Apologetics & the Local Church

Revealed Apologetics

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00:01

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and welcome to today's, or tonight's, episode.

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Just a couple of things before I introduce my guest. There are a couple of shows coming up, and there is a show that I'm going to be on as well, so I want you guys to be privy to that.

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So I am going to be interviewing Brian Auten from Apologetics 315 on Monday.

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I'd have to check the time, but I'll be sharing the information on social media, so you guys will be up on that.

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I will also be interviewed on the Apologetics 315 podcast on Sunday.

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Now, I don't know if they release it right away, but I'll let you guys know where you can find that when it is released.

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And then on Tuesday, I'm actually interviewing my former apologetics professor when

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I was in seminary at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. That is Dr. Khaldun Swice, and he is,

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I think, one of the editors to one of those apologetics textbooks that cover the history of apologetics from like the early church all the way up until the modern period.

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So I'm super excited to have him on. He's an awesome dude, and so that's going to be a lot of fun.

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But tonight, I have with me Pastor Luke Pearson. He is the discipleship pastor at Apologia Church.

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I often, well, maybe we'll ask him how they pronounce it over there, but I could see him smiling. I say

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Apologia when I teach apologetics and go through 1 Peter 3, verse 15, but they say

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Apologia. We'll see. Maybe tonight will be the definitive pronunciation.

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We'll know exactly how they pronounce it over there. I'm sure Dr. White will take them to task on the proper improper pronunciation of the

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Greek there. So I'm happy to have Pastor Luke Pearson on with me tonight.

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Let me invite him on the screen with me. Hey, how's it going, man? Good, man.

01:59

How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for coming on, man. I know you guys are super busy, so I appreciate you taking the time.

02:06

My pleasure, man. I appreciate it. So I'll just start off. It's Apologia, although if you ask

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Dr. White, he would say Apologia. So before he came on staff here, he was always saying

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Apologia. Finally, we broke him, and he does say Apologia now. Okay, so you've convinced him to say it improperly.

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That's right. That's exactly right. All right. It's the English version of the

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Greek. Okay, there we go. Okay, that makes sense. All right, well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself?

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How did you become a pastor and then get – or how did you get connected with Apologia Church, Jeff Durbin, Dr.

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White, and how did you move into the position of discipleship pastor? Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, actually,

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I was – my family and Jeff's family planted Apologia. So we had originally started – it's a long story.

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I won't get into the details today, but we had started Apologia Christian Ministries strictly as an outreach ministry.

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And we literally – we have lots of Mormons here. We would literally drive around sometimes just to look for Mormon missionaries to talk to them.

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And so that's kind of how we started. And then the church we were at went through some changes.

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Jeff was the chaplain at a rehab facility here in Phoenix. And through that, it was about a year and a half or two -year process or so.

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Again, a lot of details I won't get into today. But we – God made it very clear we needed to plant

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Apologia Church. Big reason being there was so many people coming to Christ out of addictions at the rehab.

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They didn't have a church to go to. And so through, again, a number of circumstances and situations and literally pastors that we knew around the nation saying, hey, if you don't plant this church, you're in sin.

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That's what kind of led to that. So the church we were at sent us, laid hands on Jeff as the founding pastor.

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And then the first service, he laid hands on me. I actually started as the youth pastor.

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So that was in February of 2010. So we just did 12 years of that.

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And then slowly – so when we planted it, like I said, it was his family and my family.

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My wife was pregnant with my oldest at the time. Jeff had his four kids. And I was originally doing the youth.

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And very quickly – and I shouldn't say very quickly. I think it was within a year or so, it became clear that I needed to kind of transition into a different role, mainly because the majority of our church was brand -new baby

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Christians out of addictions. And so they –

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I needed to switch my focus more to discipleship, one -on -one stuff, and less with the youth.

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And so, yeah, that's kind of how I came into that role and been doing that ever since. That's my primary focus at the church.

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We obviously do a lot of different things, but that's my primary role here. And then I think it was about three years ago.

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Forgive me if I don't have the timeline correct. But it was about three years ago when we brought

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Dr. White on as an elder. He had been attending Apologia for a little while, about a year,

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I think, just because – I mean, he's known Jeff since 96 or 97 and was just really excited about things we were doing here and wanted to be a part of that and wanted to help mentor us.

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We also have Pastor Zach Morgan. He was our other pastor at the time – still is, but it was myself,

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Jeff, and Zach. And then Dr. White, you know, he's so awesome. He just wanted to be able to pour into us and mentor us.

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And so he came – started coming just for that role. And then kind of naturally over time, we had some situations we had to deal with where we were leaning on him for wisdom and input and advice.

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And he kind of just naturally fell into that elder role very organically.

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And so, yeah, I think it's been about three years or so. And, yeah, so that's kind of that storyline there.

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So two things. So you work youth ministry, okay? So I was a youth director.

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They didn't call me youth pastor because I wasn't ordained. So they didn't call me youth pastor. I was youth director.

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And so how was that for you? What was the age group you worked with? How did that work? I want to hear your blood and tears story so that I can –

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Oh, I have some. I have some. It's hard work. Yeah. So, I mean,

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I had been working – my wife and I had been doing youth ministry for years at that point.

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I don't even know how many years it was. It was a while. And that was back –

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I've been in Arizona for 15 years. So even going back to northwest Indiana where we moved from, we were doing youth ministry there.

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And so the church we were at where Jeff and I met was doing the same sort of thing.

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And we both ended up kind of taking over the youth ministry there. That's, again, a long story.

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But the youth pastor left, and they needed someone to fill in. So Jeff was the main teacher, but we kind of tag -teamed it, took it over, and just had a blast.

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It was really cool, and we were very serious about our theology, very serious about the teaching time.

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The kids loved that and appreciated that, but we were also very serious about having fun. So, you know,

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I'm talking like we would use youth group budget to get smoke machines and strobe lights and stuff like that and turn all the lights off and fill up the entire church with smoke and strobe and play

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Capture the Flag and zombies and stuff like that. So I actually do have a scar.

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I'll tell you about. We had a lock -in once. And so we would play the

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Capture the Flag where we, like, the dividing line in the church was the back wall of the stage in the auditorium.

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And then there's the hallways and all these classrooms and stuff. So we would turn all the lights off.

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It's pitch black. And, you know, I was cheating. I'll admit it.

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I was on the stage, already crossed over the center line before we started.

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And I'm like, I'm going to win this. I'm going to get this flag. And we started. And, like, 30 seconds in,

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I literally walk right into the butt end of the cross, of the cross, right?

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Bam! Hit my eye. I have a scar. I was like, I have a picture of bleeding. I had blood running down my face. So I was like, oh, timeout, timeout, timeout.

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And then, like, what happened? And I'm, like, telling them. And, like, about 10 minutes later, someone's like, wait a minute. What were you doing on the other side?

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And I was like, oh, shoot. Busted. I was cheating. I was cheating. I was cheating. So anyways, yeah.

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So that's kind of, I just came out of that, you know. So it was just a natural transition. And we did have, you know, we had a few teens come with us when we planned the church.

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But not a lot, you know. And it just kind of, like I said, over about a year, it kind of just fizzled.

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And kind of, I needed to be doing other things. So, yeah. Okay. Well, not to compete with your story, but my first year in youth ministry,

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I went to a small church. It was a small reformed church. And it was very, like, old looking. Yeah.

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You could tell it was one of those old school, you know. And we had a small youth group of, like, 15 kids. And we played manhunt in the church with all the lights off.

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Yeah. And it was old. It has, like, this creepy nursery in one wing of the church. It's got this little upstairs loft, which is also creepy.

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And then there's this small little, you know, opening where you can go into the attic. And so kids would hide everywhere.

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And so I'm the one who's it. I have to, like, count in the fellowship hall. There's this big square room.

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And as I'm counting, I hear a crash. And when I turn around, a kid's legs were hanging from the ceiling.

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He actually hid in the attic and fell through. Oh, man.

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His feet were hanging. We had to run up into the attic and pull him out. That's awesome. And that was my first main youth event.

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I had to explain to his mom, hey, how'd the night go? I was like, it went great. Your son fell through the ceiling. It's cool.

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You know, it's whatever. He's good. That's awesome. Almost. That's the key word.

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Yeah. That's very cool. All right. Well, let's no longer talk about our past scars in youth ministry.

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That's definitely a challenge in and of itself. Our main topic for tonight is apologetics within the local church.

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What does apologetics look like in your church? How do you guys navigate that specifically?

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And then we'll kind of get into the importance of doing apologetics under the covering and accountability of a church.

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Yeah. I appreciate that a ton. I mean, we could go a number of directions, but really apologetics is the foundation of everything we do.

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So there's four pillars on which apology at church stands. Presupposition apologetics is one, and then reform theology, theonomy, and post -millennialism.

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Those are our four pillars, our four theological pillars. Everything we do, it goes back to what our presuppositions are.

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So whether it's abortion ministry, whether it's counseling, whether it's youth ministry, whether it's street evangelism, you name it, it's always going to go back to God's word as our objective standard and how we approach everything.

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And I know that's kind of a generic response, generic answer, but it's the honest truth that it affects everything that we do.

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And I mean, I can get into more specifics if you want, but that's my immediate response to that question.

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So how does the apologetic instruction go on your church? Do you guys just have small groups where you meet?

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Are you going to break off into groups during your services? How do you incorporate apologetics in the equipping of people who are interested in it?

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Or is it just part of your preaching and part of the things you do every time you meet? Sure. Yeah, well,

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I think both. I know you'll appreciate this. I mean, good exegetical preaching should involve some aspect of apologetics anyways, because again,

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God is our objective standard in everything that we do. But kind of on a week to week basis.

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I mean, you know, we don't have a lot of inward focus ministries. A lot of our stuff is outward focus.

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So, you know, we're at the abortion meal. We have teams that go to the strip clubs to preach the gospel. We got, you know, different areas throughout the valley where there's a lot of people on Friday nights and stuff.

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They go preach the gospel. And that's, you know, so that's a lot of our local actual like apologetic minded, intentionally apologetically minded ministries.

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But then we have, you know, we have we do have small groups throughout the week. We have a Thursday night Bible study that we call our advanced theological training, which is nothing more than we've put together a curriculum that that represents apologia well.

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And we have guys that we are intentionally pouring into and trying to raise up to be future elders.

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We give what they're on rotation, essentially. So they have opportunities to teach and to hone their skills. You know, so apologetics comes comes to play a lot in that a lot of the curriculum we go through, you know, and then our small groups say we have,

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I think, eight now throughout the valley here. You know, so some of those some of those groups intentionally go through, you know, things like like books like Always Ready by Eric Bonson.

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You know, it varies, but there's there's going to be intentionally like we're intentionally studying apologetics right now.

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You know, it's going to come up a lot just in in our everyday conversations and things that we're doing.

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So. Right. Excellent. I was just waving this book up in front of the camera here. This is a

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Bonson classic. Yep. Always ready. I don't know if you saw me sipping real quick, but I have a

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Bonson. Oh, nice. That's awesome. The preconditions for intelligibility.

