Is Joe Rogan one step closer to accepting Christ?
In an interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Rogan spoke with Wesley Huff about Jesus’ resurrection and how it connects to biblical prophecy foretold thousands of years prior to His birth.
Speaking on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Isaiah and the ancient connections of these texts, Rogan points out the uncanny reality that these texts are accurate in the story they tell.
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“…imagine how crazy that is that something in a time where there’s no printed press and something had been passed on for so long as oral tradition is exact word for word written in a cave in Qumran, and then the same thing you get in the English translation of the Bible today,” says Rogan.
Huff later points out the actual absurdity of what Christianity must look like from the world’s point of view.
“…that is kind of the crazy thing about Christianity where you have this Jewish itinerate guy who’s walking around first century Roman occupied Judea. He’s making some pretty audacious claims to be God Himself, and then He predicts His own death and resurrection,” says Huff.
Huff also points out that the disciples were terrified following Jesus’ death, but because of the resurrection, they were able to change the world around them.
“They go from 11 scared men,” says Huff, “To completely overhauling the Roman world in only a couple hundred years because of this claim that they say they saw Jesus resurrected.”
Rogan asks Huff what his personal take is on Jesus’ resurrection, or if he sticks just to interpreting the message based on historical evidence.
“You have a guy who objectively lived. He objectively died, and then individuals close to His inner circle claim that they see Him not dead,” Huff says.
Rogan notes that these claims of Jesus’ resurrection would have been incredibly unusual.
“It’s hard when you’re dealing with illiterate populations, you’re dealing with thousands of years of time, you’re dealing with an oral tradition…it’s very difficult for anybody who thinks of themselves as an intelligent person who’s secular to even entertain the possibility that someone died and [came] back to life,” says Rogan.
While Rogan continues to ponder on the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, Huff points out that the gospels were written during the timeframe of the eyewitness accounts, meaning there were plenty of people who could have fact-checked these testimonies. He notes how Scripture tells us that hundreds of people saw Jesus after the resurrection, and that Jesus stayed on this earth for 40 days following His resurrection.
“…Jesus was walking around teaching them for 40 days after He was resurrected from the dead. And so, these are written within a time period when you have people who would have seen Jesus’ ministry,” says Huff.
Rogan poses the question of whether Jesus actually died, and Huff assures him that the Roman crucifixion was known for being excruciatingly painful and effective, and that one of the things scholars can agree on is that Jesus absolutely died.
“This was designed to humiliate and it was designed to be as painful as possible,” Huff says.
As Joe Rogan continues to have guests on that continue to get him to think about the gospel, about Jesus death and resurrection, pray that he would see the light and connect Jesus as being the Way, the Truth and the Life.
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Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.
