Transcript
Speaker: I'm gonna go across that field and I'm gonna dare God to strike me with lightning. And they all said, don't do it. But I walked across this field the street, I went into the field, I pointed my finger in the sky and I said, God, if you exist, I dare you to strike me down.
Speaker: That's how I lost my hair.
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to The Upgrade. I am Joseph Attevay, aka Pastor Joe. We have our production crew here, our head of production, Joe Attevay.
Speaker: And we have our creative director, Stephen George. They're only allowed to talk when I say, but trust me, they're gonna interject. But we have an amazing guest here today. He's my brother from another father. That's right, we are brothers.
Speaker: Same mom, grew up together. he is Dr. David Dean. He's a professor Yan Fook Bible Institute in Hong Kong. He teaches there.
Speaker: He has his master's in theology. Also, he was a nuclear physicist. I'll let him tell you a little bit more about that. And also an adjunct professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. He's also been a missionary teaching at a seminary in the Philippines.
Speaker: He's a super talented, really smart guy because he's my brother. ah But I just want to give him a chance to say hello before I tell you where we're heading with this.
Speaker: Well, hello to all of you, and I'm thrilled to be here. And we're going to have a great time together. Woo!
Speaker: Yes, we are. So fast forward really quick. If you don't know my life story, I'll tell you really quickly that we grew up in a family of five. David and Debbie were my older brother and sister. I had a younger brother and sister, Stacy and Karen, but we were separated when I was 12 or 13.
Speaker: Our mother kidnapped us. So I was kidnapped away from my older brother, David and Debbie, and they went with their dad. um You know, it was a really tough time. And it was about, that's when I got into the most of the trouble I got into in my life, as I've talked about many times. But we met again when I was in my early 20s.
Speaker: And so for about 13 years, we had been separated. Now, the David that I knew was a scientist, even in high school. Yeah. He was always blowing things up and doing all kinds of experiments and he was an atheist. He did not believe in God and if I had said anything about God to him, which I didn't, he would have left. I mean, i remember him being an atheist. I remember him talking about how silly it was for people to believe in God,
Speaker: So I went off into my street life in New York. And so here we have this tearful reunion, um me and ah my brother and our sister. And then, you know, after that, he said, let's get together again. And he...
Speaker: He came with his wife, me young, and I had, there was a girl I was dating at the time, wasn't my wife, and we met at a, Beefsteak Charlie's. Beefsteak Charlie's. And he in the middle of this dinner, pulls out a Bible and hands it to me and says they're Christians,
Speaker: I didn't understand really what that meant at the point at that point, but that Bible later saved my life, and the girl I was with pretty much just looked at me and laughed.
Speaker: She just couldn't understand. So the question is, Dr. David Dean, my brother, how did that happen? Short answer, by the grace of God, but the long answer is much more interesting.
Speaker: Okay. Let's see, a little background. um Joe and I have different fathers. My father ah was a Unitarian minister.
Speaker: Our mother was Jewish. um My father went to Princeton Seminary, but he never believed the gospel. He never believed the Bible was true.
Speaker: And so when he started his church, he basically taught in his church that there is no God. He was a promoter of secular humanism. um In his pulpit, he preached about things like feminism and nuclear disarmament and ecology, um promoted the sexual revolution, every liberal cause you could imagine.
Speaker: But that was that was later in my life when I was a teen. When I was young, I just knew that he was an atheist. And like every kid, I wanted to be like my father. So I adopted his atheism.
Speaker: What about the science part of it though? Was he into that as much as you were? No, he was never into science. I just always loved science, you know, since I was a tiny little kid, you know, you remember we used to build airplanes. I remember. We used to do all kinds of fun things. You mean you did? Well, we did a lot of them together.
Speaker: um But I remember even in grade school, I would get into arguments with the Catholic kids and the Baptist kids. I'd make fun of them. How can you believe in God? you know Where's the evidence of God? Can you see him?
Speaker: No. Can you hear him? No. Can you feel him? No. I said, why would you believe in something for which there is no evidence? And I was really good at arguing.
