Tag: Deeper Waters Podcast

Deeper Waters Podcast 3/21/2020

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Can we trust the Gospels? So many times one of the questions I hear from a skeptic is that if this information was so important, why wasn’t it written down sooner? Of course, there’s a hidden assumption there that in the ancient world, writing something down was the best way to communicate, as if most people could read.

Eventually, the Gospels were written, but they were written according to most scholars at least 30 years later. Isn’t that a long time? How many of us can remember events from 30 years ago that well? Now I’m 39, and I can remember quite a few things. I remember that on Christmas of 1988 I got Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers 2 for the NES and my parents were surprised I played Zelda first. I just thought Zelda would be more shaping of my identity and I was right.

Some of you who are older might remember other things. You might better remember Challenger exploding or the JFK assassination. Still, we all know memory is not always reliable. People do misremember things. There are several minor details that are different in the Gospels. Could this be an indication that the accounts have things wrong because people didn’t remember?

And what about the telephone game? Don’t we know that if you use oral tradition that things will get messed up? Can we really trust it? Kids don’t get the facts right when they play the game. How can we trust important information to a similar situation?

To discuss these, I’m bringing on a scholar who has studied oral tradition very well. He has written on Jesus and memory and the Synoptic Gospels. He will be with us this Saturday to talk about if we can trust oral tradition with the Gospels or not. His name is Robert McIver.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Professor Robert K. McIver, PhD has taught biblical studies Avondale University College, Cooranbong, NSW, Australia, since 1988.  Before coming to Avondale, Robert had taught mathematics at secondary and tertiary levels, before changing his career to work as a church pastor.  He holds a doctorate in biblical studies and archaeology from Andrews University, and has published ten books, including Memory, Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels, and Jesus in Four Dimensions, as well as articles in academic and popular journals.  He is married to Susan, and has two daughters and two grandsons.

We are also working on getting shows up for you. I just uploaded a bunch of them this week as the time with the virus is giving me that time I can do that. I hope to be all caught up before too long. Please be watching for this episode.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 2/29/2020

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Around the time a young man enters middle school, he starts to go through a physiological change where all of a sudden, those girls who had cooties before immediately become super appealing to him. While he looked at them with disdain before, now he looks at them wanting to know them better. Not only that, their bodies are changing at the same time and a man wants to know what exactly lies underneath all those clothes.

Now there are a few ways that a man can find this out, other than checking out a book on anatomy. He can either date the girl and seek to marry her and on the wedding night see what that girl looks like underneath, or he can try to seduce her before marriage, or if he doesn’t care about that girl in particular and any girl will do, he can look at porn.

In the past, porn used to be something hard to look at. You had to sneak down to the magazine rack at the store or else go to that hidden room at the video store. A lot of planning would be required in order to get your fix. Well, that was then and this is now.

The age of the internet has brought about pornography so much so that now we have rule 34. If it exists, there is porn of the internet on it somewhere. Pornography is a click away. You can access a woman’s body from any computer in your home.

Or heck, who needs your home? Just take your tablet or phone and you can do the same thing. Teenagers especially now have an easier time getting porn than they ever did before.

It’s had an effect sadly. It’s hard to find a man whose life has not been damaged by porn use. Women have to suffer it too as they are increasingly pressured to match what the young men see in their pornography videos. Not only that, I suspect the reasons I hear so many commercials for ED and see so many products for it is because men have trained themselves to get aroused at pornography videos.

Some men want to help out and in my travels on the internet, I found some of those men. Keep in mind that in saying all of this, I know porn is becoming an increasing problem for women who watch it as well today. I hope many skills can be transferable, but today, it’s looking at men. One such man who wants to help will be my guest this Saturday. His name is Shane O’Neill

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Shane O’Neill has a graduate degree in apologetics from Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity and He is the Editorial Director for Proven Ministries. Proven Ministries works with organizations, churches, families, and individuals to see a revival of sexual dignity throughout the entire Bride of Christ. 

We are also working on getting the webcam working so hopefully we can go to YouTube live and Facebook live to do these shows. If you struggle with porn or know someone who does, which is incredibly likely, please be listening to this show. Hope to see you then.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 1/25/2020

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Years ago Pat Buchanan said we were in a culture war and he was not taken seriously. Today, everyone knows he was right and we still are in that war. Different ideologies are fighting it out day by day today. Mostly, it is not so much over politics as it is over sexual issues.

Take a look around and see. Why did the Methodist church just experience a split? Because of the question of homosexuality. What is one of the big rallying cries between Democrats and Republicans? Abortion, which again, has to do with sex. Today, we have questions going on now of transgenderism.

