Join Dr. Mark Turman, Executive Director of Denison Forum, for a dynamic roundtable discussion with Dr. Ryan Denison and Josh Miller. Together, they explore a range of timely topics, from the impact of the Gather25 Conference and the growing unity among Christians worldwide to the groundbreaking possibilities of quantum computing.
The conversation also highlights the rise in Bible sales, innovative ministries like the ACTS 17 Collective, and movements such as the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which seek to bring hope and righteousness to society. Don’t miss this insightful discussion that weaves together current events and a biblical perspective to inspire faith and action.
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Topics
- (01:56): Discussing the Gather 25 Conference
- (15:06): Exploring Quantum Computing
- (18:41): The Role of Technology and Faith
- (29:40): Encouraging Signs of Faith and Hope
- (47:39): Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Resources
- Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison
- Gather25 Conference
- Gather25 FAQ
- Microsoft Claims Quantum Computing Breakthrough by Creating New State of Matter – WSJ
- The ACTS 17 Collective is introducing tech leaders to Jesus
- The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship
- The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
- ACTS 17 Collective
- Joe Rogan interviews Wesley Huff, a Christian apologist
- Denison Forum (@DenisonForum) / X
- Denison Forum (@denisonforum) • Instagram photos and videos
- Denison Ministries
About Dr. Mark Turman
Dr. Mark Turman is the Executive Director of Denison Forum and Vice President of Denison Ministries. Among his many duties, Turman is most notably the host of The Denison Forum Podcast. He is also the chief strategist for DF Pastors, which equips pastors and church leaders to understand and transform today’s culture.
About Dr. Ryan Denison
Ryan Denison, PhD, is the Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum. Ryan writes The Daily Article every Friday and contributes writing and research to many of the ministry’s productions. He holds a PhD in church history from BH Carroll Theological Institute after having earned his MDiv at Truett Seminary. He’s authored The Path to Purpose, What Are My Spiritual Gifts?, How to Bless God by Blessing Others, 7 Deadly Sins, and has contributed writing or research to every Denison Forum book.
About Josh Miller
Josh Miller is the Chief of Staff and Chief Strategy Officer at Denison Ministries. He is also a disciple of Jesus, husband, and father. He has been a musician, filmmaker, restaurant manager, songwriter, barista, worship leader, pastor and is still trying to figure out who the heck he is. He and his wife Deven live in Plano, TX with their two young boys.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
[00:00:00] Dr. Mark Turman: Welcome to the Denison Forum Podcast. I’m Mark Turman, Executive Director of Denison Forum, host for today’s conversation, where we seek to help you live by faith and not fear. And we’re going to do this a little bit different from many of our normal formats. We’ve done a little bit of this with Dr. Jim Denison, as well as Dr. Mark Turman. But we’re going to have a little bit of a different kind of round table conversation about some things that are going on in the world that might be of interest to you and help you to discern them and see them from a biblical perspective. Joining me today are two of my coworkers, Dr. Ryan Dennison senior editor for theology, who you’ve heard on our podcast before. He writes for our daily article on a regular basis, as well as for our website. And he’s going to join us as well as Josh Miller, who is chief of staff with Denison ministries. Josh has had a number of different roles at Denison ministries, but now serves as chief of staff and chief strategy officer. Josh has been on our podcast before, but it’s been a while. So guys, how about you say good morning?
[00:01:11] Josh Miller: Morning. Morning, good to be here.
[00:01:13] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, so we are trying to figure out ways to just be creative and useful in creating conversations that help you to find clarity and understanding. And we each are bringing this morning a topic to the table.
That we’re going to introduce and then kick it around. And if you have questions about it, you can certainly email us and we’ll follow up with you just info at Denison forum. org. And you’ll find all of that in the show notes, along with a lot of other links that we’re going to point you to this morning, in case you’re interested in any of these topics and want to learn more we’re growing, we’re learning.
And finding ways to just understand the world from a biblical perspective. And that’s what we want to do with today’s conversation. Ryan, we’re going to come to you first. You talk, you want to talk about the gather 25 conference. What in the world is that?
[00:02:04] Dr. Ryan Denison: Thanks. And I wondered the same thing when it, when I was first made aware of it.
Someone came to our Sunday school class one Sunday morning and was just talking about how our church was going to be hosting the event and told us a bit about it and it, it sparked an interest. And so I spent time trying to learn more about it. And it’s a global conference that kicks off on February 28th.
And so by the time this comes out, it’ll be just a couple days later. And it kicks off at 7 o’clock p. m. central time and then continues on for 25 hours straight. And so I, I don’t think they expect people to actually be part of that entire thing. That would be quite a big ask. But I think what makes it interesting is that every continent on earth with the exception of Antarctica is going to host part of the event where there’ll be Broadcasting it in their language.
They’ll be leading it. The goal is to kind of help the church realize how big we actually are and how diverse the community of God is in a way that helps us to move beyond kind of our more siloed communities on a more local level. And one of the things that makes it unique is that they’re live streaming it in a way that the technology has developed to the point where they can do auto translation.