Speaker: And I would win the arguments. I don't know whether I convinced any of them, but I was pretty smug. Tell the story about the field. Oh boy. Well, you remember when we moved to Bloomfield, you were in intermediate school. I was in high school. You walked to school, but I had to take a bus and our bus used to pick us up in front of the Baptist church.
Speaker: Well, there are a lot of Baptist kids there. And one day we're waiting for the bus. There's this big field across the street and we could see there's a thunderstorm coming our way. And we were wondering whether the rain was going to hit us before the bus came.
Speaker: And there's lightning coming down. And we got talking about God and I said, there is no God. One of the Baptist kids said, you shouldn't say that. and i said, look, I'm going to go across that field and I'm going to dare God to strike me with lightning.
Speaker: And they all said, don't do it. But I walked across this field the street, I went into the field, I pointed my finger in the sky and I said, God, if you exist, I dare you to strike me down.
Speaker: That's how I lost my hair. Nothing happened. Nothing happened, of course. God merciful. And I mean, but that's the way I was. I was i was committed to the idea that there is no God.
Speaker: And yet in in my heart of hearts, I knew that wasn't true because just a few years later, um my stepmother and I went to the Delaware River to take a canoeing course on how to shoot the rapids on the river.
Speaker: And so we you know we we learned, we went through the rapids several times, we did fine. There was a guy there who didn't have a partner. So he came up to my stepmother and said, would you shoot the rapids with me?
Speaker: And she said, okay. So they got in the canoe, they paddled out in the middle of the river. And this guy was a total klutz. He did everything wrong. He got the canoe turned sideways to the current.
Speaker: They ran into a rock, the canoe tipped over. And the last thing we saw was the canoe being washed upside down around the corner of the river and no heads in sight.
Speaker: And I found myself there quietly saying in my head, but very urgently, God, please don't let her be dead. Please don't let her be dead. Because the reality is that we all know that there's somebody out there.
Speaker: And here was the atheist praying, even though he would never admit that God existed. Well, I didn't think about that incident very much until years later. By the way, they both lived.
Speaker: They both lived. Just in case you were wondering. That's true. They did. They finally washed up about three miles down the river and had to hitchhike. Didn't want leave people in a really sad, wondering. True.
Speaker: True. But... um About a year after our mother kidnapped Joe and Karen and Stacy, I went- Joe, by the way. I went off to study physics at Drew University and started my second year, we started studying thermodynamics and the laws of thermodynamics basically say Energy is conserved.
Speaker: You can't get something for nothing. And everything runs down. And a more sophisticated version of that everything runs down is that order always turns into chaos. And chaos never spontaneously becomes order.
Speaker: And we all know this. Everything runs down. Nothing runs up. It's already ringing a bell in my head now. We ah we we all get old. Things fall apart. you You go away from primary your house for a month and you come back and things are broken and there's dust everywhere.
Speaker: You never go away from a dirty room and come back. It's clean. you Your sock drawer is always getting messy. You have to reorder it. The only thing that can create order out of disorder is intelligence.
Speaker: That's what we humans do, right? We're always creating order out of disorder. Well, When I finally realized that and I thought it through, I realized that my only explanation for my own existence, Darwinism, could not be true.
Speaker: And there was no way out of it. How do you explain the universe in which we live? How do you explain the interactions of animals, you know bees to poll pollinate flowers and flowers to feed the bees and you know termites can't digest wood, but they have a protozoan that lives in their belly that does it for them.
Speaker: The universe is amazing. It's complex. Everything works together. So I had to go from being an atheist to being an agnostic. An agnostic is a person who says, well, I don't really know whether there is a God.
Speaker: And that's not a very satisfying position to have, but my intellectual honesty wouldn't let me say I'm an atheist anymore. Then you met a girl? Then I met a girl who is now my wife.
Speaker: um That would change things. Yeah. Well, when I first met her, she was not a Christian. She's Korean. Okay. She went away to a summer camp for Koreans and she got saved there.
Speaker: And when she came back around that time, we started dating. We probably dated for about a year. Then I went off to Cornell to do my graduate studies there. We quickly. didn't tell everybody how you met her. Oh, um i was I was the coach of the first women's fencing team at my university.
Speaker: Convenient, everybody. yeah Come here. Let me help you with that sword. You were her coach. I was her coach. you were Oh, boy.
