Dr. Hugh Ross, a leading astrophysicist, tells of demon-possessed Russian scientists, his atheism to faith journey, and mind-blowing facts about the planet we inhabit.
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Your spark scientific man. You can't possibly believe of
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spirit activity in our world today.
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I don't see too much of that here and United States or in
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Canada or x-rays. Although I did have some
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experiences of what part of Pasadena California, where there
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was a street or in both sides are witchcraft ovens.
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And but where I really saw evidence It's of that as when I
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was invited to speak to scientists and the Soviet Union
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a time when the Communists were in control of the country.
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And interestingly, I was invited by the Soviet government to come
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but on the condition that I only share my Christian faith with
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phd-level Scientists they said if we catch you sharing your
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Christian faith with anyone else will immediately Deport you,
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you'll never be invited back. And I said, well, why are you
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having me come? They said, well, these are
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scientists that travel internationally to meetings and
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so basically, they brought me in to appease them.
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But one thing I discovered when I began to speak to these
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audiences of a scientists is that many of them are obviously
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demon possessed and I discovered why, that was the time when the
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Soviet Union was sponsoring research and all called physics.
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So a lot of the physicists at their Institutes of learning
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were actually heavily involved in the occult trying to develop
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all called weapons. They could use against the west.
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And consequently I remember talking to there's one audience
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or about a quarter of the physicists are, we're demon
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possessed and was obvious. I walk into the room immediately
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starts screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs, you
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know? An obvious fear of the fact that
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I was even in the room, some of them would curl up in the fetal
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position, and they would yell out these incredible charges
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against Jesus, accusing him of incredible.
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A moral crimes. And, you know, I've been around
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longshoremen in the u.s. he use the lord's name in vain, but
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they stopped short of accusing Jesus of gross moral and
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behavior. And and also I recognized, I
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said, okay, this happened to me once the next time I brought a
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cohort with me who was also invited and it was like, I just
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want you to sit at the back and you pray that the demons will be
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silent. And that happened, I gave this
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talk and these demon possessed, people were utterly silent.
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And what I discovered is. The other Soviet scientists
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there, they all believe in demons they saw.
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And I remember literally every day, but they were stunned that
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the demons were quiet and so that got their attention because
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they had never seen the demons be quiet before and so I got to
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share it them, the reason why the demons were quiet and so
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probably of all the speaking of done internationally, it was
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speaking to scientists and Soviet Union.
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Or I saw the greatest response of those.
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Is to receiving Jesus Christ as Creator.
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Lord, and Savior. I mean, there was one audience
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of several hundred were we I gave a personal invitation and
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said, if this day, you've committed your life to Jesus
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Christ for the first time, please write your name on a
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piece of paper and put it up on the desk here.
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And I didn't realize that there was a paper shortage and the
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Soviet Union at that time because a near Riot broke out.
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Are these scientists were scrounging around for pieces of
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paper and when they find one, they rip it into tiny little
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pieces. So each of them could write
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their name on it and put it on the desk at the front easily,
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more than 90 percent of the businesses that they gave their
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life to Jesus Christ. We had a mountain of leaves
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tiny, shards of paper on the desk of front and as they walked
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out, There were two men at the back, handing them books.
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So I went to the back there and said, what are you giving them?
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And they said we're giving him Russian Gideon Bibles.
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They were the first, rushing Gideon Bibles that get into
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Russia. And I said, and then he also
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shared with me. Do you remember doing a
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fundraiser for rushing Gideon Bibles, and Santa Barbara two
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years ago? And I said, yeah I do that's
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where I kind of gave my testimony and In the peel of the
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people there, to donate for publishing these Russian Gideon
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Bibles. They said these are those Bibles
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that were raised at night at that fundraiser.
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So, you know, I will just wonderful experience for me to
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just see all these little pieces fitting together.
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That was both an, an Unholy and a Divine encounter the same
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time. How does an atheist
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astrophysicist come to Faith? What is that process?
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How was it for you? Ew.
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Well, I wasn't raised in a believing home, but it was a
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home where my parents stress moral upbringing, and they
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didn't believe in God, earn eternal life.
