 Jesus is with us everywhere we go. We're so glad that you're joining us for hope today. So glad that you're with us for these next 30 minutes where we get the moment to encourage you, uplift you and inspire you wherever you are here with Tom Hollis. And Amanda Brock, I know Amanda hasn't been here in so long because you've been traveling and glory-vanting all around. Glory-vanting, is that like alluvanting with the Holy Spirit? Yeah, yeah. Glory-vanting. Good to have you back, Amanda. Thank you. I think one of my favorite moments was with our son. We went down to Pensacola where he is stationed right now. And I think just, and a miracle to me is that he purchased a guitar. He's left-handed, but all they have is a right-handed guitar. He got it and he's playing it. And God gave him a song. I am so in awe of what God is doing in and through his life. It's amazing. God is working. He's at work. And we're going to learn about that. You know, you've probably heard the term apostle. What does that mean? What means ambassador? In fact, Paul called himself an ambassador in chains. These guys, man, and all the ladies that were there as well ministering. They planted churches. They had heavenly encounters. They worked miracles. They were shipwrecked, flogged and prison even martyred. And they turned empires and kingdoms upside down. And we've got James with us, James Allen Mosley. He's written a book called The Biography of Jesus' Apostles. You are not going to want to miss this. There's so much great information and how it applies to us today as well. And I think the more that we have to read the Bible and just like seeing how they were doing in their everyday lives, and I think it's a challenge for all of us to like self-examine ourselves and be like, how am I truly walking this out? You know, how am I allowing the gospel or allowing these moments to interrupt our situations? I know Amanda, this is something that you live out on the daily through the Pittsburgh Dream Center. This is, I know like Amanda, you are like on the front lines every day just helping people show them the love of Jesus. Well, and we're excited and it's work, but we're starting our lunch program for the kids in our community. I'm excited. I had to learn, go through some training, but you know what? It's willing to stretch and be uncomfortable because Jesus is going to operate on the other end of that. And those children are going to know somebody cares about them. Ultimately, it's the Lord. It's interesting. Even in my tease there, I said these guys and I was like, wait a minute. There was a lot of women preaching the gospel too. In fact, James even talks about that in the Bible. I know that that's a hot topic in some denominations right now, but I wanted to take a moment to share about Pat Robertson's passing. Pat Robertson was a giant in the church and in the ministry, the type of ministry that we do. Pat was very large in the starting of this ministry. In fact, when God called Russ and Norma to start this ministry, they went and talked to Pat and he had done tons of research already to find and he just like gave him all the stuff and all the different things that they would need is just a, he had an incredible life of reaching people for God. I know personally I watched the 700 Club growing up and I can remember he did a book that had like answers to hard questions. Of course we have a hard questions program. But I remember even as a teenager digging into that book and I'd be asked questions or things that I didn't know and I wanted to know. So I am truly appreciative for what he gave in his life and how he impacted so many for Christ. Truly a pioneer in the faith and so we just want to say we're lifting up our praise for Gordon and the entire family there and also CBN and the whole 700 Club because we know when you lose someone of that magnitude impact, it really does have like touch your heart in a deep way. So we just want to say that we are praying for them. He went on and received his reward in heaven last Thursday. So just really, it's a beautiful thing. You know, I know it's sad when we see people go, but knowing that where they're going and that they are with Jesus dancing on the streets of gold, what an amazing life lives. So I don't believe in imitating anybody else, but I do believe in that there have been people that God has raised up and then they go on and then what about us? Who's going to take? Who's going to step into that breach? Who's going to be raised up not to do the same things that Pat Robertson did, but to do the things that God's called you to do? That is something that God is going to be talking to us about when we learn about these ambassadors, these apostles, when we come back with James Mosley, we'll be right back. Cornerstone television t-shirt, where'd you get it? I am so glad that you asked, you know, this is an exclusive offer for the month of June for you to receive this one-of-a-kind CTVN t-shirt. You can support and support your favorite Christian television network this summer when you go to barbecues, hanging out with family and having tons of fun. Oh man, that is so much fun. And speaking of cornerstone television, I love their programming, especially that Hope Today show. Yes, we love Hope Today and all of the programs. And you know, with your best gift, request your cornerstone television network t-shirt when you give this month. We have sizes from extra small to 6 XL. It is 100% cotton. It is quality. And we want you to have this on you today. That's right, we have one for everyone. And you get to represent the station you love with your own logo t-shirt. You'll enjoy this wearable reminder that Hope happens here