Speaker: Okay, sorry. So, well, we started dating. ah we We dated for couple years, long distance dating because Cornell to New Jersey where she was living was a long way. And somewhere along in there, it becomes clear that this isn't going to work because she's growing as a Christian.
Speaker: She came to realize that it was wrong for a Christian to be dating a non-Christian because the goal of dating is marriage and Christians shouldn't date non-Christians. So she's trying to share the gospel with me.
Speaker: Of course, I'm pushing back. I want nothing to do with it. Well, in the fall of 1982, I decided I was going to solve the problem.
Speaker: So I went to my father. and Remember, he's a Unitarian minister. And I said, Dad, give me some books I can read that will show that the Bible isn't true. So I can convince her that her religion is foolishness, then she can give up her Christianity and we can get along. Now, I wasn't really interested in marriage at that point. I just wanted to make this relationship work.
Speaker: Well, I took those two books
Speaker: and the Bible. What were the two books? um One was the Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. and The other one was Why I'm Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, I think.
Speaker: Took those two books. Whose voice was that that just interjected? Was that from heaven? What? The voice just interjected, you know. It was one of those young guys, right? The ones that are never going ask questions. That's one of our angels who are watching over us, yes.
Speaker: So I read the books my father gave me, and I read a lot of the Bible. I mostly focused in the Bible on Matthew, John, and Romans. And I was really into this.
Speaker: For three months, I'd come home after my studies at the seminary, or not the seminary, at the university, Cornell, and I probably spent two hours every night. And at the end of that period of time, I mailed the two books back to my father and I said, these are trash.
Speaker: They're illogical. They don't make sense. They're not convincing. Now, I had not come to faith. I had not been convinced yet that God exists, but I could tell that whoever wrote this book understood human nature.
Speaker: I'm talking about the Bible. The Bible. i you know It talks about sin. I knew about sin. I was a sinner. um And that's that's as far as I went.
Speaker: So I wrote to me young and she wrote back and she said, that's not good enough. she She sent me a cardboard box full of chick tracks. Remember those little tiny books?
Speaker: And I got the box. I opened it up. I looked what was in there. I was furious. So I sent her off a letter. I said, we're through. love that she did that. I said, we're through. And you know we hadn't seen each other since the summer.
Speaker: oh I hadn't seen her that whole three months and we just broke up. So I just continued my studies at Cornell. And in April of 83, I had to go home to New Jersey to do something. Somehow, Mee Young heard that I was coming.
Speaker: And she invited me and my little sister, Libby, to go to Christian Day at Six Flags here New Jersey. a Good old Christian Day. You were probably so excited.
Speaker: Well, we went and it was a very interesting day. we Do you remember what you were thinking when you were going to Christian Day? It was sort of like, well, okay, we can part as friends, you know, right that kind of thing.
Speaker: um But while we were there, several people talked to me about the Lord and asked me if I was a believer. And I said, no. um Got some interesting stories about that, but That evening, there was an outdoor Christian rock concert at the park.
Speaker: And they had a stage, but there were no seats. So everybody's just standing or sitting in the field. And I remember Fireworks and Phil Kage, and I can't remember who the other bands were, but they were sharing the gospel.
Speaker: And, you know, I'm listening.
Speaker: And I look off and I see a lady with big blonde hair. i love this so much. This is the funniest story. she's She's moving through the crowd and she would grab a bunch of people. And most of the people, they were teenagers. And she'd pull them into a huddle and she'd be there with them for a couple, three minutes. And then she'd move on and do it to some other group of kids. And I don't know what she's doing.
Speaker: ah Finally, she comes over where me, Young, and I are. And she grabs us and a couple of other young people and she pulls us in a huddle and she starts praying. And she was praying against the demons of alcohol and drugs and bad rock music. And when she's done praying, she opens her eyes and she looks straight at me and she says, you're not a believer, are you? I was a prostitute. I was a drug addict.
Speaker: Jesus delivered me from it all and he can deliver you from whatever your problem is. Now pray after me. She never stopped. And I was terrified.