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But they encouraged my studies. My parents say that I was born a
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scientist. I was doing experiments since I
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was 2 years of age and also I now know that I'm on the
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autistic Spectrum. So I was actually reading before
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it was engaging in any kind of Significant conversation and at
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age seven, our school public school, took us on a field trip
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to the Vancouver, Public Library, which at that time at
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three million volumes. And that day, I went home with
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five books on astronomy and physics and every Saturday, I
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would go and read for five more and so my parents say, I was
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born an astronomer but all I really didn't commit to that
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career until it was eight years. Years of age.
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But every year I would study it, different sub-discipline of
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Science and at age 16 I've studied cosmology that's the
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science of the origin history the universe and there is a
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major debate at that time. Is it a steady state universe as
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an oscillating universe and hesitating universe or big?
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Bang universe. But at that time, I realized the
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observational evidence was heavily.
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Favoring the Big Bang Airy. And so if it's big bang, the
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universe has a beginning. There's a beginning, there must
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be a cosmic beginner. So at age 17, I began to search
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for the cosmic beginner but it didn't really know how to
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undergo that search. So the first place I looked was
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in the books of Immanuel Kant because he's recognizes the
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father of cosmology red is critique of pure reason.
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And found that there are a lot of inconsistencies and his
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arguments It's about the universe and the possibility of
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God's existence and involvement. In the universe I went on and
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read some of rainy to carts works.
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And the public school I attended was filled with International
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students and so they encouraged me to look at Buddhism and
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Hinduism Islam, Zoroastrianism. A lot of different isms.
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And so I began to go through those isms and said, you know,
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most of these religions are based Some kind of holy book or
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scripture. So I said I'm going to read the
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original sources not just the commentaries so I began with the
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Hindu Vedas and realize they had the wrong concepts of the
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Universe. I was rather surprised to
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discover that's the origin of the oscillating universe theory,
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but I knew enough about astronomy to realize that the
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Universe had way too much entropy to permit a possible
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rebound Phoenix. Style.
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Also, Asian of the universe. So I said, I don't think
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Hinduism, is it? I looked at Buddhism and
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discovered it. They basically borrow their
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cosmology of Hinduism and I looked at as long and realize
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that they have different checks on creation, but they were
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inconsistent with one another and inconsistent what I knew to
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be true about the universe. So I spent about several months
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going through these different books And for some reason, I
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left the Bible to the very end. I knew enough about the
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religions of the world to realize that would be the
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biggest challenge. So I left that to the end but
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realize hey and all these other different holy books.
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I was able to find abundant provable airs and
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contradictions. So then it began to look at the
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Bible and when I tell people, I didn't have any contact with
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Christians until much Each laughter, I became one, it's not
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quite accurate. I mean, I did see two Christians
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from 30 feet away, when I was 11 years of age, they were two
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businessmen that came into our Public School, put two boxes on
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her teacher's desk and exited without saying, a single word,
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but in those boxes were Gideon Bibles.
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So from age 11 onward, I had a Gideon Bible, but I didn't pick
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it up until it was 17. And I did it.
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Pick it up. And began to go through it.
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And said this book is radically different from all these other
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so-called holy books, much more detailed and specific and
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actually addresses geography, history and science.
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And unlike these other holy books, it actually commanded
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objective testing, everything is to be tested.
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You see it in the book of Thessalonians test everything,
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hold fast to that, which proves to be good and true.
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So I said, okay I'm going to do this and I've been taught the
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scientific method in every year of my public education.
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So I was very fluent in the scientific method applied that
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to the creation text in the Bible and would really surprise.
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Me is even the first creation text Genesis chapter 1,
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rigorously follows the scientific method I have to
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admit. I was naive, I didn't know where
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the scientific method came from. Was years later when I read the
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writings of the Scottish. Theologian, Thomas Torrance, I
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realized that comes from the Bible and comes from Reformation
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theology. But following that scientific
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method, I realized all of the Bible's creation Tech's, got
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everything, correctly, described, and the correct
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chronological sequence. So I says, okay, this book has a
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possibility of actually being a revelation from the one that
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created you. Reverse.
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So I spent almost two years spending an hour or two a day
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studying the Bible looking for provable scientific or
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historical error or some provable contradiction.
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Now at the end of that study period, there were many
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passages, I didn't understand but I was unable to find a
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single provable error contradictions and I found
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hundreds of places where the Bible predicted Future
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historical events and future, scientific discoveries, and I
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recognize that's beyond human capability.