as together we spread the love of Jesus every day. You know, we cannot do it without you. When you give, you help us to impact Pittsburgh and beyond, reaching those of all nations and generations, because we know people need to know the hope and the love of Jesus like never before. So why don't you give us a call at 888-665-4483. And request your very own Cornerstone TV t-shirt. That's right. You can also give online at ctvn.org slash donate. We would love to see you out in public somewhere wearing this t-shirt. Maybe we'll have ours on too. Thanks for supporting us. Well, apart from a few well-known stories like Peter walking on the water, most of the readers of the Bible only have a vague notion of who Jesus's apostles were and what exactly they did. But James Moseley is our next guest and he has a fantastic new book out called The Biographies of Jesus's Apostles, Ambassadors in Change. He joins us now. Help us take a deeper look at the lives of the apostles and how they overcame incredible odds to fulfill Jesus's great commission. Jim, it's great to have you here. I love, love your book. Love it. Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me. Well, tell me about as you dove, dived whatever you did into the lives of the apostles and you looked at the scriptures and the historical records. What kind of surprising things came up? Well, a lot really, because it's easy to read past little details in scripture. One of the things that I noticed when I was harmonizing the Gospels is I made a table of the women at the foot of the cross. And what I discovered there is that John says that Jesus' mother Mary was there. But the other gospel writers indicate that there was another woman named Mary Salome, who is the wife of Zebedee. And she was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And therefore what we have is James and John are almost certainly the first cousins of Jesus. So when he called them into ministry, he certainly wasn't calling a stranger. He was calling somebody they had known each other since boyhood. I always wondered about that because he says, come follow me. And they just like drop everything. They walk away, leave their father with the nets there. But it was clear. Obviously, I'm sure they had heard of Jesus. But in this case, there was even a stronger connection. Well, I think so because so we have those two are connected to him. We also look if we study the fathers of Matthew Levy, Simon, James the last and Simon the zealot. It's almost certainly the case in the early church believed that those three were brothers and we're also the first cousins of Jesus. Now think of Jesus taking a zealot who wanted to overthrow Rome and taking Matthew who was serving the Roman Empire, putting him in his ministry team together and making it all work. We could use that in our country today. Absolutely. So tell me about let's start with the first one, Peter, the rock. Tell me about this and tell me what you found out about Peter as you dove into his story. Well, Peter's story is told more than any other story in the Bible. Jesus speaks to him more and he speaks to Jesus more than to any other disciple. So reading through, we find a lot of things that are pretty self-evident in his story. But there are some things that are surprising. For example, remember when they get caught on the on the sea in the storm and Jesus walks on water? When you read the scripture very carefully, you find out this was because they disobeyed Jesus. After feeding the 5,000, Jesus told them, boys, take the boat back to Bethsaida and wait for me there. Well, they didn't. They crossed the sea back to Copernoam, probably hoping that they'd get to Peter's house and his mom would have a nice warm supper for them. But they got stuck on the sea because of their disobedience. Jesus had to save them, save them in this way. Another thing about Peter that I think is amazing. We have that scripture that says, you are the rock and upon this rock, I will found my church. Well, when we read the original language carefully, we see that the Greek word Jesus uses for you are a rock, Peter, is you are a pebble. But then he says upon this rock, upon this boulder, I will found my church. So what he is probably saying is you Peter are a pebble, but upon me, the rock, I will found my church. So Peter is a chip off the old block. Absolutely. I just was wondering, you know, how did you come to Jesus? You, you have so much material and I, you know, from the beginning, like, what did that moment look like for you? Well, when I was 12 years old, I was sitting in Boca Raton and a bridge watching a sunset and I came to the conclusion just looking at the world around me, God had to be there. It God had to exist. So I decided I wanted to find him and I began a quest for that. So I began reading Plato and Aristotle and felt like that was leading leading me that direction. I went to Oxford University and studied philosophy, hoping that the dons there would lead me to God, but they, you know, really had no interest in God. And so I began to travel the world thinking that in different cultures or societies, I would get clues to who God was. I went and I lived in Italy for two years. And the the joy of life of the Italians made me think maybe I'll find it here, but I didn't. And so I stepped, I kept going further East. I went to India and when I went there, I got a job opening up an American company in India. And my first day there, I met the owner of the company we were supposed to work with. And he said, why have you come to India? And I said, well, sir, I came to set up this company between your company and mine. He goes, no, no, no, no. Why have you personally come