Unearthing Jesus: The Most Important Biblical Discoveries w/ Jeremiah Johnston | Ep. 47, Pt. 2

Episode 47: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Upside Down Parenting Podcast, Dr. Jeremiah Johnston continues discussing his book The Jesus Discoveries: 10 Historic Finds That Bring Us Face To Face with Jesus, emphasizing how archaeological evidence and historical data can strengthen rather than replace faith by grounding belief in real events, places, and people. He encourages parents to ground their children’s faith in Jesus-centered, evidence-based discipleship, emphasizing core doctrines like Jesus’ virgin birth, sinlessness, miracles, and bodily resurrection. Dr. Johnston also highlights the role of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth who guides believers.

Episode Transcript

Janel Greig (00:00):
Well, welcome back to the Upside Down Parenting Podcast for part two of our conversation with Dr. Jeremiah Johnston. He spent years exploring the tension between evidence and faith and today he’s going to join us again to talk about his new book, The Jesus Discoveries: 10 Historic Finds That Bring Us Face To Face with Jesus. Thanks for joining us as we jump back into the conversation.

Dr. Matt Jones (00:23):
As parents are raising kids in a world that really values ideas and influence, it was striking that you pointed out that Jesus wasn’t included on Time’s list of the 50 greatest thinkers in history. How did we lose Jesus as a brilliant intellectual? What was the contribution to that or what were the contributions to that?

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (00:43):
Now, is this lightning round still or do I go?

Dr. Matt Jones (00:46):
No, you can go. Well, if you can say it lightning, I’m in.

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (00:53):
The foundation, especially in North America, of the Bible began to crack following the Civil War where we became Bible-ish at best and we stopped reading the Bible and we forgot that all of Western civilization is built on the teachings of Jesus Christ. When I was at the World Economic Forum and Jillian Tett, she is the provost – you have to say it like you’re from England – she’s the provost of King’s College, Cambridge University, and on the board of the editorial times.

She said, “Why does any of this even matter?” And I said, “Well, have you heard of free enterprise, forgiving debts, loving your enemies? That comes from one worldview and one event horizon, the physical resurrection of Jesus is the event horizon. The worldview is the Judeo-Christian worldview that built Western civilization that enhanced science, that loves our enemies, prays for those who persecute us.” And this is why Churchill, who I’m a big fan of, said that he felt like he was the defender of Christian civilization in World War II.

(01:56):
We have lost the notion that these ideas come from Jesus Christ and we have lost the notion that he is the smartest, most intelligent man who ever lived. We only have parts of 26 days of his life recorded in the gospels, just parts of 26 days in the 89 chapters of the gospels, that have revolutionized the world. I believe this is why John says if everything was written that he did, the libraries couldn’t contain it, but what we have written is so you will believe.

Dr. Matt Jones (02:30):
Cool. Good. That’s awesome. I have a follow-up with that and this is speculative. I acknowledge this, but it’s very clear according to Luke chapter four, verse one, that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit. What role do you think the Holy Spirit has had in Jesus’ intelligence?

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (02:50):
The Spirit is, I think, mentioned 55 times in Acts. I’m trying to check me, my numbers may be wrong, and that may be Luke Acts together. I think the Holy Spirit, Jesus was constantly filled with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. I believe in perichoresis. I believe that there’s inseparability of operations within Trinity.

So it would be hard to say, well, it was 75% the Holy Spirit, 25% Jesus, but we do know he was fully man, fully God, but we don’t give the Spirit enough credit. In John 16, he’s called the “Hodegos” in Greek, which means tour guide. “Hodo” is road. “Hodegos” is tour guide, one that guides us along the road of truth and that’s where we need to lean in more to the Holy Spirit. And I’ve heard this before and sometimes I’ve kind of passed it off.

(03:45):
You know how people will say the Holy Spirit will give you the words you need to say, exactly what you need to say. And I’ve always taken that as a cop out for people that don’t want to prepare. Well, I was as prepared as you could get at the World Economic Forum, but I sensed the Holy Spirit, in that moment, give me words that I don’t even remember saying literally. Yes, I was prepared, but it went next level of Holy Spirit.

And so that probably happened all the time in the life of Jesus. So I don’t think there’s any inseparability. I think that’s a great question. I think that the role the spirit plays in Luke Acts is tremendous. And then when you throw on., you latch on John 16 that he’s the spirit of truth. He’s our truth tour guide at all times. We need to rely on the spirit who reveals truth to us.

Dr. Matt Jones (04:34):
Well, I appreciate you bringing that in. Janel, I just want to make a comment before you hit him with another question. Sometimes we are more binatarian in our interaction with the triune God and I really appreciate you bringing in the importance of the spirit so we can think Trinitarian in how we understand even Jesus’ activity on earth. So thank you so much for saying that, Jeremiah.

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (04:56):
Absolutely. I love that. I mean, he’s the forgotten member of the Trinity and we don’t preach enough the power and the filling of the Holy Spirit. And this is true of anyone who’s watching right now. He said, “Well, Jeremiah, you have a PhD.” Listen, I didn’t lock in intellectually until I found my calling from God. I was extremely average.