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So, this message must really be inspired by the one that created
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the universe. So, it was at age, 19.
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I sign my name of the back of this Gideon.
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Bible committing my life to Jesus Christ, but I also realize
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that commitment meant I had to begin to share my Christian
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faith with With my fellow students and professors and so I
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began to do that. After I sign my name on the back
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of a Gideon Bible. And, you know, I have a lot of
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fear about sharing my faith because I knew just how oppose
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my fellow students and professors would be to what I
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had discovered. So I was expecting a lot of
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opposition, a lot of abuse and persecution, but I was
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pleasantly surprised. Just how open my fellow students
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and professors were to a, rational scientific approach to
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Faith. What moved you from?
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I mean, a deist could come to the conclusions.
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You did write that. There's must be a God and come
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to the scientific conclusions. You did.
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But what takes that? That step further that there's a
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personal That God is a personal being that you could have that
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relation, right? Good question because just
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looking at the universe itself, there's a beginning.
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There's a beginning to space and time the something we now can
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prove through space-time theorems that proves that there
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must be an agent beyond space and time but brought the
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universe into existence that's deism.
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What move me from deism to theism is looking at this Gideon
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Bible and realizing this is a God that's involved, not in just
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creating universe. Verse and then taking it back
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seat and watching it all unfold. This is a God that's involved in
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this creation and I came to that conclusion just realizing how in
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the Bible it predicted future historical events accurately
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specifically and hundreds of times and also did that with
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future scientific discoveries. We humans and made which showed
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me. This is a God that's involved
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after the beginning of the universe.
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This is a God who has a deep interest and the purpose, and
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Destiny of human beings. And so, that was theism and then
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your Christianity is really based on this idea that the
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creator of the universe himself came to planet Earth and lived,
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a human life, amongst all of us and in their human life,
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demonstrated moral perfection, something no other human is
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capable of doing and yet in that world.
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Perfection. He willingly was offering to
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trade his moral perfection for moral imperfection, the, I'm
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referring to the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
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And what impressed me in reading the gospels is, there are
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occasions when he would tell an audience, who have you can
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accuse me of any sin or fault, and then the audience was his
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mother and his four brothers. And it's like, you're not going
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to fool your mom. So the fact that he was able to
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Make that declaration and have no objection from the audience
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either the religious leaders of our opposed to his message horse
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personal family. Said yes, this and yours.
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You read the life of Jesus. He really did demonstrate a life
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of moral perfection and any perform Miracles and especially
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on a read the Gospel of John gospel, John talks about
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miracles that no profit, no human profit, can perform
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miracles Miracles that only God has capable of Performing and so
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it was reading the gospels reading The Sermon on the Mount
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seeing that moral perfection. And then what Jesus did for all
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of humanity, where he basically said, I'll take upon myself the,
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you know, the payment of all the offenses that you've made in
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your entire life and I said, that's an offer is too good to
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turn down. So I says, yeah, I'm it's just
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makes Small sense to trade, my moral imperfection for his moral
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perfection. But one thing that caused me to
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hesitate is realize, it's not just asking, God to forgive you
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of all of your sins and offenses against him and other human
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beings, it's actually making him the master of your life, but I
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realize, hey he's God, he's morally perfect!
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He knows me better than I know myself, it only makes rational
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sense to put I'm in charge of my life, but I do admit I had a lot
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of fear by do that. I'm going to have to start
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sharing my faith and I'm going to face a lot of objections and
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persecution. But what I didn't really realize
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until it made that commitment, God has committed to assist us
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and what he commands us to do and I discovered that.
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Hey, if I go into an auditorium, I've say 700 angry atheist,
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scientists. I don't go in there.
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Alone. God is with me and he will
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assist me and took me a few weeks to understand that
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principle. But as a principal, I've been
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living by ever since How about, lastly?
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Last time, we just talked you gave a brief overview at the
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unlikely odds that there would be life on planet Earth.
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You think you could run through that?
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So many people enjoy that. I like to hear that again,
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right? Well, I've actually written this
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book. It just got released a few days
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ago designed to the core where I give an update on that.