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That's great. I teach an online presuppositional apologetics course with people from all around the world.

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Sign up and I get to meet with them weekly through Zoom. And so one of the students kind of made this for me and sent it my way.

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And this is literally my my favorite mug and my favorite picture of Dr. Bonson. And yeah, that's a classic.

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That's a great that's a great mug. That's pretty cool. And I always brag. I always brag to people.

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I believe I said this to Dr. White. I don't know if I did or not, but I have a friend who was sort of a mentor to me.

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He actually debated Dr. White over the issue of baptism, infant baptism. So my friend was a

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OPC guy and his name was Pastor Pastor Bill Shishko. And Dr. White had debated him.

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And one of the few debates where I actually thought the other guy gave Dr. White a run for his money.

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But ultimately, I think Dr. White came out on top, but he definitely knew his stuff. But I would go to this guy's house and he would never let me leave his house without grabbing a book from his library.

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He actually knew both Dr. Bonson and Van Till. And I was able through multiple visits to con him out of his signed copy.

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Van Till signed a copy of The Defense of the Faith. So I was able to nab it. So I have little trinkets here and there, you know, nerdy presuppositional trinkets.

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So Shishko, that's your presuppositional pedigree then?

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That's where you learned that from? That's not where I learned it from. I learned it through Bonson and just reading his books.

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I was introduced to Greg Bonson on accident and I just changed my whole perspective.

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And I know you're familiar with stories like that where people listen to the debate between him and Dr. Stein. But when

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I got connected to Pastor Shishko through a friend who knew that I was into presuppositional apologetics and so was he.

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And so we were like, man, you guys would be great together. And so we actually developed a really good friendship and he became a mentor to me for some time.

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Oh, very cool. So I got some free books out of it, which is nice. That's awesome. Well, if you don't mind,

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I love to tell those stories. So my pedigree, that line of thinking for me, it's really cool.

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So I've actually done a couple Apology Radio episodes on tooth and nail records and the sovereignty of God.

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I don't know if you've caught any of those or not, or if you even know what tooth and nail records is. So do you remember the band, the

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O .C. Supertones? No. They're like a ska band. I grew up in a super strict Spanish Pentecostal church.

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Oh, okay. I didn't listen to a lot of music outside of my small bubble. I grew up pretty legalistic myself, but I was able to kind of break out of that at the end of.

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Well, you try to capture the flag. So we know you have a little rebellious. That's true. That's true.

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I always tell people I'm in my rebellious state because I've rebelled against the legalism I was raised in. So there was a band in the late 90s, 2000s called the

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O .C. Supertones. They were a ska band. A lot of people that are into punk music and ska and stuff will know who they are.

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Their lead singer's name is Matt Morgenski. This was back in Indiana.

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I think my wife and I, we got married when we were 21, but we had just graduated high school. I think we were like 19 or so.

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At that point, we're youth leaders. We graduated out of the youth group. Now we're youth leaders. Funny story, our youth pastor had bumped into Matt Morgenski playing basketball somewhere, suckered him in to come and teach him this winter camp that we were at.

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Matt Morgenski is a reformed presuppositionalist, and he taught presuppositional apologetics that weekend.

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I never heard it before. I was really blown away by it. It really, really impacted me pretty heavily.

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So that was the end of that. Another 10 years or so after that is when

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I meet Jeff and where I really start to own that line of thinking and stuff.

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Just recently, like in the last couple years, I went down this rabbit hole one day and learned that Matt Morgenski learned presuppositional apologetics directly from David Bonson.

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David Bonson, okay. Yes. So David Bonson was doing, that's

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Greg's son if you don't know. He was doing contracts or something for bands for the

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Tooth and Nail Records back in the day. Yeah, and he learned it directly from him and then come to find out here

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I learned directly from Matt. So it's kind of cool, just full circle. Now we do stuff with David and he's given us his dad's library.

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Bonson, you and all that. So it's kind of a cool, just full circle story. Well, that's pretty cool because the people who started the

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Bonson project, that was actually part of their promotional committee. So the first time I ever had somewhat of not an interaction with him, but I ended up being part of the email stream where he actually said, hey,

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I'm going to purchase the whole thing. So it was cool because they were saying that they were going to put it on sermon audio and then they were also going to be sending the audio to Apologia Church.

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That's so cool. So yeah, we have kind of an in and out weird connections there. Yeah, very cool.

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That's very awesome. Well, you did say something where you, when you're doing apologetics within the context of your church, you try to pour into certain individuals that you see can kind of be used in that capacity and teach others.

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What do you think about this weird thing? I noticed this a lot in larger churches that when new pastors are hired, they're often hired from like out of state.

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I don't know if you know that this is like a trend. Can you speak to that? Because I really liked how you said we're trying to raise up and pour into the people within your church.

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Why is that important and what's the deal with people looking for leaders outside the confines of their own local congregation?

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Yeah, well, I don't like it. You know, from our perspective, we think it's just biblical.

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And, you know, hopefully I don't offend someone saying that, but I've said this a lot, but you'll never see us hire someone or bring someone in from without.

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We believe it's a biblical practice to raise men up from within and send, raise up and send, raise up and send.

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And that's, yeah, I think that's the way to do it. And the reason we do that, there's a couple of reasons.

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But one, if we're going to make someone an elder at Apologia, like they need to, like, understand our culture.

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They need to understand and agree wholeheartedly with what we teach. You know, and I've told the guys that we've sent out,

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I've said, like, I need to trust you with my life. That's how serious

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I take that. And so there's actually four. We actually have kind of a well written out process for this, but not a specific timeline.

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But there's four things that we look for in raising men up to be elders.

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Number one, obviously, they need to be gifted in teaching. And so, you know, we see guys like that.

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And, you know, we've talked to guys in the past like, hey, you know, you're really gifted. You know, have you thought more about potentially, you know, expanding your role?

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We're doing more with that. And so, like, that's one of the first things we do is put them in that rotation on Thursday night so that they can practice more and hone their skills.

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So that's one. Number two, I want to make sure that they're scared to death to step in the pulpit.

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And I mean that. You know, there's been too many times where we've had guys come and, like, literally, it's like the first Sunday we just meet them.

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They're like, hey, I just graduated seminary. Let me know if you need some pulpit. Are you going to fill the pulpit?

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You know, right away, we're like red flag number one. And those guys never work out because they're not scared to be in the pulpit.

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They're not scared to mess things up. They just want the honor and the glory, you know, of being in front of everyone.

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So that's two. Number three, like I tell my guys, I should never have to ask you to do anything.

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You should be the first one there, the last one to leave. You're serving. You're getting your hands dirty.

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You're bleeding. You're sweating. You're crying. Like, you're in the mix. And you're asking me, like, hey, what can

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I do? And the guys that are really good at that, they rise to the top very quickly.

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And I'll be honest, we have guys that are incredibly gifted teachers, but they don't really serve.

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And that's not something that, you know, that they, I don't want to say take seriously, but that's not something that maybe they're gifted in or they have a desire to do.

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And so they're going to be very good teachers. And praise God for that. But they're not quite meeting the mark for us when it comes to being an elder.

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The fourth thing is courage. I want to know that you're courageous. I want to know that you're out at the abortion mill, that you're, you know, you could do street evangelism, whatever.

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Like, you're not a coward. Because at Apologia, we lead from the pulpit.

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And it starts at the top. And so, you know, that's the fourth thing. And so we take that very serious and we're very intentional about that.

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And yeah, like it's, I mean, I don't even know how, I couldn't even possibly hire someone, bring someone in from out, unless I'm able to watch them.

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And we actually have a document online I wrote a few years ago. I think it's called a ministry request procedures or something like that.

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And, you know, I tell people, like, because we get requests all the time from people who are like, You know,

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I would like to be an elder one day. You know, I'd love to do it through Apologia. Would you ever plant here?

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You know, or whatever. Some version of that. And we're like, okay, first thing you need to do is come visit

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Apologia. Come in the summer. Because you're going to hate it. You're going to hate it.

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Don't come in the winter because you'll love it in the winter. That's good. And to like, the second thing is, you know, if you really feel like you want to be a part of what we're doing, you need to move here.

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You need to be committed to that. You need to come under our care. So we get to know you.

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You get to get to know us. We get to watch your life. You know, and so I like in that document,

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I'm like, I'm a minimum of two years or we were just getting to know you. Sure. You know, and then we'll talk.

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Then we'll say, hey, you know what? Yeah, I think you maybe you are qualified to be an elder, you know, so, you know, you're given that they obviously got to have an internal and external call.

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So a lot of guys have an internal call, but they don't have an external call, you know?

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And so honestly, we made it very, very, I don't want to say harsh, but very direct in from the beginning because it immediately,

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I would say, knocks off 90 % of those people requesting that because they don't want to move here.

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They just want they literally just want us to come to Rhode Island or wherever they're at and plant a church, you know, and I'm like, well, it's not really how this works.

27:17

Sure. Yeah. So I think I just completely gave you a long winded answer, but hopefully that. Hey, that's actually that's actually perfect.

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I mean, maybe he's a mutual friend. Are you friends with at all with with Matt Slick from Karm .org?

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Yeah. Yeah. Matt's a good friend. And he says that when people ask if they can work for Karm or write for Karm or to get involved in apologetics, he always tells them that you need to count the cost.

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Right. So you need to be ready to be ridiculed. You need to be ready to be made fun of. You need to be ready to be attacked.

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You need to be ready to undergo difficulties. Right. Because it's a commitment and you do definitely need to be called to do those things in that specific capacity.

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Of course, we're all called to apologetics. But if you're going to do it in certain capacities, it does take a certain calling, especially when you're doing work as an elder or a pastor or anything like that.

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It's not all glam. You know, you're not going to be the next John MacArthur or, you know, the R .C.

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Sproul or whatever. It's people see that glamorous side, but they don't see the hours and hours. Oh, yeah. Playing and controversy that happens behind the scenes.

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So, yeah. Well, I'll tell you the first thing we tell people, we actually stole this from from Dr. White. But the first thing

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I tell a guy is like, if you could do anything else in life and be remotely happy, do that.

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You know, and, you know, because it's, you know, being a pastor has glorious moments.

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I'm not going to I'm not going to lie about that or deny that. You know, it's all to God's glory, of course.

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But, you know, you can have you can have glorious moments in the next moment.

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It's awful. Someone dies or you're dealing with someone going through marital, you know, strife or addictions or whatever.

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And it's it's hard. And one thing we always say is like, I would say that being being a pastor is not a nine to five job.

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It's it's it's a lifestyle. Yeah, you have to live it. You know, you in order to know your sheep and properly shepherd them, you have to know that you have to live with them.

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You can't just turn it off. And, you know, unfortunately, I've had pastors. We've all had pastors like that. Men that I love and respect a ton.

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But like, you know, I've been I've been in pastor's office with them like at like four o 'clock and they're like, oh,

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I'm just hanging out till five. And then I and then I can go home, you know, and they're literally just sitting there like just chilling, talking it up, doing nothing.

