The Atheist Who Loved Debating Christians, Until One Debate Changed Everything

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0:00 Our first story today is with someone who became involved in gangs in the first grade and whose best friend was shot at 9 years old when he had nightmares he would open the Bible and sometimes read the book of Revelation to help him to go to sleep at night I don't know if that took away the nightmares or gave him more but he soon became disillusioned with Christianity and while he started to Exel academically he became known as the guy who loved to debate Christians but all that Chang when he realized that the Bible actually predicted world history and gave him peace about what lies ahead let's welcome our first guest to Hope at night Braxton Sebastian thank you so much for being here it's a pleasure that was that was a pretty good introduction now you were raised in a home that really wasn't h hostile to Christianity what was that like and how in the world did you start atheism well yeah definitely loaded question so my my parents met at a Christian University I was the result of two teenagers in college couldn't keep their hands off each other um and then I came about as a kid I was always gravitating towards things that were very Transcendent so I was into Marvel Comics I was into DC Comics and anything that was you know the concept of of a god being and this all powerful entity and the responsibility of that so at 9 years old I'm having these nightmares and for some reason I wake up we've never read the Bible we've never had family worship it's midnight and normally I would sneak and watch TV on like volume level one right Tom and Jerry or whatever was on late at night but for whatever reason this one night I'm like impressed to open the Bible the the pattern was like this I I would have a nightmare I would wake up I would read revelation probably for about an hour and all of a sudden I would just feel

2:03 Better and I would go back to sleep I eventually my parents had divorced and my father was living in the Bible Belt United States go down to live with my dad because a lot of African-American males didn't really know their dads um grew up like you mentioned really gang infested neighborhood um and so I was like this is an opportunity for me to spend time with my dad and so I went to Atlanta huge Christian Community and during this time is when I became disillusioned with Christianity because you're seeing you know this guy at high school he's driving a Bentley his dad's the pastor of one of the biggest churches there 16 years old driving a $100,000 car and this young lady came to me like Hey we're having a raffle at our church you could win the pastor's Bentley and I'm like Jesus was poor so what you're raffling off of Bentley like I said you guys have a bus that takes people from their homes to your church if he sells to Bentley he could buy 10 fam's Honda ACC courts and she was like well that's not really how we're you know the church works and and so this sort of started me down and then my senior year in high school this was like the real Crux event so my senior class they decided that you know we're going to get together in the mornings and we're going to have a spiritual time and the school allowed it so we didn't have to attend first period which was home room so we're getting together and the weekend just passed crazy weekend parties the whole nine and this sister stands up and says hey we got to give our hearts to Jesus now in my mind I'm thinking sister just 24 hours ago you were shaking your new you know what and I'm thinking now you're telling me I need to give my life to Jesus so this started a debate and that sort of debate sort of I don't I guess you can say it was a catalyst for me and I was like I actually hate everything about this and so I would go every morning just to and eventually I got banned from the boing things but ironically I was in tension because in my biology class he

4:08 Says a random event occurred and life started and my hand goes up I'm like explain that to me again a random event yeah just time plus chance plus matter I was like that makes sense to you and so I'm debating with my biology teacher you were debating uh with Christians and you were debating with the the evolutionists yes I'm in I'm in both both camps so so now this this sort of tension for me when I get to college I join the Marine Corps as I join the Marines they say there's no atheist right in a foxhole I was one of them and as a marine you're you're trained to kill and in my mindset which was before 9/11 I was just thinking look I want to be dangerous a mercenary whatever you can do but I started to develop this social justice concern of human trafficking was very big at that time and so I thought yeah if I can you use my skills to kill and da d da to take out these sort of terrible things happening in the world then I'm on I'm all for that and so I had this weird sense of morality at the same time so now you have this tension where I'm against religion on the other side I am I'm just intellectually can accept evolution in the Big Bang but then at the flip side I have this weird sense of morality and social justice of like why are we not protecting the weak and this sort of coalesced into this sort of aggressive atheism where it's like well what are Christ doing for these things in the world was there a moment that was you could call it the defining moment where you decided look I'm actually a believer in God I'm a Believer in Jesus yes was what what took place so in college um I was known as the guy who was debating Christians and I pretty much know everybody on campus I run I see this young girl walking through campus she was beautiful and I remembered seeing her in the student center reading her Bible and so so as I approach her I'm desperate right I'm like how do I get this girl s to spend time with her so I'm like we should study the Bible sometime so I'm thinking I didn't really want to study the Bible