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And what really surprised me going through the scientific
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literature and the past 3 years, more discoveries have been made
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that demonstrate the extraordinary fine-tuning of the
00:18:20
universe are Galaxy cluster, our galaxy, our local spiral arm and
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the Galaxy, the local bubble, the local fluff, our star, the
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system of planets that company our star, our moon, and the
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earth. Basically, what I was able to
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document in this book, designed to the core is that every
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possible Cosmic size scale you choose to look, you'll find
00:18:46
overwhelming evidence that say the cosmic web has been
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supernaturally. Design that make possible
00:18:53
existence of human beings here on planet Earth.
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At this time, probably the most dramatic example, is the
00:19:01
chapter, I wrote here on the moon, or I make the point that
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the moon formed as a result of the proto-earth and another
00:19:10
rocky planet. Thea colliding, with one another
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and in the merging event we wind up with a bigger Earth a denser
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Earth. Super enrichment heh.
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Heavy elements and the debris Cloud around the earth called
00:19:25
Isis and makes the moon, but both the Earth and the moon had
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an early hot origin and both of them got enriched with iron and
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nickel and Cobalt. Those are ferrous metals and
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because of their hot origin, both bodies had a hot liquid
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core of iron nickel and Cobalt and they were close enough
00:19:50
together bird. In the history of the solar
00:19:53
system that the tidal forces of the Moon circulated that liquid
00:19:58
iron, and the Earth's core and likewise the tidal forces of the
00:20:03
earth exerted. In the moon circulated, the
00:20:06
liquid iron core in the moon and that gave at Dynamo for both
00:20:11
bodies. And so, both bodies had a
00:20:14
powerful magnetosphere around them but because of how close
00:20:18
they were together at that time and make needle Spears.
00:20:21
Coupled and the research paper that I cite in this book
00:20:26
documents that have a wasn't for that, couple powerful
00:20:30
magnetosphere. The particle radiation from the
00:20:34
early Sun would have sputtered away.
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All of her salt water and Oliver Sacks atmosphere.
00:20:40
And there would have been no possibility for life of any
00:20:43
kind. And they concluded their paper
00:20:45
by saying this is a habitability requirement.
00:20:49
But they dropped it right there. And then Right.
00:20:52
And designed to the core. This is the most extraordinary
00:20:56
habitability requirement ever discovered by astronomers.
00:21:00
The only way you're going to have life on a planet is if you
00:21:04
have two planets rocky planets emerging together, where you get
00:21:10
a bigger planet, that's super endowed with uranium, and
00:21:14
thorium, and iron, nickel and Cobalt.
00:21:17
And you wind up getting a moon, and you need the moon to be the
00:21:20
same mass. Us and size and density that our
00:21:24
moon is and Earth to be the same size mass and density, Earth is
00:21:29
and beginning, just a few Earth diameters apart from one,
00:21:33
another where the Moon is spiraling away because it's also
00:21:37
crucial that as the moon spirals away it slows down or rotation
00:21:43
rate because the initial Earth at a rotation rate of about 2
00:21:47
hours a day. And for advanced light, you need
00:21:50
24 hours So, I mean, if you're a dog or a cat you can get by with
00:21:56
23 hours or 25 hours, but for Global human civilization, you
00:22:01
need 24 hours. And so unless we can find
00:22:09
another planet, exactly like the Earth exactly like the moon,
00:22:13
where the earth-moon system has exactly the same history that
00:22:16
the earth-moon system has, there's no possibilities are a
00:22:19
number on that. A percentage of Good.
00:22:24
Well it's essentially zero fat but tell the story in this book
00:22:29
of how I'm number of scientists which were involved in this.
00:22:34
This doing research on the origin of the Moon came to the
00:22:39
conclusion that the origin of the Moon required extraordinary.
00:22:43
Fine-tuning so much fine-tuning that had significant
00:22:48
philosophical consequences and so I cite an s.
00:22:53
Special issue of the British journal Nature, were about six
00:22:58
of these origin of Life. Researchers said we have to redo
00:23:01
our models. We got to get this design factor
00:23:05
down because otherwise we got these super natural consequences
00:23:10
and so they redid all their models.
00:23:12
But the new models actually had more design in it than the old
00:23:17
models. And it was Tim Elliott who
00:23:19
commented and British journal Nature.