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It's like, well, it's only four o 'clock, you know, and it's but that's the that's and they kind of go back into like why we don't hire from without.

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Like that's the whole CEO, like modern business model that has been brought into the church.

30:03

And there's really no biblical grounding for that. Again, presupposition like there's no there's no standard for that in God's word.

30:12

By what standard you conduct your ministry. Right. That you do. That's excellent. Right. Exactly.

30:18

Exactly. Like I said, it bleeds. It bleeds into everything you do. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Excellent.

30:23

Excellent. Now, OK, so you equip certain individuals to to teach in various capacities, obviously apologetics being one of them.

30:34

How do you reinforce the importance of doing apologetics within the context of the church?

30:39

And I know Dr. White has spoken about this. Pastor Jeff has spoken about it. Why don't you kind of go into some of the dangers of being a rogue apologist in which you're kind of just doing this on your own and maybe kind of go through how you guys do it at your church?

30:54

And what does that whole accountability structure look like? So people kind of get a glimpse into what it looks like to do it biblically.

31:01

Yeah. Yeah. That's such such a good question. And I really appreciate that because there's there's just so much of that out there.

31:09

You know, and I'll be honest. I think a lot of a lot of that happens because there's weak pastors.

31:16

Right. So men men have a desire to to to to, you know, fulfill the

31:22

Great Commission, to do apologetics, to preach the gospel. And and but they're not getting the support from their local church.

31:29

And so they end up on their own. And, you know, nine times out of 10, I'm just I just made that up.

31:36

That's a completely subjective. Don't quote him on this presented. Completely subjective. But, you know,

31:41

I mean, majority of the time it doesn't go well. At some point, those guys end up like just falling off the rails or getting themselves into trouble.

31:51

And so it's so important. I mean, even like so Pastor Zach is our he's the pastor over local outreach.

31:59

So he, you know, his he manages like the abortion ministry in the strip club ministry, stuff like that.

32:05

And like we always tell people like, you know, you have to be under somebody's umbrella, somebody's authority.

32:15

You know, if it's not ours, because we have people that come that aren't members of the apology of the different things we do. And we're like, yeah, we welcome that.

32:21

But you need to be under someone's accountability. You know, and what a lot of guys I think a lot of guys are so alpha.

32:28

Right. And they're so like gung ho about this that they hear that. And they're like, oh, no one's going to tell me what to do sort of a thing.

32:35

And it's like, look, it's for your own protection, not just spiritually speaking.

32:41

You know, obviously, you want protection to make sure you you're not saying things you shouldn't say that you're not acting a certain way that you shouldn't act.

32:48

But it's for your own protection to what if something happens to you? Like the abortion ministry is an awful mystery.

32:54

It could be dangerous at times. You know, what if something happens to you? What if someone attacks you?

33:00

You know, what if you got to go? What if someone calls the cops on you and you are arrested and you go to jail and all you're doing is preaching the gospel?

33:07

Like, do you have some some protection for you? And so there's really a you know, there's a twofold protection there.

33:15

But yeah, that's a that's a must for us. I'm not going to get too far off the rails here, but when it comes to like ending abortion, you know, unfortunately, there's been some considerable rogue groups of of men that have have faithfully fought this fight.

33:36

But they've done it outside the church or to the point where they've it's become idolatry, where they form little abolitionist churches, where they, you know, attack the bride of Christ and just act very un -Christlike in their desire to do something righteous.

33:57

Can you give an example of that? That's it. That's interesting. So you're saying these people, they they're they're working against abortion.

34:04

They kind of see it as their ministry, but they're not doing it under the covering of a church. Yeah. What are you saying? Kind of what happens to groups like that?

34:11

Yeah. No, I appreciate that. So there was a group and I'm not going to mention the name right now, but they got pretty big a few years ago and, you know, across the nation and literally this group started out of a group of men that were kicked out of their churches because they were causing division over this issue.

34:32

So they were so, so intent on ending abortion that it became an idol.

34:39

It led to them causing division in their churches because they weren't getting, like I mentioned a minute ago, they weren't getting the support from their pastor.

34:47

They weren't getting the covering from their local church. They were actually kicked out of their churches and they ended up essentially starting their own little abolitionist churches all over where they would meet on Sundays so that they could say they weren't neglecting the fellowship.

35:02

But it was all about abortion and they were literally going to local churches, good solid gospel preachers, some reformed churches even, and like protesting outside these good churches because they weren't at their local abortion mills.

35:20

And, you know, we've had our own issues with some of those people where they've attacked us. You know, we're like, hey, we're on the same team.

35:26

We're doing the same thing. You know, but that's where that leads.

35:32

You said rogue. Rogue's a perfect word for that. You get these lone wolves, they become rogue, no authority, and they become loose cannons.

35:42

And the same goes, like I said, for apologetics, for street preachers. And believe me,

35:49

I know my street preachers, we call them, that, you know, have done similar things.

35:55

And Reuben Israel comes to mind. I don't know if you know that name at all. You got guys like Westboro Baptist, same sort of thing where there's no real accountability.

36:04

They're a very small group of men or group of people. And they just start doing crazy things, saying crazy things, not doing apologetics to the glory of God.

36:17

As we know, in 1 Peter 3 15, first it's sanctified Christ as Lord in your heart.

36:24

But everyone always leaves off the end of it, right? With gentleness and respect. And too many times there's apologists who are phenomenal apologists.

36:36

They know the word. They know the scriptures. They're brilliant. But they're also jerks, right?

36:43

And no one likes those guys. And in the end, you're not going to, you know, obviously we believe

36:48

God's sovereign. He's the one that's going to change hearts. But you're not going to win anybody over by being a jerk.

36:56

So, yeah, you could be rock solid in your apologetic skills, but do it with gentleness and grace.

37:04

Do it like you actually love the person and care about them. And I'm going to rabbit trail here.

37:11

So, when I was, when I say I was first discipled, again,

37:17

I grew up in the church. Was at Awana's. I did all the youth group things. You know, like, but I don't feel like I was actually really discipled until I was probably around 19.

37:29

And that's when I really fell in love with, like, theology and apologetics and stuff. I was discipled as what

37:36

I call a hardcore MacArthurite, which, you know, people like that.

37:41

I love John MacArthur. I'm not saying anything bad about John MacArthur. He's had a tremendous impact on me and my ministry and stuff.

37:49

But the point was, like, when you're brought up like that, anything

37:54

Johnny Mac says is gospel truth, right? But some of those guys, and the guy that, you know, was discipling me was one of those that has literally bounced around from church to church to church.

38:10

And he's my buddy's uncle, and he's a jerk. And he trained us up to be jerks when it came to apologetics.

38:17

You know, where we're having, like, one of his Pentecostals over, and it ends up in, like, a screaming match.

38:23

And it was like, I don't think that was how it should have gone down. But it was just, it breeded, like, this arrogance, you know, where it's like,

38:33

I have the truth. I know the truth. You don't. You're going to hell. And I'll be honest. There's a book.

38:39

It's a small book by Jerry Bridges called Respectable Sins. Okay. And basically, the point of that book was each chapter was, like, different sins within the church that are kind of accepted.

38:54

Okay. And one of them was pride. And that hit me upside the head like a two -by -four.

39:02

It was like, when I'm going out to do evangelism, like, I found myself just being prideful and arrogant and, like, not really even caring about the person

39:11

I'm talking to. I just wanted to smash them. Sure. Right? That's all I cared about was, like, winning the argument.

39:18

And that chapter broke me, like, hard. And I was like, man, that's me. And so that's been huge.

39:25

That's been huge in my life in ministry. It's like, you know what? If we're going out there to preach the gospel to someone, but we don't actually, like, love them and care about them, then we're not really doing it how we're told to do.

39:39

Right. I often hear people say, hey, this person is a really good apologist, but, you know, they can be a jerk sometimes.

39:45

Then they're not a really good apologist because not being a jerk is part of being a good apologist.

39:52

It's not just the logical arguments and things like that. And I think we always, especially as presuppositionalists,

39:58

I know it's kind of become like a meme, you know, by what standard. And I don't care how many people, you know, talk about that and like, oh, that's just, you know, that's the generic presupp catchphrase.

40:08

But it's so appropriate. We always ask ourselves, by what standard are we conducting ourselves the way that we are?

40:15

And it's scary because, you know, I do apologetics here on YouTube and Facebook, but sometimes, every now and then,

40:23

I'll pop in the underbelly of the internet on Discord. It's kind of like the underground street battles, you know.

40:31

And let me tell you, man, when I've seen apologists destroy arguments, but they are even using foul language.

40:41

And when I reach out to them and say, hey, what are you doing? The maneuvers that they use to justify their attitude is incredible.

40:51

If you want to be a good apologist, it needs to be 1 Peter 3 .15 needs to be taken in its entirety. The gentleness and respect, yes,

40:59

I know Jesus flipped the tables over, but don't use those passages as a justification for being an idiot.

41:05

So I think that's a very important element to keep in mind. Well, if I say something to that, this is something that's become very important for me that I say a lot.

41:14

Kind of going back to the groups I mentioned earlier that we've worked with, there's a saying that we become what we worship.

41:25

And even when it comes to apologetics, we should be Christians doing apologetics or a

41:33

Christian apologist. Our identity should always be in Christ first, you know, and then what we're doing secondary.

41:41

So even apologetics, that could become unidle, right? So if we're like just going off what you're just saying, like if like you're just going on boasting, like I'm going to I'm an apologist, you know, and that becomes your identity.

41:56

Then what you start to notice, like you're saying is, guys, they can justify using foul language.

42:03

They can justify not acting Christlike because those things bow to their idol.

42:10

But when Christ is our identity, those things can't bow to Christ.

42:16

I mean, they should, but you know, like you get what I'm saying? Like, so even as a pastor, right, like even being a pastor can become an idol.

42:28

Like if that becomes your identity and you're no longer pastoring a church for God's glory, you know, for Christ, like you could start to do things that maybe don't seem quite the right thing to do because you're bending, you're now bending your morality to fit your idol.

42:58

And yeah, so that's been huge for me in the last few years. I'm really glad you brought that up because I think that's a perfect example of someone becoming what they worship.

43:08

Sure, sure. Once again, guys, I am having a conversation with Pastor Luke Pearson. He is the discipleship pastor at Apologia Church.

43:16

If you have any questions for Luke, he said that he is totally down to answer the most difficult philosophical and apologetics questions that you possibly can throw at him.

43:25

I'm just kidding. If you have any questions, I know there's some questions already in the chat here. Please send them in and, you know, we'll go through them.

43:34

So, all right. So your situation is very unique. You said that, you know, it's important to have accountability, you know, and, you know, you're answering to the broader church.

43:48

Do you have a pastor that's watching over you? These sorts of things. What is it like to have a ninja as a pastor?

43:55

You don't see that very often. Not even in the churches in Japan. They don't have them. No. Well, there's not a lot of churches in Japan to begin with.