to India? I had no idea he could guess this, but I said, I'm looking for God. And he said, I thought this might be the case. So I took the trouble of preparing these books for you. And he brought up a big brown box filled with books of all the religious traditions of India. And he said, but I caution you, do not become a metaphysical tourist. We have so many people from the West who come here looking for spiritual things and they just get lost. And so I spent two years in India. I crossed the Himalayas. I met the Dalai Lama. I trekked through a jungle to meditated a Sufi shrine. I studied Islam. I studied the Quran. I know it better than most Muslims know it. But it was like having a telephone and I was hoping God would be the other end. But not only when I picked it up was there no God, there wasn't even a dial tone. So I came back to the U.S. Finally discouraged. And my sister said, why don't you go to a church? So I went to the church on the way in California and they had an altar call. And frankly, I was skeptical. I didn't even like the environment. I was just not really feeling at home or comfortable. And I thought, well, if I'm scientific enough to unravel the world and look for God and all these other places, I can walk to the front of this air conditioned aisle. So I did. And my prayer was kind of insolent. If I were God, I wouldn't have been very happy with that prayer. But I just said, God, I don't know about this. But if you're in this and if I can accept Jesus in my life, I'm open. That was my prayer. I didn't even repent, but this light went on my heart and I thought, well, that's just the moment, but it didn't go off day after day after day. And I found after a little while, my heart had become a believer. My heart had become saved. My head hadn't. So then this is how I began writing all these books. I tried to tear the Bible apart to say either my heart or my mind is going to end up being right. Well, my mind ended up being wrong and all the battering rams of intellectualism that I brought against the Bible shattered against its impregnable gates. And I learned of its inerrancy and its majestic miraculousness. Jim, this is so incredible. Like just hearing your testimony and your story of how you went to India and you were like reading all of these spiritual books. And what would you say, you know, from your experience of it was powerfully said, the light went on with inside of you never went out. So what would you say from, you know, your experiences being in India and studying these different religions to Jesus? What is the difference? What really makes it this thing? The difference is it's true. So so there's a saying, particularly in Islam, that there are as many pathways to God as there are hearts to men. But that is not true. There is only one way. It's Jesus. He's the way of the truth in the life. It's like C.S. Lewis said there are many sides to every question until you know the answer. And then there's only one. And that's what that's what it is, is that is that is that God is unique and he gave a unique pathway for us to find him. And if we don't follow that pathway, it's like taking a map. If you're trying to get to Florida, but you take the wrong wrong road, you're not going to end up in Florida. And that's what God has given us is the pathway to salvation. You know, as I was reading your story, you said that as you were searching in these other religions that every once in a while you'd catch this little flicker like in your heart of like, Oh, Oh, there's the light. There's the thing I want. And then it would go away. But when you came to Christ, that thing came on and never went away. When that first came on with Christ, I thought it was the same thing. I thought it was the ambience. I thought it was the mood. It was the moment was that it was the people around me, which sometimes those things do sway you. If you go and practice an Eastern religion and you're constantly repeating some kind of a mantra, after a while you auto hypnotize yourself, sometimes a whole room will hypnotize themselves with these things. And you feel like you're having a transcended experience, but it's either one of two things, something that will pass or something that's dangerously evil. And you should walk away from it. Wow. So with the book, what was your purpose in writing the book? Why? Why dive so deep into I know you taught through the through the Bible for many years at your church. And you do meticulous research. I mean, there's so much in the book. It's amazing. But why? What was your purpose in writing? What can we learn from? Well, at my church, they asked me to just take over for an adult theology teacher for three Sundays. And I said, OK, and I was really nervous because I'd never done it. And I didn't know the Bible well enough to do it. And you know what happened in church when you volunteer? It went on for 10 years. So I went up, I went, I ended up teaching the Bible through three times verse by verse to an adult, a group of adults. These adults included a rocket scientist from JPL, a professional theologian, people who had known the Bible and studied it for their whole lives. They were far beyond me in their expertise about the Bible. But I figured the best way to learn is to teach. And all I have to do is stay one week ahead of them. So as iron sharpened iron, we work together on this project. And I wrote original course material for all these classes, which ended up becoming 18 books on biblical theology. But why I did the research I did is because when I tried to teach all the Gospels harmonized together, I'd run into problems. You know, and then I would go look at other resources and you'd have