(05:18):
But man, when you have a calling mission in the Holy Spirit, that’s unstoppable. So the greatest prayer you can pray, and we can pray to the Holy Spirit and say, “Show me your calling, show me your mission for my life.” And you may not get the next 23 steps, but you’ll get the next step and then you leave rope for the Lord to work.

Janel Greig (05:36):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think that’s one of the things, and we touched on this. I can’t remember if we were recording already, Jeremiah, or if we were talking about this beforehand, but the book that you wrote is for anybody. It’s accessible for our parents that maybe have never even stepped into the world of apologetics. Maybe they don’t even know what the word means and they’re listening to the show today.

But you also talked about the collapse of the Christian mind, and talking about how apologetics is more important now than ever. So for our parent listeners that are trying to actually be intentional and thoughtful in how they raise their kids in today’s culture, maybe they’ve never even heard about any archeological evidence. What advice or maybe first step would you give to them to enter into what apologetics looks like and maybe how to incorporate the archeological finds that you’ve shared in this book to their training for their kids?

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (06:28):
That’s a really great question. I would encourage you to make everything Jesus centric right now. There are a lot of interesting archeological questions from the Old Testament. There’s a lot of unique avenues. There’s interesting questions about the end times, but me as a dad, I want my children to be rock solid on the cardinal doctrines of the faith: that Jesus is virgin-born. He was sinless. He was a miracle worker. He died and he rose again, physically, bodily. We know the exact date, April 5th, AD 33. And so that’s why I kept.

There were so many fun discoveries, even recent ones I could have kept out. But again, I wrote this for my kids, that dinner table conversation of how can they know Jesus better? That’s the whole point of the Bible is Jesus. And so my advice is any resource you can get, whether it’s the Jesus discoveries or going to the land of Israel, start with it being Jesus and gospel centric. This is why Paul uses that word in Greek.

(07:27):
These are matters of utmost importance. And yes, is it interesting to discuss the flood and the Ark of the Covenant and Noah’s Ark and okay, yeah, to an extent and the Book of Enoch. God help me if anyone asks me that. But man, take all that energy and focus it on Jesus. I mean, this is cited. The book is written for a very, I mean, my nine-year-old was reading it to me, but I’m just looking right at the notes.

(07:56):
I mean, you can go much deeper. One of the cool things that Jesus was known as and made famous as is a healer. And this is something that is so powerful to me because before Jesus died and arose again, people were invoking his name for healing. And as disciples they said, “Master, these people over here, they’re using your name for healing.” And Jesus says that famous line, “Well, those that if they’re not against us, they’re for us. That’s great.” And remember John the Baptist, he is having doubts in Luke 7.

(08:30):
Was this really the one? And this is so cool for our audience because we all experienced doubts. Jesus doesn’t shame us when we doubt. He sharpens us with evidence. And how does Jesus respond in Luke 7:22? The blind sea, the death here, the lame walk and the dead, in Greek, nekros egeiro, where literally the dead stand up. He responded with evidence. He didn’t respond with, “You need to believe more. Why aren’t you believing enough?”

No one’s going to get patted on the back for the RPMs of their faith. Faith is always defined by its object. And so again, he focused on his mission. You brought up Luke four a minute ago, Matt. Jesus’ programmatic sermon and Luke four in his own synagogue is based on Isaiah 61: one and two, that he has come to do all the things that the gospels describe, except he doesn’t read the last line, the day of vengeance of our God.

(09:26):
So listen, I would, as a mom and dad, focus everything on Jesus. And then once you feel like you’ve got that, then you can start getting into some of the more sidebar gray areas. Interesting questions we won’t know the answer to before we get to heaven. Yeah.

Dr. Matt Jones (09:42):
Yep.

Janel Greig (09:43):
That’s great.

Dr. Matt Jones (09:43):
At what age would you start the apologetics work with the kids?

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (09:49):
As early as possible. You can do it on the ground with trees, plants. There is not an age level. And I honestly, now you have me interested, Janel. I don’t even know if I use the word apologetics in my book. People think we’re apologizing for something. That’s where I really talked about thinking that we have to be Christian thinkers. We have to think like Jesus so we can act like Jesus. That’s what a biblical world view is.

Janel Greig (10:14):
You do in the back of the book, it’s like the addendum type section. You definitely dig into the meaning, which I think is so useful for people to understand. It’s just why we have good reasons to believe Christianity is true. No, that’s great.

I appreciate, too, your question or your comment about doubt and struggles. Jesus did, whether it was with John or with Thomas, he didn’t approach it with condemnation but confirmation of what their doubts were. And that’s when as parents, we want to come around that.

So maybe can I tag onto that? If for parents who do have kids walking through a season of doubt, maybe they’re asking the hard questions. What would you say to those people, the parents maybe who feel like faith and evidence don’t mix, that Christianity should just be about that blind faith, belief, not proof?

