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We’re excited to bring you a fascinating episode this week! Doris welcomed Dr. Mikel Del Rosario, professor, author, and host of the Apologetics Guy podcast, to talk about his brand new book: Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? Making Sense of Historical Claims.

Many have wrestled with doubt or faced tough questions from loved ones about who Jesus is, did Jesus claim to be God, and the reliability of the Bible. This episode is packed with encouragement, practical insight, and real stories that will help you defend your faith with clarity, courage, and compassion.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

– What history says about Jesus’ divine claims Dr. Mikel Del Rosario gives an accessible look into how historians—including skeptics—evaluate Jesus’ words and actions, and why his claims to be God are both profound and credible.

– Why it’s OK to doubt—and how God meets us when we do Doris and Dr. Mikel Del Rosario discuss how doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, and how asking good questions can actually strengthen it.

– How to love and listen well in spiritual conversations You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to share your faith—just a good listener, willing to walk alongside others and meet them where they are.

– Practical answers to tough questions—from skeptics and other faiths From thoughtful responses to Jehovah’s Witnesses or Muslim friends, to talking with those who see Jesus as “just a good teacher,” you’ll come away empowered to share clear, respectful answers.

Resource Highlight: New Book! Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? is available now from InterVarsity Press (IVP Academic) and online retailers. This is not only for church leaders or professors—you’ll find it accessible, practical, and perfect for reading on your own or with a Bible study group.

We’re talking about this amazing book and more!

Episode Highlights and Takeaways …

000:00 Faith Conversations and Apologetics Insights

05:14 “Explaining Faith with Courage”

08:49 “Debating Jesus’ Divinity Claims”

15:25 “Faith, History, and Jesus”

16:49 “Jesus’ Divine Authority Examined”

21:32 Engaging Skeptics and Other Faiths

27:32 Eyewitnesses and Jesus’ Identity

32:13 Unexpected Messiah Revealed

32:47 Messianic Signs and Jesus’ Miracles

37:33 Listening First, Sharing Later

40:59 Faith-Building Resource for Groups

Connect with Dr. Del Rosario!

You can connect with Dr Mikel Del Rosario at www.apologeticsguy.com where you’ll find his book, blog, YouTube channel info, The Accessible Apologetics Workbook, and a plethora of helpful resources and recommended reading!

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario helps Christians find clear answers to tough questions about Christianity and explain the faith with courage and compassion. He is a Professor of Bible and Theology at Moody Bible Institute and the author of Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? Making Sense of His Historical Claims (IVP Academic).

Previously, he taught Christian Apologetics and World Religion at William Jessup University and Digital Media for Ministry at Dallas Theological Seminary. He has published over 30 journal articles on apologetics and cultural engagement in Bibliotheca Sacra with his mentor, Dr. Darrell Bock. He holds an M.A. in Christian Apologetics with highest honors from Biola University, along with a Master of Theology (Th.M) and a Ph.D in Biblical Studies (Emphasis in New Testament Studies) from Dallas Theological Seminary, where he served as Project Manager for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center, producing and hosting The Table podcast. He has also served in the Philippines as a missionary professor with Converge Worldwide and a youth pastor to refugees and multicultural students in California. Follow him online at ApologeticsGuy.com, the Apologetics Guy YouTube channel, and his podcast on the Christianity Today Network: The Apologetics Guy Show.

What Threatens to Steal Your Joy?

Check out Surrender the Joy Stealers: Rediscover the Jesus Joy in You 6-week Bible study rooted in John 15. You can find more info at https://dorisswift.com/book/

Let’s Stay Connected!

Find my free resources including Fear Fighting Bible Verses, Simple Tips for Sharing Your Faith, Surrender the Joy Stealers, Step Out of Your Doubt and Into Your Calling ebook, and more on my dorisswift.com homepage!

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Thanks for Listening!

I hope this episode encouraged, inspired, and challenged you to cultivate community, live and walk in the value, purpose, and worth God gave you, and take action where your passion, compassion, and conviction intersect.

If you’re looking for a speaker for your next women’s conference, retreat, luncheon, or workshop, reach out and connect with me on my speaker page at https://www.womenspeakers.com/florida/edgewater/speaker/doris-swift

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Stay tuned for more amazing content and remember to check the show notes for all the links mentioned.

Thank you for being a part of our community. We are grateful for your continued support and encourage you to embrace the unique gifts that make you magnificently you.

I hope you’ll join me next time when I talk with another guest who is taking action where her passion, compassion, and conviction intersect …

Until then friend, have a blessed week, and I’ll talk to you soon.

