Tag: Deeper Waters Podcast

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/28/2019

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

“Lord. Save me from your followers.” How many people have really been burned badly by the church? They’re that group of people that many of us think we have to see on Sunday and go and put on all of our happy faces and act like everything is just fine in our lives. Many times, you dare not say anything controversial or confess a struggle with sin or anything else, because, well, Christians just don’t do that.

If you grow up in Christian culture, you might sadly be used to this kind of thing and know what to expect in a church. What if you’re an atheist and don’t know what to expect? How do you handle it then? Could it be that some people could be turned away from a church that expects everyone to tow the party line?

What about the way apologetics is treated in the church? Can you really do that there? What about questions such as the appropriateness of beauty? If you’re a woman, is it a case that you have to follow a proper dress code because you’re an object of desire, but the men around you might not be put under that same standard?

My guest is someone who came to Christianity as an adult and found that a major hurdle was the church. Even at her first visit where she was supposed to stand before the church and talk about how she came to Christ, the pastor’s wife saw her outside and told her her outfit was too revealing. Fortunately, she stayed, but how many other seekers might have been turned away?

This lady today is a teacher of apologetics and a highly successful one. Her book is called Why I Still Believe. Her name is Mary Jo Sharp.

So who is she?

According to her bio:

A former atheist from the Pacific Northwest, Mary Jo was raised without religion. She is now an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and the founder and director of Confident Christianity Apologetics Ministry. Mary Jo is the author of LifeWay Christian Resources’s “Why Do You Believe That?” Bible study and is working on an upcoming book on hypocrisy titled, “Why I Still Believe,” with Zondervan. She is an itinerant speaker on apologetics throughout North America and has engaged in formal debates on Islam. She focuses on using love and logic in order to uncover truth.

I hope you’ll be looking forward to the next episode. If you’ve been watching, we are quickly getting caught up on them and hope to be current before too long. Thank you for your support.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/14/2019

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

It used to be that if you were filling something out and it asked what gender you were, there were two options. You were male or you were female. We all understood that. However, now we live in an age that seems to call everything into question including basic facts of biology.

Now we have boys who claim to be girls and vice-versa. We have an Olympic athlete who has undergone an operation so he can become a woman. Transgenderism is a major new item today and terms like non-binary are showing up more and more.

A great concern is about the possible medical dangers involved with transgenderism. It’s problematic enough to many of us to think that you are a member of the opposite sex. It’s something else quite different when you put hormones in your body to bring about a change. It’s even more concerning when small children who are incredibly impressionable are led down this route and even take puberty blockers and begin a transition. These are kids who have a hard time deciding what to wear to school the next day and yet make major life-altering decisions like this.

But what are the medical side-effects of this? We have drugs that could help people overcome cancer that aren’t released yet, but we seem to want to do something of this extreme level without understanding the circumstances. Are we playing a dangerous game? Could we be damaging children in a way irreversible by scientific means?

To discuss this, I need some help. Obviously, I’m not a scientist or a doctor and I don’t play one on TV. I need someone knowledgeable on this. I need someone like my guest this weekend. Her name is Michelle Cretella.

So who is she?

Dr. Cretella is Executive Director of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). She was elected to the Board of Directors in 2005, and served two terms as president prior to being hired as the executive director. Dr. Cretella previously chaired several committees which enabled her to become one of the ACPeds’ chief researchers, editors and spokespersons. Her article Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate was published in the 2016 summer issue of Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. Following this, she became one of the world’s most outspoken critics of gender ideology in pediatrics. She is regularly consulted by many media news outlets. 

Dr. Cretella serves on the Advisory Board of the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice, and is Chair of the Gender Identity Subcommittee for the Catholic Medical Association. She is a peer reviewer for the journal Issues in Law and Medicine, and also for the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Dr. Cretella received her medical degree in 1994 from the University Of Connecticut School Of Medicine. She completed her residency in pediatrics in 1997 at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut. She completed a fellowship in College Health through the University of Virginia in 1999. After 15 years of group practice in rural Connecticut and Rhode Island she left clinical practice to devote more time to family and the ACPeds. Dr. Cretella and her husband are the proud parents of four children.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that episodes are now going up. We hope to be caught up soon. Please be watching your feed for this and other upcoming episodes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 9/7/2019

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

Most of us love the superhero films. What’s amazing about that is how the special effects have changed over the years. In the old Superman TV shows sometimes, when Superman would fly, they would turn him into a cartoon. When the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve came out, we were told you will believe a man can fly.

