Joe Reeves

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

Sebastien Braxton

Felecia Lee

Jonathan Walter

Hope Channel

08 Jesus is Different

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Joe Reeves with Inverse.

Hello, my name is Joe and welcome to Inverse.

On Inverse we love studying the Bible and we have our Bibles opened right here with friends.

And at Inverse we are studying the Bible.

If you don't know, it's not about apologizing.

It's about explaining and knowing the reasons for your faith and for your beliefs.

Christian apologetics is defending the Christian faith and answering tough questions.

So we try to ask really hard questions on this panel and see if we can make each other stumble.

And thanks for joining us wherever you're watching from.

You can read our Bible study guides on inversebible.org and you will love going to Apologetics on that website and our previous Bible studies as well.

Our programs are on hopetv.org forward slash inverse.

And so today and on this episode, we are going to read the words of Jesus and we're going to think about who he is.

And I'm going to invite Jonathan to open us with prayer.

Father, we thank you so much for the opportunity we have to study the Bible.

Thank you for how you've led in our lives, how you've led us through this program.

And in this arc that we are in right now, apologetics, we just ask that you will help us to understand why we believe what we believe or why someone should believe in Christianity.

I pray that you will bless us now and be with us through spirit in Jesus name we pray.

We are in the Gospel of John today, chapter 14.

Some of these closing moments with Jesus and his disciples and really confirming his identity with them as he shares some of these last words with them.

So we'll read from chapter 14 and Felicia will read for us.

If it were not so, I would have told you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also.

And where I go, you know, and the way you know." Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way?

Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No 1 comes to the Father except through me.

If you had known me, you would have known my father also.

And from now on, you know him and have seen him.

Philip said to him, Lord, show us the father, and it is sufficient for us.

Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip.

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?

The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works.

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.

And good to read the whole chapter in your devotional time, your own study time, these words of Jesus.

And in the last few episodes of Apologetics, we've been studying about Jesus and Hinduism, Jesus and Buddhism, Jesus and Islam.

And we listen to the different world teachers and what belief systems are offered in this world, and we have to make a choice whose words we believe.

And Paul, as we read these words of Jesus, What makes Jesus different than other world religion teachers?

Other world teachers, Krishna, Muhammad, Buddha, all of them are trying to articulate, they're looking for light, they're looking for truth.

Jesus is the embodiment of that truth, that's what he claims to be.

Lewis, you know, who very often thought about these questions, he says very famously, he says, someone who says I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claims to be God, he says, This will not do.

He says, a man who is merely man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic or else he would be the devil of hell.

Either this man was and is the Son of God or else a madman or something else." Powerful quote.

Basically what he's ruling out Jesus just being a good moral teacher.

They don't accept him being God or the son of God necessarily or the sent from heaven, but teaching good ethics and promoting good values or moral values.

And it's hard to, if someone, you accept someone as a good moral teacher, but then they make this outrageous claim that they're God.

Like, if I had a friend who is a good person, but then that friend is like, I'm God, That sort of puts me to doubt everything else that you say, if you have that sort of illusion about yourself.

And so that's strange in how we can conclude he's a good moral teacher, but he's not what he says he is.

But the other thing it makes me think about when we ask what makes Jesus different, there is this passage in Song of Solomon, chapter 5.

And of course, this is this imagery of this woman and this man and their love relationship.

And in verse 9 of chapter 5, it says, "'What is your beloved more than another beloved "'offers among women?

"'What is your beloved more than another beloved Ophiris among women?

What is your beloved more than another that you charge us so?

And then she goes on to list all of these qualities about what makes him so different.

My beloved is white and ruddy, chief among 10, 000.

And then she ends, yay, he is altogether lovely.

1 of the things that differentiates Jesus from all of the other leaders is this invitation that we have to be in relationship with Him.

He's not simply trying to get you to do a list of good things.

He's not just trying to get you to walk and step in a certain way, which is a part of it, but He's inviting us to something so much greater.

So to think that He as Creator, as God, as powerful, is interested in your thoughts, is interested in your heart.

That definitely is a winning point compared to everyone else or all the other leaders who are just trying to get you to change your behavior.

And that's why I'm glad you started with verse 1 in John 14, because Jesus is saying, I came down from heaven.

I'm going to prepare mansions for you so that where I am there, you may be also.

07 Jesus and Islam

Now here's your host, Joe Reeves, with Inverse.

Hi, my name is Joe, and welcome to Inverse.

Inverse is a Bible study where we get into the text.

This season we are looking at apologetics.

We are considering other religions and worldviews.

We're going to be looking at a number of different scriptures.

We're going to be thinking about what other people bring, what we can find common with them, and how the Christian religion challenges them or calls them to something different.

Studying all these things today with my friend Jonathan.

So we're at the table and you're the other chair at the table and we're so glad for that.

And as we journey through this, we've been learning a lot from each other about the Bible, about Christianity, about Jesus, the very basics of our belief system.

Leave a comment on YouTube, Facebook, or wherever you're at and ask the tough questions and engage with us and with each other.