people confused about was Jesus born in 4 B.C. or in 2 B.C. How do you solve these differences between these Gospels? And I would back up and say to the class, whoa, whoa, whoa, we have to go somewhere else. I have got to take some time to figure out how we reconcile these apparent discrepancies. And I'll tell you this, there are no unresolvable discrepancies in the Bible, not one. There are about 50 challenges to the Bible you run into. After that, the skeptics run out of gas and here's an excellent answer for every apparent problem. Well, let me ask you about my namesake here, doubting Thomas, good old doubting Thomas, you know, I mean, he gets a bad rap in many, many cases. And I've understood as I've looked into him a little bit, understood my own personality in doubting things and questioning things at times. What was surprising about what you found out about Thomas? Well, Thomas may have been the least doubting of the Apostles rather than the most doubting of them. So for example, when Jesus said that they were going to go to go to Lazarus home because he died, they said, they're trying to kill you in Judea. Why do you want to go back to Judea? And Thomas was the one who said, let's go. We'll go with him and even die. When the other Apostles saw Jesus appear on Resurrection Sunday, they asked for the very same proofs that Thomas asked for. They got to touch then his nail holes. They got to touch his body. He even took out a piece of fish and ate it in front of them to prove to them. When Thomas met with him, he asked for the very same proofs that the other disciples had asked for. He was no more doubting than they were. But his response to when he ascertained that Jesus was really there physically was to utter the most theologically profound statement in Scripture, my Lord and my God. Yeah, I love that. So take that everybody about Thomas. What else? What other things kind of stuck? What's I know that you've got a list of surprising things that you found as you as you did this deep dive. Tell me some more. Well, you know, one of the things you get from skeptics is that the Gospels weren't really written contemporaneously with the mission of Jesus that they were written by people who pretended to be apostles years afterwards and things like that. But we can find in Scripture evidence that that is not the case. So, for example, in Matthew 13, Jesus tells his disciples that you are scribes in the new kingdom of heaven. What is he telling them? He's telling them you are scribes. You are going to be writing all this stuff down. When Jesus delivers the sermon on the mount, all the 12 apostles are not there. Matthew, who is the only apostle to record it, he is not there. Only Peter, James and John are there. So that begs the question. Where did Matthew get the exact text of this most beautiful sermon, this most beautiful discourse in all of human literature? Where did he get it? One of three places. Jesus told him afterwards word for word. The Holy Spirit gave it to him afterwards word for word or what I think more likely the other apostles who were there, the three who were there, told him because can you imagine being a new scribe in the kingdom of heaven and sitting there on Mount Aramo and listening to the sermon on the mount and not saying to each other, are you getting this down? The other thing is this. Jesus ministry lasted 1,350 days. 770 of those days, which is 57% of his ministry, he disappeared from the pages of scripture. He drops out of history. What is he doing with his disciples at that time? He's probably rehearsing with them. He's probably going over their notes. Did I get this right, Master? Did I get that right, Master? Did I understand this correctly? Because he was going to launch them in the most world changing mission the world had ever seen. And he would have probably taken that time to equip them. So I'm just wondering, do you have a preference like version wise of the Bible that you prefer to study from or maybe what's a tool if someone wants to dig in for themselves? Well, of course, that depends on where you are as a Christian. So if you are really looking for, if you're more scholarly, you probably want something like the ESV or the NASB because that's a little more of a word for word translation. But if you are more new to Christianity, you're probably going to want something like the NIV, which is a more dynamic equivalent. In other words, it's thought for thought instead of word for word. As for me, what I do is I use, I try to use the Greek text. Now, that might sound like, oh, yeah, I can't do that. No, you can. You can go to sites like Bible Hub or Blue Letter Bible and anybody can get into the Greek in which God has rendered these manuscripts. And God chose this Greek language, not because it would be too mysterious or hard for you to understand. He chose it so that everyone could get it. That's our Hebrew scholar over here. I love when you said the Blue Letter Bible. I like highly, highly recommend just like when you're able to deeply dive into the Bible and just read word for word. But one thing I wanted to ask you because I feel like you have a very unique position in the body of Christ. And you can relate to a lot of people right now that are skeptics. There's like, and it doesn't even matter if it's Gen Z millennial, no matter the age of a lot of people who are questioning is God real? How can we trust the Bible? What would you say to that person that's watching right now about what they can believe is true? Well, I would say that we probably don't have the time right now, but I have a little discourse that I go through where I can prove without recourse to faith or recourse to the