With love and joy,

Doris

Transcript

Doris [00:01:54]:
What is threatening to steal your joy? What is it that feels so heavy right now that you could barely stand? God has a plan. And his plan is to surrender it. Surrender it to him. It might be a prodigal, it might be a relationship, a marriage, something with your job. So many things. We have so many amazing blessings, but there are so many things in our life that threaten to steal our joy. I’m Doris Swift, author of the award winning six week Bible study, Surrender the Joy. Rediscover the Jesus joy in you.

Doris [00:02:34]:
And it helps women rediscover the overflowing ever present Jesus joy within. Using personal and biblical stories I share, how you can identify your joy stealers. Surrender them to God, Reawaken the joy within and share the joy with others. You can do it on your own or with a group. Check it out, friends. Surrender the joy stealers. Rediscover the Jesus joy in you. It’s available on all the online retailers.

Doris [00:03:04]:
It’s time to take your joy back. Welcome back to the show. I am really excited to welcome this guest today. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for some time. I am welcoming Dr. Mikel Del Rosario and he is a professor of Bible and theology at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and he’s a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is also a podcast host of the popular podcast the Apologetic Guy. And you gotta love that name so much.

Doris [00:03:37]:
I love it. Um, it’s fantastic. And you listen to podcasts, so go and listen to that and subscribe. And today we’re talking about his new book, Did Jesus really say He Was God? Making Sense of His Historical Claims. And it’s published by InterVarsity Press, which is IVP academic and it’s an apologetics book that uses history to defend the deity of Christ and helps Christians engage unbelievers in thoughtful conversations about the Lord. Welcome to the show, Dr. Del Rosario. It’s so great to have you.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:04:10]:
Thanks so much, Doris, for the invitation. I’m glad we finally made this happen. I know we’ve been talking about this for a little while.

Doris [00:04:15]:
Yeah, we sure have. And I just, I. I have a love for apologetics and just fascinates me the investigative part of it, you know, and that there’s so many, even atheists, who have gone to the word of God to try to disprove it and instead wound up becoming a Christian who then teaches apologetics or, you know, also has a heart for helping others to share their faith. So I love the message that you want to help others to not only walk in their faith and know what they believe and why they believe it, but also to help others when they have faith conversations. Because, you know, I. I personally used to get defensive when I was talking about faith, but understanding that it’s not being defensive, it’s being. It’s defending the faith, but having a faith conversation. So I would love if you would share, as I asked my guests, how you’re taking action, where your passion, compassion, and conviction intersect now.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:05:14]:
What a great question. So my passion is helping people find clear answers to tough questions about God, Jesus and the Bible, and then helping Christians to better explain their faith, too, with both courage and compassion. And so with my new book, did Jesus really say he was God? This is where these things come together for me, because specifically, I want to talk about helping people talk about Jesus with their unbelieving friends, having more confidence just for themselves, that the Bible is giving us real history. And so it’s a matter of engaging with courage because you have to stand up for what is true in the midst of a culture that’s pushing back on the Gospel message, pushing back on the deity of Jesus, but also compassion, because a lot of times the people we talk to don’t see the Bible as any kind of authority at all and don’t even see the general reliability of the Bible. And so as a way to find common ground and meet them where they’re at, we need to be able to engage, even on a historical level, when they ask questions like, did this really happen? Instead of just saying, well, how could you possibly ask that? It’s God’s word, but actually to be compassionate, put yourself in their shoes and. And then walk with them through how they can begin to think through these claims of Jesus historically, even though if they don’t see the Bible as an authority.

Doris [00:06:30]:
Thank you. That was just so well said. And the fact being, when you think about it, you know, we have to first understand and believe what it is that our faith is all about, you know, and who Jesus really is. Because that’s question. Sometimes I’ll ask like, well, who is Jesus to you? And then some. Some might not even realize that there is so much more and it’s so much deeper because oftentimes, like I. I do lay counseling at church and there’s an intake form, and you’ll ask somebody, well, when did you first become a believer, a follower of Jesus? You know, and sometimes their answer might be, well, I was born Christian. And so, you know, sometimes it’s just because that’s the way somebody has been brought up or they are kind of grabbing hold of the f faith of their parents or family, but just to have it to be a personal thing for ourselves.

Doris [00:07:28]:
And I love that your heart is to help people to know not only what they know and why they know it or why it’s true. Basically because it’s true. We have to share truth because there’s so many untruths out there. So what actually prompted you? Because you’ve written so many different things, you’re a professor and you teach and all of that, but what actually prompted you to write this particular, particular book?