But as we open the scriptures today, we will begin with prayer, as our acknowledgement that we need help from God.

Father, we are so privileged to get to know you.

We are in awe of the fact that although you're so great, you still invite us to know more about you and your son, Jesus Christ, who is equal with the Father.

We ask for understanding and for clarity and for hearts humble enough to receive who you are.

Bless our study together in your name I pray, amen.

You can read our Bible study guides online at inversebible.org.

We have lots of material there and some of it we go through on the programs and there's some things more in depth there in our publication.

And we have many past Bible studies that are very exciting, maybe answering questions that you've thought about.

All of our past episodes are there at hopetv.org forward slash inverse.

And the verse that we are looking at today is in Deuteronomy chapter 6.

And addressing 1 of the questions that our friends, our brothers and sisters from the Islamic faith have questions about Christianity right away.

So let's see what the Bible says about that.

In Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verses 4 through 9.

Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets before your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Very pivotal passage in the Old Testament for the Jewish religion, culture, tradition.

And Jonathan, what does this passage tell us about the nature of God?

It's a fascinating passage as many passages in the Old Testament kind of allude to this.

And that is the fact that we hear, if we look at the grammar in the original language, something interesting takes place here.

So when you see the word the Lord in the Old Testament, that is actually a replacement because the Hebrew word that is there is the name for God.

It's Yahweh or YHWH if you want to put it that way and and because the the in the Hebrew I guess religious tradition they considered the name of God unspeakable because it is so holy so they replaced it with Adonai which means Lord.

So often when you see a Lord staying there it's it really is the name of God that is mentioned there in the original language which is in singular Yahweh the Lord our God.

Now the word that's used here is in Hebrew is Elohim, which is a plural form for God.

So we see singular and plural, a singular and a plural form of God being used.

So that brings up a lot of questions, because if God is 1, what does that oneness communicate?

Is it does it mean he's 1 God or in terms of how many gods there are, or what does it mean?

And as Bible-believing Christians, our understanding is that there is here an allusion to the fact that God is unity and that he's considered 1 God, yet there is a plurality within the Godhead that is hard to comprehend.

I just recently had a discussion with someone who called me, a random person who called me where I work and was trying to discuss this with me.

And I was like, listen, like there is, there are certain illustrations you can use to try to understand it, but there is an element of mystery around what some call the Trinity or the plurality within the Godhead.

And so this this verse is beautiful because it brings out that reality about God.

And this this verse brings out something that we can really appreciate about our Islamic brothers and sisters in that many other religions that we have studied so far have many different gods that are being worshipped and they have many different idols Islam came into the scene in the sixth century was it and from the teachings of Muhammad and his leadership.

These idols cannot hear and cannot see and cannot help you.

And there's only 1 God and the Lord is 1.

And so that does bring a certain breath of fresh air when you've been surrounded by idolatry and a multiplicity of gods.

However, they do stumble on the Christian description of God and that becomes a challenge.

In the human sense, we are 1 in being and 1 in person.

But the way as Jonathan pointed out, the Bible describes God as 1 in being, but 3 in person.

And to the natural mind, to the human mind, that seems impossible.

But this is the mystery that scripture presents.

And it is a spiritual thing that has to be spiritually discerned as the Bible says.

I'd like us to walk through some of the scriptures and we'll get the number 3 in the New Testament for sure.

But are there any other verses from the Old Testament that help us understand that there's some complexity to the nature of God.

1 scripture that I like to go to is actually in Genesis.

And that is, there's a couple of, if I can, if I may, if we start in Genesis chapter 1 real quick, just 1 phrase here in verse 26.

It says, then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.

In the image of God, he created him male and female.

So you have the play on words, on singular and plurality in the creation, in the image of God, when God created human beings.

In a way, He's saying that, you know, man and woman are, yes, they're both human, but they're together, they are the image of God.

So there's a oneness and a plurality even within humanity.

Yes, and then that's, and there's a beautiful coming together in chapter 2 of Genesis, when God, in God brings marriage into the picture.

GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

Religious Liberty Teetering on the Edge

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

05 Should There be Free Speech in the Church?

We've been studying religious liberty in this room, at this seminar, and so glad to have you join us this morning.

I work for the Saba School of Personal Ministries Department of the General Conference.

I do not work for religious liberty, never have.

Religious liberty, we have been considering yesterday here in this seminar.

We looked first of all what will cause the next civil war.

We studied from Revelation chapter 11, the story of the French Revolution, the roots of communism, the atheistic powers and secular tyranny that has been a religious threat in many parts of the world.

And we look next to Revelation chapter 13 and apostate Protestantism, which revealed that the final blow that goes back and forth, the final blow will come from religious tyranny.

And in America, that will be promoted by apostate Protestantism.

I'll show you a few things on the Roman Catholic front as well this morning.

And so we also looked at 8 top arguments that Christian nationalists use in saying from the Bible and from American history that Christians should be the favored religion and they should rule Adventists has stood up against that since the 1880s and I read a little quote probably the shortest quote I used all day yesterday Was 1 sentence from the first edition of the American Sentinel, January 1886, which says there is no such thing as a Christian nation on Earth.