44:03

This is true. This is true. I've actually been to Japan twice. I love it there. Hey, by the way, I just saw Eddie Delcour.

44:09

I love Eddie. I don't know. I met him a few times. I see he's in the chat. Eddie Delcour. That name sounds familiar.

44:15

He's been on our show a few times. He was a strong man. He could, like, rip a phone book in half.

44:22

Really? Yeah. Is he part of apologetics ministry? Yeah, I think so. In California, he does.

44:28

He's been on a couple of times doing stuff with, like, oneness and Jehovah's Witnesses, I believe. I think

44:33

I heard. Maybe if Eddie is here, I don't know if it's the same person that was on with Dr.

44:40

Tony Costa, but I've been meaning to reach out to you, so private message me on Facebook or something.

44:46

There you go. I'd love to have you on. He goes way back with Dr. White. Eddie and Dr. White go way back. I'd love to get connected with him.

44:53

Hit me up on Facebook, man. Maybe we can get you on. I'd love to have you on. Anyway, go ahead. What's it like pastoring with the ninja?

45:01

It's made me have really quick hands. I've gotten really good at blocking because he's constantly doing stuff.

45:14

You don't know where he is. You can't sin within the four walls of the church because he's, like, hiding in the corners there.

45:21

It's pretty intimidating. I'm not going to lie. That's the honest truth. The honest truth.

45:27

People are like, you can't tell while I'm sitting down. I'm a large, large man. They call me the bear for a reason.

45:34

People are like, wow, you're a lot faster than I thought you were. It's like, well, it's because my best friend's a ninja.

45:40

I've had to become very quick with the hands and blocking. You never know when he's going to come up and do a little ninja move on you.

45:47

That's pretty intense. My real question, then. There was a real question hiding behind that lighthearted question there.

45:54

We talked a little bit about the detriment of doing apologetics as a robe. What are some of the benefits of—and we know that this is the proper way to go about it—but what are some of the benefits of doing apologetics under that umbrella of accountability?

46:08

Maybe you can give us some specific examples in which a situation—you don't have to oversight of the church was very helpful, and we kind of see that biblical principle of that oversight being practiced.

46:25

Maybe you can kind of share that with us. Yeah, no, that's a really good question. We've had numerous instances at the abortion mill, for example.

46:35

I don't know if you've ever had an opportunity to go to an abortion mill, but it's a very hard place to do ministry.

46:43

You very quickly and very easily can have a very sincere and godly righteous anger for what's going on.

46:56

Sure. Some people can't handle that. Okay. Some people, we've had to be like, you probably shouldn't come out here because they allow that anger then to spill out of them.

47:13

It's completely understandable, right? It's like, I get it, I get it, but if you can't control your anger, you shouldn't be out here.

47:23

We've had that happen a number of times. Again, that's why you have the church to protect you, to keep you safe.

47:33

I mean, literally, the abortion will keep you safe because we've had plenty of... I know guys, there's guys that are churches that have been knocked out, they've had guns pulled on them.

47:45

You get some of these guys that are dropping off their girlfriends or whatever to kill their babies, they're angry and they'll gladly come and fight you.

47:54

And if you have someone that's willing to get in their face and engage in anger, it's going to get ugly really fast.

48:02

So that's just one example. Even situations like maybe out doing street evangelism, we've had people that just maybe are too new to the faith and they're just not quite ready.

48:19

We could say, hey, let's get you some more training first. Let's teach you some more things.

48:25

Or maybe it's just like, you know what, I think the method you're employing just isn't really working with what we're trying to do.

48:35

I think you'll appreciate this. One thing, when we do training, say it's for the

48:40

Mormon temple. So when we go to the Easter pageant here for the Mormons, there's 100 ,000 people that come through this event in two weeks.

48:49

And this year, it was back again this year after three years, and it was packing out like 15 ,000 people a night.

48:55

And so one thing we train our people to do is if someone's having a conversation, don't interrupt them on our side.

49:05

Because we all have our methods, right? We all have that road that we want to bring someone down.

49:14

Don't interrupt them. Unless someone's just completely flailing and flabbergasted and is having a really hard time.

49:24

And in that case, be like, hey, do you mind if I jump in? But don't just jump over them and not let them speak, because they're trying to bring this person down a specific path.

49:35

And it can be very easy to, when you have 20 people gathered around one person or whatever, it can be very easy to get conversations going all over the place, and then it becomes chaotic.

49:46

But so anyways, that's an example of the church umbrella saying, hey, this is how we're going to do things.

49:54

Let's keep it that way. We want to make it so it's not chaotic, so the gospel is clearly preached.

50:00

So just even little things like that, that's why it's important to have oversight. Yeah, I think that's an excellent point too, where you said that those conversations out on the street can kind of go all over the place.

50:10

This is why when you read, for example, a book on apologetic method, and we remember step one, step two, step two, and then we arm ourselves with these steps that we are going to strategically employ when we're in an apologetics context, and then all of a sudden you're placed in a real life situation, and your checklist of apologetic points to make do not work out the way that you planned.

50:38

I think it's very important, and I think it's a mark, and maybe you could speak to this. It's a mark of maturity to follow the advice of Bruce Lee, and that is to be like water.

50:50

You need to be able to be flexible, right, and adapt to the situations. We hold to specific biblical presuppositional principles, but you need to be able to adapt because the real life situation, it's not as simple as when you're sitting in a class, and you're just asking questions, and you're writing your notes, and then you're ready to kind of go out.

51:08

Why don't you speak to that? How have you personally been able to kind of adapt to a situation that didn't go your way, but you were able to kind of be a little flexible in that situation and kind of redirect the conversation and make some of the various apologetic points that you wanted to make?

51:24

Man, that happened last week. We were in Salt Lake City last week helping our church plant.

51:31

We were in Provo at BYU and was talking to a really sweet young man and was having a really great conversation.

51:40

Not that it went badly, but I have a certain, like I said, I have a certain path that I like to bring Mormons down, and very quickly into that path,

51:50

I realized he's not even believing LDS doctrine.

51:56

He's saying something that I've never heard from a Mormon before. He literally was saying that Jesus was eternal, and I'm like, bro, that's not what you guys teach.

52:08

That's right. And he's like, yeah, yeah, we do. And I was like, no, that's not what you guys teach.

52:15

And then he starts, you know, so I'm trying, at that point, I'm like, I had to completely shift my, how

52:22

I was, my approach because I'm like, now I have to argue with him as a Mormon almost to like, no, this is what you guys teach.

52:33

And, you know, and he just kept saying, well, where's the reference? Where's the reference? And I'm like, of course, it's the,

52:39

I didn't bring my references with me that one time. And I'm like, I was like, man, I just kept saying,

52:44

I'm really sorry, I don't have them with me. And then thankfully, Jeff came up like an hour into the conversation, and he had the references with him.

52:51

And I was like, hey, can you bring him over here? And actually, I think that would probably go up on,

52:56

I think we'll be putting that up on YouTube. We got that. But it was like, it was a situation where I was like, man,

53:02

I don't even know. So for a minute, like I had to like, almost stop and be like, I don't even know right now how to approach this because because he's not even believing what they teach.

53:15

He's saying something different. You know, and so it took a little it took a few minutes for me to kind of kind of dig back in and, you know, and and kind of regroup, like you said, like water had to kind of to go with the conversation.

53:28

And, you know, we ended up having like talking to this guy for like two hours, I think. Yeah. But yeah, talking to a

53:35

Roman Catholic and saying, you know, I believe that, you know, scripture is the only infallible rule of faith, faith for a believer.

53:42

And they're like, Yeah, yeah, I'm down with that. Like, no, no, no, you're not allowed to be down with that. Like, what do you do when you try to, you know, go down a certain path, and you are now talking to a heretical

53:52

Catholic? Heretic in their own circles. Yeah. To navigate that.

53:58

Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. That's a good question. Well, it's really important that we are prepared, right?

54:07

Always be ready, because not everyone's going to have a ninja pastor in their back pocket or a James White to call in and help.

54:12

It's really important to kind of be equipped to engage at that level. Why don't you kind of talk to us a little bit about how has evangelism in the street helped you better prepare?

54:27

In other words, how did real street evangelism, being engaged with people out in the street, how did that contribute to like your own personal study?

54:38

So I know when you get into real life conversation, there are gaps and weaknesses that you identify very quickly.

54:44

You know, it's different than when you're kind of just studying and you're like, I think I got this. Your weaknesses get exposed very quickly when you're out in the world.

54:51

Why don't you explain that for us? How have those things affected your own personal study, and then how you bring that back out into the streets when you do?

54:58

Man, that's such a good question. I mean, the simple answer is it forces you to know the word, right?

55:07

You know, and you know this, like street evangelism takes practice. No one goes out there the first time and nails it, right?

55:16

Especially talking to Mormons, which we do a lot of, like no one goes out the first time and gets it right. Like, you know, it takes time.

55:23

It takes practice. It takes hearing their arguments. And then it forces you to go back and be like, all right, how do

55:31

I respond to this with the word? And that's the simple answer is it forces you to know your scriptures.

55:37

And so you can't be out there and answering these questions, especially with groups like the

55:44

LDS or Jehovah's Witnesses or Roman Catholics that actually use scripture because you have to then argue with scripture.

55:51

Obviously, like the whole New Age or, you know, just millennial postmodern, that's a whole other thing that they could care less what scriptures say.

56:03

But you still obviously have to know the scripture. But yeah, I mean, that's it. Like it forces you to know and to be able to argue and not use their arguments, you know, or like their arguments where they just rip things out of context.

56:19

Like you have to know the context of those verses. You have to know what was behind, what was the author trying to say?

56:26

That's very powerful. I saw the debate with, I don't know if you watched it, but it was

56:31

James White in a debate with Dr. Tim Stratton over the topic of Molinism.

56:37

During the cross -examination, he says, well, you know, the proposition of the debate is is

56:43

Molinism biblical? So why don't we take a look at those passages? And of course, Dr. White drilled his opponent in the passages that he used for the support of his position and to expound on the context of those passages, which the person was not prepared to engage in.

56:59

So it's not a cheap debate trick, but it's a very powerful tool to really hold someone's feet to the fire when they're throwing various scriptures around.

57:07

I would imagine that that is helpful when you're talking to Mormon and Jehovah's Witnesses and things like that.

57:13

Yeah. And I mean, I'm so glad you went this direction. We've actually had,

57:20

I don't want to say a debate, but a healthy conversation with our friend

57:27

Si, Tim Bruggencape, you know, where he was like, how do you, how do you use precept with Mormons?

57:36

You know, because he's so good at using it with atheists and stuff like that. You know, it's like, how do you use it?

57:43

He's like, don't you have to use a different method? And we're like, no, it's the same method. It's just you're still, you're still arguing from scripture.

57:52

You're still using God's word as your standard. But they, they take, you know, they'll, they'll say essentially that they believe scripture to be true as long as it's translated correctly.