The special effects have changed because technology has changed. I remember the Matrix being groundbreaking in what it was doing and now it’s seen as commonplace. Nowadays, people on YouTube are making their own unique videos at home. It was a wonder when Disney was doing so awesome in their animated movies and now they’re going to live-action films.

This effects us in more than entertainment options. I have a steel rod on my spine due to scoliosis surgery. This would not have been doable I think 100 years ago. We have so many medical procedures that can be done. We carry tools in our pockets that can access the knowledge of the world, which we, of course, use to argue with strangers and look at pictures of cats.

Yet movies have also shown us what could be even more. The Matrix pictured a world where you don’t have to study martial arts. It is instead downloaded into your brain. Others like Ghost in the Shell and Iron Man have even more merging of men with technology.

The classic game Final Fantasy VI warned of a war that had taken place 1,000 years prior when some people had used magic and now, some were wanting to awaken that tool again and what would happen? We can scoff at magic today, but can technology be equally dangerous? We have the capacity to destroy our planet multiple times over now. What else can we do? What else will we do? Should we be concerned about human upgrades?

My guest is coming on to talk about these issues. We have a good relationship here at Deeper Waters with Reasons To Believe. He is one of the co-authors of their recent book Humans 2.0 and is coming to discuss the ramifications of transhumanism. His name is Fuz Rana and he will be my guest Saturday.

So who is he?

Fazale Rana is the vice president of research and apologetics at Reasons to Believe. He is the author of several groundbreaking books, including Who Was Adam, Creating Life in the Lab, The Cell’s Design and Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth. He holds a PhD in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry from Ohio University.

We’ll be talking about the book and transhumanism. Is it all bad? Is it all good? Are we playing God? How should we approach this? What does it mean to be a human?

We are rapidly working on uploading past episodes. I hope to be all caught up before the month is over. Please keep watching your podcast feed.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/31/2019

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

Miracles. We have all heard of them, but few of us have taken the real time to investigate them. Sure, we have Craig Keener’s book, but how many among us are really going to pick up and read a two-volume work that contains over 1,000 pages? If only there was a more accessible work out there that was an investigative look.

If we talk about that, aren’t journalists supposed to be good at investigating? Aren’t they supposed to be able to dig deep into a news story and pick out the information that is there? Aren’t they supposed to dig and get to the bottom of the case? Why yes, yes they are. Wouldn’t it be great if a journalist decided to investigate miracles?

As it turns out, one has. This is one who has investigated several cases in Christianity. He is a former atheist who nows teaches apologetics and has even recently opened up a center for applied apologetics. By now, many of you know who I’m talking about. He’s Lee Strobel, my guest on the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel, the former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times best-selling author of more than thirty books. He is a former Professor of Christian Thought at Houston Baptist University and serves as a Teaching Pastor at Woodlands Church in Texas. 

Lee was educated at the University of Missouri (Bachelor of Journalism degree) and Yale Law School (Master of Studies in Law degree). He was a journalist for fourteen years at The Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, winning Illinois’ highest honor for public service journalism from United Press International. He also led a team that won UPI’s top award for investigative reporting in Illinois.

After investigating the evidence for Jesus, Lee became a Christian in 1981. He subsequently became a teaching pastor at two of America’s most influential churches and hosted the national network TV program Faith Under Fire. In addition, he taught First Amendment law at Roosevelt University.

In 2017, Lee’s spiritual journey was depicted in a major motion picture, The Case for Christ, which was the #3 faith-based movie of the year at the boxoffice. Lee has won national awards for his books The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, The Case for a Creator, and The Case for Grace. In all, his books have sold in excess of 14 million copies.

Lee was described in the Washington Post as “one of the evangelical community’s most popular apologists.” The Christian Post named Lee one of the top seven evangelical leaders who made an impact in 2017.

Lee and Leslie have been married for forty-five years and near Houston, Texas. Their daughter, Alison, is the author of five novels. Their son, Kyle, is a professor of spiritual theology at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.

We’ll be talking with Lee about his book The Case For Miracles and seeing what evidence he found for miracles. We’ll also talk briefly about his new school that has opened up. He’s a guest that I have wanted to have on for some time and I hope you’ll enjoy the interview as much as I did. (We just recorded this morning in a rare Thursday interview) Please also leave a positive review on iTunes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/24/2019

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

The past is a funny place. They do things differently there. In an age where we have popular preachers that make most of us shake our heads in disbelief if we’re paying attention, it’s hard to imagine a time when the preachers were celebrities not because of their appearances or their megachurches, but because they were good expositors of Scripture. Truly, though they rest, their works do follow. Their commentaries and writings are still read today. Just a few days ago, I got on Kindle a book for my wife about Spurgeon and his writings on sorrow and depression.