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:07:53]:
Yeah, there’s a couple of things. One is a personal experience, and the other one is some sociological research that came out a couple years ago. But tell you the personal story first. There was this woman who cornered me at this event after a church gathering, and she wanted to raise this idea of where we ever even got the idea that Jesus is divine. And the only time this has ever happened to me had my Bible out on the table while we were talking. And in the middle of our conversation, she grabs my Bible and she holds it up like a visual aid, and she says, according to this, Jesus never claimed to be God. I was so taken aback by that, because this person had been going to church pretty regularly, and yet she was saying some of the same kinds of things as our skeptical friends, our atheist friends. And so we began to talk about Jesus sayings in the Gospel of John, for example, like where he says, I and the father are one, John 10, where he says, where he says, before Abraham was I am John 8.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:08:49]:
But then she switched from a literary challenge like show me where in the Bible it says Jesus is claiming to be divine to a historical challenge, like, if it really is the case that Jesus said things like that, why don’t we see any hint of a divine claim in the earlier Gospels, especially in the Gospel of Mark, because most scholars believe Mark was the earliest one written. And so she had been reading some of these skeptical scholars and began to doubt and started talking this way. So that’s the personal story. Kind of kept that in the back of my mind as I was going through my doctoral program. And that actually spun off a number of research projects. But I kept thinking, we need to be able to train people to engage with our skeptical relatives, skeptical friends who are saying these kinds of things, even people we might find in our own churches who are starting to talk like agnostic scholars, because they’re reading some agnostic scholars. But the study, that piece of research I wanted to talk about was ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research. They had a study called the State of Theology and in that study they pulled 3,000 people and they showed that 43% of those people they polled who are self professed evangelical Christians who say they go to church regularly, even that the Bible is important to them, 43% of them agreed with the statement Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:10:06]:
43%. The fact that those 43% all agreed was mind blowing to me because these are people who supposedly go to church every Sunday and the Bible is important to them. So we need to be able to help people engage with not only those outside the church, but even those in the church who are wondering, did Jesus really say he was God? Was he really God or just a great teacher? So it’s a very practical, very needed book right now.

Doris [00:10:31]:
Yeah, for sure. And I actually read that in your book and when I read the statistics, it was very startling that almost half the people polled didn’t really believe that Jesus was God. And but we really don’t know. Like we just assume that other people believe the same things that we do. If, you know, we’re going even to the same church, but not necessarily. And so that was really eye opening to me. And so this kind of ties in historical with spiritual. So how, how does that work when you are going through and you’re writing this and you’re doing the historical? Because Jesus was also mentioned in other historical works.

Doris [00:11:12]:
Bringing in the historical, do you find that that helps people connect better in seeing the big picture of the whole thing? Because there’s other resources and other historical writings that talk about Jesus?

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:11:28]:
Yeah, I think it really depends where the person is. So if somebody’s pushing back on the deity of Jesus, I might want to ask them a kind of what do you mean by that kind of question? And see if their question is literary, like can you show me a Bible verse where Jesus is claiming to be divine? Or if it’s more of a historical question, like, yeah, the Bible says it, but how do I know that’s really giving me real history? And if I find somebody like that, like an Uber driver who recently told me I’m not religious, but I like history, well then I’m going to go there. And if they are historically minded or they’ve been reading skeptical historians, skeptical scholars, this actually helps them to see that you don’t have to just from the get go assume the Bible is the word of God. Actually Jewish historians and atheist historians can come to the table with Christian historians and look at the things Jesus actually said about himself. And one of the things I’m trying to show you in the book is how to think like a professional historian and why no matter what theory you have about Jesus, you have to make sense of his claim to be divine.

Doris [00:12:26]:
Yeah. Wow, that is powerful. And how you’re talking about taking a different perspective, like a different approach to it, because sometimes we just tend to go right to. Well, of course it’s true, you know, and so reaching people where they are, like, that’s great, because I guess a lot of it is asking questions, like asking good questions, but not only asking, but listening, because that gives us kind of some clues and ideas of which direction to go if. Because we might go in one direction. And that’s not even at all what that person was thinking or asking. So. So that’s very important.

Doris [00:13:00]:
And I love that this book helps because, you know, we’ve heard it said, oh, well, we’re all theologians, you know, or whatever. But this book is written in a very understandable way that a layperson can read. And so I appreciate that so much.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:13:16]:
That’s what I wanted to do with it, because what stands behind this is the doctoral research that I did for my PhD. So we’re not skimping on the content, but I. I’m a professor, so I teach college students. I’m kind of teaching through the material. Rather than publishing a technical monograph for specialists. I’m actually teaching the material so that it can be helpful to people in the church so that you can engage with your skeptical friends, those family members. You know, especially around the holidays, we get into conversations about Jesus. I want it to be able to help people like that.