6:09 But I'll listen to you talk about anything so in that process she sits down and gives me a Bible study on Daniel chapter 2 and Daniel chapter 7 Bible prophecy 4H hour Bible study 4 hours four hours in school right I missed my computer class because she finished Daniel 2 and she was like well there's another section but I know you have to go to class I was like no no go ahead and finish and I was and I was fascinated because I loved history and here she is telling me that I know as a historian you know armchair historian I'm not like officially but I loved history so I'm thinking you're telling me that a book The Book of Daniel at least was collected by 300 400 BC is predicting events that happened well ad and you're telling me this is in the Bible and I'm like how is that possible and I knew the history better than her so she's like well after Alexander the Great there were four generals yeah cassander lmus pamy salus I knew who they were and so I go home only thing replaying in my mind is this study and the reality of if this is true then surely this has to be inspired W there's no other there's no other explanation how can you predict future events unless there's an intelligence that knew these things before they they came to pass I mean that's the stuff of Science Fiction like you're thinking back to the future like all these type of things like in my brain as an ' 80s baby like I just cannot understand how a book could have done that and that other people had this book and I'd never heard a Christian talk about it one time you felt like you were beginning to trust because you you were learning about prophecies in there yes that were clearly precisely defining events that were taking place or or had come to pass well before that took place exactly right and and the thing about prophecy is the fact that what appealed to me as an atheist was that prophecy invites you to reason it invites you to validate because one of the pillars that that grew out of loving history is

8:13 Archaeology so now you can go and see David was a real historical person Jerusalem was a real historical Place Nebuchadnezzar was a real historical person so you're like I know that these people existed I know that this is true you're just telling me this predicted ahead of time so what prophecy does is is Jesus tells us in the New Testament John 13 he says I tell you beforehand so that when it comes to pass you might believe and so Faith rests upon evidence not demonstration and that was always my issue as an atheist you always want me to be a Christian first and then I'll find out why but God is not insecure you can evaluate him before you even believe see if I'm telling the truth see if I actually can predict and find me another path another religion that has a prophecy that you can validate and evaluate from the outside okay so here you are as a young man you you had a Bible study with a beautiful young lady I did you were now wrestling with these deep truths you were confronting that you're part of a bigger reality here heavily what started to change from that point on well immediately what started to change was I had to read the Bible so I'm like if if if this thing is inspired that means this is actually from God like you know the stuff I was into in atheism Area 51 like aliens like you're looking at all these websites that are only online for like an hour I'm sitting here going from do we have extraterrestrial contact to if this book is inspired by God that is extraterrestrial contact God is not from this world there is life intelligent outside of earth that is communicated with us through this book so I have to read it so I start reading 15 chapters a day and as this happens right all the sudden I was into hip-hop music and I was actually working on a a record deal with several different popular producers in Atlanta at the time all of the sudden I'm not my heart's not in it so I'm at this studio meeting and they're like hey sebas we want to get you to the studio we're going to record we're going to do