And so different groups on different continents will be leading the worship, leading the teaching, and they’ll be doing it in their own language, but everyone around the world will be able to follow along. And so they’ve been partnering with local churches, with other groups. If you go to gather25. com, you can learn more about the event and how to.
How to host, I don’t think it’ll be too late by the time this comes out, and they’ll even be keeping the recording up for a week or two after the event so that if you can’t participate live or there’s parts you missed, then you can go back and catch it. But what’s really cool is just the way that the technology is enabling us to be able to.
Have a little slice of kind of the diversified unity that the body of Christ really is, and a little piece of what heaven’s going to be like in a lot of ways, I think, and so that’s kind of the goal of the event, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what God does with it. Another part of it that I thought was kind of interesting, though, is that a lot of these revivals, these events, kind of, they, the idea is you have the, you have the event, and then there’s a whole lot of stuff planned out for afterwards on, you know, follow up things, and how to continue to engage in discipleship, and they really made a point to emphasize that Their planning has gone into this 25 hour conference.
What happens after that is really up to the Holy Spirit and up to you. And I found that to be kind of a refreshing tactic to just kind of reinforce the need for the Holy Spirit to be the one that guides how all the development discipleship goes forward. And I know those were the things that first stood out to me when I first learned about the conference and I’m excited to see what God does with it.
But I was curious, do y’all have any thoughts on, have y’all Heard of the conference before. Do you have any thoughts on kind of the way they have it set up or anything that you might hope to see what God does?
[00:05:00] Dr. Mark Turman: Josh, what do you think? What’s your initial reaction?
[00:05:02] Josh Miller: Yeah. I mean, I hadn’t, hadn’t heard of this one before.
You know, I’ve seen different versions of this effort on occasion over the years. And I think it’s pretty cool to see how technology has helped make this more possible increases the quality of it, increases the real time nature of it, and expands it beyond just like a citywide type group of churches coming together, or even a nationwide I just think one of the, that’s one of the cool things about technology and what that’s allowed us to do.
But I love things like this. I think there, anytime we can get outside of our small little bubble and, and build a greater perspective of what the church really is, I think that’s incredibly important. You know, I think we all have this sort of default setting to think that we are the right ones or we are the ones that have it all figured out or even are the most important ones.
And we may never say that out loud, but in the way we live our lives, we kind of think I think the world revolves around us and our thing and even our churches to some degree. And so I think anytime we can get outside of our bubble, outside of our normal circle and see how God is moving beyond us and in different ways, in different communities and yet how he’s doing you know, accomplishing this greater purpose across the world, I think is really healthy for all of us and gets us outside of Kind of just our small little world that we can live in from time to time.
And so I think things like this are just really important for us to at minimum be aware of, but ideally participate in as best we can to gain some unique perspective outside of the things we kind of do day in and day out.
[00:06:32] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, I love that same idea is that, you know, we’re part of a really big story.
And we ought to be getting that from our reading and, and study of scripture that God is up to a very, very big story that’s been spanning several millennia. And we don’t know how much he may extend that. But for however long we are a part of a big, big God sized story and getting a snapshot of that.
in our own generation through something like this. And like I said, seeing a very positive, redemptive use of technology. I remember several decades ago that Billy Graham did something like this using radio basically in his day. And I think they, they were amazed that they were able to basically have a broadcast in multiple languages through the use of radio.
I think they, they touted that they were able to reach a billion people with the message of the gospel through the Billy Graham crusade. But just look how far we’ve come now to where we can do it worldwide. We can do it in what will likely be surely a higher quality streaming video and audio experience.
And so I think it’s just fabulous. Ryan, as you’ve kind of looked into this, are there certain topics? that they plan to talk about. I know that there will likely be incredible music from every venue. Are they trying to focus on certain aspects of the gospel, certain aspects of what it means to be holy or to be serving the world?
Have you seen anything like that?
[00:08:11] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, I think the main focus of it, I think, is just trying to help the world’s The world’s Christians unite around the idea of sharing the gospel. One of the things they talk about on the website is that there’s, they say there’s about seven and a half billion people in the world, two and a half billion Christians, and when you look at it that way, the idea of taking the gospel to every corner and making sure that everyone’s heard doesn’t seem quite as daunting.
It’s kind of just a, almost a three to one or two to one kind of ratio. And so I think that’s part of what they’re hoping to accomplish with this. And. Is allowing each continent to share how they’re sharing the gospel with others but also to make us aware of some of the challenges they face.
One of the parts I’m most interested in seeing from the conference is that One of the I guess the persecuted church is kind of filling it as a stand in for one of the continents Not a whole lot of Christians in an in Antarctica So they’re kind of giving that time to the persecuted church instead and it’s been interesting They say a location of where each continent is broadcasting with the exception of them And so I think the goal is to really give the opportunity to reinforce how Different people’s experiences with the gospel are depending on where they live.