Doris [00:13:47]:
Yeah, that’s really good. That’s so good. And the fact being too, that you. You break the book up into four parts. So if you could kind of talk a little bit about each part, because. And two, like I was going to say earlier, people have said when you ask, well, who was Jesus? Who do you think Jesus was? And even Jesus said, who do you say I am? But who did he say he was? Is important. But also, do people, you know, sometimes they might believe Jesus was a good teacher or he was a rabbi or whatever, but really, we can’t believe that if we don’t believe what he said, because otherwise, either he was crazy or, you know, or he was who he said he was kind of thing. So if you could go a little maybe through some of the things that you did and how you purposefully put this into four separate parts.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:14:37]:
Starts out with A forward by my mentor, Dr. Darrell Bock at Dallas Seminary, talking about the importance of historical Jesus studies, the need to study Jesus and discuss the facts of the case. I make a comparison to Theophilus. For example, Theophilus had questions about what he was taught about Jesus, and God sent Luke to help him. Wrote two books of the New Testament for us, Luke and Acts. Not just to help Theophilus have more confidence in what he was taught about Jesus, but ultimately think of how many people, millions and millions of people who have read Luke Acts and have come to faith in Christ are drawn, being drawn closer to the Lord through that. So I tell my students, if you’re doubting your faith, God can send someone to help you also like he sent Luke to help Theophilus. And maybe you’ll be the Luke for the Theophilus.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:15:25]:
You know, who’s your friend at church or your roommate who’s questioning their faith. So I write this introduction called More Than a Man about this lady who questioned my conviction that Jesus is God and kind of lay an outline for just the cultural moment that we have right now and why this is so important, where the conversation is in the scholarly world and then how that relates to just regular spiritual conversations that we have every day. The first part is talking about Jesus as a figure in ancient history. And some Christians get a little nervous sometimes when we play in this area, because when we start to meet people where they’re at, some Christians will say, I’m a little uncomfortable doing this, playing this game of let’s fact check the Bible because I know it’s God’s word, so why am I going to be talking like that? But I think for the sake of meeting people where they’re at. Like, if you were a missionary, you would figure out who are the people that you’re ministering to, what are the ways that they need the Bible explained to them and meet them where they’re at. So I kind of talk about how we do history so that you can think like a professional historian. And then you’re introduced to the rules and the world of professional historians and how we can actually do history and study Jesus in the same way that we study Alexander the Great or Caesar Augustus. Because I tell Christians who are nervous in this area, I say that the Bible teaches that God acted in history.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:16:49]:
And if God acted in history, we should be able to study Jesus as a figure in ancient history at the very least. So we do that. And then part two and three are the two blasphemy accusation scenes. I drill down to two key scenes, the healing of the paralytic in Mark, chapter two, and Jesus Jewish examination in Mark, chapter 14. I put those two things together, show historically how Jesus claimed to have divine authority. And then part four, I call that the battle of the views, testing all these different theories. Some people think Jesus only claimed to have a human kind of authority, whether that’s a priestly or a prophetic authority. And I see how that stacks up to the claim that I’m making that Jesus said he was actually God, that he claimed to have divine authority.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:17:32]:
And then you’re going to see how that works historically. So that’s where the book finishes up. And then I go into a very practical discussion of how you can talk to your Muslim friends, talk to your Jehovah’s Witness friends, and what this actually means for us as Christians as well, that Jesus is Lord, that he has authority in heaven and on earth. What does that mean to us? So it’s a challenge for Christians as well.

Doris [00:17:54]:
Yeah. That’s so good. I love how you said. And what that means for us. And like earlier, I love how you said that even if we doubt or if we have doubting friends, that God can send someone like he sent Luke. And I think that is just very encouraging because sometimes people are afraid to express that they’re having doubts because there’s sometimes a stigma or, you know, people would maybe judge them for that or, you know, like, well, you have to have more faith or you have to pray more, you know, different things like that. So. So I’m so glad that you brought that up, because it’s important.

Doris [00:18:33]:
And I think people really, when they doubt their faith, and you’ve probably run into this with a lot of students, if they’re doubting their faith, it could really crumble their foundation if they don’t know what, you know, why they’re having these, or they think they’re the only one that struggles.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:18:51]:
Yeah, yeah. I need to remind people who are listening that doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is unbelief. So, like, Theophilus had some doubts, and Luke believed that careful history and eyewitness testimony could help Theophilus have more confidence. And he was. He might have been thinking, should I really be part of this Jewish thing? Is this really for everybody? Is this for me? What about these things I was taught about Jesus? Are those things true? And then God sent Luke to help him.

Doris [00:19:18]:
Yeah. Wow. And that was just so powerful for him, you know, to have someone sent. And just like, knowing that’s kind of made it tangible that God really cares. And God wants to, you know, reveal himself. And he wants a relationship with us as minute as sometimes we might feel in this galaxy among galaxies, you know, like that, you know, that we, that we matter to God and that he sees us. And I think that’s very powerful. And, you know, and I love how your book talks about the blasphemy because that kind of, when you go right to there, it’s like, well, he claimed to do, you know, be able to do things, to have the authority that people at the time only believed God had authority to do.