Bible that God exists and that he is the God the Bible says he is. Now, if we can do that, then I've gone with skeptics and with atheists and I said, OK, just prove what I've just said. Now, the other thing is this, people always ask Christians, prove that God exists. Well, I ask the counter question, prove that he does not exist. If you analyze this logically and philosophically, you'll find to prove something does not exist is not a possible thing. So if you're going to be an atheist, you have to believe in something that cannot be proven. If you're going to be a Christian, you can believe in something which can absolutely be proven only by logic. And then if you look at all the other religious traditions, there's no more competitive, compelling, true, and spiritually changing communication than what we have in the Bible. So why would you settle for something worse? Why would you settle for something unsatisfying, logically deficient when you could have the truth? Well, speaking of the truth, we're going to dig in right now to Matthew 4, 18 and 19. I can't wait to hear more about this. But it says, and Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. Then he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. All right, talk to us about this scripture in the context in which it was spoken. When I first read that scripture as a new Christian at 32, I thought that these men were just dropping their nets and exercising a special kind of faith because they were following a complete stranger. In fact, they probably knew Jesus from childhood. One thing we know for sure is that they knew Jesus from many months before when they first met him at the Feast of Tabernacles and called him the Messiah. When he met John and he met Philip and he met Nathaniel and he met Peter and they went to the wedding at Kana. He was not a stranger. So the faith that they were exercising here was something different. They were deciding to change their lives from being acquaintances of Jesus to getting all in with Jesus. They were going to go into full time ministry and they understood that by dropping their nets. So say there's somebody watching right now that is similar to where you've been. You know, I just heard a statistic that 72% of people say they believe in God. Okay, now that sounds good except a generation ago it would have been over 90%. So there's this real struggle that many people in recent generations have had with the existence of God. What would you say to someone as a challenge to them to not give up on the idea and the truth of God? If you believe God exists, I would ask this question. If you could know him, would you not want to? Why would you not want to know God? Why would you want to go through life and face an end like a Muslim who doesn't know ever in his whole life if he's going to be saved or he's not going to be saved? Wouldn't you like to know that you have a final good happy place that you're going to? And if knowing God would mean that, why wouldn't you want to know him? So if you do want to know him, then what you need to do is follow traditions that will lead you to that direct relationship. And if you examine all these other traditions, whether it's Hinduism or Taoism or Islam, you will find that they don't make that promise. Only Christianity makes that promise. So why would you be scientific enough to test if it's true? Because if it is, it will be life changing beyond all imagination. And if it's not true, all you've done is waste a little faith in time. But it is true. So you will never waste faith and you will never waste time when you're exploring your relationship with Christ. I love how we're just talking right now about the truth. And I love that Jesus says, I am the way. I am the truth and I am the life. And I recently saw on TikTok over the weekend that there was a man who was a former Islamist. He was of ISIS. And he was having this moment and he said, Jesus appeared to him and said the very same things. I am the way. I am the truth. And I am the life. And in that moment, he said, he knew it was Jesus. And Jesus said his name to him. And so you know, all about here at Cornerstone Television Network, here on Hope Today, this is why we simply exist is because we want you, no matter where you are in your walk, maybe you are so far from God, maybe you're like Jim and you're trying to discover at one point like who God is and the truth of who he is. And we just wanted to come here and tell you that there is a truth, that there is someone that paid the ultimate price for you, that laid it all down and it is all written in this beautiful book called the Bible. And if you're watching today and maybe you've been questioning that we say keep asking those questions because we know that God is real and he's going to reveal himself to you. He is not afraid of your questions. He's not afraid of your doubts. He can handle it because he wants to have an intimate relationship with you. So that's you today and you've been questioning or maybe today you're like, you know what? I'm ready to turn my life to Jesus. Give us a call at our prayer line at 888-665-4483. Even if you have questions, give us a call because we want you to know the greatest hope of all. His name is Yeshua. His name is Jesus. And he died just for you because he loves you. Have a great day. On tomorrow's hope today, discover the secret to receiving your miracle. Pastor and author Judy Jacob shares from her personal experience of turmoil and victory as she encourages you to reach for the unreachable, believe for the incredible and walk in faith toward your miracle. Don't miss tomorrow's hope today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.