10:14 This and that in the third they're like okay we're going to put you you you and all these artists here on the website and I was like well can you just take my picture off the website so now the the producer is like what's going on like what artist doesn't want to be featured on a website and so this reading of the Bible began to change my my party life so now my friends like yo we're going to the strip club not into that hey man we're going out to this party no I can't do that and my friends are like what happened to this brother so they thought it was the girl a lot of these perspectives on things started to change but the last thing that really changed for me that was uh really shocking was the idea that I could live above my weaknesses that there was a righteousness that could come by faith that God would actually help me with my struggles and I was I was in this relation with this Christian girl at the time we were being intimate I'm reading the Bible and I come to the Ten Commandments you should not commit adultery and I'm like wait but that's for married people so of course you know my intellectual brain go to the dictionary no you're being intimate with someone who is not your wife so I'm like I wonder if my girlfriend knows this she's a Christian so I call her hey did you know and she's like yeah yeah I knew and and so I was thinking to myself we should probably stop she's like sure and so M I'm like oh I'm Scot free so I I come back we we get together and it doesn't stop so I was like and so I get this sermon about how God can help you by faith to deliver you from your struggles in this sermon the preacher says well why do we wait to talk to God after the Temptation why not talk to him right then so in the moment the Temptation comes along my girlfriend's like all right I have to go but then it's like goodbye hug kiss all of this stuff and so I'm like you never seen a guy so happy to see his girlfriend leave I was packing her stuff I was getting her jacket for her because I'm thinking man I'm about to see if this Christianity stuff really works practically not just intellectually the prophecy convince me mentally this experience is what

12:18 Convinced me of the reality and so in this moment my girlfriend is like Hey Nobody's Home it's just me and you we said we would stop one last time and in my mind I'm praying cuz the sermon comes back to my mind talk to God right now so I'm talking to God in my mind like Lord I don't want to do this I'm not I have never gone to church I've never attended any spiritual community at this point in time in my mind I'm thinking well I've already fallen and I'm waiting for God to do something miraculous right like a boom you know nothing and so I'm about to lose hope I'm about to give up and say what's the point and in that very moment God supernaturally removes all sexual desire from me it's like electricity came over my body so I'm like this is crazy pushing my girlfriend off she starts crying she's like I think we should break up she left I came in my house and I sat on my bed and I said Christianity is real I'm going to be a Christian and that very next week I was in church you experienced this tremendous victory in the midst of this struggle this this battle yes and it convinced you of the reality of God's goodness and his strength in 1,000% there's a lot of things that can happen in life that can discourage you that can make you question but when you have an experience with God and you say Lord I'm going to take you at your word and he comes through that's what prophecy is you take him at his word and he comes through not only does he do it prophetically in history he will do it in your history in your life and in my life that was an experience that I always go back to whenever I struggle whenever I doubt whenever I question Sebastian you cannot deny what you experience iced in that very moment and if God never worked another miracle in my life that one thing is enough for me to go back to and to at least give that spark to my faith that I'm going to hold on to Forever incredible you know in our world today we have uh more access to Bibles than we've ever had before there are more preachers probably around than we've ever had before it's true why do

14:20 You think atheism still exists in our world today uh and and and to top that off most of these atheists most people are atheist aren't card carrying members of The Atheist Club Gandhi has a saying where he says I like your Christ I do not like your Christians because your Christians are so unlike your Christ my issue was hypocrisy that's what really solidified my atheism it wasn't the intellectual yes there were there were certain things in the Bible God's going to burn you up forever like I don't believe that and and in these different ideas and ideologies that came in they discouraged me from Christianity but it was really the experience of of these people do not look like the god of the Bible they do not look like the Jesus of the gospels and so atheism today is mainly a practical atheism than it is an intellectual atheism because in reality as I tell my former atheist friends and I'm still friends with some of them to this day 20s something years later and I'm like listen if you want to destroy Christianity that's fine and you say look he's nothing different from the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus great but what's your answer for suffering in the world what's the hope that you can offer people see I've been where you were on that side of the table and there was no hope there was battles in my life that atheism could not solve and answer yes I'm struggling with this and that Temptation and sin and evil in my life and terrible habit and Atheism provided no hope so at the at the end of the day today a lot of people if they're truly Fair intellectually as atheist they have to admit their worldview is really leaning towards agnosticism I I just want to say I don't know I can't intellectually prove it scientifically but experientially I mean you have nothing to offer what's the contribution so at some at some level atheism is going to persist as long as Christians do not look like Jesus do not act and treat people like Jesus did with respect and honor and love and a humility to desire to serve and to meet but at the same