So it is that a reader of the blog suggested that for abortion, I get on a guest who understands culture wars. One who understands it so much that he has a website named for it. They suggested I get C. Michael Jones on and I decided to do so.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Dr. E. Michael Jones is a world renowned Catholic Historian and author known for his books Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, and The Slaughter of Cities and is preparing to release his latest book called Logos Rising: The History of Ultimate Reality. He is the editor of Culture Wars Magazine, and his books and subscriptions to the magazine are all available online at CultureWars.com.

We are working on older episodes and getting them up quickly. I hope you’ll keep listening. Next month, we will be focusing on love and marriage.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 1/11/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Life is sacred, so many of us think, but we live in an age where that is being questioned. An actress can stand up and win an award and talk about how she had to have an abortion to get where she is and is cheered for saying that. We have reached the age where post-birth abortions are talked about, in some cases even up to the age of two years old. You can even have abortions for your pets if you want to.

Yet there are rumors of change coming. Alyssa Milano can go on a sex strike in regards to things like the heartbeat bill here in my state of Georgia. (Hint Alyssa: Many of us men who are Christians who are anti-abortion don’t care if you don’t want to have sex with us because we already have wives to have sex with or we’re just not interested in women who want to kill their children and children of others.) Pro-life judges have been appointed to the Supreme Court and with two judges who could possibly be leaving the bench soon for various reasons, many pro-abortion activists are getting scared about the possibilities.

Now is a time when we need more and more facts on a side. Christians need to be ready. The good news is, like in many cases, the facts are there. The bad news is that many of us don’t really bother to access those facts. Fortunately, they are there and you can access them easily. Perhaps, one easy way you can access them is opening your phone and listening to a podcast, like my own, the Deeper Waters Podcast, and listening to my guest this Saturday, Trent Horn.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

After his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn earned master’s degrees in the fields of theology, philosophy, and bioethics. He serves as a staff apologist for Catholic Answers, where he specializes in teaching Catholics to graciously and persuasively engage those who disagree with them.

Trent models that approach each week on the radio program Catholic Answers Live and on his own podcast, The Counsel of Trent. He has also been invited to debate at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and Stanford University.

Trent is an adjunct professor of apologetics at Holy Apostles College, has written for The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, and is the author of nine books, including Answering Atheism, The Case for Catholicism, and Why We’re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love.

We’re going to be talking about abortion then for January when we look at abortion for Roe v. Wade. I hope you’ll be watching for this new episode. I also hope you’ll be doing what you can in the fight for life.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/28/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What are the Gospels? I understand that we can say they’re the accounts that we have of the life of Jesus, but what are they? What purpose do they really serve? What did the writers want us to get out of them?

Not only that, what purpose did they serve? How did the ancient people view the Gospels? What did they expect when they read the Gospels? Did they think the authors really believed there was a historical figure who did these things or did they think this was a nice set of novels?

Let’s go even further. What were the writers of these works thinking? Did they have any ideas for the best way to go about telling the accounts of Jesus? What liberties did they have with the source material? Why didn’t they cite source material? What sources did they even use and were they right to use them?

These are questions we can ask when we approach the Gospels. We can also ask then about the reliability of the Gospels. Was memory that reliable? What about the distance in time? What about the Gospels being anonymous?

If only we had someone who had really studied all of these kinds of questions and was an excellent scholar in the field.

Oh, wait. We do have such a person, and he is my guest this Saturday for the Deeper Waters Podcast talking about his latest book (Although he’s sure to have written another one in the time it took me to write this blog), Christobiography. Returning to our show is Craig Keener.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Bio sketch: Craig S. Keener (PhD, Duke University) is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is author of twenty-eight books (thirty-three volumes), six of which have won awards in Christianity Today, plus other awards. He has also authored roughly one hundred academic articles; seven booklets; and more than one hundred fifty popular-level articles. His IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, which provides cultural background on each passage of the New Testament, has sold more than half a million copies. Craig is the New Testament editor for the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, which won the International Book Award for Christianity and Bible of the year in the Christian Book Awards. In 2020 Craig is president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and he is married to Dr. Médine Moussounga Keener. His blog site is http://www.craigkeener.com/.

Now that the holidays have passed, hopefully, we’ll be able to devote the time to getting the shows back on schedule again. I hope you’ll be waiting. Be there for the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/21/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I came across my guest in an unusual way. A Christian friend of mine shared an interesting article on a Christian defense of Dungeons and Dragons. Now I was intrigued since I played growing up and I know several Christians today who still do. I’m still heavily involved in role-playing games, though these are all video games.