Speaker: So she starts leading me in a sinner's prayer and I didn't know how to say no, so I prayed it afterward. And she gives me a big hug. She says, welcome to the family of God. And she disappears and goes to meet some other people.
Speaker: Who else but a crazy, charismatic woman to lead you to Jesus Christ. Actually, we think we know who it was later on. We think we found this this person.
Speaker: We think we know who it was. But that's another story for another day. I will thank her someday in heaven. So I wasn't convinced that anything really had happened. ah we We stayed there for a little while longer and i dropped me young back off at her house in Cherry Hill and I drove six hours back to Ithaca where Cornell was.
Speaker: Probably got there about five o'clock in the morning. I got in bed, couldn't sleep. I'm lying there thinking about what happened. And I very distinctly remember saying to myself, guess to God, I know I'm a sinner.
Speaker: I don't know whether God exists, but if he exists, I'm in trouble. I said, God, if you're real, you have to let me know that you're real. And I went to sleep and I woke up a couple hours later and I knew God was real.
Speaker: The interesting thing is i didn't have any revelation. i didn't have any special dream, no voice from heaven. but everything had been laid in place, right?
Speaker: God had taken away my excuse for denying his existence, Darwinism. He had exposed me to his word. I had heard the gospel many times and times before that as well.
Speaker: Everything was there and I knew that I was a sinner. The Holy Spirit had done that invisible thing that he does. He illuminates everything.
Speaker: Your mind enables you to comprehend the truth, which is in front of your face the whole time. And that's that's how God did it in my case. you know no No signs from heaven, no voice, nothing like that. But I mean, the truth just jumped out of the pages at me.
Speaker: And I had to eat a lot of crow. Think of all the people you know that I had
Speaker: attacked all the times that I had denied God, all the times that I blasphemed his name. And yet he was merciful to me. I didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it now.
Speaker: Right. Nobody does. Right. That's what grace is. Grace is when God gives you a good thing that you don't deserve. You know it. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the start. We were at lunch with my son and he said, asked us, did you ever see a miracle or a real miracle? And I was like, I see it every week.
Speaker: And this is a miracle, this story. Right. When God changes a person's heart, that's a miracle's a miracle. That's miracle. ah So what kind of happened after that?
Speaker: Well, what happened after that? I got involved in a small church group that was led by Mennonites. I was there for about a year. um Me, Young and I didn't get engaged until more than a year after I got saved because we both said, let's not rush this thing.
Speaker: We did get engaged and we got married in 1985.
Speaker: May of 1985. And it um and it was what, September or October of 1985 that you and I first met. Not first as in first, but after 13 years. Right, 12 or 13 years. After that long, boy, that was the weirdest time.
Speaker: waiting for you. You told me to meet you at such and such a place in Staten Island on a certain street. We met in McDonald's. Yeah. Well, outside. Richmond and Forest Avenue outside. Well, I'm waiting on the street.
Speaker: haven't seen you. I mean, you're double the age that I last saw you. I look different. Well, some guy about your age came walking toward me and I went up to him and I said, are you my brother? And he said, are you crazy?
Speaker: And then you showed up a few minutes later. oh That was just yeah that was an awesome moment. An awesome moment. Because, you know, until a couple weeks earlier when we found out where you were, Debbie and I thought you were probably all dead.
Speaker: i got to shut down. So
Speaker: that was a great day. It was a great day. And then we met with my old girlfriend. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gave me the Bible. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then we met several times after that. Remember going to the zoo in New York?
Speaker: We went to the zoo together. But the whole time we were at the zoo. You and I are just walking around talking about... the lord talking about the bible yes i remember that right you sent me books archaeological stuff and you know the practical stuff just to even get my mind to even comprehend that it could be true and yeah then when your big brother who's a scientist becomes a christian it's a difficult situation to just say i don't believe it i mean i laughed initially but then i was like wait a minute
Speaker: David believes this? Yeah, that was... Like, because I know he wouldn't... I know you wouldn't believe something just... I knew there had to be some logic to your belief, which I later realized didn't matter, but but there was things that you showed me that pointed me to the at least to investigate.
Speaker: And it was when I was up four days and hadn't slept and I opened that Bible and you said, read the book of John.