58:03

So like, in other words, yeah, they believe scripture until it disagrees with what Joseph Smith said and then it was translated incorrectly.

58:10

But point being, you still have to, you still have to do that same process.

58:15

It's the same method. It's just, what is your presupposition? And for the

58:21

Mormon, ultimately what it comes down to is Joseph Smith. It's their prophets.

58:26

That's their, that's what they presuppose because, you know, and then, and then when it contradicts with scripture, you're still going back to the word saying, yeah,

58:34

I know Joseph said that. I know Brigham said that, but it contradicts with God's word. So it's the same.

58:41

You just use it and you use it in different, different ways. Right. But it's the same.

58:46

It's the same method. So like transcendental, if we can use the philosophical categories, when you use a transcendental argument against a, uh, an atheist, it's going to have a certain emphasis, right?

58:56

We talk about the transcendental necessity of logic and reason, induction, these sorts of things. It doesn't change when you're talking with the

59:04

Mormon. It's just that with the Mormon, you're going to have a different transcendental emphasis.

59:10

And I tell people all the time that presuppositional apologetics can often be presented as kind of the silver bullet, right?

59:15

It's just this argument that it just shuts down anything the unbeliever can say. And, you know, there, there it is.

59:20

We're done. And that's not true. Presuppositional argumentation is very powerful, but there's still lots of work to be done in the sense that a lot of your conversations, even when using presuppositional methodology is going to look very similar to how a classicalist might get into some of the weeds.

59:38

I mean, obviously we're standing on a different foundation. There's, there's key differences between the methodologies, but there's going to be some similarities.

59:43

So you're going to have to get your hands dirty, knowing the scriptures, how to know their scriptures and how to navigate that.

59:50

So it does take a lot of work. You can't just, you know, read Vonsen's Always Ready and think, that's it.

59:55

I'm done. You know, it doesn't matter. I could just use this one argument, say by what standard, and then I'm done, you know?

01:00:01

So I like how you kind of mentioned that. We just need to, we need to know the scriptures and have to engage in some of those details.

01:00:06

I think that's very important. Well, if that's, if that's how you're approaching precept, like you just said, like, well, I did the method.

01:00:12

I'm done. Like, you've only done half the, half the work anyways, because what I love about precept is it always goes to the gospel.

01:00:19

Yes. Right. It's always pointing to people that Christ, you know, that to me, that's the big difference between that and like evidential and classical and stuff is like, it's always pointing someone to Christ.

01:00:30

You've chopped your legs off and then you say, oh, by the way, I chopped your legs off. Here's Jesus. Right. So if you're just going in swinging a bat and taking out knees and then you leave, like you didn't even, you missed the whole point to begin with.

01:00:45

Right. Take the legs off. Here's Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. So like, it's, so there's, there's a, there's a process of this.

01:00:53

So we should always should be pointing people to Christ and always leaving them with the gospel.

01:00:58

And even with the Mormons, you know, if we get, if we get to a place, which happens a lot where they're just like,

01:01:04

I don't know if you've ever had a chance to talk to a Mormon, but. Oh yes. Yeah. So, you know, once you've won the argument, their immediate response, cause this is what they're trained is to say is to bear their testimony and say, well,

01:01:17

I've prayed about it. You know, I have a burning in my bosom. That's what they're trained to do. And so we've gotten really good when they started to do that, we don't, we tried to keep the conversation going.

01:01:26

We're like, no, no, no. And, but, you know, at that point they're done, they're ready to bounce.

01:01:33

And, and so like, you know, as they're walking away, even as someone's walking away, you're still, you're, you're saying, please turn to Christ, please repent, please believe in the gospel, you know, like, so you could still be dropping those gospel bombs, even when someone's done with the conversation.

01:01:49

But that, that's the point. Yeah. That's awesome. When you, when you're, when you're speaking with Mormons, you need to have a little pack of Tums because once the burning in the bosom comes, then we can help you there.

01:02:02

Now let's get back to the gospel, right? You don't let them get away with it. It can be very challenging. Yeah. All right.

01:02:07

Awesome. Well, we're at the top of the hour here and we have some questions, so would you be okay taking some questions here?

01:02:13

Yeah. I got some time. Okay. All right. Let's, and thank you so much. This has been a real fun conversation.

01:02:19

Yeah. I'm loving it. All right. So Tom Campbell, thank you so much for your,

01:02:24

I guess your question slash statement, best books, et cetera, for local church and personal apologetics.

01:02:31

I don't know if they're asking maybe what is, is there a book out there that talks about the local church and apologetics doing apologetics within that context, or if that's what they mean, then

01:02:43

I don't know if maybe you might have a resource to point them to. I don't have one for the church aspect.

01:02:50

Um, obviously you've mentioned always ready a few times. That's the number one go to presupposition apologetics against,

01:02:57

Oh, that book right there is phenomenal. Actually I had my guys that came out.

01:03:05

I listened to it. I didn't get it. I didn't read it, but I listened to it on the Canon plus app and immediately

01:03:10

I was like, we have to teach us. So that I put our guys through that. I love that book. Okay. So you're going to get me off the tangent here, but I have a couple of ways.

01:03:18

I don't know if you have this one also. Let me see. Oh, here we go. So it is this.

01:03:26

And the third one is the, the remake of pushing the antithesis. Oh, nice.

01:03:32

I call, I call Greg Bonson, the Tupac of apologetics, because if people remember Tupac Shakur, when he died, uh, he still was coming out with albums.

01:03:43

So someone's like, there's a new Bonson book out. And it's like, well, he passed away in the nineties. I'm like, but he's still got them coming out.

01:03:49

So yeah, we want to check out, uh, the impossibility of the contrary and against all opposition and pushing the antithesis, which sounds technical, but it was actually, um, a series of lectures that Bonson did, um, to high school students who were going into college.

01:04:05

So it's actually like a high school level. Um, so definitely excellent resource, but go ahead. Yeah. So I'm sure most of your listeners probably already familiar with a lot of these books, but I love that book.

01:04:16

Um, let me back up. Always ready is a great introductory book, I think into, into pre -sub, um, obviously presuppositional apologetics takes it to a whole nother level.

01:04:27

It's a bigger book gets much heavier. Doesn't he presuppositional apologetics?

01:04:34

Oh yeah. Stated and defended that one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I thought I was like, oh, did I say something wrong?

01:04:40

Um, um, but that, you know, gets a lot more heavier into the, the philosophical side of things.

01:04:46

Um, I love against all opposition because like I listened to it and, and it was like all things

01:04:54

Bonson in a small volume, but it's easily accessible. Um, so I know each chapter is basically like a, a, a different subject.

01:05:02

And so it basically took all, you know, Bonson's library is ridiculous and it took, you know, all these main topics and put cadets into one chapter in each in, in this book.

01:05:13

And, and it didn't get too heavy. I didn't feel like in the, into the, uh, philosophy side of things.

01:05:19

Cause I, I have recommended Bonson to people who are just trying to get into apologetics, you know, and they're like, ah, it's a little heavy.

01:05:29

Um, and I, I, it's my favorite

01:05:34

Apollo, as you can see, it's my favorite apologetics book, but it's probably Bonson's more technical, but definitely not an entry point.

01:05:42

Yeah. So that's why I liked that book. Cause you could send a, give that someone to say, read this. And I feel like it's very accessible.

01:05:49

Um, anyways, I love that book. So I'm glad you brought that one up. Well, when we, when you read

01:05:54

Bonson, he can be really technical, but for people who don't know these books are actually transcriptions from his lectures.

01:06:03

Now, if you read Dr. Bonson and then you listen to Dr. Bonson, it's like two different worlds.

01:06:11

He is an excellent teacher. And so when he's speaking, he's much easier to understand than when writing, but although he's very good as a writer as well, much more down to earth in his, in his lectures.

01:06:25

And I would say that 90 % of the stuff I learned from Bonson is from his lectures, not even from the books, although the books are all resources.

01:06:32

So that's a great point. Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean, what a brilliant guy. He could literally do like that where he can dumb things down.

01:06:41

I don't, you know, for us, us dumb dumbs, right? Like he can make, he can make it very easy to understand and very practical, but then, but then when he needs to go deep and he needs to go heavy, man, he puts in another gear and, and he's, he's, he could do it like that on the fly as well.

01:07:00

And so that's what a, what a brilliant guy. No, I can't say the same with William Lane Craig. I have read

01:07:05

William Lane Craig's reasonable faith. Okay.

01:07:12

Okay. And, and then he'll dumb, he'll, he'll give you a dumbed down version, like on guard.

01:07:17

Or if you read like one of his technical Molinism books, and then there's a popular version. When you read the technical stuff, you come away from the book.

01:07:25

Like, I don't get it. And then you read his dumbed down version. And then you're still like, I still don't get it.

01:07:30

So not everyone is able to, you know, to dumb it down for us, for us dummies.

01:07:38

Yeah. So I appreciate Bonson was, was especially gifted in that area. Oh yeah. And yourself as well as Jeff.

01:07:45

I think you guys have done an excellent job. Really taking the

01:07:50

Bonson's presuppositionalism and like showing what it looks like in the streets.

01:07:55

Like to the average person. Like there's even a comment here where they, you know, I think here, let me put this up here.

01:08:01

So Arthur Bear says, I actually got into presupp by watching old Apologia videos of Jeff and Lou interacting.

01:08:06

I remember the first video was the atheist rally from what I remember. So, you know, people can kind of read

01:08:12

Bonson and Van Till and they'll kind of get it. But you guys went a very long way and just showing people what that looks like, like in the streets.

01:08:19

You guys did what is needed in a, in like to be written as a book. So we have the technical stuff.

01:08:25

Right. But we don't have what you guys do in book form, which is unfortunate. I mean, there's some stuff out there, but I think you guys did an excellent job and went a really long way in terms of showing people what presuppositionalism looks like.

01:08:36

And to that end, I think many people are grateful. I appreciate that. Praise God. I appreciate that.

01:08:43

It's funny. We always say like we literally started out. One of our most viewed videos was we met with some

01:08:50

Jehovah's Witnesses at a park and we had like a $20 recorder from Radio Shack or something.

01:09:00

And that was what we put up. And it's got like these really dumb, cheesy graphics. There's not even video.

01:09:06

It's just audio. And and that's one of our most viewed things. So you never know how

01:09:11

God's going to use stuff. Yep. Absolutely. Arthur Bear actually does have a question, though.

01:09:16

Not just that comment here. He asks, Luke, what are your thoughts on worship music in church?

01:09:22

Nowadays, there's a controversy on what type of music is being played. So are people singing

01:09:29

Oceans on Sunday morning? No, not an apology.

01:09:36

But OK, so we've had a bit. I'm just trying to think how to answer this question.

01:09:41

We've had a bit of a journey when we first started. You know, we are meeting at drug rehab.

01:09:47

We had nobody capable of leading worship. And we are doing YouTube videos of Hillsong and Jesus culture.

01:09:55

And it was honestly some of the most amazing times of worship. Just seeing these brand new Christians on their faces weeping before God, you know.