16:24 Time intellectual atheism is only going to become more aggressive because while your life does not match as a Christian you're trying to intellectually debate with me and I'm not fighting you because I intellectually agree I'm fighting you because I'm hurt I'm fighting you because I'm disappointed and I don't know if you ever been in a debate with a person who they stop making sense but you realize they're holding on to this thing like a dog to a bone because it intellectually means something to you and so many times when I get in conversations one of the most important questions you can ask a person when you're in a disagree agement is why is it so important to you why is it so important to you that God does not exist if you ask an atheist that well I guarantee you a story is going to come I guarantee you an experience is going my dad was a Christian was beating my mom my mom was a Christian she was literally the most cold Loveless person in my life like in these different things they're going to go back to a story because you don't become that aggressive and it's not important to you on a personal level but if we're intellectually honest we have a saying in Jamaica if a person is honestly mistaken when you tell them the truth they either cease to be honest or cease to be mistaken but you cannot be both the moment you're introduced to truth and the moment I tell you as an atheist there's evidence to believe Christianity Christianity has evidence to support its worldview but you still fight now we're not talking intellectually we're speaking to the heart I I heard it once said that there are five gospels that most people read right mhm Matthew Mark Luke John and the Christian and most people read The Fifth Gospel oh yeah right it's not about the arguments it's about the relationships and the life you live if you just interact with people with kindness and joy and love and peace or even your home and how your children behave you you have a a a certain sense in people's Souls that man a loving and lovable Christian is a great argument for Christianity and a loving and

18:25 Lovable family even more that's right and any other questions right over there so people have been saying for years that Christ is coming um what makes them so sure that it's going to happen in the very near future we're heading into places where there's we're not turning back the clock here one thing I can also add is when the prophecy that I studied with that young lady was Daniel chapter 2 this dream of Nebuchadnezzar and it started with his kingdom as this head of gold he dreamed of the statue Daniel interpreted for him so in this prophecy what you see is is you're the head of gold then after you another kingdom will arise of silver then another kingdom of bronze and then another kingdom of iron and then iron mixed with clay and then he says and a rock is cut out of a mountain without man's hands right and this rock hits the image on its feet and destroys the image so when you when you look at that he essentially says this is several kingdoms that will come which we know we have Babylon we have the mes and the Persians prophetically we can study that out and then the Greeks represent the brass and then the the Romans the iron and then Rome is not conquered but divides itself and then the iron and the clay and then the Rock So if this prophecy is accurate and majority of this vision is concluded the only thing left to happen is this rock to be cut out and to strike this thing on its feet which we automatically associate with Jesus's return taking his kingdom consuming all the other kingdoms and consuming the world so what we see prophetically is if 95% of this prophecy is completed and the last event is Jesus coming and setting up his kingdom on this Earth and it consuming all other kingdoms it also prophetically gives us a sense of time that says all these other major events have happened this is the last one well this is the next event then we're living in that time and then you go to the signs of Matthew 24 and Luke 21 that say these are all the little markers along the way uh that tell you that and so one one example I