Speaker: It was like, if you get here, go here. and I did, and that's when everything changed. Did I call you when I got saved? Did I call you? or think you called me soon after. I don't remember how soon it was, but yeah.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. Right. We were we were thrilled. But you called somebody when you got saved, right? and they almost fell out. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, that's a funny story. there there was i was working on a PhD at Cornell when I got saved. I didn't finish it. I stopped with the master's. But there was a guy there named Steve who was in my in my class.
Speaker: And he was a believer. He was part of Campus Crusade. And I used to rib him unmercifully about being a Christian. That's surprising. So... and When I woke up that day, the day after ah Great Adventure, i figured got to find a church. I got to find some people to help me grow.
Speaker: So I called him up and I said, Steve, you're not going to believe this, but I just got saved. And he put his hand over the receiver and he just laughed and laughed and laughed. I could hear him even though he was covering the receiver.
Speaker: And then he said, okay, Dave, that was very funny. know What do you really want? He didn't believe it. He didn't believe it. I said, no, Steve, I'm serious. wow So he said, well, okay, if you're serious, come over to dinner tomorrow night. i did.
Speaker: That's what led to the first church that I was involved in. He must have really enjoyed that. In a good way. Yeah. It was really funny. so when you were talking to me about it, that's when you were bombarding particles at the synchrotron, is it called?
Speaker: When I was working at Cornell, well, we had a synchrotron and electron positron storage ring. So I was working at the lab. of You were dressed in a white coat. You were like yeah underground. yeah It's buried underneath the football field at Cornell.
Speaker: It's still there. That's just wild. And you know, I can't say Christ, but then you, at some point there, that's when you changed course. Well, I mean, changed course and went off to seminary. Yeah. or Whatever. You know, you,
Speaker: Yes. um Well, yeah, I was, let's see, we were married in 85. I think I'd been working at the nuclear facility since 83. So it was in 87 that I went off to seminary.
Speaker: But it's very interesting. um Me Young and I were married. We got involved with Bethel Grove Church in Ithaca and they had Bible studies in homes and there was an elder named Ross.
Speaker: We'd go to his house and we'd have Bible studies every two weeks. And so one one Sunday he said to me, would you like to try leading the Bible study? and I said, well,
Speaker: Sure, I guess if you'll help me do it. So he gave me a passage to study and we got together to talk about it, make sure that I had it right. So a couple weeks later, I led the Bible study.
Speaker: And after it was over, a lot of the people came up to me and said, that was helpful. We understood. We understood what you were saying. Now, believe it or not, that single incident ignited in me a desire to teach the word of God. Hmm.
Speaker: And so couple days later, I called up Ross and I said, can I get together with you to talk something over? And he said, sure, why don't you and your wife come to dinner next Tuesday?
Speaker: Well, that Tuesday, I'm sitting at my desk in the Cornell Lab of Nuclear Studies working on something. And I get a phone call, it's from Ross's wife and she said,
Speaker: Ross died this morning. He had gone out for a walk, came back home, lay down in his lazy boy recliner, as he always did after his walk. He had his Bible open on his chest.
Speaker: And his wife and their granddaughter had gone out for a walk. They came back. They went in the kitchen. They said, Ross, do you want some ice cream? We're having some ice cream. He didn't answer.
Speaker: So they went and touched him, and his body was cold. So I never got the chance to have that talk with him.
Speaker: But I couldn't get it out of my head. And so eventually, after talking to the pastor of the church and some other people, Meung and packed our bags and went off to Dallas Theological Cemetery in 1987. Wow. Yeah. How old were you?
Speaker: 87. I was 31. eighty seven i was thirty one
Speaker: And Uncle David, after that 13 years of being separated, how did you find my dad? Well, that's a great story. Your dad could tell it better than I can. I was in New York at the time, and every time I got pulled over, I was using a new name.
Speaker: My name is Joseph Attevi right now. It's actually Joseph Carlucci Attevi for a reason. Carlucci was a made-up name that we had taken on so that my father couldn't find us. Couldn't find you.
Speaker: I wouldn't have minded if my brother found me. like There was no animosity between us. We grew up together in hell. So we were close. There was no, we wanted him. yeah i wanted him and my older sister in my life.