00:23:21
This is causing us Optical disquiet.
00:23:24
Yeah, but that was, before they discovered, this coupled, may
00:23:30
need or Spear and so philosophical disquiet today, as
00:23:35
far far greater than it was in 2014.
00:23:37
The same, when these mall the statistical number was still
00:23:40
zero before that Discovery, basically, right?
00:23:44
It was, but now, it's been driven down assume even closer
00:23:48
to 0. I mean, what I've shown in
00:23:52
several of my books, Is that if you're going to argue that the
00:23:56
earth-moon system has all of its features without Supernatural
00:24:01
divine intervention, the probability of that happening
00:24:05
naturalistically as much less than one chance in 10 to the 15
00:24:10
hundredth power. That's 1500 zeros between the
00:24:14
decimal point in the one and it's roughly equivalent to
00:24:18
someone here in the state of California where I live.
00:24:22
Winning the California Lottery. Murray, 200 consecutive times
00:24:27
where they buy just one ticket each time, which a mathematician
00:24:32
friend of mine said, is indistinguishable from the
00:24:34
probability of winning the California Lottery. 200
00:24:38
consecutive times, we don't buy any tickets at all.
00:24:42
Yeah that's all yeah. Every time I talk to you there's
00:24:46
not the being here to my doctor have to recoup.
00:24:48
I have to let my brain untangle itself.
00:24:52
Well, that's just one chapter of the book designed to the core.
00:24:56
And then, you know, late people read the book set.
00:24:58
Every chapter is a mind-blower I mean, mostly people haven't even
00:25:03
thought about this Cosmic web of Super Galaxy clusters being
00:25:07
super naturally designed, so that we humans can see it.
00:25:11
Like, you need to warm up chapters, you know, loosen the
00:25:13
brain up a little bit before you you get to those You pull?
00:25:17
You pull a brain? Yeah.
00:25:21
And you know, I've got my office here about 50 books written by
00:25:25
astronomers. Now let's call the anthropic
00:25:28
principle and all but two of them are not table to them are
00:25:32
unbelievers, but they all agree. When we look at the universe as
00:25:36
a whole, we see overwhelming evidence that has been designed
00:25:42
to make white possible. And in particular, human life
00:25:45
possible, but they stopped at the level, the universe What I
00:25:49
tried to do in this book as say, you know, these non-believing
00:25:53
astronomers are comfortable with a God, that designs a universe
00:25:58
as a whole because that means they can keep this guard at an
00:26:01
arm's length. But what we see is it's not just
00:26:05
the universe as a whole that's super naturally designed.
00:26:09
The Super Galaxy cluster ring is designed, it's Unique.
00:26:13
There are tens of thousands of Super Galaxy clusters were
00:26:16
living in the only one that These amazing design features
00:26:21
that make our existence possible as you go from the very largest
00:26:25
size scales all the way down to the smallest size scales you see
00:26:29
that argument holds all the way down.
00:26:31
I mean, one thing that makes it difficult for me to watch the
00:26:35
Star Wars movies. They all begin with a galaxy
00:26:38
far, far away. But we astronomers have looked
00:26:41
at galaxies Far Far Away. None of them are candidates.
00:26:45
Only our galaxy, and our galaxy has over. 200 features that must
00:26:51
be fine-tuned to make our existence possible.
00:26:54
It's a Galaxy like no other but I could make that argument about
00:26:58
our star. Our planet, our planetary
00:27:01
system, the local bubble in our galaxy in which we exist.
00:27:05
Looking at the supermassive. Black hole in the center of our
00:27:09
galaxy, no matter what size scale.
00:27:11
You look at you get this overwhelming sense, there's a
00:27:15
personal Creator behind it. All That is fine, tuning and
00:27:20
designing everything. So we humans can exist at this
00:27:24
one. Place at one time and universe.
00:27:28
As the other thing that blows me away if we were here any earlier
00:27:32
or any later we couldn't possibly exist.
00:27:35
We're here at the only time that Cosmic history in which our
00:27:39
existence is possible and we're living at the only location and
00:27:43
universe for existence to possible which tells me the
00:27:47
Creator, the universe. You must have a profound purpose
00:27:51
and Destiny for us human being. You must have a profound purpose
00:27:51
and Destiny for us human being.