Doris [00:20:04]:
So the blasphemy was actually a good argument for what he actually said, that he was God and that he actually was God. So that is, that is so important. And so as you’re going through this, and it’s just, it just really launched recently, right?

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:20:22]:
Yes, actually just yesterday. So I don’t know when this is going live, but it was just on the 23rd of October.

Doris [00:20:27]:
Yeah, so that’s really great. And so to grab this book is so important because we run into this all the time. And sometimes, like, say, for example, I was just telling the story the other day that, you know, I have sometimes Jehovah Witness friends will come to the door. And there was one time that I was with my mom and she was over the house, I think. I don’t think I was at her house. But anyway, so here they are at the door, and we are talking about the beginning of John where it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And in their Bible it says, was a God like that one little A was in there. And it’s like, okay, so this is not apples to apples kind of thing.

Doris [00:21:12]:
So I’m, you know, I’m so glad that you have that in the back of the book having those kind of conversations. So how is, like, if you help people to do that, what are some of the ways in the book that you, you help people in, in being able to have those conversations with those of other faiths.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:21:32]:
Yeah. So most of the book is talking about how do we engage with these skeptical scholars coming from atheist and agnostic backgrounds. But then in the practical application section, I do talk about people in other religions. So we might have friends who are Muslims, we might have co workers who are part of the Watchtower Jehovah’s Witnesses, or maybe the Jehovah’s Witness has just come to your house. And when I say, let’s ask them questions, we need to be listening. Not only for, is it a literary challenge or a historical challenge. We need to listen for theological misunderstandings that are sometimes part of their hesitancy to see what we see in the Scriptures. So, for example, with Jehovah’s Witnesses, for them to say, Jesus is the greatest man who ever lived, but not Almighty God, we need to listen and ask them how it is they’re reading these texts, right? Because for some people, they’re going to say, if Jesus was tired, if he got hurt, we see he was hungry or sleepy, then how can he possibly be God? Because there are all these verses that say he learned things and he’s very human.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:22:34]:
But there’s a misunderstanding about the doctrine of the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ, that Jesus is both human and. And divine. Fully human, fully divine. And so let’s ask those questions and find out where they’re coming from. On the Muslim side, sometimes people will say, unless I see a Bible verse that says Jesus claimed to be God the Father, then he didn’t claim to be God. And that’s not what the Christian claim is. Jesus didn’t claim to be a rival deity to God the Father, neither did he claim to be the exact same divine person as God the Father. And so we need to ask them why it is they’re having a hard time understanding Jesus as divine.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:23:14]:
Also. Implicit and explicit claims. Sometimes people will confuse the directness of a claim with the existence of a claim. Just because Jesus isn’t being direct all the time, like I and the Father are one, or before Abraham was, I am. He might be making an implicit claim like, son, your sins are forgiven. And the scribes were the theologians in the audience in Mark, chapter two, when he healed the paralytic, and they understood what he was doing. That’s why they thought he was blaspheming by speaking like God does, by acting like God does, because he’s making implicit claims that are virtual equivalents to the explicit claims claiming to be God. So, for example, I make an implicit claim.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:23:51]:
If I say, it’s our 26th wedding anniversary, I’m claiming to be married. Implicitly, I’m speaking like a marriage. That’s how married people talk. Or I could just wear a wedding ring and not even say anything. That’s how married people act. And so Jesus is speaking like God does, he’s talking like God does, and he’s also acting like God does. And so this is how we need to understand how and appreciate how the implicit claims are working in the Gospels. So it’s a lot of question asking.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:24:18]:
And I give specific Bible verses that you can go to with your Muslim friends, with your Jehovah’s Witness friends in the book. But that’s just generally when you’re talking to anybody, find out where they’re coming from so you can answer the question. That’s really the question behind the question, where their concern is so we can meet them where they’re at.

Doris [00:24:34]:
Yeah, those are great examples, too, because when you like talking to the woman who almost hit you over the head with the Bible about. About that, and, and you. And you share that in your book too, which is. Which is fun to read, and it just makes you think. And the fact being that you’re right to. Well, of course you’re right about that. But the thing about that you brought out is what I’m trying to say about it could be a communication gap. Like there could be something that somebody has misunderstood that caused them to even fall away from the church because they didn’t understand or someone presented it in a way that wasn’t truthful.

Doris [00:25:12]:
There’s a lot of different things even out there now that are kind of infiltrating into the church that are really not biblical. And so it could really cause people to go off the rails a little bit, you know, especially because it sounds good. You know, like we obviously know that we shouldn’t be playing with Ouija boards or, you know, we shouldn’t be using tarot cards at parties and things like that. People tend to think those are fun things to do and all of that. But it, you know, we really don’t need to be messing with that stuff because there’s a spiritual world we shouldn’t be messing with. But the fact being that, you know, that it. That there’s. There’s the truth.