But within that’s also see just the unity that comes from The fact that we all serve the same jesus and I think that’s one of the main focuses is on just creating that awareness of The fact that we all have the same savior and that all of us need the same savior So regardless of what that looks like in our culture or regardless of how god is calling us to share that message with others it’s still the same gospel and I think that’s just especially in our culture today and on a Western culture where the things get so divisive and the culture is so divisive.
I, I really look forward to kind of just a call to unity that transcends all that and gets us back to the core of, it’s okay to disagree on a lot of theological things. It’s okay to disagree on a lot of, even a lot of beliefs that are important to how we worship God, if the core of the gospel is the same.
And I think that’s going to be one of the main emphases that comes out of this is just reminding people of that fact.
[00:10:18] Josh Miller: I’m thinking about when sorry, Mark, I was thinking about when when Jesus came, his message was so controversial because it was not just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles. And so there’s been this, something about the gospel since the very beginning that should take you outside of yourself, where there’s this perspective of, Again, about me or my way.
And yet when I think we’re living out our faith in a healthy way, it should take us beyond our own perspective. And I, and I agree with you, Ryan, that when we’re seeing this divisiveness in the culture, it is a symptom of this kind of smaller circle we’ve built around ourselves that we, we know the right way, have the right path.
And those that are outside of it are, we’re almost antagonistic towards. And so I just think it’s great and very Jesus like to be looking at how the gospel can cross some of those barriers and bridge us together. Even when we do have differing backgrounds and opinions and cultures and perspectives, the gospel should supersede all of those divisions.
It doesn’t mean those divisions aren’t real. It doesn’t mean we don’t have some things to work out together and some opinions that may not always mesh, but the gospel should always be superseding any of those distinctions or differences. And so I think events like this give us an opportunity to focus on some of those major and most important things rather than the smaller things that divide us.
[00:11:39] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, absolutely. And I was in a meeting that ran along those lines just yesterday. And that idea of what’s the core of the gospel that hopefully we can all agree on. You can find that on the website gather25. com. They have a statement of their core belief of what the definition of the gospel is.
But I’ll be interested to tune in just to see how they define the persecuted church. Because persecution can happen anywhere in any context, including in the Western church. But I think the devil Taylor makes what persecution looks like in any context, right? And it can be literally being thrown in jail because you name Christ is your savior.
But it can also look a lot of different ways. I was talking to a new person that I met this week who was talking about his daughter being in New York City and that she gets mocked for Going to church on Sunday instead of going to work and, you know, trying to get more work done on a Sunday morning in the work that she does, and she gets mocked it at her company for doing that.
And so it’d be interesting just to see how they frame the definition of the persecuted church and, and how they explain it. But it makes me think of, I had a conversation with, a cultural apologist named Sky Jatani a couple of weeks ago on our podcast and we were talking about this. We were talking about how in the West we we tend to divide an emphasis on personal faith and personal holiness away from issues of righteousness and justice, sometimes called social justice.
And I asked him, I said how could we get better at bringing those two things together in a biblical way? And he said if you just get outside of this country, you probably would get a better perspective on it. And he told me a story. He said, you know, it’s been shown that if you go like and take the story of the prodigal son, Luke 15, if you read it in different cultures, different cultures hear it differently.
And he pointed out, you know, if you, if you go and read the story of the prodigal son in particularly like an African country and you ask the people after you read the story to them, what do you remember? In America, we’ll, we might remember the, you know, the. Lavish, ridiculous, foolish living of the younger son he said, but if you go and read that in Africa, the first thing they’re, they’re likely to tell you that they noticed was that there was a famine in the land.
And that’s why the younger son lost all of his resources. It wasn’t necessarily or only. Because he was being foolish with the resources that he had and that led him to a place of desperation, they would look at it and say if he ran into the circumstances of a famine we know what that’s like.
And figuring that into the context makes you see the story a little bit differently. So yeah, it’s just, just amazing what technology can do for us and, and the kind of experiences and snapshots. So Ryan, give us the details next. Friday and Saturday, right? The 28th and stretching into the first.
Is that right?
[00:14:41] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yes, sir. That begins Friday at 7 o’clock central time. The idea since it starts everywhere globally it’s a different time everywhere. And but if you go to the gather 25 website then you’ll be able to tell where that is for your area to get more information on how you can be part of it and just what that looks like.
[00:14:59] Dr. Mark Turman: All right, we’ll include that. That link in our show notes as well. So yeah, looking forward to seeing how that works out. Josh, you wanted to talk about quantum computing.
[00:15:09] Josh Miller: So you’re gonna,
[00:15:10] Dr. Mark Turman: you’re gonna take us over our pay grade really fast.
[00:15:14] Josh Miller: Yeah, boy, this is a risky move on my part because this gets outside of my expertise so quickly.
So I’ll try and unpack this briefly as best as I can. And then we’ll lead to a more question that’s maybe more in our wheelhouse than the actual topic itself. But I stumbled on this news release the other day about Microsoft announcing a new quantum computer. And Google had done this recently as well.
