author has Sunday. That’s right. 2 days later. Yes.
He understands what he understands the big picture.
That’s right.
Jay, uh, we can talk for hours. Thank you so much. Thanks for
having me.
For coming on and talking about cold face, uh, Christianity.