Doris [00:25:50]:
But the truth can be slightly twisted and still sound like truth, but it really isn’t truth. So sticking to the. The facts, too is important, right? Like the historical facts and biblical facts.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:26:05]:
Yeah. So some things are not false. They’re just not. They’re just inadequate to describe who Jesus actually is. So if a Muslim friend says, we believe Jesus is a prophet, well, certainly there’s a prophetic dimension to Jesus ministry or Jesus was a great teacher. Of course he’s a great teacher. But that’s not all there is to Jesus. There’s a lot more to Jesus than that.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:26:24]:
But I think we can meet people where they’re at and start there and say. And agree with them, at least to a certain level. Say, yes, Jesus was Certainly a prophet. He was certainly a teacher. But let’s take a look at the things that he was saying about himself while he was teaching or that he was a miracle worker. Let’s take a look at the things he was saying while he was working miracles about who he is. And in the midst of the miracle, he’s saying, son, your sins are forgiven, for example, in the Healing of the Paralytic, chapter two of Mark. And he’s making it.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:26:55]:
That’s a divine claim, not just a human claim to say, son, your sins are forgiven. Because the scribes knew this was making yourself too close to God by claiming God’s prerogatives for yourself. And so they’re like, he’s blaspheming. I mean, they’re. Their minds. Right. But they’re thinking he’s blaspheming. Actually, they.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:27:12]:
They would be right. If Jesus wasn’t really God, then he would actually be guilty of this blasphemy that they thought he was guilty of. But it’s only because he really does have authority on earth to forgive sins. And that was validated when he healed the paralytic and the man got up and walked. That’s saying the Son of man does have authority on earth to forgive sins.

Doris [00:27:32]:
Yeah. Wow, that’s. That’s really a powerful thing. And how his claims were backed up by the things that, you know, the miracles that were being performed and the eyewitness accounts that you can’t discount the fact that there were eyewitnesses that basically gave up their life, you know, for this truth. And how you said to find the common ground. Because sometimes we could listen to what other people are saying, and they talk about Jesus in a way that’s very honoring and very respectful, and that they believe that he was a prophet, that he was a teacher, that he was a, you know, very learned man and a rabbi and all of that. But. But not really claiming who he really is or like, claiming to believe that he is.

Doris [00:28:20]:
Was God, you know, is God and so. Or who he really is. So when we think about, like, if we think. Well, other. Oh, they believe what we. They believe in the same God we do, but it really isn’t the same God because we believe in the God of the Trinity, which. And then people will say, well, it doesn’t say Trinity in the Bible. So.

Doris [00:28:40]:
But then you can also come back at that with the ways that Jesus also spoke Right. About that.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:28:47]:
Yeah. Jesus is making not just human claims. He’s not just making prophetic or priestly claims. He’s making divine claims. And so you have to ask yourself, is Jesus trying to set himself up as a rival deity to God the Father? No. Is he claiming to be the exact same person as God the Father? No. What Jesus is doing is introducing what we would call divine persons today, this concept of divine personage into the Jewish belief in the one God of Israel. And what we see later on is Paul incorporating Jesus into the very identity of the God of Israel by using the word Lord for Jesus most often and the word God for God the Father most often.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:29:31]:
Now, you might think Lord is less, but it’s actually not. Because the word Lord is Kyrios in Greek. That’s how the Old Testament translation, the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. That’s how it’s translated from. That’s how the divine name is translated. Yahweh in the Old Testament becomes the Lord Kyrios in the Greek Septuagint. And so when they say Jesus is Lord, well, what is Kyrios? It’s Yahweh. They’re saying Jesus is Yahweh.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:29:58]:
Peter does this in Acts chapter two. He says, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. He’s quoting Joel. Then he calls Jesus Lord. Jesus is the Lord you need to be calling to. And he says, let all of Israel know that Jesus is Lord and Messiah. And so it’s not a, it’s not a less lesser title. This is Yahweh.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:30:17]:
Jesus has the name which is above every name. Do you know the name which is above every name isn’t Jesus because other people were named Jesus. The name that is above every name is Yahweh. And that is the name of Jesus. Jesus name is Yahweh. And so it’s mind blowing when you think about it, that Jesus is being incorporated into the very identity of the God of Israel because he claimed to be divine and he rose from the dead to prove it.

Doris [00:30:42]:
Yeah, that was great how you emphasized the point that there’s a lot of people that ever named Jesus, you know, and. But you were talking about the Greek and how the translation is so important to understand the true meaning. You know, how it does point to Jesus being God. It just reminded me, it was kind of funny. My grandson was at the house and we had ordered food, you know, to be delivered. And I guess it was an uber Uber Eats or something and doordash. And so on the app, you know, it tells you when the driver’s coming. So his name happened to be Jesus.