And if you’re wondering what that is, I was as well. I’ve heard the term quite a few times that people have been exploring this idea of quantum computing. You know, I’m still trying to catch up to AI and what the implications are there. And we’ve been talking about You know how that is probably a world changing technology in terms of what it does to jobs and every industry is going to be affected by A.
I. To some degree. A. I. Still operates on traditional computing. And you know, there’s obviously extremely powerful chips. The computers are getting faster and better more, more powerful, but it’s still a traditional model of computer. And so quantum computing. Completely changes the game and in fact and as part of this announcement, they said they created a new state of matter So we know about states of matter in terms of liquid solid gas plasma, but this is called a topological Superconductor now don’t ask me what that means but it That’s how world changing this is, this technology could be, in that it involves a new state of matter that has yet to exist.
And from my understanding, in terms of how computers work now versus how this would work, typically computers solve problems in a linear fashion. So if you give a computer a hundred problems to solve, It will solve 5, go down the list. And now as computers get faster over time, they’re able to solve those 50 problems faster and faster, more efficiently.
What supercomputing does is that it can look at all 50 problems at once and solve them simultaneously. And so in terms of the speed in which it can address problems and perform. Whatever you ask it to do. It’s just hard to even explain how much faster it is from the article in Wall Street Journal. I was reading here.
It says that when Google unveiled their experimental quantum computer, it needed just five minutes to complete a calculation that most supercomputers could not finish in 10 septillion years. Oh, my God, five minutes versus 10 septillion years. I don’t even understand what I’m saying right now, but just the we think AI is incredible and beyond our understanding and is going to change the world.
This is just a completely different ballgame. And so beyond just picking up my jaw up off the floor in trying to, you know, process what we’re talking about here and where, where this could go. And for the record, this is still experimental, not built at scale yet, more problems to solve, but they’re making advancements rapidly here.
But it made me just start to wonder again, what this does to the world. Kind of a similar question we have even with AI. And I, I began to. Wonder what does this do for us or to us when we begin to have this technology that is so beyond powerful that You wonder what problem can it not solve? Now there’s a whole question around what problems could it also create by having that amount of power and technology which is similar to the ai question, but when you look back at history As we advance in technology, I’ve begun to wonder, do we begin to decrease in our need for God as a society?
So you look back, back in the day and you know, people would pray for rain and we live in Dallas, Texas. But even in the hottest of summers, drought seasons, I’m not really ever worried that water is going to come out of my tap. It’s, there’s not this, there’s not been any time in my life where there’s been a desperation.
For for rain to come so that we can have water that became a need that I no longer connect with my relationship with God. To be honest, I just don’t think about it. As we’ve as medical, you know, advancements have come. There are a lot of things that back in the day, probably the only option was to pray.
You had strep throat. You had some kind of Mhm. Major flu or illness, a heart problem. What was your option but to ask for God to intervene? And yet as technology has advanced, we have begun to exchange our dependency on God for a reliance on technology. And so it’s, it really started to mess with me a little bit.
I was, as I was thinking about the advancements that are to come here, and we’ve already seen With AI were where you would need to go find information just from a knowledge standpoint where we would go to God to ask for or go to scripture to how do I solve this? How do I deal with this? Probably by default.
Most people are going to type that into chat GPT before they open their Bibles as a culture. And so as we now get into You know, AI is not the end of it. It’s going to continue to advance. Technology is going to continue to increase. How do we handle this sort of inverse relationship between as technology gets more powerful, it begins to replace our dependence and need for God in our own lives, personally, as Christians, and certainly on a larger scale as a society.
And I just wanted to, I wanted to get your thoughts on that. I’m just kind of processing this, wrestling with that, even looking at my own self and going. Where am I depending on things or technologies rather than something that I should still be turning to God first, or at least partnering with him in.
What do we do with this and where do we go? So Ryan, Mark, what are your thoughts?
[00:21:18] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, the first thing is, is I really want you to spell septillion because that’s either something that has to do with a really big number and math, or it’s a dinosaur that they just, you know, discovered from somewhere that we didn’t know about and goes right alongside the tyrannosaurus rex and all the rest of them.
I, I just need you to spell what that, what that word is because it just, that blows my mind. And now, now I’m thinking. Okay, I was already kind of being tensed up by A. I. And some of the things that you know this this conference that Ryan was talking about probably doesn’t happen if you don’t have some level of A.
I. Capacity to make it possible for people to be connected worldwide in a a simultaneous streaming worship teaching environment that probably doesn’t happen with without the aid of some level of supercomputing and AI technologies and and now you’re telling me that there’s some beast behind that that could be even bigger and And you know, I heard a recent conversation about technology that, you know, it’s interesting that we’re seemingly in some ways walking up to AI with a little bit more of a guarded perspective than we did with Say the Internet or particularly social media that we’re seeing the the in many ways, the unintended outcomes of social media on a generation of young people, and that’s causing us maybe to slow down and in terms of our embrace.