20:28 Can also Shar is when I was in bwana preaching I was sitting down in the in and a lady hands me a newspaper and it says Jesus has returned on the newspaper 12-year-old boy says he's Jesus he has 12 disciples and Jesus said they will say he has returned Jesus is in the wilderness and you have to go see him in the wilderness Jesus said this was going to happen and here it is on the cover of a newspaper a national newspaper that Jesus has come back and people are claiming that he's there so this let you know prophetically on a broad scale and even in very detailed prophecies that he gave these things are literally happening before our eyes that his coming is near Great excellent answer any other questions right over there there are many cultures and religions that have predicted past events events that are currently happening now and future events what makes you resonate most with Christianity and have you explored any other religions so coming from atheism the the biggest difference that I found between Christianity and other religions is that Christianity is the only religion that allows you to evaluate without joining in participating in anything religious you can just analyze the Bible look at the prophecies go to archaeology with many other religions when I had Muslim friends I had people were Hindu seik I had people who were also agnostic and of course other intellectual Persuasions and a lot of these things it was never something you could evaluate in an external piece to say here's the evidence as to why my view of the world the creation of the world the origin of the world the morality of how you should live this is why here's the evidence and most of them when they present evidence like for example prophetically it's very general it's very generic but this is very specific after Babylon will be Meo Persia after this will be Greece after this will be Rome when you're talking about the Roman came from the atrans and these people were basically no man's

22:32 People that they would eventually become the greatest Empire like no one would have believed you in the times of Babylon or or Meo Persia or even Greece Alexander the Great is one of the best Generals in the history of the world militarily speaking there's no way you're thinking they're going to get conquered and it's going to be even bigger than Alexander so when you when you look at the biblical evidence and the archaeology to support that no other religion can present that amount of evidence look at the the copies of the New Testament we have thousands 35,000 manuscripts of the Bible to say was this really happen did this did someone really write this book so when I've compared to other religions which I did do to answer that part of the question I did consider them but the resonation with Christianity was as an atheist as an intellectual I need something that not only speaks to my heart but also resonates with my mind I don't want to have to believe in a way that causes me to check out my intellect suspend belief for a moment and just walk in this and trust it and most of the time with my Hindu friends my seek friends my Muslim friends they would say you have to experience it you have to go to the mosque you have to listen to the Quran be read in its actual original language and then you will understand well for the Bible I can just evaluate I don't have to participate in that and that's a big reason why it resonated with me any other questions right over there this is more so a question for Sebastian I was wondering if you think there's any Middle Ground to be reached with A- religious philosophies that try to solve the problem of suffering so absurdism or existentialism come to mind do you think that there is some meeting place in the middle or do you think that they're just sort of irreconcilable with each other the problem of suffering with a religious answers for example existentialism in living in the moment when you when you look at um sart and and and Camu and these different people that went down that road you found that they' ended life with no hope right for them they thought they reconciled it but

24:36 Then existentially ironically that was not his experience that was not how he ended and so I I do believe there is an element in a religious intellectual uh Persuasions that somehow Echo elements of what the Bible says but to say that there's a middle ground I would say no because they would be superficially similar but fundamentally different the reason for that is in the Bible there's a great controversy which the book of Joe paints and that painting says that suffering isn't always based upon the consequence of evil immorality there's a suffering that comes because of a greater conversation that's happening universally in terms of God and Satan and because of that no a religious entity would ever find middle ground with that perspective because you'd have to posit the existence of God and secondly the a religious intellectual Persuasions also typically are born out of an issue with the existence of God and suffering so their their whole fundamental issue is I don't I can't go with God because if he's so good and so great why is all this pain when these these sort of Persuasions are simply trying to solve it without him but in order to posit the question at all you need God because the moment you say there's evil in the world you're saying there's such a thing as good well the moment you say that you have to have a standard to tell the difference that's a law in order for to be a law there must be a lawgiver so and that's God but you're saying he doesn't exist he doesn't matter he's not relevant and I I remember having a conversation with a Jewish atheistic friend of mine a Jewish atheistic friend I'm putting all three of those categories together go ahead and she was like I don't see why I need God to be moral I said well how do you determine what's wrong now mind you she's Jewish by Heritage right of the Flesh and so as she's telling me these things I don't need God to know right