Speaker: My father, I really didn't know. So I had that name, Carlucci, I became a scofflaw, which means I had so many tickets that every time I got pulled over, I spent the night in jail. And if it was a Friday, I spent the weekend in jail.
Speaker: So I got pulled over, and I was like, I can't go to jail tonight. So they said, what's your name? And I said, Joseph Atavai.
Speaker: Gave them my real name. So they gave me the tickets and the summonses. which later on, you know my story, I had $70,000 worth of them, but that's another story for another day. But I gave my real name.
Speaker: I figured, okay, I'll just get the tickets under that name. so So my father was an auxiliary policeman. you He was just like doing that auxiliary stuff in New Brunswick.
Speaker: And one of his friends who was a policeman said, you know, your name just came across the wire in New York.
Speaker: You're a scofflaw. You got tickets. What's going on here? And it led to him finding out our address and where he lived. And he showed up in front of my house. Yep.
Speaker: So he found you. And then he gave me your number. then called you. I said, it's great to meet you, Dad. But where's my brother? That was the first thing I said. Where's my brother and sister? Like, where are they?
Speaker: And at the time, i had already... You know, now I'm in my early 20s. I'm starting to think about, you know what? So if I see my father, what's he going to do? I'm a man now. I can take him.
Speaker: Maybe. but But I do miss my brother and sister. but When you're separated like that and told so many things and you're reprogrammed and you don't know. I was just lost, but...
Speaker: So that's how we had that. So we talked on the phone and we had that reunion, which is something that movies are made of because I can't think about it without crying. It's just when you haven't seen your brother for 13 years and your sister, you've been through hell and back.
Speaker: That's how it happened. Life from the dead. And then real life from the dead. Like. Then to get for me to have my life changed and turned around, it's just so crazy. It doesn't make any sense that I would become a Christian, but God used you because you're probably the only person I would have even given any credence to.
Speaker: I mean, I was no mobster was going to be able to tell me to come to Christ. You know, none of my hoodlum friends would have told me. But, you know, it's even wilder. Myung and her family moved to the United States in October of 1973, the same month that mom kidnapped you. Yes.
Speaker: Wow. I know it was October 73 because the Mets were in the World Series. They lost, but they were in the World Series. I remember that. lord you know It's always true, but the Lord is orchestrating things that we have no idea about. and i mean Who knows what he's orchestrating right now?
Speaker: That's right. To think that we're Christians, we're doing a podcast about God is the most upside-down possible thing that could ever be.
Speaker: How about this? Grace Church, where I pastor, across the street, the place we park our cars is the place where you went to grade school.
Speaker: You want to talk about coming around. yeahp It's just mind-boggling. I actually told the church that recently. Right there, that place there, right there.
Speaker: So you went to seminary. yeah Went to Dallas Theological Seminary for THM. And then we went off to Philippines. Tell everybody where the THM is real quick. Oh, ah Masters of Theology.
Speaker: Okay. Yeah. And then to the Philippines? Then to the Philippines for almost eight years. How that happen? I forget. Well, let's see, I graduated in 92 and my professors said you should get a PhD.
Speaker: So I started the PhD program in the fall of 92. I did one semester and I started in the winter of 93, but I was just burned out. It was like five and a half years constant Oh you've been going to school forever. Yeah.
Speaker: So after my first class, I went home to Me Young and I said, I can't do this. I've got to take a break. So I took a break. I was already working almost full-time at the seminary fixing computers.
Speaker: So we continued doing that for about a year and a half, and we were trying to decide what to do. My father came down with Parkinson's disease. We were thinking, you know, do we need to set up a home somewhere where he can come live with us and take care of him? But he didn't want to do that.
Speaker: So in the summer of 1994...
Speaker: we We sat down and said, well, what are we going do? Am I going to start the PhD this year and continue or aren't we? And we didn't know what to do. So we prayed and we said, Lord, we're not sure what to do. Please give us some wisdom. you know Help us to make a wise decision.
Speaker: And about an hour later, I got a call from Hong Kong. It was one of my classmates from DTS who was in Hong Kong. And he said, in five minutes, a guy from the Philippines is going to call you.