Relative to technology and how it comes at us. And then the counterargument that came right behind that was there are those people who say no, this is what we were born for. We were born to evolve to these kinds of understandings and these kinds of technologies on that. It’s just the natural.
progression of what being a human being and being a human race is all about. I’m trying to work that out in my mind. I’m, I’m more about being hesitant at this point because of some of the things I’ve seen relative to, like I said, technology like social media. And, and the thing that concerns me is, is that because we are fallen human beings.
Who live a broken depraved experience in many ways that need, that that is the reason that Jesus came, that we, we tend to take an attitude of if we can do it, then we will do it instead of stopping and saying if we can do it, we ought to also ask the question, should we do it? And you’re seeing questions like that relative to the use of AI and medical and technologies in the world of medicine AI and supercomputing in the world of warfare.
You’re seeing those kinds of questions somewhat being asked but I’m, I’m more on the concern of because of our sinful, broken human nature that we’re not going to ask. Or slow down because of ethical concerns that we should be challenge, challenging ourselves with. That’s, that’s kind of where I start with this.
[00:24:23] Dr. Ryan Denison: And I, I think along with that is there’s just this pervasive view in our culture, I think, which is understandable in a lot of ways that the more knowledge we have about something, the better we understand it. And I think those are fundamentally different concepts in a lot of ways where and I think a lot of it’s motivated by just, we have.
Seem to move past this idea of everything around us as a mystery. We’ve gained so much knowledge about the world and how it works and our ability to measure the world and you know how old something is in ways that are just like what is something composed of down to the molecular level. It is interesting that the further you go down it always seems like there’s another level to find and at some point that should be a little humbling as well I think but I don’t.
To kind of do your point I don’t think we’re real good at the humbling part of that. I think it’s more just we tend to gravitate towards the, Oh, I know more about this so I understand it better. And it’s kind of interesting. At our Sunday school class we’ve been, at church we’ve been going through a Bible project series on spiritual beings the last, for the last couple of months and One of the things that God’s really kind of been hitting me with is just the degree to which we kind of equate more knowledge with a deeper understanding or a better understanding.
And I think when we look at the world around us that it is, in a lot of ways, I don’t think we’ve necessarily progressed. and how we view the world because we have started to minimize the presence of God. We’ve minimized the impact of God. One of the things out of that spiritual being series is just we tend to separate, I think, the spiritual from the physical in ways the Bible doesn’t.
And just because we can measure it better doesn’t mean we’re right all the time. And I think that’s that’s a trend we have to fight against. And the more compute like quantum computing advances, the more understanding we’ll get of things, the more knowledge at least we’ll get of things. But Where we’re going to get into trouble I think as a human race is just if we allow that extra knowledge to make us puffed up and prideful about, you know, the degree to which we can understand the world or the degree to which we can control the world.
Because one of the things that’s pretty standard throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament alike, is that God doesn’t really appreciate when we tend to try and think we, we’ve got this without him. And I think that’s going to be one of the tendencies that comes with this is just. It’s going to further increase humanity’s belief that we don’t need God, and that’s a pretty dangerous place to be.
[00:26:59] Josh Miller: It’s always fascinating to me to, to see current events and issues and especially in the space of technology and look back to even Genesis and how much you can Point back to just the garden and Adam and Eve, the initial sin of pursuing independence and knowledge and apart from God you know, essentially that was the, the fruit of the tree was, Hey, you, you can be like God, you can do this without God.
And you’re actually, if you just had more understanding and knowledge. You wouldn’t really need him anymore. And so the same temptation exists today now and maybe even more as we move forward and technology continues to advance beyond our own mental capacity and intelligence. There will be a temptation to look to other things or to ourselves as the source of truth and source of, of hope and try and, and bring that power onto ourselves.
rather than to walk in a dependent relationship with God. And it’s a new, a new temptation in a new time, but it’s also the same. And there’s, there’s something so interesting about that. And most things we face in our culture, in our world, that we’re, we’re, there’s a new name and a new thing, but it’s the same kind of human problems that we’ve had since the beginning, you know.
[00:28:22] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, it’s, it reminds me of something I listened to this week in which I’m not a philosopher, but I was listening to a philosopher. And he was talking about, you know, that we, we, we have been living in the age that is on the other side of the enlightenment, where the focus became that, you know, we could solve basically any and all of our problems.
by our reason, by our ability to think in our ability to gain knowledge and information. And we still have very much that idea. You know, we do know, and it is true to a certain extent that knowledge is power. There’s no question about that. But we tend to live in this idea that If we just know more than we will understand more and we will be able to create a perfect utopian environment if we just can get to more knowledge and information and it doesn’t address the real core need of our life which is the the breakdown in our soul, the, the, the, the desire in our soul to live without God, as you mentioned, Josh, and to try to figure out how to be our own gods and to build our own world without humbling ourselves before him, which is the.
The fundamental aspect of what faith is all about. So yeah, something to keep our eyes on for sure. And really is a pretty good segue to the thing I wanted to talk about, which trying to get ready for this conversation. I just started thinking about two or three things that have come across my radar recently.