01:10:05

But then Jesus culture at Bethel started to get pretty wacky. And we very quickly put a kibosh on that.

01:10:11

And then Hillsong eventually as well. And even our own worship has matured a lot over the years.

01:10:21

So, you know, we have a band. And I know that's going to bring up all kinds of varying opinions on that.

01:10:28

I think that's actually one of my jurisdictions is worship. I play the bass.

01:10:34

I did worship every Sunday for five or six years. You look like a bass guy.

01:10:39

Yeah, my big old mitts. Yeah, so, like, you know,

01:10:45

I've been very much involved with the worship. And so what's important to us is, you know, obviously it's lyrical content.

01:10:54

That's our biggest thing. We try to incorporate a lot of, you know, older hymns and stuff because they're so rich theologically.

01:11:04

So, yeah, it's hard to answer that because I know you probably got, you know,

01:11:10

I'm a Reformed Baptist. But we're, you know, not a lot of Reformed Baptist churches have bands on the stage. You know, most

01:11:16

Presbyterian churches aren't going to have, you know, bands as well. And I get all the arguments. You know, it's just kind of where we're at with that is what's important to us is the worship honoring

01:11:28

Christ. Is it theologically sound? You know, we're not doing worship for the sake of an experience.

01:11:37

We're not trying to get people emotional. You know, but, you know, it's a little more on the less traditional side of worship.

01:11:52

So let me ask then, and I think that's important, that the lyrics, right, is it centering on God?

01:12:00

Do you guys have an issue then with songs that are theologically accurate, but they come or are produced from churches that are not theologically accurate?

01:12:11

Do you get into that whole issue? No, no, no, that's been a hard one because you even have songs that are strong theological songs written by Oneness Pentecostals like Phillips, Craig, and Dean, for example.

01:12:29

You know, we've had those conversations in the past. And that's a hard one to answer because really, for me,

01:12:39

I would think I would leave that to give some liberty on that.

01:12:45

Like, you know, as long as you're, you know, a solid gospel preaching church, you know, like, you know,

01:12:51

I would give you some liberty on how you should handle that. But yeah, that is a hard one. I mean, there are songs, too, that, like, even maybe not even written by, like, bad theology churches, but, like, are popular because of those churches.

01:13:06

Sure. You know, like, so what is the root of that song? You know, where did that come from? So, yeah, that's a hard, it's a really hard one to answer.

01:13:16

It's funny, it's funny because a couple years ago, the Mormon Temple, they didn't, they changed it this year. But a few years ago, they started playing at the beginning.

01:13:27

Before the show started, they started playing Holy, Holy, Holy. And we're like sitting there talking and all of a sudden

01:13:33

I hear it and I'm like, hey, hey, you can't play that song.

01:13:39

Like, that's not your song. You don't believe in the Holy Trinity. What is happening here? Well, if folks are interested,

01:13:47

I did an entire episode on worship music with Dr. Braxton Hunter of Trinity Radio. I highly recommend folks take a look at that.

01:13:55

And I even get folks who know who Braxton Hunter is. I even got him to sing a song. He's a president of a seminary and he's a serious guy.

01:14:05

I got him to sing a song, joking around, of course. But we tackled this topic and it's an excellent conversation.

01:14:10

You're right, it is a very difficult question to answer. And you don't want to be legalistic on it at the same time.

01:14:17

So I appreciate your thoughts there. Thank you so much for that, Arthur. Appreciate your question. All right.

01:14:22

So this was kind of a saucy one, but maybe we can take it here. So this is in relation to how people conduct themselves, right?

01:14:31

So with gentleness and respect and things like that. So Truth Defenders says James White has his critics.

01:14:37

So who decides who the jerks are? He says being a jerk can be subjective.

01:14:44

And judging the heart is a dangerous thing. Accusing others of not caring. So I think that's a good question.

01:14:50

Because you have people who we greatly respect. And we think are perhaps justified in the way they go about things.

01:14:56

But then you have other people who say, well, I don't know. I mean, maybe this person, it was a little too harsh here. And maybe they could have done a better job.

01:15:02

Who gets to judge when someone is in violation of, say, 1

01:15:08

Peter 3, verse 15, the gentleness and respect aspect. I think that's a fair question. That's a good question.

01:15:14

Yeah. Jesus. Okay. That's true.

01:15:19

Hey, that is true. Right? Okay. All right. Next question. No, I'm just kidding. That is why you have accountability in the local church.

01:15:28

Because if someone is doing evangelism under that umbrella of accountability and they have submitted to those elders as their authority, they get to decide.

01:15:41

That's who decides if they're being a jerk or not. So that goes right back to why do we have that protection in place.

01:15:51

You know, and I'm going to go back to my own experience. I could give you plenty of examples where I was a jerk. And I really was doing evangelism outside of – not that I wasn't a member of my church.

01:16:02

But no one at my church really knew or cared that I was doing evangelism. And I acted like a jerk at times.

01:16:14

And so hopefully that answers your question. That's who gets to decide. And that's why you have that protection because when you don't have that protection, then it really doesn't matter who thinks they're being a jerk because they don't have any authority.

01:16:29

And it's not the decision of just one individual, too. You have multiple people who care about what everyone else is doing in the church.

01:16:38

And you have multiple people coming together, drawing upon the Scriptures and the teaching of Christ to evaluate whether someone's behavior is appropriate or not.

01:16:47

And their judgment may disagree with, say, the people online who might see maybe

01:16:53

Dr. White or someone else or myself and say, well, I think it was highly inappropriate. Well, again, you're not their overseer.

01:17:01

So, I mean, we leave that to the leaders of the church and the faithful interpretation of Scripture, and they have to use wisdom.

01:17:07

It's not always easy to decide on those issues. And so it's definitely an issue we need to navigate carefully.

01:17:13

So thank you so much for that. Yeah, excellent question. Jacob Glass has a question here.

01:17:20

He says, do you think the local church should place a high focus on congregational prayer time or time to pray with each other in services?

01:17:31

Yeah, I do. We actually have an older gentleman that leads a time of prayer, a corporate prayer before church every

01:17:41

Sunday. So it's not part of our worship service, although we do have several times throughout the service where whoever is at the pulpit is leading in prayer.

01:17:52

But, yeah, we do have that time of congregational prayer for people to come prior to the service and pray together.

01:18:02

So I do think that that, I think the question is during the service.

01:18:09

I mean, I think it could be hard to have a time of, like, interactive congregational prayer during the worship service, you know, because it could, who knows what direction that could go.

01:18:26

We have had times like that where, like, maybe at the end of a service where, you know, like, say someone's moving or they're going through a struggle or whatever, we may bring someone up to the front and have everyone come up and lay hands and pray over them.

01:18:38

But, yeah, hopefully that answers that question. It depends, too, what you mean by, like, place a high focus.

01:18:44

Right. What do you mean? Like, is it occupying, like, a huge chunk of the regular flow of the service?

01:18:50

I mean, it's kind of a subjective element to the question there. Right. All right. Thank you for that. And I'm sorry for the repeats.

01:18:56

I'm kind of going down the list. So there are some people who got a couple of questions in. So we have Truth Defenders again here.

01:19:01

What about producing clones with no individuality? They emulate their idols and mentors to the very way they dress and grow their beards and tattoos.

01:19:10

Maybe a little tongue in cheek there. But how do we equip people without making clones where people are kind of superficially just trying to be like those they look up to?

01:19:21

I've actually joked that our assistant is always like, hey, do you need anything?

01:19:26

And I'm like, yes, a clone. Can you make another one of me? Because I can't keep up with everything.

01:19:34

This is just one of my hats. I have many hats I wear. How do we avoid?

01:19:40

When you're done here, you're going to take your hat off and then you're going to go work in the nursery because that's your other responsibility.

01:19:47

You're like doing 50 ,000 things at once. I'm sure. Well, we actually are family integrated, so we don't have a nursery. Yeah, but we have an abortion now.

01:19:57

We have the studio. I'm in the studio right now. Thursday is our recording day, so we recorded earlier today.

01:20:03

We also have Action for Life and Stay With Warriors. I just keep making new organizations to manage.

01:20:14

How do we avoid that? That's a really good question, and I think going back to my own story that I told earlier,

01:20:23

I would say that I was cloned in a bad way at first because I was taught this is how you do it.

01:20:32

I saw the example, and again, I was not doing it with gentleness and respect.

01:20:43

I think one thing that's really good, practically speaking, is when you're training people, because it doesn't have to be just men to do apologetics and evangelism.

01:20:56

When you're training people to go out in the street to do that work, it's always good to have them come out and just observe at first and spend time in prayer and then allow them times of practice.

01:21:12

But as they grow, let them learn on the street, on the school of hard knocks.

01:21:21

I think that allows individuals to maybe blossom on their own, and each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses.

01:21:34

Like I mentioned, all of us pastors here have different paths we want to take people down. We have our own methods, and I think that's the beauty of the diversity within the church.

01:21:48

I'll be honest. There's been times where Jeff and I have gone out to Easter pageant at the

01:21:55

Mormon Temple, and it was just us. Or maybe times where I couldn't go, or Jeff couldn't go, and it was just one of us, and there's 15 ,000 people, and we're handing out tracts.

01:22:06

That could be discouraging, but this year when we went, it was amazing, because we had at times 30 people from our church.

01:22:19

It was so cool. This is one of those moments where you get to sit back and revel in God's glory.

01:22:28

It was so cool to see all these people, and they were all doing their own thing, but they were being faithful.

01:22:35

They were emulating the example we've given them, but they were doing it in their own way, and it was really, really cool to see.

01:22:42

Jeff and I talked about it. It was like, man, just to think where we've come to be able to sit back and just watch and not even have to say anything, and to see all these different individuals.

01:22:55

They might be the foot, or the eyeball, or the brain, or the ankle, whatever, the different parts of the body, and they're doing their thing, but it's all about the gospel.

01:23:06

It's all about Christ's kingdom and glory, and it's really cool. I don't know if I answered that question or not.

01:23:12

No, no, that's fine. If I can get my two cents here, I think there is actually some value in producing clones to a certain extent.

01:23:22

For example, a clone of someone doing things right can act as training wheels for someone to just get started.

01:23:32

I think being thrown into real -world situations, they can develop individuality because it's not going to always work when you do something the way someone else does it.

01:23:43

You might want to emulate James White, but then someone asks you textual critical issues, and you're like, crap,

01:23:49

I don't know anything about that. You can't just get away by staring at them exegetically.

01:23:56

It doesn't work. You just described me. I think there's value.

01:24:04

Even Paul says, imitate me even as I imitate Christ. I want to be a clone of Paul in a sense, but of course, when we're thrown into the real -life situations, some of that individuality element will develop,

01:24:16

I think, in a healthy way. Okay, thank you for that. Richard Cox says, does theonomy ever help with apologetic endeavors?

01:24:26

Post Mill, I don't know if they're saying, does theonomy ever help with apologetic endeavors?

01:24:32

Does post -millennialism ever help with apologetic endeavors? Eli, have you read Bonson on either?

