2025-05-27
Podcast Evangelism
For those not familiar with Wes Huff, he is a Doctoral Student in Manuscript Scribal Culture, studying the habits and work of ancient scribes, which is information useful in reconstructing, deciphering, and performing textual criticism.
As Wes explains, he was just plodding along through life. Work, school, wife and children, and the small ministry he’s a part of with a couple friends called “Apologetics Canada.” Wes had done some amount of YouTube videos about apologetics and the Bible, and then started to do some response videos refuting the wild claims of Ancient Alien conspiracy theorist Billy Carson, who had been making the rounds on very prominent podcasts such as Rogan, PBD, Flagrant, and others. Carson had spread lies about the Bible to millions of people, things which were clearly false and didn’t stand up to even minor scholarly critique
So Wes made videos in response to these claims. The part where things pick up, is when a close Christian friend and neighbor of Carson asks him to come on his podcast and to debate about his ideas. This host not being up to the task himself, was suggested to reach out to Wes by a community member. The host had Wes on Virtually from Canada, and Carson and his arguments were utterly demolished, resulting in bad attitude from him, threatened lawsuits for releasing the podcast debate which tarnished his image, and a general train wreck of handling the situation.
All of that only made fame of the debate spread faster. Wes says that he didn’t even think the debate was that great or noteworthy as they didn’t have a chance to get deep into many topics before Carson walked out.
As word spreads, many of the high profile podcasts start to reach out to have Wes on to talk about the debate and fallout for Carson, and to make a defense of the Bible against things that Carson had spread previously on their shows.
The end result is that Wes Huff becomes quite famous overnight, and has spent the past several months appearing on dozens of shows, having hours and hours of conversation defending the historicity of the Bible, explaining Doctrine, and presenting the Gospel.
Gavin Ortlund makes the point that even just Wes’ most recent appearance on the Flagrant Podcast garnered a viewing of 2+million people on YouTube alone, which is about equivalent to the number of people reached by the 16 week New York evangelistic crusade by Billy Graham in 1957. Ortlund also claims that Wes’ appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast may have been one of the largest gospel broadcasts of all time, given Rogan’s multi million follower audience with 14-19 million followers on individual platforms, and likely much more cumulatively, plus the millions and millions of views from responses to responses to responses to the podcasts appearances.
I find it wild that God is such a miraculous God, that he can prepare people and their life circumstances for just such a time, that when it happens it takes off faster than anyone could ever imagine. No one could have planned or engineered the set of circumstances in which these lies, defense, drama, and response unfolded in a way to get the gospel to so many millions of people globally. Except for God.
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2025-05-18
Music
This morning at church we sang “Christus Victor.” I was first introduced to this song when our Worship Pastor, Scott, chose it as our song for the year, to learn and meditate on.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I attended the TGC25 Alive Together conference, and we had the privileged of singing this song there with 7,000+ siblings in Christ. Singing with that many Christians is something I have participated in twice now, and each time it has been an entirely overwhelming and tearfully joyful experience.
My wife and I agreed that we have each frequently felt the words of Elijah, “I am the only one left” as we go through life, and we need the reminder that we are not alone, that God has called a great crowd that no one can number, who long to serve before him day and night, no long hungering, no longer thirsting
9After these things I looked, and behold, a great crowd that no one was able to number, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes and with palm branches in their hands. 10And they were crying out with a loud voice, saying, "Salvation to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" 11And all the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12saying, “Amen! ==Praise and glory, and wisdom and thanksgiving, and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever== ^[Literally “for the ages of the ages”]. Amen!” 13And one of the elders answered, saying to me, “These who are dressed in the white robes—who are they, and from where have they come?” 14And I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, ”These are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15Because of this, they are before the throne of God, and they serve ^[Or “worship”] him day and night in his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter ^[Literally “will take up residence over”] them. 16==They will not be hungry any longer or be thirsty any longer, nor will the sun ever beat down on them, nor any heat, ^[An allusion to Isa 49:10] 17because the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and will lead them to springs of living waters, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”== ^[An allusion to Isa 25:8]
I’m thankful for my Pastor Scott, and his heart for choosing songs that are beautiful, moving, and theologically rich. As the song sticks in my head, I think about the words over and over, the biblical truth. God is so high and powerful and great and glorious and immense and nothing can stand before him, or beside him, or hide from him, and yet he chose to redeem me, to add me to that innumerable crowd of all kinds of believers whom he’s chosen.
Supper
We also had the Lord’s Supper this morning, and as we partook it, I was thinking about what’s I’ve been listening to about the Real Presence of Christ in his supper. I’ve added some notes there about the topic.
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