And tie into when we were starting this new year thinking about it, preparing for it. We said that one of the things we wanted to try to emphasize on the, on this podcast was to bring a greater sense of hope into people’s lives that when they listen to this, that they’re getting a breath of fresh air.
They hear so much. Negativity, so much anger, so much conflict that stirs and generates fear particularly in just general news sources and that type of thing. Those things matter. We need to be informed about things like war and about possible pandemics and other things that are going on. But we also need to know that there’s a lot of things that are happening that are bringing out hope and so there were two or three things one of them being ryan an article that you wrote a week or so ago, but I just came back to this idea that you know, bible sales are up by 22 at the end of 2024 I did some digging on that and that’s not just an evangelical reality, that actually that’s true of many catholics which I thought was intriguing.
I was born into a large Roman Catholic family. First decade or dozen years of my life. I went to the Catholic church with my parents. My parents were totally highly invested in this church and helped to strengthen and build it for. At least two and a half decades until a series of disappointments kind of knocked them out of the church.
But one of the things I remember growing up and talking to my mom about at one point, we had one Bible that sat on the coffee table and it was huge. I mean, it was easily, you know, 12, 14 inches tall and four or five inches thick. I mean, it was more than I could pick up for most of my childhood. And later on, as I started to under a little, understand a little bit more about faith, my mom said, Oh we’re not, we’re not encouraged to read the Bible on our own.
We need to go to the church and we need to let the priest interpret and teach us the Bible. And so we honor the Bible. We revere the Bible, but we go to the church. So let the church. Explain and teach and instruct and There’s an element of that that’s true, but what was interesting in my research about increased Bible sales is that there’s been a huge, huge push within the Roman Catholic Church for, for individual believers to read the Bible and to study the Bible.
In fact, one of their resources is a podcast. in a year that’s hosted by a priest whose name is Father Mike Schmidt at one point in recent months, that podcast became the number one podcast in the nation or perhaps in a larger scale. I don’t know. But that’s pretty amazing when you think about that kind of a podcast makes me think of what we saw, saw a few weeks ago when Joe Rogan, who is considered the most popular podcaster in the world and not just consider that he has the data to back it up, but he hosted a Christian apologist by the name of Wesley Huff.
They had a three hour conversation, mostly about why the Bible is a credible document and an inspired document. So that was all very encouraging to me. Ryan, your article that you wrote a few days ago talking about An organization called the AX17 Collective. So I’m just going to pause so that you can talk a minute and talk about your article.
Give us the 90 second overview of what the AX17 Collective is that you wrote about. People will be able to find this article. In our show notes as well, if they missed it from a few days ago, what is it what is it about in terms of a ministry that you wrote about?
[00:33:33] Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, it’s a group based in Silicon Valley who has made it their mission and felt like it was their calling to really reach out to members of that community.
One of the things they talk about or she shared in an interview with the New York Times. One of the families behind it is just this idea that so much of the gospel is this idea that Jesus came for the poor and the destitute and the needy and he 100 percent did. But one of the things I thought was interesting, she says, like, but the rich and the powerful need Jesus too.
And so that’s kind of, they feel like that’s their ministry is Jesus is that God has placed them in this community where the idea that it’s rational to believe in God is. Or at least has been fairly anathema for the longest for most of its history in Silicon Valley and in that culture, and they’re really trying to help people see at the very least that it’s okay to entertain the thought that God exists.
It’s okay to entertain the thought that Jesus might. Actually be the savior we need and to help people do that through hosting conferences that entice them to come hear from industry leaders that will share share perspectives about their work perspectives about their lives, things that just kind of bring get people in the door and then almost in an Oh, by the way, I’m a Christian to sort of thing to help.
To help them understand that Jesus is part of my life. Jesus is just as much as work is. And Jesus is just as real as all the other things that we believe. And really trying to entice people to just give Jesus a chance. And I think back to kind of the conversation we had with the frost outfit about a month ago.
Where it was a lot the same where he was talking about how in his circles very different from Silicon Valley but a similar mindset in terms of just this belief that it’s irrational to believe in God has become sort of the de facto view and just the effort he’s making to help people see it’s really not that way and it doesn’t have to be.
And so it’s, It’s in a lot of ways, just a different side of that same argument, but it was encouraging to see what God’s doing and the way that God is reaching out. And it was a good reminder that God wants all people to come to him, not just those who are aware of him, not just those who are aware of their need for him, like Jesus.
Loves everyone. And we’re called to do the same.
[00:35:50] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it just reminded me of some of the great stories in the Bible. You know, like you said, we see Jesus reaching out to people who were the down and outers, but he was also there for the up and inners. You might say that would have been people like Zacchaeus.
Nicodemus, who, you know, famously comes to him at night and the probably the most well known Bible verse out of John 3, 16 is out of a conversation between Jesus and one of the elite members of his of his community at that point. And you know, Jesus has this conversation with a guy that’s famously called the rich young ruler.