01:24:38

Why don't you share your thoughts there, and then maybe I'll share my thoughts after that. Yes, 100%.

01:24:45

I actually just had this conversation recently with somebody. For me, precept,

01:24:53

Reformed theology, theonomy, and post -mill are all very much intertwined and interconnected.

01:25:02

I don't know where you stand on other than precept and Reformed theology.

01:25:07

I'm post -millennial, and I'm undecided in theonomy because I haven't studied it. You get what

01:25:14

I'm saying then. It's funny because a lot of guys that fall into that camp of thinking all got there through one of those four things.

01:25:27

It ended up leading that way. Goodness gracious, especially right now, theonomy is a hot topic.

01:25:38

With the abortion discussion, that's a hot topic. We've been able to use that a lot in our apologetics to pro -aborts and stuff like that.

01:25:47

Post -millennial, just the Mormons, for example.

01:25:52

I know I keep going back to them, but that's what we've used a lot because we've literally heard

01:25:59

Mormons say that Jesus was a false prophet in Matthew 24. Because it was this generation.

01:26:06

We'll say Joseph Smith made all these prophecies about his generation.

01:26:13

They didn't come to true, therefore, he's a false prophet. They're like, well, Jesus did the same thing. Being post -millennial,

01:26:19

I'm so glad you brought that up. Before I was post -mill, I would have been going, I need to go.

01:26:29

It's getting hot. You don't have an answer for them at that point. That's just an example of where it's absolutely been.

01:26:38

Plus, being post -mill, it changes your outlook on everything. There's not an area of life where it hasn't impacted me in some way.

01:26:51

I'm thinking long -term. I grew up, like most people in our nation, most

01:26:59

Christians in our nation, dispensational, pre -millennial. I'm no longer looking to escape.

01:27:08

Everything I'm thinking about trying to do, I'm thinking long -term. I'm thinking about my grandkids and my great -grandkids.

01:27:16

I think it absolutely affects all of that. Excellent. I've read a little bit of Bonson on Theonomy.

01:27:23

I've listened to more of Bonson on Theonomy, but I haven't undecided. Most of my study in Bonson has been just apologetic methodology.

01:27:31

Of course, you're going to brush up on Theonomy since it was such a big part of— He was one of the leading speakers on that topic when he was alive.

01:27:42

That's what By the Standard is. That's his intro into Theonomy. Start there, and then

01:27:50

Theonomy and Christian Ethics. If you can find a copy, they're hard to find.

01:27:56

I do have an old copy, and I stole that from my good friend, Pastor Milton. There you go.

01:28:02

That was another stolen one. I've seen those on Amazon for $750. Now I can make some money.

01:28:10

That's his thick book on Theonomy that really gets into the practicality of things.

01:28:21

Interestingly enough, some people don't know this, but I actually got into apologetics first through my study of eschatology.

01:28:30

I grew up a pre -trib dispensational. Growing up, that's the position

01:28:41

I held, too. When I was introduced to Gary DeMar's Last Day's Madness, that for me was the most—

01:28:50

Again, it's not like a scholarly tome or anything like that. That for me was probably one of the most paradigm -shifting books

01:28:58

I've ever read other than the Bible itself. Not because it's this great masterpiece, but because eschatology was a big focus of mine growing up.

01:29:09

I saw things a certain way that when I read that book, it literally took the rug out from under my feet and destroyed everything that I used to believe.

01:29:21

Now I tell people that even if I was not a partial preterist and post -millennialist,

01:29:27

I would never be a dispensationalist. It really was a game -changer for me.

01:29:34

It was through Gary DeMar and American Vision. I'm like, who's this Greg Bonson guy? Then, of course, the rest is history.

01:29:41

See, I told you. Everyone through one of those four things ends up coming to the same point.

01:29:48

I love Uncle Gary. He's one of my favorites. I've had Gary on before. He's a cool guy, man. We literally call him

01:29:56

Uncle Gary. I love that man so much. He's doing his thing.

01:30:02

He's got a lot going on. Anytime I have a question, I'll send him a message, and he always responds quickly.

01:30:13

I'm like, how cool is that? I don't deserve that man's time. He's like, sure, let me see if I can help you out with that.

01:30:20

What a resource to have. Gary was DFFs with Greg.

01:30:26

I think he was there when Greg died, if I remember correctly. I think it was to promote the

01:30:33

Bonson Project or something. I don't remember what it was, but we talked a little bit about... Oh, yeah, when we were promoting the books.

01:30:41

Oh, yeah, yeah. I had one, and he spoke a little bit about Bonson. They were really close. But he was good.

01:30:46

I remember Gary DeMar, where I really fell in love with Gary DeMar, is I remember when I was on this American Vision obsession.

01:30:52

I was like, I have to order these books. I ordered a CD set of him on a radio show taking questions from dispensationalists.

01:31:02

And he just destroyed... I got phone call after phone call. I was like, this guy is awesome. And he was aggressive, but in a likable way.

01:31:09

I've never heard that. It's called Gary DeMar Under Fire. Oh, I got to find that.

01:31:15

A cartoon drawing, kind of a caricature drawing of him with tomatoes being thrown at him. I still remember the case.

01:31:20

I listened to it for years and years. That's awesome. That is awesome. All right, Jacob Glass has a question here.

01:31:27

How often do you believe a church should take the Lord's Supper? Every time you meet? Every Sunday? Monthly? Or does it matter?

01:31:33

My question is stemming recently from reading 1 Corinthians 11, verse 26.

01:31:39

We do it every worship service. Okay. So that's something we take serious.

01:31:48

We've always done it every Sunday. For us, it's important too that an elder issues the supper.

01:31:57

So even if we have a guest speaker, which we've had at times, we make sure there's an elder present to lead the

01:32:03

Lord's Supper. So yes, that's our stance on that.

01:32:10

I grew up doing it monthly. Same. I think that's what probably a lot of churches in our culture do, which is just silly.

01:32:18

I mean, you know the argument. It's, well, we don't want to make it something not special.

01:32:25

We don't want to get numb to it sort of a thing. We do it every week. It shows it's special because you do it every week.

01:32:31

Yeah, I know. I know. What's great about doing it, you know, so to answer that question, we do it every time we meet corporately.

01:32:40

You know, when our small groups meet and stuff, they don't do it corporately in a worship setting.

01:32:48

What's so great about it is it's like a weekly renewal and kind of a reset.

01:32:58

You know this, but the church meets on Sunday because Sunday is technically the first day of the week.

01:33:04

It's not Monday. And so Christians, the early Christians were like, we're going to meet on Sunday.

01:33:10

So we're starting off the week properly, you know, like my friend

01:33:15

Joe Booth describes it as like you come to church, you're getting your marching orders, you know, and then you're going out into the world for the week.

01:33:22

And then you come back the next week and you get your marching orders and do the same. And it gives us as a church the opportunity to, you know, to kind of regroup, reset every week where it's like, hey, you know, bitterness can't go on too long, you know, within the body.

01:33:41

If every week you're saying, hey, don't take this. If you got bitterness in your heart, you know, and so it keeps the body fresh,

01:33:49

I think. And yeah, I don't know. I think it's just, it makes it more special, like you said, to do it every week.

01:33:59

All right. Thank you for that. Yeah. All right. We're almost done. We've got just a couple more questions. You're doing great, man.

01:34:04

Sweet. All right here. So Richard Cox asks, Luke, do you do

01:34:10

Whitfield with Jeff? How has that seminary impacted Apologia? Yeah. So, yes,

01:34:16

I have done some. I have not got my master's yet like Jeff did, but I have done some of it.

01:34:23

And Whitfield's great. I love Dr. Talbot a ton.

01:34:29

Here's another guy who like you who messaged him. I've lost track of how many times

01:34:35

I've messaged him. And like, hey, I got a question. And then he like just picks up the phone and calls you and talks to you for like three hours.

01:34:41

And I'm like, how do you have time to talk to me right now? I don't understand. I'm the same way. I can't, like if someone,

01:34:47

I mean, I'm not a famous theologian or anything, but when someone says, hey, Eli, you know, what are your thoughts on this?

01:34:53

Like, I'm not going to sit there and write out an essay for you. And some of your questions require like, so I'm like, yeah, just, just call me.

01:34:59

I'd rather just talk on the phone. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, the thing with him too is like, you know, he's a, he's in Lakeland, Florida, you know, right now they're three hours ahead of us.

01:35:09

Like I'll send him a message. I'll get home. It'll be late. It'll be like 10 o 'clock or 11 o 'clock.

01:35:14

And I'll be like, hey, I got a question, you know, and he's upgraded papers and it's like two in the morning or one in the morning and he's graded papers, you know?

01:35:22

And I'm like, how are you doing this right now? I don't understand the energy you have, but, Whitfield's great.

01:35:29

And so when we were looking into different seminaries, I asked around and I asked someone that knows

01:35:41

Whitfield intimately. And I said, hey, what do you think about Whitfield? And they were like, well, it's, it's much more than is required.

01:35:49

And I said, all right, done. So for us, it's, it's, it's a rigorous, it's a rigorous program.

01:35:57

It's not accredited, which I could care less about. They're not taking the government's money. I could care less with their credit.

01:36:02

I know for some people like, especially guys that I've had this conversation with guys that are like in the military and they have to have an accredited school.

01:36:11

But like, I don't care. The point is like, am I learning? Am I getting better? And that's a great, that's a great point.

01:36:17

Because I just heard, so I was just listening to a podcast today and someone was mentioning that, you know, unaccredited versus, you know, accredited

01:36:24

PhDs and degrees and stuff. And he said something, the guy was listening to said something really helpful. He said that degrees are like keys.

01:36:31

You know, a key opens a door. Sometimes your degree, it will open a certain door, but if you don't need that certain door to open, then there's no need to go for that degree.

01:36:41

I mean, who cares if the, if the door you want to walk through requires accreditation, then you take that key and you do, you use the key, but who cares?

01:36:49

The point is, are you getting the content and is it appropriate to what your ministry context is?

01:36:56

We're not just doing it so that we wear something on our shirt. Say I have got accredited PhD. Like, you know what I'm saying?

01:37:01

So I don't think it matters in the big way. That's a great analogy. The one thing

01:37:07

I really like about Whitfield too, is he's actually like got different programs for your denomination.

01:37:14

So he's got Presbyterian, he's got Reformed Baptist, maybe even Lutheran or something.

01:37:19

I forget, but there's like different ones you can go down if you're a pastor. Now I will say this because this is important for those that like your show.

01:37:27

Dr. Talbot is Clarkian. Okay. So that's the only thing

01:37:33

I have against the program. And you know, I used to be a Clarkian for a short while.

01:37:39

Okay. Very short. I've known, I mean, besides Dr. Talbot, I've known people and I've had that conversation with them.

01:37:49

And I'm like, every time I'm just like, wait, what?

01:37:56

That's how I feel every time. I'm like, I don't understand what you just did. So that's the only complaint.

