Can We Take the Gospels Seriously? (With Rebecca McLaughlin)

Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

J.D. Greear

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 624 Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Show Notes:

* Rebecca, in your book Is Christmas Unbelievable, you answer some questions about the supernatural parts of Christmas. So much of what we know about Christmas, of course, comes from the gospels. But can we really trust them?
* A lot of people say the gospels are unbelievable because they're written decades after the events happened. But first of all, the gospels are not like you or I being asked what we had for breakfast last week. It was the disciples' job to learn Jesus' teachings. They rehearsed these stories for decades after his death, every day—that's what they did all the time! Then, there were hundreds of other people who traveled around with him and saw the miracles he did who could attest to what he taught and did. We actually have a rich source of witnesses to the events of the gospels, not just the recollections of one or two guys 30 years later.
* The gospels have proven to be impressive historical documents time after time—so much so that we should feel comfortable giving them the benefit of the doubt for historical facts that can't be proven with other sources.

The gospels all testify about Jesus' divinity in their own unique way.

Check out Rebecca McLaughlin's new book, Is Christmas Unbelievable, today!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Ask Me Anything. Normally I am not the host on this program. Normally, I'm the one that's
0:23.5	being asked questions. Today, we have an incredible privilege of having somebody that I frequently
0:28.8	ask questions to and whose books and whose talks I listen to to get answers for things. And that is
0:35.7	Rebecca McLaughlin, who has been here at the Summit Church,
0:39.2	is a friend of ours. And Rebecca, I just want to thank you so much for joining us on this
0:44.2	Ask Me Anything podcast. Welcome.
0:46.7	I'm glad to Pete. I'm kind of sad there that can I not just flip things over and ask you
0:50.3	questions that we want to. Yeah, we will. I will judo it right back on you. And I'll see we can get
0:55.6	you to do it. Because listen, we are, we are truly honored. And specifically, I wanted to ask,
1:00.6	I'm going to do this in two parts. We're going to do one today and then one, you know, for our next
1:06.3	podcast. Around your new book is Christmas unbelievable, which, you know, I just, by the way, I just want to say I love the title because I think a lot of people are afraid to express that. They're like, it feels good. It's sentimental. I don't want it to go away, but is it really, I mean, is there something behind this? So one of the questions that you asked in that book was, can we actually take the gospel seriously?
1:29.3	Are these sentimental fairy tales?
1:31.2	And so there you go.
1:32.5	Can we take the gospel seriously specifically as it relates to the Christmas narratives?
1:36.8	Yeah, it's funny you should say that even the title is a place that people may not want to go.
1:41.8	Because that's partly why we're at this book to say, okay,
1:45.6	let's just for a minute strip the sentiment aside and look at the claims being made about
1:50.1	Jesus. Can we take them seriously? Is this even credible at all? And I think one of the big
1:55.2	questions that's mixed into that is can we take the full gospel accounts of Jesus' life seriously?
1:59.9	And in particular, when it comes to Christmas, can we take the Gospels of Jesus' life seriously? And in particular, when it comes
2:01.1	to Christmas, can we take the Gospels of Matthew and Luke seriously? Those are the ones that
2:05.4	specifically kind of draw into Jesus' birth narratives. And so a couple of thoughts just more broadly
	...

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