Speaker: So I waited five minutes. a guy from the Philippines called me and said, we need a systematic theology teacher. You want to come to the Philippines? That's how it happened. That is just so good.
Speaker: I can't take it. That's how it happened. And you were like, okay. Well, I said, I'm willing to consider it. huh We went, talked to our church and talked to the elders and We went. So they sort of they sort of sent you?
Speaker: like and um and we we We were church-based missionaries. we were partly supported by our home church in Dallas and partly supported by a church in the Philippines. And well, you had two boys, two sons. we had our two sons. They were six and three when we went to the Philippines.
Speaker: So they grew up there. In Manila? Yep. And I remember you telling me about the traffic. Oh, wow. So you taught there and now you're in Hong Kong. how did you get How did you get from Philippines to Hong Kong? Interesting.
Speaker: It's the same guy, my friend Patrick. Really? Yeah. So I finished the PhD in 2008, summer. First semester of 2009, I taught at DTS, filling in for a professor who'd gotten sick.
Speaker: And during spring break- That's Dallas, everybody. Yeah, in that semester, that a bunch of churches in Philippines asked me to go over. So I went over for like two weeks, to a bunch of conferences, youth conference, family conference.
Speaker: And I had to stop in Hong Kong on the flight. So when I booked my return flight, I decided to stay in Hong Kong for a couple of days to visit my friend Patrick. He's the one who got me hooked up with Philippines.
Speaker: And he had been involved in starting a church-based seminary a few years earlier. And they couldn't find a systematic theology teacher. And they wanted somebody who spoke Cantonese.
Speaker: And I said, well, I can't speak Cantonese. So before I left, he said, let's do this. Why don't you come over for one semester? We'll try out and see if our students can handle learning in English.
Speaker: oh So we went in the fall of 2009 and it worked out. So they said stay. So we've been there ever since. Been there ever since. Yeah. I got a question for you, Uncle David. Okay.
Speaker: For listeners out there that are either in the position that you are in, maybe intellectuals who are thinking it's illogical to believe in God and they have their reasons, or someone who's listening and they know people, maybe it's a family member of theirs, and you could equip them to maybe start a conversation or to give them really good points. Like you were talking about Darwinism. You've spoke at the church a few times and said there's a few animals that disprove Darwinism.
Speaker: you know, those different theories on evolution and stuff like that. And also just with your background when it comes to thermodynamics and entropy and disorder and chaos, like what are maybe three to five huge points that really do point to there being God that you could equip people or even tell listeners who are atheists? I would just encourage people to look at the world. You know Romans chapter one.
Speaker: Let me read just a little bit from there. um
Speaker: Romans 1, starting with verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. That is key phrase. God has shown it to them.
Speaker: There's nobody who doesn't have this evidence. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, namely his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
Speaker: Now, when you stop and think about it, the world in which we live is incredible, literally. I'm using that in the real sense.
Speaker: It's unbelievably complex. And it all works. why why Why do the laws of physics work? Why is the earth set up so that plants give off carbon dioxide and animals consume carbon dioxide?
Speaker: Why do we live in this incredible biological bubble that's spinning through space that provides all the conditions necessary for life and it wouldn't work if it were just a little closer to the sun or a little bit farther away?
Speaker: You know, why is the moon in a circular orbit? You can't get something in a circular orbit without intentional design. Let me throw something in there. Yeah.
Speaker: You read that scripture to me. Yeah.
Speaker: Before I went to visit you in Ithaca, I was in that phase of, I'm not sure. you know i think i'm pretty sure you took me to that church, but I was driving up a little Honda, my first real car, decent car. yeah I was on that Thruway. I'll never forget this, ever.
Speaker: I've told this story before, but I was just driving on the Thruway, and I looked up. And I saw the clouds and I said to myself, I've been missing this all along.
Speaker: There's so much more because my life had been so bad and so isolated and so dark and so enclosed. Yep.
Speaker: that when you started talking to me about God and the fact that there's more than this and how could this be? It's obviously just look around. So I was just looking around and I was like, I just had this rush of, wow.