Doris [00:31:22]:
I don’t know if he pronounced it Jesus or what is like. And the message was Jesus is coming soon or something like that. Jesus is on his way to you. And I was like, okay, that’s great. But we always kind of chuckle about that because it is kind of funny. But yeah, so. So the fact being that who, who Jesus really is and how he was referred to in, in the Gospels and in the Bible and that he is God and he. He doesn’t claim to be God the Father.

Doris [00:31:50]:
So the Israelites, like, they really believe they believed in God, but they didn’t believe that the Messiah had come yet. But I wondered to when the Messiah they were waiting for comes, is that Messiah. Do they believe that Messiah is God the Son or do they just believe the Savior?

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:32:13]:
Yeah, that’s why Jesus was revealing more about who he is, because he wasn’t the kind of Messiah most people were expecting. Nobody expected the Messiah to be God himself. And neither did they expect the Messiah to. To be a suffering Messiah as well. But when John’s disciples came to Jes. And they said, are you the one really who is to come or should we be waiting for somebody else? And this is in Matthew 11. Jesus says, Go back and tell John what you hear and see. And one of the things he said is that the lame walk, and that’s an example of the signs of the Messianic era.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:32:47]:
This is something that Jewish people were familiar with. There’s texts outside the Bible that talk about the signs of the Messianic era. For example, in the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Messianic Apocalypse, talks about these signs. And you know, the Messiah is here when these things start happening. And here’s another thing that historians will say, okay, Jesus is known to be not only a miracle worker, but one who miraculously heals lame people. There’s that scene where John’s disciples come to him and Jesus makes reference to the. The lame walk now and then. The healing of the paralytic is another one.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:33:19]:
Even Jesus disciples later on were healing in his name. Lame people like Acts, chapter three, Peter and John heal this lame man. So there are evidential handles to this. There are historical things that match up very nicely with what we see literarily. Like the way Mark is presenting Jesus in the Gospel.

Doris [00:33:37]:
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that because it’s really important to know the cultural aspects of it and that actually, because somebody might read that and we can say, oh, well, that’s fantastic that Jesus healed the lame man. But not knowing the connotation or like not knowing how what that really meant, what he was really saying and showing at that time in that culture.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:34:02]:
Yeah.

Doris [00:34:02]:
And that that would be part of the Messiah, like, coming. Like that would be a sign of it. So that’s. That’s pretty fascinating. I love that.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:34:11]:
Yeah. He doesn’t do miracles just to show he has supernatural power. He’s making points about his power. He’s making points about his authority and the. The forgiving of sins and the healing. I came across this just recently, Psalm 103, where God forgives sin and heals. It says, praise the Lord who gives. Praise the Lord who forgives all your sins and heals.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:34:32]:
And Jesus is doing both in Mark, chapter two. And so when they say he’s acting like God does, in their minds, you know, he’s speaking like God does. Why is this man talking like that? Jesus is showing, not just telling, but rather showing who he is. That’s why I say he claimed to be divine through a combination of his words and his deeds, because words are potentially cheap. He’s showing by who he. He’s showing more about who he is by the way he acts and the things he does.

Doris [00:35:00]:
Wow, thanks for bringing that out because. Especially to what you were saying about the miracles. Because sometimes, like when. When we read about the miracles, just take it as well. Yeah. Because he loved these people and he was wanting to heal them. And then sometimes you might also think, well, he was doing these miracles to get people’s attention so that they could hear more about what his true message was, talking about the kingdom of God. Um, but like, that you were just sharing an even deeper thing about what the purpose of the miracles were.

Doris [00:35:35]:
And so I think that’s going to really bless our listeners today, and we don’t have to know it all in order to witness to other people. If you can encourage someone right now who’s listening, that feels like I can’t share my faith because I don’t know anything, you know, I don’t know enough.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:35:52]:
Yeah, well, we don’t have to. So we have a command in 1st Peter 3:15 to be prepared, always to give an answer, a reason for the hope that you have in Jesus, but do it with gentleness and respect. So if someone wants to know how you can have hope in Jesus, we need to be able to give a reason. And that might be what Jesus has done in your life. That might be your own personal testimony. And if somebody asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, you know what the right answer is. I don’t know. That’s okay.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:36:19]:
I think people respect those who aren’t making up random things on the spot, but rather are just being very real and authentic and saying, you know what? That’s a really good question, actually. Either it’s something you’ve hadn’t thought about before, or maybe you’ve actually wondered about that before. But then I would say, tell them now. I’m really curious about that. Let me go back and do some work and look into the scriptures. And I’d love to get back to. Back to you and talk with you about this, because it’s something I’m kind of interested in too now, you know, and that way you’re going on a journey together rather than this me versus you kind of thing. If somebody asks you a hard question, just say, that’s a really good question.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:36:56]:
That happened to me on a podcast once. Somebody asked me a really tough question about some extra biblical texts that I hadn’t thought about in a while, and I thought, that’s a really good question. I’m gonna have to look into that again. So there’s no, no problem saying that kind of thing. And actually, I think lets people know that you’re being honest and authentic with them and that just furthers your relationship and hopefully you’ll be able to get back together with them and continue talking about Jesus.