By the way, the only, the only time that Jesus has what some call a failed evangelistic experience because the guy doesn’t, doesn’t accept what Jesus is saying to him. But I love that idea and I. I love when you were talking and writing about this collective called Act 17, Act 17 collective stands for acknowledging Christ in technology and society.
And one of the quotes that came out of that interview that Ryan was talking about the Wall Street Journal these people that are leading the ministry Trey and Michelle Stevens say that they are redeeming success. or redefining success for those who define the culture which I thought was a really, really big insight.
You know, we just had the inauguration. We saw all of these big tech leaders gathered in the rotunda and we’re all wondering, you know, where might God be able to work in this environment among these people who now have so much power and influence through the S use of technology. And just anyway, that just, Brought me a lot of hope that there was somebody who had said, you know, we need to go establish a beachhead of ministry, even in that environment.
And then one last thing that brought me a lot of, of encouragement, kind of like where we started talking about the, the gather 25 conference a conference that just finished a couple of days ago in Europe is called the ARC conference. ARC stands for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. One of the kind of key faces or voices of this is the podcaster Jordan Peterson.
Many people will recognize him not a Christian, but very much a part of this effort called the ARC Movement. Really powerful gathering of several hundred, maybe several thousand leaders, particularly from Europe and some from America. A really profound address that I listened to by a Christian cultural apologist that many people know called Oz Guinness that was just phenomenal to listen to and how these people are coming, not overtly Christian, but they are embracing the ideas of of righteousness and of justice.
Thank you. liberal democracy, small l by the way, way of liberal democracy that are the principles of democracy built upon Christian ideas. from Western Europe all the way into America. And just to see these people coming to say, you know what, we must do better as a society and as a culture around the world.
You know, I heard one commentator say that, you know, we have to embrace not only what God’s doing in America, but also what God is doing in Europe and around the world. That that is vital to our health and progress as a society. And so just to see something like that the idea of gathering for responsible citizenship, you know, all of these ideas, Bible, people reading the Bible, people establishing ministry in an environment like high tech environments.
And then. People from business and religion and medicine and education and politics coming together to try to figure out better ways and better solutions. All of that just kind of gives me a greater sense of hope that I don’t really see when I just turn on my general news website or, or news program.
Are y’all seeing positive things like that that make you have a sense of hope as well?
[00:39:49] Josh Miller: I, I totally do. I think there’s, it’s been exciting to see Jesus come back up in the conversation in a positive way. And at minimum people are finding out that some of the alternatives they have pursued don’t bear fruit like they hoped.
And you know, you think about Jesus incredible claim that he is the way and the truth and the life. And so what that means is that all the alternatives at some point reach a dead end. And that may be tomorrow or that may be at eternity, at some point there is a dead end. And so I think what we’ve seen in some of these alternatives are people, people are finding the dead end early, which I think is fantastic.
And that’s the prayer is that, that people would become aware of their need for Christ and that. That’s what happened with all of us, right? That is the gospel that we pursued our own way and found out that that was lacking and we were lacking and needed Jesus to come and rescue us. And so I think that’s what we’re seeing the starting points of in some of these kind of other cultural movements that have looked for alternate realities or alternate saviors and other ways to find redemption and hope.
that haven’t panned out and people are going maybe there was something to this faith thing, maybe just being smart enough or, or having enough knowledge like we were talking about earlier, doesn’t quite satisfy the needs of my soul, doesn’t quite explain all the things that I would like it to explain.
And so I think there is this searching that’s happening again for something that actually has meaning and matters. And that’s where there’s opportunity for us as believers to. To use our sphere of influence to point people back to Christ as they’re searching, as people are looking to do that. That’s what to the act 17 story, the act 17 collective.
What a great example of somebody going, where has God placed me? And how can I point people to him? You know, not, none of us on this conversation would be equipped to go start an Act 17 collective. You could see as we stumbled through our quantum computing conversation. We are not the guys to do that.
And so we’re, we are doing our best, I hope on most days to, to honor where God has put us and to point people to Jesus where we are. But for everybody even listening to this conversation, I’d encourage. You’d ask that question of yourself, where has God placed me? As the world is beginning to search, people are finding their dead ends in whatever way they’ve pursued and are looking for an alternative and looking for the way and the truth.
If we are going to live out what we say we believe about Jesus being the way, what an opportunity for us to begin to point people towards the way that actually bears fruit for eternity. And that is, I think, the call for Christians in this culture today. is to go, where has God placed me? Who has God placed me around?
And how can I use my sphere of influence, what God has done in me to point others to truth, hope, and life. And that’s, I know that’s the hope of this podcast, that we could speak to some of these issues and, and point people in that direction as well. That’s the, the call I’m wrestling with in myself is.
How can I live this out in a way that points people well to, to Jesus, even as a an introvert, even as the guy who wouldn’t be the evangelist in the room where has God placed me and how has he placed me in a way that I can go represent him well, and as people are, you can feel it, you can feel the ache for something more in culture, you can feel the ache for hope That we could answer that and point people to Jesus.