The article was a good one and lo and behold, written by a professor at a Christian university. I was intrigued. I also realized that this was a person I had heard of before. He was interviewed by Mary Jo Sharp in her book Why I Still Believe to talk about beauty.

So I thought getting in touch with him would be a simple matter. We could talk about the interaction of Christianity and culture and about beauty as well. After all, could it be that those who are seeing the devil in everything and repelling from the culture are doing more harm than good in the long run?

I reached out to him then and he was delighted to come on the show. We set the date and as you can imagine, it will be this Saturday. We will be talking about the interaction of Christ and culture and straight from Houston Baptist University, my guest will be Philip Tallon.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Dr. Tallon is the assistant professor of theology at Houston Baptist University. He got his PhD in theology at the University of St. Andrews.

Dr. Tallon is a member of the Honors College faculty and Chair of the Apologetics Department. Both areas of service allow him to explore the intersection of theology, philosophy, and the arts: helping students to understand the Lordship of Jesus over “every square inch” of creation.

Dr. Tallon’s primary areas of research are in Christian theology and theological aesthetics. He is especially interested in doing ‘theology through the arts,’ which examines how the arts can reorient and enrich our understanding of Christian truth.

We’ll be talking about beauty, play, and culture. How do we find God in all of these things? What is the way that Christians are to interact with culture? Could there be danger in seeing a devil behind everything that seems contrary to us?

I hope you’ll be watching for the next episode. We are almost completely caught up with episodes after all. Please also go and leave a positive review on iTunes for the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 11/2/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that has in its own way always been around, but wasn’t its own individual branch until sometime after Descartes. Differences have gone all the way back before from Plato to Aristotle. Plato had the theory of the forms to explain how we know things. Aristotle didn’t disagree entirely with the forms, but said we know things through sense experience, or at least that’s where our knowledge begins.

Today, we can look at the material world and see that we have a lot of science and think that that is the path to knowledge. By contrast, what is religion? Religion is done by authority. The adage of “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Some leave out the “I believe it” which would be redundant in a sense.

Is that the way religion is done? Do we just believe something because we read it in a book? How can we know God exists? How can we know what He’s like? Can we have a proper experience of God? How could we tell if that was a valid experience? Can one just intuit God exists even if they don’t know how to articulate the Kalam Cosmological Argument?

We’re going to be discussing religious epistemology today. How can someone know something that is a religious claim? Does one just have to take something by faith? What is faith anyway?

To discuss all of this, we’re bringing on a young scholar. Young is the word as just checking, my wife and I were surprised to see he’s just a few months older than she is, and yet he already has an Oxford published book called Religious Epistemology.. His name is Tyler McNabb.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Tyler Dalton McNabb (PhD, Glasgow) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Macau. Before taking his current position, McNabb taught three years at Houston Baptist University. McNabb is the author of Religious Epistemology(CUP) and co-author of Plantingian Religious Epistemology and World Religions (Lexington). He has also authored/co-authored various articles published in journals such as Religious Studies, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, The Heythrop Journal, and Philosophia Christi.  

We are busy working on getting episodes up. I know we’re behind on schedule, but thanks for bearing with us. Please keep listening.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 10/26/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, but fiction sure can be pretty strange. If you interact with a lot of fiction, it can contain some stranger things. Let’s consider for example, Stranger Things, the hit series on Netflix. This series has been a mega-hit for Netflix and has a huge fan following. My wife and I are hoping we have enough to get Netflix again before the new season comes out next year.

Right after watching Season three this year, I went on Amazon to see if anyone had written anything about Christianity and Stranger Things. Sure enough, I found what I was looking for. Not only did I find it, I found it was by someone who had been on the show before.

So I send out a few emails and before too long, things are in the works. I’m really pleased to get to do a show on such a popular series. While it is doubtful the authors want to spread anything Christian in the series, that doesn’t mean we can’t see Christian themes in there. After all, it’s been said wherever you have a hero and a villain, you have the gospel.

We are almost to the day. It’s possible that Allie could be joining me on this show. While she hasn’t read the book, that could be to her advantage in this case so she could ask questions that anyone wondering about Christianity and Stranger Things could answer. We’re still waiting to see what she’ll do.

So Allie may or may not be present, but I can tell you who will be present besides myself. It will be our guest who is an Old Testament scholar who does a lot of work with Logos. He’s written a lot on the unseen realm and is now bringing that knowledge to Stranger Things. His name is Michael Heiser.