Speaker: Yeah, the earth is amazing. Life is amazing. And you lived in that beautiful place, Ithaca. The sky was, as I was driving away from New York, the sky was clearing up and I was like, wow, God.
Speaker: Well, I mean, think about this. I mean, we know this. It happens all the time. But how in the world does reproduction occur? How can people make babies? How can dogs make puppies?
Speaker: I mean, it's it it's so incredibly complex and it had to be designed. What's your analogy that you always use with the box and the watch?
Speaker: Oh, yeah. yeah yeah Yeah, I use this in a church. I'll say, is there anybody out there in the you audience who has a Rolex watch? And of course, nobody will volunteer. But I say, well, if you're willing to give me your watch, and I would disassemble it very carefully, and I put all the pieces inside of a paint can, and I go to Home Depot, and I say, please shake this for me.
Speaker: do you think that we would open the can and find a functioning watch? Now we hear evolutionists say, well, if we had the building blocks of life, life might come into existence.
Speaker: That's as silly as saying if you took a Rolex watch and disassembled it and shook it, you'd get a working watch because you don't just need the building blocks. They have to be assembled in a certain way. They have to be assembled under tension in the right orientation, right? And and everything is against it.
Speaker: the The possibility of, I mean, it's been calculated, the possibility of the simplest living thing being assembled just by getting the parts together.
Speaker: right Even if one part is in one side of the universe and the other part in the others part of the universe, it's utterly impossible. and And plus, let's suppose the first living thing came into existence by itself.
Speaker: It's going to die. It needs an organic environment in which to live. You know, um you know when i'm when I'm teaching on Genesis and talking about creation,
Speaker: um people say, well, how could God create the world in seven days? Well, what's the alternative? It happened by accident over millions of years? but how How did a living thing find itself in an environment where it could survive?
Speaker: God had to create a world with the appearance of age. There had to be decayed vegetable matter in the soil. There had to be salt in the ocean. right All these things had to be in place for the process to continue. Exactly.
Speaker: So, you know back back to your question, Joe. The main thing I would say is look at the world. Ask yourself, could this be an accident? And don't fall for the scientist to say, well, it could, it could, it could.
Speaker: We all know that order always decays into disorder. We all know it. And yet we try to hide from the fact of God's existence by telling us that somehow,
Speaker: all of this incredibly complex life came into existence by accident.
Speaker: That's really where I start. Really where I start. Yeah, I mean, come on. And 85% of scientists don't believe in the Big Bang and and evolution anymore, That's true. That's true. Well. Because they're smart enough to know.
Speaker: Well, it's a dirty secret of science that a lot of biologists are abandoning Darwinism. Of course. course because it's been disproved you know and here's another thing people talk about dna being the computer code of life where's the computer no i'm dead serious exactly it's not just a code dna does things right it assembles things it's not just a code it's more than that
Speaker: And it goes down to the subatomic level and the way that orbitals work. And nobody really knows why it does what it does, but it can't be an accident. It just can't.
Speaker: You a believer now? All right. So before we close out, I, you've written a couple of books, which book would you recommend for somebody who's just searching?
Speaker: ah Probably my first book. Um, It's called Ready or Not. I know it. Yeah. It's very short book. It's basically, I'd call it an evangelistic study of God's plan for the end times.
Speaker: So it talks about God's plans for the future of mankind, but it also presents the gospel. It's simple and it's short and it's available on Amazon as an ebook and it's really cheap.
Speaker: um So I'd recommend that. Yeah, we'll make sure we put the links to your books. And you also have a YouTube channel, which many of the people at our church watch. Reason and Revelation. Reason and Revelation. And they can just go Reason and Revelation, Dr. Dean.
Speaker: Yeah, it'll come. And they can come up with it. and I encourage you to do it. It's like going to college. Yeah. And it's, you know, just you learn. You just learn. I mean, over the years, you've kept me grounded. You've, you know, we probably don't agree on everything, but I think in the end we usually do because you're usually right. so No, the word is right. I know.
Speaker: Listen, you want to learn more, go to Reason and Revelation. And maybe next time you come on, we can talk about the end times a little bit. Have some fun.
Speaker: Love it. Anyway, God bless you, big brother. Loved having you. Love all of you. It's only up from here. amen