Doris [00:37:20]:
Thank you. That is so encouraging. And two, like you were saying, we don’t have to know everything, but if there’s a question that we need to go look further into, it opens the door for another conversation.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:37:33]:
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes the best move you can make is just invite somebody into the next conversation or just get really curious about people and if they start saying things, ask them why they believe what they believe and understand more their story. If someone says, I used to be Christian, and then we don’t go to church anymore, you want to pursue that and ask them why they might tell you about all these things that happened in their lives, then you’re actually getting. People are giving you a gift, which is a window into their soul when they start telling you about their views on God, on Jesus, on the scriptures. And rather than jump in to try to correct their theology, we need to be able to listen and hear where they’re coming from. People are not used to being listened to, and sometimes that actually gives you more of a right to speak and a way for you to be heard is if you listen to them first. Before we start sharing our story and our ideas, that we would listen to their stories and their ideas.

Doris [00:38:25]:
Yeah, Such great advice and wisdom there. You know, give people grace and just listen. I think is. Is really what’s kind of come out a lot during our conversation is just like, listen, what is it that they’re saying and how can we help them? But knowing that we don’t have all the answers. And that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:38:48]:
You know, that’s sometimes the mark of a. Sorry to say, like a new. A new somebody who’s just newly learning these apologetic things is when somebody says something they disagree with, the Christian wants to jump in and correct them right away. Some of the most brilliant scholars I’ve ever been around are very patient and very quiet when you talk to them. They’ll just sit there and listen to you, and the person might be saying some awfully heretical thing to them. They’re just going to listen to you until you’re done talking, and then they might ask a nice, you know, pointed question to get you to consider maybe a different perspective you haven’t thought about before. But I think listening to people is some. Is a skill that we need to get back as, as evangelists, as apologists, and just as Christians in general who are ambassadors of Christ representing Jesus.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:39:35]:
How do we love people well, while also them being ready to speak truth at the same time.

Doris [00:39:40]:
Yeah, that’s so good. That’s golden right there. Love people well. And, and listen. And just like, we miss things because we’re too busy trying to think of what we’re going to say next, and then we miss what they’re saying, what they’re saying to us, and it’s right there in plain sight, you know, and, and so we could really miss something really important, like a really important opportunity, because we don’t know if we’re the one that was sent to this person. Like you were saying earlier, you know, we might need someone to be sent to us, but we might be the person that God is sending to someone else. So we don’t want to miss that because that’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of. So.

Doris [00:40:22]:
And it’s, it’s fantastic all the things that you are doing. And I would love if you would share how the listener can connect with you, how they can find your, your book and the other resources that you might have to offer and your website and your podcast, which is amazing.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:40:39]:
Yeah, you can find all the things at my website@apologeticsguy.com so if you follow me on social media as well, you can find me at apologeticsguy on Instagram on YouTube, on Facebook, on TikTok and the app I like to call X Twitter.

Doris [00:40:55]:
X Twitter. I know, it’s like, what do we say?

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:40:58]:
Twitter in more ways than one.

Doris [00:40:59]:
Yeah. So great. And I’m so glad that people can find you easily and grab this book because it is powerful and it’s a wonderful resource and it’s not something you just read it one and done. You go back and just continue to use it as a resource and also, you know, gather your friends together and. And do it as a group study and just go through it together and encourage one another in the faith because we’re called to encourage one another and build each other up because life is hard and the world is, you know, hard. So it’s so important for us to be able to do that with our brothers and sisters in Christ and. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Dr. Del Rosario.

Doris [00:41:40]:
It’s been really amazing having you on and I just enjoy this conversation so much. And there’s some really, really deep things that have come through that really has encouraged me and helped me to be able to even go deeper and share my faith and in different other ways that maybe I hadn’t thought of before. And so I know it will encourage a lot of others as well. And I hope to have you back on again sometime.

Dr. Mikel Del Rosario [00:42:04]:
Well, thank you so much, Doris. I appreciate the invitation.

Doris [00:42:07]:
Well, thank you. And I can’t wait to share more about this book and encourage others to grab it as well. And I’m certainly going to grab myself several copies. So thank you so much and we will talk soon.