They also had their issues in their days with skeptics of the Christian faith. These men often had to have some knowledge in Christian apologetics if they were going to make it. Some of them certainly did and just as we can learn from their exposition of Scripture and their sermons on daily living, so we can learn from how they did apologetics back in their own day.

Fortunately, I had someone get in touch with me who had discovered my podcast and thought this would be a great topic to discuss. He also has his own show and was interested in letting people know about the work that he was doing. I was happy to comply as I thought that it was a great topic to discuss and I know my friend Tim McGrew has regularly shared with me the wisdom of reading old books, something I still need to pay more attention to.

My guest’s name is Troy Frasier. He runs the Revived Thoughts podcast focusing on bringing back thoughts from preachers of the past. We will be discussing on my show this weekend what we can learn from those great minds.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Troy Frasier graduated from Bible College in 2015. Since then he’s worked with at risk youth, lived and taught in China for two years, and taught at a school in the heart of Miami. He is now serving at Northside Christian Church. He is also a co-host on the Revived Thoughts Podcast. The show was created by Troy Frasier and Joel Bourdess to bring the great sermons of history back to life! They have been able to bring unique voices to over 15 sermons so far by people like John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

I hope you’ll be listening to the next episode. I am working on getting the old episodes up slowly but surely. Give it time and they will be there. Thanks for being a fan and supporter of the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/17/2019

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

The 60’s were a wild time in America. You had the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the space race and landing on the moon, and Woodstock. You also had a revolution that drastically changed society and that was the sexual revolution. This revolution has been on the move and is still in effect to this day. Unfortunately, while the American Revolution did bring about much good for us, the same cannot be said of this one.

Today, we live in a culture that is thoroughly confused about sexuality. Sure, we’re watching sex, we’re talking about sex, we’re dreaming about sex, and we’re just plain having sex, but we’re not really thinking about sex. We keep chasing after the god of Eros wondering why he flies away so often.

Maybe instead of moving forward on this path, we need to move backward. Maybe we need to undo the sexual revolution. Maybe we need to think more about what sex is and why it is so important to think about it.

To discuss the Sexual Revolution, I am bringing on someone who has written and spoken profusely about this topic. It is a field she never thought she would get into being an economics major, but it is where she has found herself. Today, she teaches from a Catholic perspective on the issues of sexuality and family. We are going to be talking about her new book, The Sexual State. Her name is Jennifer Roback Morse.

So who is she?

According to her bio:

Dr. Morse is the founder of The Ruth Institute, a global non-profit organization equipping Christians to defend the family and build a Civilization of Love. 

Dr. Morse was a campaign spokeswoman for California’s winning Proposition 8 campaign, defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. She has authored or co-authored six books and spoken around the globe. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Polish and Chuukese, the native language of the Micronesian Islands. 

Her latest book is The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Why the Church was Right Along. (See below for a complete list of Dr. Morse’s books.) 

She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Rochester and taught economics at Yale and George Mason Universities. 

Dr. Morse was named one of the “Catholic Stars of 2013,” on a list that included Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI.

Dr. Morse and her husband are parents of an adopted child, a birth child, a goddaughter and were foster parents for San Diego County to eight foster children. In 2015, Dr. Morse and her husband relocated to Lake Charles, Louisiana, where the work of the Ruth Institute continues. 

Complete list of Dr. Morse’s books: 

  1. Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village (2001) 
  2. Smart Sex: Finding Lifelong Love in a Hookup World (2005)
  3. 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage (2013) coauthored with Betsy Kerekes.
  4. The Sexual Revolution and Its Victims (2015)
  5. 101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person (2016) coauthored with Betsy Kerekes. 
  6. The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Why the Church was Right Along. (2018) 

I hope you’ll be watching for this new one. If you’ve been watching for awhile, the episodes are being worked on and coming up. There have been some snags lately, but they are coming. Just please bear with us.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/3/2019: The Apologetics Book Club

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

When I was in seminary, I heard a funny story about an event that took place before I got there with the professor’s wives talking to the wives of students at the seminary, since the overwhelming majority of us were male. Most of them were giving the same kind of generic advice that wives would give new wives. Nothing wrong with that advice, but you could hear it anywhere. One wife did give a piece of advice you won’t find in most marriage materials, but it is directly applicable to seminary students’ wives or the wives of anyone in ministry.