That’s that’s the I think that’s the hope for our society is that we would live out our faith.
[00:43:32] Dr. Ryan Denison: 100 percent and I think in a lot of ways, it’s part of God’s redemption of where our culture has been that he’s brought so many people to the point that there’s not a lot else. Of a lot of other places to look that haven’t already been proven wanting in our culture in terms of just the things that are held up as this is what you should pursue or this is where you can find hope.
I think it’s really our culture has been brought to the point where we’re left with either looking beyond ourselves for hope or just nihilism and on some level I think most people don’t want to believe this life doesn’t matter and most people don’t want to believe that there is no hope. And the same things that motivated people to look beyond God in the past are now kind of motivating people to look to God for the future. And that’s a really exciting time to be alive, a really exciting time to be able to share the gospel. But kind of like you mentioned, Josh, so much of it goes back to just embracing the idea that I am, that we are where God needs us to be and that wherever we are, whatever that looks like in terms of our work, our community, that God can use us there to help people know him.
But I think the key is that we have to be willing to be used and that’s with the Act 17 collective. They, I mean, that was a pretty big leap of faith for them to be able to actually tell this culture that predominantly doesn’t think Christianity is an intellectually viable position to hold that, hey, we’re Christians.
And part of that is that they are so excellent in the work they do outside of the Act 17 collective that people are willing to give them a chance, even if they’re a little dubious of the whole Jesus thing going into it. And the same way, I think our culture is receptive to the gospel in ways that haven’t been the case recently.
But at the same time, that doesn’t mean they’re going to just give us the benefit of the doubt. And one of the best ways to earn that chance to share the gospel well is to just be excellent at everything we do in life. And that’s. That means not just seeing, that means seeing every fast of our lives as part of our calling.
[00:45:32] Dr. Mark Turman: And that, that idea I heard a number of years ago that, you know, we pursue excellence because excellence honors God and it, it also inspires people. And it, you know, and in many of these environments, like you’re saying, it gives us credibility. And that, but it should not be our idol. It should never be our idol, but it’s something we do as a way of honoring God rather than replacing God.
And Ryan, I love, as you pointed out in this article that we’ll link people to as well, that there’s so many good things going on in the world, the act 17 collective and other movements like arc that may be moving toward. You know, efforts, real meaningful efforts of pursuing greater righteousness and and justice and things that matter in the world.
But I love the way you and the way you landed this article that Satan is fine with us making the world a better place even. And even doing so in the name of Christ, so long as we, we stopped short of actually recognizing Jesus as Lord and getting back to that real core idea. I think you’ll see that in the gather 25 conference and other places.
Yeah, there’s a lot of great things we can and should do, but the real urgent and most important first question is, do you have. A relationship with Christ and how can we even in this podcast and the rest of our ministry at Denison Forum and Denison Ministries, how do we keep pointing people back to that?
Not that you go to church or you have religious practices, but have you come to the place where you ask Jesus to forgive you of your sin and become the leader? of your life and you become his follower, his disciple. How do we do that? And kind of, Joshua, your point may be, as you were talking, I was thinking of Dr.
James Dennison his frequent quote, I’ll paraphrase it, and that is, is if, if God couldn’t use you here and now, you wouldn’t be here now? And kind of a, a paraphrase of another Bible teacher named Henry Blackaby who said that when you say that God can’t use you, you’ve actually said more about God than you have about yourself.
And so there’s an opportunity here for all of us to, in hope, know that God is still in control no matter how crazy and sometimes very discouraging the world looks. One last thing I was thinking about was I Not necessarily calling out the people just because I want them to go to the New York times, but they hosted an interview a couple of weeks ago with Denzel Washington, kind of in the aftermath of him not getting an Oscar nomination for gladiator too.
And and because of the news right at the end of 2024 that he had been baptized but the interview was fascinating in a number of ways, but the last. Four or five minutes of that interview, for me, were the best. When the interviewer asked him, what do you want people to remember from this interview?
And he said I want you to realize that we’re being forced to have faith because there’s so much coming at us. We can’t absorb it. And if you just look at the world that we have built for ourselves, look at how broken, look at how violent, look at how partisan look at how broken this world is.
We’re being forced to ask questions of faith, and I think that is a hopeful sign for us because hopefully it will drive us To the gospel that we need and to the Savior that we need that is so important Any last thoughts before we wrap up guys
[00:48:53] Josh Miller: thought you wrapped up great nothing more to add. That’s a great word to go out.
[00:48:58] Dr. Mark Turman: All right. Thanks guys. And thanks to our audience for listening to us today. We hope that what we’ve shared has been helpful and encouraging lots of links in the show notes. If you want to check out any of these things that we’ve talked about today. Again, thank you for being a part of our conversation.
Thank you for supporting Denison Forum as we seek to help people discern the news differently. We’ll see you next time on the Denison Forum podcast.
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