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (11:03):
That will not get us through the challenging times. We have a solid rock of truth that we can hold onto even when our feelings tell us not to. That’s how important truth is. Truth is not arbitrated by our feelings. Faith also does not equal certainty. Faith equals trusting God through the uncertainty. That’s so key. Many of us are at where the dad is in Mark 9:22-24 where he looks at Jesus. I mean, think about this and he said, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

Dr. Matt Jones (11:38):
Help my unbelief. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (11:39):
That was enough faith to activate Jesus. I believe, help my unbelief. So let’s not hold ourselves too hostage that somehow there is no perfect faith. There is no perfect prayer. And when our kids doubt, we need to sit with them in their doubt and be like, “Your friend just died or that’s terrible that your friend’s parents just got divorced.” And I understand why you’re doubting and just sit with them in that.

We have to acknowledge their pain. We have to acknowledge their doubt, but we don’t live there either. We immediately then start focusing on truth. But what does God’s word say? This is where God’s word comes in. What does God’s word say about when we fail or when we mess up? And what does God’s word say about accountability? And what’s one Timothy? I was having to quote 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 to my daughter’s boyfriend the other day and had a very good time doing that.

(12:29):
What does Christian say about these things about being above reproach and avoiding the appearance of evil and how does God’s word protect us? And the thing that I would say that I’m working on the most is I could make all kinds of assertions. It’s so much better when I ask questions of my kids and invite them into the dialogue. So that’s where I’m working. I don’t have it perfected by any means, but that’s where I’m working on.

Dr. Matt Jones (12:55):
Yeah. And I think that’s harder too whenever you have a lot of knowledge and background. It’s harder to step back and say, all right, let me ask you instead of tell you, but yet Jesus, if you study Jesus’ life, he’s full of questions. Yes.

So we’re going to ask one more question and this is a question that we like to ask. What’s a question that you wish whenever you come on podcasts or whenever you go on YouTube interviews, what’s a question that you wish people would ask you that you just say, “Man, I hope I get to speak about this.” And I know it’s going to involve Jesus. I can tell already. But what specifically there, Jeremiah?

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (13:30):
I wish they would say, who has been your biggest spiritual influence? Who is the reason you are where you are right now?

Dr. Matt Jones (13:37):
All right. Do you mind sharing that with us? He set us up and then he didn’t answer. All right.

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (13:41):
That’s the question I wish I was asked.

Dr. Matt Jones (13:43):
Oh, okay, good.

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (13:45):
Without a doubt, it’s my wife. None of this would happen. My wife, she’s a serious Christian. She has a serious faith and I would’ve given up a long time ago. It’s interesting when your book gets on the New York Times list, how all these people come back into your life who couldn’t walk you to the parking lot fast enough. And Audrey has given me humility to respond and to say, Jeremiah, but you know what I remember? Audrey never stopped believing in God’s call in our life, when others doubted it, when others didn’t believe in it.

(14:19):
Audrey kept believing. And I remember wanting to quit every day when we lived in Summertown. I would walk 1.8 miles back from my college and be like, “Audrey, these people are scary smart.” And she would say, “You’ve got this. You’ve got this. Just keep taking it.” So the Lord, yes, but the Lord brings people into our lives and any success I’ve attained, she read this whole book and she’s like, “You’ve got to change all these words. Our boys are not going to.”

She is kind of the true author of this book because she helps me with the hardest part, which is making it understandable. It’s easy for me to write diagnostically and boring, but no one cares about that kind of writing. So that’s the credit that I married up. I married a woman who’s in love with Jesus and in love with preaching kids and she has been a humility X factor in my life and continues to be.

(15:13):
I won’t go like some of these major platforms that I won’t mention, but my one agreement to go is Audrey comes and she prays the whole time while I’m answering these questions. That’s awesome. So that’s the X factor in my life.

Dr. Matt Jones (15:26):
That’s great. Thank you for sharing that, Jeremiah. And unfortunately we’re out of time in part two of our episode with Jeremiah Johnston. Again, folks, please pick up the book. It really is worth your time and investment, The Jesus Discoveries. And so as we wrap up today, we keep coming back to that question so many of our kids and maybe even ourselves are asking, “Okay, but can you prove it?” In a world that runs on evidence with photos and data and receipts, it’s no surprise that faith is being examined through the same lens.

What’s so encouraging is that Christianity doesn’t shy away from that question. As we’ve heard today, there’s real history here, real places, real events, real evidence that points to Jesus not as a myth, but as a person who truly walked the earth to change all of history. And for many, seeing that evidence doesn’t replace faith, it actually strengthens it.

(16:19):
So as parents, that gives us something really powerful, confidence, confidence that when our kids ask hard questions, we don’t have to shut them down. We can lean in, we can process those ith them and we can explore that together. So Jeremiah Johnston, we are so honored and privileged to have you join us today. Thank you for the time and commitments you made. And Janel, thanks for partnering with me. God bless as you all listen and love your children well.

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston (16:45):
Amen. Thank you, Janel and Matt. It has been a delight.

Dr. Matt Jones (16:47):
Thank you.

Janel Greig (16:48):
Thank you.