And today, I think that Adventists are getting misaligned with with parroting what we're listening to on our podcasts, on our audio books and news commentators.

I tried yesterday and I'll do maybe some this morning.

I tried to show you on the screen where to find the resources that I've been reading from because there's a lot of religious liberty questions.

I covered just a handful in this seminar but there's many many more questions that we didn't have time to address And so you need to be reading from our books Adventist History and you need to be understanding the Adventist position because it's very different than the evangelical position on religious liberty.

This is because Bible prophecy reveals that there will be tyranny at the end of the world.

And most of the Christian world, when they read about the beast from Revelation, they say, Aha, there's Islam, there's atheism, there's the globalists, there's everything.

And Adventists come along and say, No, this represents Christianity, an apostate form of Christianity that will bring the final tyranny.

In the history of Christianity we have some dark chapters.

When the Christian world started taking power in Rome, political power, and starting with Constantine, and really reaching a major climax with Justinian in the 6th century, and in the age of Justinian there was a lot of persecution and they were persecuting all religions.

You know, they burned the library in Athens so it was against the pagans.

Pagans were persecuted, Zoroastrians, but do you know who got the worst persecution?

So, anybody that studies the history of Justinian, the worst persecution was Christian on Christian.

When you want to promote or favor Christianity, well, which version of Christianity?

And then you start persecuting other forms of Christians.

And that happened all throughout the history of Europe.

John Calvin himself set up a theocracy in Geneva, Switzerland, burned Michael Cervetus to the stake for teaching against the Trinity.

And then the Puritans, they set up their theocracy in Massachusetts and other colonies in the United States.

They came to America looking for freedom, for themselves and for nobody else.

And that's a lot of people's version of religious freedom.

Religious freedom for me, but not for thee.

Adventists believe in religious freedom for everybody.

And Roger Williams, you know, if you go to Geneva, Switzerland, have you ever seen that wall?

They have the 4 big ones right in the middle.

And did you know that there's an American along that wall?

And the Europeans realized that in the story of the Protestant Reformation, there's 1 American who deserves mention and it's a statue of Roger Williams.

And Roger Williams' statue was there in the Protestant wall in Geneva, recognized as really ultimately carrying the idea of the Protestant Reformation.

And that is that if we're going to provide religious liberty for all, if we're going to stop this persecution, we have to apply it evenly.

When he arrived in Massachusetts, he was in trouble right away because he was preaching that the government should only deal with the second table of the law, the last 6 commandments.

The first 4 commandments, that was off limits for the government, including the Sabbath and including blasphemy laws.

We'll deal with that a little bit this morning.

But all across the colonies in America were blasphemy laws, not in Rhode Island.

So Adventists stand in a very unique position right now, but it's very tempting for you to forget about Adventist history and to be listening to what everybody else is saying right now and for Adventists to be what everyone else is being.

And if we do that, then listen, if Adventists don't stand for religious liberty for everybody, then who will?

If Adventists don't, don't stand in the place that God has put us, then who will?

By the way, I have read Roger Williams' most prominent book, The Bloody Tenet, that he wrote.

And it's called The Bloody Tenet of Persecution.

The reason that he believed in religious liberty, there are several reasons, but let me tell you a few.

He believed in religious liberty because he saw the religious persecution in Europe and because he was a student of Bible prophecy.

He has an address to Parliament in the first few pages of the Bloody Tenet.

He quotes from Daniel 7 and quotes from Revelation 13.

Daniel and Revelation multiple times in his book.

And he concluded, along with the other Protestant reformers, that the papacy was the Antichrist.

And because of his study of Bible prophecy, he knew that what they had done in uniting church and state was wrong and we had to establish a new form of government.

In other words, Roger Williams understood his moment because of Bible prophecy.

And because of studying the little horn, the beasts of revelation and that this Antichrist was a persecuting power, he understood that there needed to be a separation of church and state.

And in his book he said that there was the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world and there needed to be a hedge in between.

And that would later be called the separation of church and state.

And that was started with Roger Williams.

So and then yesterday we looked at, lastly, should the church accept government money?

Now, we saw that in Adventist history that when there were Sunday laws, when there was the National Reformed Association and things were really picking up on the religious liberty front in America in the 1880s and 1890s, that religious liberty fanaticism came into the church at the same time.

And people started inside the church attacking each other on this issue of religious liberty.

And that there was a controversy that was for 2 years very strong in the church about whether the church should accept tax exemption or government grants.

Back to Menu

Presenter

Joe Reeves

All Recordings

08 Jesus is Different

28m

07 Jesus and Islam

29m

05 Should There be Free Speech in the Church?

50m

04 Should Adventists Accept Government Money?

41m

03 How Not to Debate a Christian Nationalist?

57m

02 Are Adventists Wrong about Revelation 13?

55m

06 Jesus and Buddhism

29m

01 What Will Cause the Next Civil War?

57m

05 Jesus and Hinduism

29m

04 The Problem of Evil

29m

03 Divine Design

29m

02 Climbing Mars Hill

29m

Sound Doctrine