01:38:02

He's Clarkian. It's not a huge deal. I mean, it's, it's so similar, obviously, you know, to, to precept.

01:38:09

Which I highly recommend people read Clark. I mean, there's, you have to read them with caution because there's obviously some important things that we want to keep in mind and be wary of.

01:38:17

But in terms of logical rigor, I mean, the guy was, Oh yeah. Well, him and Greg were like, were

01:38:23

Vantill's prize students. Yeah. Right. Was, was Gordon Clark a student of Vantill?

01:38:29

I'm pretty sure they were. I think him and Greg went to school together and then they split over something real minor.

01:38:35

I forget what it was, but. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for that question,

01:38:41

Richard. This is hilarious. Alyssa Scott says, I was a Mormon once, but then my doctor prescribed me Nexium.

01:38:46

That's I suppose that's our burn for the burning. Well played Alyssa. Well played.

01:38:51

That was really good. All right. Toto Bermundo. I feel like because I'm Puerto Rican, I should pronounce that better.

01:38:59

Toto Bermundo. Okay. There we go. I don't know if it's Spanish or whatever, but a question. How do the elders at Apologia react when they hear a pre -mill sermon from Johnny Mac?

01:39:09

Just curious. God bless. Cringe. Are you serious?

01:39:14

No, I mean, we've had some shows where we've critiqued lovingly and courageously critiqued some of some comments and stuff.

01:39:25

Pastor MacArthur has said it's interesting. The last couple of years since COVID, he's become much more theonomic than he was before.

01:39:37

But yeah, I mean. Okay. So this is how much of MacArthur I was.

01:39:45

Okay. I studied the book of Revelation three different ways.

01:39:54

I just read it plain through. I read it with the MacArthur study Bible, and then

01:40:00

I read through it with the MacArthur commentary. And this is before I was post -mill, obviously.

01:40:07

And I remember vividly at times being like,

01:40:15

I don't see that. But Johnny Mac said it, so it must be true.

01:40:21

That's right. Well, he's not a dumb guy. I mean, he's pretty awesome in terms of his. Yeah. Trust me.

01:40:27

I'm telling you, when I was disabled, I was disabled on Johnny Mac cassette tapes. That was how I did it.

01:40:32

And so that was within a few years, within five years of me becoming post -mill.

01:40:39

That was right before I met Jeff, actually. And Jeff was already post -mill. And then we went through Matthew 24, and he gave me the

01:40:46

Paracea by James Thewitt Russell, and it completely wrecked me. Completely wrecked me.

01:40:53

He's full. He's full. But his information in which we agree is phenomenal. So here's the thing.

01:40:58

Here's the thing about that book. Jeff didn't tell me that it was full price. He was just like, you need to read this.

01:41:05

And I read it, and I was just eating it up. And the whole way through, I'm like, yes, yes.

01:41:10

This is amazing. And then you get to the last chapter, and he goes full Prednis, and you're like, no.

01:41:18

But I didn't know the difference then. I didn't know there was a difference between full and partial. I just remember reading it going, what just happened?

01:41:26

Like, what just happened? Like, something shifted. I don't know what it was, but that book is phenomenal.

01:41:32

I mean, just how it lines all the synoptics up. It's so good. And so for me, the kicker was

01:41:40

Isaiah 65. That was the chapter that put me over the edge. He has a whole chapter,

01:41:45

I think, or a big chunk on Isaiah 65, and that was the chapter that put me over the edge.

01:41:51

But anyways, I went way off topic. No, that's good. So, yeah, so my point was, like,

01:41:57

I did all the MacArthur pre -meal stuff, and now where I'm at,

01:42:02

I'm like, man, I love MacArthur to death. You know, what a hero for the faith.

01:42:08

I just think he's got that wrong. Have you been following the podcast? There's a podcast that is put out.

01:42:15

It is phenomenal, and it follows the entire career of John MacArthur.

01:42:21

No. Dude, and the production, I feel like I'm listening to, like, a legit documentary.

01:42:27

Oh, I got to check that out. So let me get the name of it. It is called, like, I don't even, most of the stuff

01:42:34

I listen to is on YouTube. I got the YouTube premium, so I can just turn that on. But this is the one thing

01:42:39

I really, like, anticipate when they come out with another episode. It is called the

01:42:44

MacArthur Center. Let me see the name of it. Yeah, it's called the MacArthur Center Podcast.

01:42:51

And it literally goes through his entire, like, how he got into ministry. It intersperses, like, his quotes and interviews and controversies.

01:42:59

It covers everything. So well made and so entertaining. It's like I'm sad when it's like, oh, the music's coming on like it's over.

01:43:08

It is so good. I got to check that out. I would love that. Yeah, you would. All right.

01:43:13

Okay, so we're almost done here. So JP is actually a former student of mine. I worked at a

01:43:19

Christian private school online in New York, and he was a student of mine. We did apologetics and theology, and we had some really great discussions.

01:43:27

I'm happy to see him still asking good questions and thinking hard about these things. So JP, thank you so much for your question.

01:43:34

And hopefully you and Emma can get yourself down here to North Carolina, and we can hang out.

01:43:40

So just wanted to throw that out there. So JP asks, in a metropolitan area where postmodernism and even presuppositionalism seems to be aggressive and countercultural, how do you present presupp as a method towards the absolute truth?

01:43:59

I'm not sure if I understand the question, but if you understand the question, you can take a stab at it.

01:44:04

Well, any presentation of absolute truth right now is countercultural.

01:44:11

And so, I mean, from my perspective. Oh, I apologize.

01:44:16

He rewrote the question here. In a metropolitan cultural area where postmodernism seems to reign, how do you bring upon presuppositionalism as a legitimate argument?

01:44:27

Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, still going back to what I was saying, like presuppositional presents absolute truth, which

01:44:37

I'll be honest. I think using this argument with atheists and postmoderns is the easiest.

01:44:46

Yes. Because they have no objective standard for anything. They have no way to justify anything they believe.

01:44:53

It's completely subjective. Right. They say as much, and it's super, super easy just to point to that and just say, look what you're standing on right here.

01:45:02

You're standing on my worldview and then saying rubbish. So, I think it's super easy.

01:45:10

I actually really enjoy talking to a lot of the, especially like the young. We were at LSU about a month ago when we were in Louisiana, and I had a blast.

01:45:22

You know, some of those students were crazy, but I had a blast. It was fun, and I think it's super easy.

01:45:28

I don't know. I think you kind of, I think you said the same thing. So, I don't really care if people think it's aggressive.

01:45:35

Like, you know, if you're doing it graciously, like if you think it's aggressive,

01:45:41

I don't really care because I'm pointing it to the truth. Yeah. And I'm going to make sure you get the gospel.

01:45:48

I think aggressiveness is not even, it's not, aggressiveness is not the property of a method.

01:45:54

Yeah. It's how you present it. So, you can be non -aggressive in how you present presuppositional argumentation, right?

01:46:04

Now, the nature of presuppositionalism is that you're cutting right to the foundation, but I wouldn't say that's aggressive.

01:46:10

It's just you're getting to the point, right? So, I think you can present the issues with gentleness and respect, but with postmoderns,

01:46:19

I mean, it's a big old reductio ad absurdum, right? It's, you know, how do you present absolute truth to someone who rejects absolute truth?

01:46:29

You simply point out that in their rejection of absolute truth, they have to presuppose the very thing they're objecting to.

01:46:35

Yeah. And so, they could either say, oh, wow, I never thought of that. Or they can say, no, that's not true.

01:46:41

And then they're making truth claims that they, that are undercut by their own perspective. So, at that point, as Bonson says, you give them the microphone, you tell them to speak up so that everyone knows that this is the kind of absurdity one is reduced to when they reject the truth.

01:46:53

Absolute truth. And specifically, the absolute truth of the Christian worldview. That's why I love

01:46:58

Presupp. One of the reasons. There's a lot of reasons. You know, you could talk in circles all day long with a postmodern atheist about all, you know, about all the evidences and you name it.

01:47:16

All day long. I love Presupp because it cuts through the crap like that. You're just like,

01:47:22

I'm not even talking about that. Let's just. That's a good title for a book. Cut through the crap. Yeah. Like, like I said, you cut their legs off and give them

01:47:33

Jesus. Like, what? You know, I don't need to have all this, you know, all these other peripheral conversations.

01:47:40

Like, do I love evidences? Yeah, of course. But, like, when I'm talking to atheists, like, let's just get to the point. Like, everything you're saying right now, it doesn't matter because you have nothing to stand on.

01:47:51

So turn and repent. You know, I think side side did a great job when he says, what's what's the point of arguing for three hours over the complexity of the eye when the person is going to hell?

01:48:04

Like, yeah, it might be important to talk about the complexity of the eye. We're not undermining the important. But there needs to be a point where, like, as Van Til said, you don't just go on and on about the facts.

01:48:14

You need to get to the philosophy of the facts. What is the worldview? What is the context out of which facts make sense?

01:48:21

And that's where we bring the whole Christian worldview to bear upon the unbeliever, which includes the message of repentance.

01:48:27

So I think that's a very important aspect there. Well, Luke, you survived the Q &A. That was the final question.

01:48:34

I'm going to disregard this. Tyler, my good friend Tyler from Freedthinker, he says Post Mill overcorrects from the issues with Free Mill.

01:48:42

And he is an amillennialist. It's OK. I'll give it to you. Still running rampant around. We'll pray for you, brother.

01:48:50

I'll give it to you. I always say that the pastor, James, or Dr. White, as you know him, went from an optimistic amill to a pessimistic

01:49:00

Post Mill. That doesn't even make sense. That's awesome. Oh, if you listen to it, it makes sense.

01:49:07

OK. All right. All right. Well, Luke, I want to say thank you so much. I know that you are so busy and that your church and the ministries associated with the church are doing excellent work with ending abortion and apologetics and just ministry to Mormons and things like that.

01:49:23

And I just want to encourage you to continue to do that unto the Lord. And you guys are an inspiration for a lot of people.

01:49:31

And hopefully you guys are setting a great example where people can go out, step out courageously, and engage the culture for the glory of God.

01:49:38

So thank you so much for everything you guys are doing there. And thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure, man. I appreciate that.

01:49:43

All glory to God. All right. Well, if you could just stay on with me for like 30 seconds, I'm just going to close out this episode.

01:49:49

Just reminding folks, I'm going to be interviewed on Apologetics 315 on Sunday at 4 p .m.

01:49:55

It's going to be a podcast. So I suppose it's I presuppose I presuppose it's going to be recorded.

01:50:01

Thank you. I'll be here all week. And I'll let you guys know when that comes out. And then I'll be interviewing the guy who's interviewing me on Monday at 4 p .m.

01:50:11

And I will be interviewing my former apologetics professor on Tuesday at I don't remember the time off the top of my head.

01:50:20

So I'll let folks know if you follow me through social media and things like that. You guys can be privy to that information.

01:50:26

Well, thank you so much, guys, for listening in and sending your questions. Until next time, take care and God bless.