26:37 And wrong this and that and the third I said so how do you judge Germany for the Holocaust because when they were being interviewed the individuals who are part of the Nazi party said I broke no laws that was the law in Germany if you were a Jew we arrest you and the inquis the person who was on the in inquiring party for the international Justice said well is there not a law above our laws and he said what law is that the supreme law in Germany is German law that's it there is no law above our laws and that moment she looked at me on the plane and said I don't know how to respond to that because I said the moment you posit what your grandmother went through in the Holocaust you can't just look at your grandmother and say there's no General sense that some things are just wrong and we got to figure out why we know that that's true but existentialism and absurdism and and um even Buddhist philosophy that suffering is a result of Desire because you love things because you're attached to them that's why you suffer none of those philosop can explain something like the Holocaust none of them can explain and they don't provide adequate answers to that great tremendous any other questions right over there in what part do you see the United states where the Antichrist is becoming more apparent well when I first began to believe in Bible prophecy as I said some of these things didn't seem at all possible there there was a strong separation between religion and the government uh church and state um that of course doesn't exist anymore uh religion and politics are inseparable it seems um so that enables the possibility of religious persecution first of all secondly I thought well how can oppression happen here in the United States because we're free we Liberty is

28:42 A strong value and then of course 911 took place and we realized that okay um every time we get on an airplane we realize who's really in charge and it's not us the government um reminds us that they're really in charge they're in control and um the government has become stronger and stronger not only within the United States but dictating worldwide through different policies through um you know sanctions and many many many things through through uh economic means and then I thought well how can it be you know that Revelation 13 talks about no one being able to buy or sell how can that possibly happen globally there's so many currencies well digital currencies Have No Boundaries no borders so everything that the Bible has to say about how this can come about has already been paved for us we can see that it's just a matter of a very short time before it happens uh the question with uh the Antichrist and all this stuff this is a a fascinating topic and uh we're going to offer some study resources of course for that but I just think man this is as you guys are sharing and talking this is just really exciting really incredible um and uh it gives us hope you know that there there's a God who's coming back for his people whatever's happening around us we don't have to be afraid because Jesus is coming back for us absolutely we got time for one more question right over there how do we live in the now in in the face of all these prophecies or do we even try to live in now I think when you look at the Book of Daniel you find the first half of the book is narrative it's stories and the second half is predominantly prophecies Revelation is similar in a similar structure the first half of the book is very historical the seven churches all of these different things what you find is there are principles of how Daniel

30:45 Lived in chapter one where he refused to defile himself in that particular envir even though the environment was going corrupt he decided to stay faithful to God you see in Daniel chapter to the the power of prayer and having those friends in that community that you pray with that you seek God with and you believe that God can deliver you from any crisis and you go to Daniel chapter 3 and you see uh a character where I'm not afraid to stand and be counted when everyone is watching right and so you you deal with this being faithful to God and what you know to be true in anonymity as well as in publicity and in Daniel chapter 4 you see a character of a person who says I'm willing to tell you the truth and speak truth to power even when it's not popular and it may put my own life at risk so I I see some principles in the first half of Daniel's narrative that really drive home that point of how can I live in the light of these prophecies and that really comes down to character and who you decide to be in the principles you're going to live by right it definitely sounds like uh the experiences Daniel went through are are a bit of a microcosm of what end time events be like and we his faithfulness his trust in God his prayer life yeah things that sustained him that will sustain us too towards the end been tremendous exciting absolutely you've taken us to an adventure in Bible prophecy and we just got started if you'd like to study more about the Prophecies of the books of Daniel and Revelation I encourage you to visit our resource site at hope. study there you can find stepbystep Bible study guides that will walk you through the prophetic books of the Bible or if you'd like to study the Bible in person or in a group online just let us know and we'll be happy to help I hope tonight's episode has given you peace not just about the future but about The God Who holds all of time in his hands that means you could probably safely stock up on popcorn and ditch the surplus of canned goods and toilet paper

32:49 Do you believe there is a God who not only loves you but cares enough to let you know what lies ahead I hope you do because knowing that gives me hope at night thanks again for joining us today see you next week