“Make peace with the books.”

Yes. If you marry someone in ministry, odds are you will have to deal with a lot of books being around the house. My own wife was so thrilled when I finally got a Kindle because then there would have to be fewer books around the house. Many of my fellow apologists were astounded when Marie Kondo in her Tidying Up series said to ideally have no more than 30 books. (At this, I really wondered if my Preterism might be false and she could be the antichrist.)

We love our books in this field. What do you expect? Naturally, with the rise of the internet, we have several bibliophiles all coming together. Book clubs rise up and people come to discuss what books they love and why. Also, we can discuss what books we don’t like and why. One such club was started by one of our favorite bibliophiles who has come on the show a number of times. Now he wants to tell you about his book club. His name is Rob Bowman and he runs the Apologetics Book Club.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Robert M. Bowman Jr. is an evangelical Christian apologist, biblical scholar, author, editor, and lecturer. For over ten years (2008–2018) he served as the executive director at the Institute for Religious Research, based in Cedar Springs, Michigan (http://IRR.org). Rob has lectured on biblical studies, religion, and apologetics at Biola University, Cornerstone University, and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of over sixty articles and the author or co-author of thirteen books including Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, co-authored with J. Ed Komoszewski, and Faith Has Its Reasons: Integrative Approaches to Defending the Christian Faith, co-authored with Kenneth D. Boa. His newest book, Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions: Examining the Foundations of Christianity and Mormonism, is forthcoming in late 2019. He holds the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in biblical studies from Fuller Theological Seminary and South African Theological Seminary. Dr. Bowman is widely regarded as the leading evangelical scholar addressing the uses and interpretations of the Bible by Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. He leads the Apologetics Book Club on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/apologeticsbookclub/) and blogs at https://RobertBowman.net.

We’ll be talking about this book club. Why does it exist and why should an apologist join? Why should a man of the book be reading other books? Isn’t the Bible sufficient in itself?

We’ve got the mechanism for uploading podcasts up again and I have a new sound guy who will be starting soon doing work on editing. I hope to be up to date again on episodes soon. Thanks for being a supporter and I hope you’ll keep listening to the Deeper Waters Podcast and leave a positive review on iTunes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/27/2019

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

There are many things that bring me great joy in life. Two of them are getting to do Christian apologetics, and my beautiful wife Allie. What’s interesting is that for the most part, it seems the fairer sex and apologetics don’t normally go hand in hand. You have some exceptions like Holly Ordway, Mary Jo Sharp, Natasha Crain, and Nancy Pearcey. These are awesome to have, but it seems like for the most part, apologetics is a man’s world.

That could also include the home. In many cases, the man is the spiritual leader of the home even if he’s less advanced in Christianity. So when it comes to raising children, then shouldn’t it also be the man that teaches the child about Christianity and also how to defend it? Mothers are often so busy anyway. There’s taking care of the house, fixing meals, watching the kids, and everything else. Being a mother is often a sadly thankless job.

But could it be that part of this is wrong? Could a mother actually teach her child something about apologetics? How could she do so with a busy schedule as a mother? Is it possible to do something like that? Where could a mother go to learn this?

Fortunately, there has been a book that has come out aimed at mothers and their instinct as a mama bear. After all, a good mother will fight anyone with a fierceness if her children are in danger. Why not fight if the kid’s in spiritual danger? For that, we do need Mama Bears. These are bears that will roar like a mother.

For that, we need an organization like Mama Bear Apologetics. We also need a book like Mama Bear Apologetics. We also need someone who will be a spokeswoman for that movement, and that woman is Hillary Ferrer and she’ll be my guest this Saturday.

So who is she?

According to her bio:

Hillary Morgan Ferrer, founder of Mama Bear Apologetics, has a burden for providing accessible apologetics resources for busy moms. She has a master’s in biology and her specialties are scientific apologetics, dealing with doubt, and identifying causes and solutions for youth leaving the church. Currently, she serves as vice president of Women in Apologetics, a Christian non-profit organization dedicated to equipping, encouraging, and educating women in apologetics.

We’ll be talking about apologetics for mothers. How can a mother devote her life to being a wife and mother and at the same time do Christian apologetics? Ferrer has gathered a team of mothers around her who are interested in apologetics to work on this project together and help other mothers roar like a mother.

We are working on getting past shows on the web. I have seen that I have received an updated way to do that due to a web issue. Please be watching for the next episode and leave a positive review on iTunes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 7/20/2019

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

Since the dawn of humanity, there have been two things that I think we can say have been readily apparent.