Who is he?

“A scholar in the fields of Biblical Studies and the Ancient Near East, Dr. MichaelS. Heiser is a Scholar-in-Residence at Faithlife Corporation, the makers of Logos Bible Software. Heiser studied at Dallas Theological Seminary, has a master’s degree in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s in Hebrew Studies and a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published hundreds of essays and peer-reviewed papers in scholarly journals and popular periodicals such as Bible Study Magazine. He has taught at the collegiate level for well over a decade, specializing in the Hebrew Bible, Northwest Semitic languages (biblical Hebrew, biblical Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Egyptian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Phoenician, and Moabite), biblical theology, the history and religions of the ancient Near East and Second Temple Jewish literature.”

What hath Stranger Things to do with Christianity? What are the themes in the show that point to Christian ideas? What about moral problems in the show like pre-marital sex and other such issues? How should Christians approach a work like Stranger Things?

I hope you’ll be watching for this episode and that you’ll be watching your podcast feed. We are working on putting up new episodes more and more. Please also leave a positive review on iTunes for us.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 10/19/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Atheism seems to be everywhere on the internet. Suppose you go on YouTube being your innocent self and you just want to listen to a favorite Christian song. Don’t be surprised if the comments section is full of atheists talking about how much bunk Christianity is.

It’s not just the internet. Today, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is often out there wherever a cross can be found on any tombstone trying to get it taken down. Religion is always a hot topic in the news. This is especially the case when social issues and sexual issues team up together.

Yet as critical atheists are of religion so often, how come the directions aren’t reversed. What if someone were to be critical of atheism? What if someone were to look past a lot of the bluster we can see and really examine the case?

My guest has done just that. He is a highly trained philosopher in the field and has recently written an excellent book looking at atheism from both a popular perspective and an academic perspective. He will deal with objections you find on the internet and objections you find in academia. His name is Stephen Parrish, author of Atheism: A Critical Analysis.

So who is he?

He has an A.A. in Liberal Arts from Schoolcraft College, a B.S. in biology and Chemistry from Eastern Michigan University, an A.M.L.S. in library science from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in philosophy from Wayne State University, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the same as well. He is currently a philosophy professor at Concordia University in Ann Arbor.

We’ll be talking about his book and about arguments of atheism on the popular and academic level. It will be an intense interview and a lot of it will be quite deep. I hope you’ll be watching for the next episode. Please be leaving positive reviews of our podcast as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 10/12/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

For many of us living in America, that Jesus is the Messiah doesn’t mean much to us. It should, but your average churchgoer doesn’t know what that means except some special title among the Jews. If you’re a Jewish person, that title means something.

It really matters to you if the Messiah has come or not. It matters to you that the God of Israel will be glorified. It matters to you that the promise made to Abraham and the other patriarchs has been fulfilled and the promise made to David has been fulfilled.

Yet many Jews today balk at the idea of Jesus being the Messiah.

Even if Jesus rose from the dead, what difference does it make? How does that show he is the Messiah? Answering Jewish people on this requires a whole lot more than just a minimal facts approach or something similar. it requires an understanding of Judaism and how it is that the Messiah fits in.

Fortunately, I do have a friend who does just that.

He will be joining me this Saturday on the show. We will be discussing evangelism to Jewish people and how to tell them the good news that the Messiah has already come. He is indeed the Messiah of the Jews as well as the Gentiles. My friend who has studied this has recently written the book The Resurrection of the Jewish Messiah and his name is Eric Chabot.

So who is he?


He has an MA from Southern Evangelical Seminary and has spoken several times at the National Apologetics Conference in Charlotte, NC. He is a graduate of the Cross Examined Apologetics Instructors Academy and a member of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. He is an instructor at the Messianic Studies Institute in Columbus, Ohio and Adjunct instructor at Xenos Christian Fellowship there as well. He has been doing outreach since 2004 and is the founder and director of Ratio Christi at Ohio State University and director at Columbus State University College Ratio Christi. He is a speaker for CJF ministries and has spoken at numerous churches and other locations. He has written a short booklet on “Is Yeshua The Jewish Messiah?” and co-authored a work called “Does God Exist? Why It Matters.”

(We still hope he affirms the virgin birth, which I do affirm.)

Jewish apologetics is something we don’t see much of, but it is a needed field. I am thankful to have someone in the field studying it since the Jewish people are the ones that brought about our Messiah and brought about the Old Testament for us. We owe it to them to tell them the good news about Messiah Jesus.

Be listening please and leave us a positive review on Deeper Waters.

In Christ,
Nick Peters