#1. Men and women need to come together or else the human race is doomed.

#2. Men and women have a really hard time knowing how to relate to one another.

Today we have the church and we know that in Christ there is supposed to be no male and female. Yet still, there are difficulties. There are so many passages that seem to put women in a lower place and at the same time, we don’t want to make sure the church isn’t just kowtowing to the culture.

How are we to do this? Don’t the Scriptures say that a woman is to submit to her husband? Don’t they say that she’s supposed to keep quiet in the church as in all the churches and learn from her husband at home? Isn’t it the case that a woman is not supposed to teach or have authority over a man?

Yet at the same time, we have these other passages. What about 1 Corinthians 7? Is it really the case that man is the head except in bed? How are we supposed to relate? If we say there is complete equality, could we open the door elsewhere? Could it be that there is no distinction between men and women, maybe we open the door for the approval of homosexual practice?

What about women pastoring a church? Can women even lead Bible studies? Is it acceptable for women to teach women but not men? But if a husband and wife wanted to teach together, say a marriage seminar, could that be done?

And if we go to the Bible, don’t we see women in places of teaching? Don’t we see Priscilla and Aquila teaching Apollos in the Bible? What about Phoebe in the letter to Romans? What about Junia? Didn’t the Lord Himself associate with women and let them be the first witnesses to His resurrection and teach them?

We’ll be discussing this debate on my podcast this week. To do that, I am bringing on a guest who is not a scholar in the field, but using legal examination tactics, has written a book engaging with the best scholarship out there. His work will definitely give both sides something to think about. The book is Men and Women in Christ and the author is Andrew Bartlett.

So who is he?


1973 BA in Law, Oxford University
1974 Called to the Bar of England and Wales. Practised until 2019.

1988 Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators
1993 Appointed Queen’s Counsel
From 2001 Various part-time judicial positions in UK while continuing in practice as a barrister
2012 BA in Theology, University of Gloucestershire

Current work:
Mainly as an international arbitrator

Christian background:
Did not grow up in a Christian family. Became a Christian as a teenager.
I have served in various churches as an elder or churchwarden.

I hope you’ll be listening to this latest episode. I am still working on getting the latest ones uploaded. The website is having some problems, but I hope to have it fixed soon.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 6/29/2019

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

One of the most talked about biblical movies of all time is the Ten Commandments. These ten laws have become enshrined in our culture. You can see them at the Supreme Court building and they are often seen to be the moral foundation of our civilization.

We want to say that, but then it gets confusing. Is the fourth commandment required in our society and if so, why do we observe it on Sunday instead of Saturday? What about other laws that are there? If your wife is having her period, is it wrong to have sex with her? Should we wear tattoos if we’re Christians? And geez, doesn’t the Old Testament allow for slavery?

The law is confusing.

What if we’re misunderstanding it? What if the Law, while often containing good moral principles for us, really isn’t even, well, Law? What if it is something different? What could we see about it if we compared it to other cultures in the Ancient Near East?

And if there’s any Old Testament scholar who knows how to do that, it’s my guest this Saturday. After all, this is the man who has had his hand in a continued series on this very topic. Book after book has come out opening readers to a new world in the Old Testament. Well, maybe a new world isn’t the best way to describe it. After all, every book in this series refers to a lost world. The author of this series is, of course, John Walton, and he returns once again this Saturday to talk about his book The Lost World of the Torah.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

John H. Walton (Ph.D. Hebrew Union College) is Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School where he has taught for almost twenty years. Dr. Walton has published nearly 30 books, among them commentaries, reference works, text books, scholarly monographs, and popular academic works. He was the Old Testament general editor for the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (NIV, NKJV, NRSV), and is perhaps most widely known for the “Lost World” books (including The Lost World of Genesis One,The Lost World of Adam and Eve, and The Lost World of the Flood). His areas of expertise include the importance of the ancient Near East for interpreting the Old Testament as well as the dialogue between science and faith.

I hope you’ll be listening as we discuss the Old Testament Law and how we are to understand it. What does it mean for us as Christians? Do we apply it across the board or not? If it’s not in effect, does that mean we can totally ignore it? What moral principles can we get if any from the Law?

I am working on getting the shows for this month updated. We are having some problems with the web site. Please be patient as I am working on things and in the meantime, you can check to see some of them on YouTube. Please also leave a positive review of the Deeper Waters Podcast on iTunes.

In Christ,
Nick Peters