March 31, 2017 Show with James N. Anderson on “Why Should I Believe Christianity?” PLUS Buz Taylor on “Postmillenialism & the Modern Prophecy Movement”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this last day of March, March 31st, 2017.

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In studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello once again. And I am so delighted to have on the program today for the very first time

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Dr. James N. Anderson. Dr. Anderson is an ordained minister in the

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Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and he came to Reformed Theological Seminary from Edinburgh, Scotland and specializes in philosophical theology, religious epistemology, and Christian apologetics.

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His doctoral theses at the University of Edinburgh explored the paradoxical nature of certain

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Christian doctrines and the implications for the rationality of the Christian faith. His research and writing has also focused on the presuppositionalism of Cornelius Fantel, particularly his advocacy of the transcendental argument.

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Dr. Anderson has a long -standing concern to bring the Reformed theological tradition into greater dialogue with contemporary analytic philosophy.

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Before studying philosophy, Dr. Anderson also earned a PhD in computer simulation from the

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University of Edinburgh. He is a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the

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British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, and the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

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Prior to joining RTS in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dr. Anderson served as an assistant pastor at the historic

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Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh where he engaged in regular preaching, teaching, and pastoral ministry.

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He is active now in service at the Ballantyne Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he is married to Catriona, and they have three children.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time ever, Dr. James N.

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Anderson. Thank you so much, Chris, great to be here. And I apologized if I mispronounced anything.

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Well I was wondering about that Edinburgh. No, that's the way, isn't it? Isn't it the way the Scots, pretty close, isn't that how they pronounce it?

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That's right, yeah, Edinburgh. Yeah, wow, I stand corrected. What, did you think it was Edinburgh? That's the way that they actually, there's a city in Indiana spelled exactly the same way, and it's

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Edinburgh. I heard that Scotty in Star Trek didn't really have a Scotch accent, that that was all just part of his acting, and I was thinking that you were doing a pretty good job if you were doing the same thing.

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And is it Catriona, did I pronounce your wife's name correctly? It's pretty close, more like Katrina, but she tells me that even

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I don't pronounce it right. That's interesting.

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Well, before we even go into the discussion at hand, I want to hear more about you, about your upbringing as a child, what religion was in your home, if any, and how providentially our

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Sovereign Lord drew you to himself, and how you embraced the true Christ and true gospel of the

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Scriptures. Yeah, I would love to share that with you. So I was blessed to be raised in a

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Christian home. On my mother's side, strong evangelical family.

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Her parents, my grandfather, who I never knew, and my grandmother were both evangelical

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Anglicans who served as missionaries in India. So I had that background on my mother's side.

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My mother has always been a strong evangelical believer. My father's side were more what

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I would call cultural Christians, nominal Church of England, but my father, when he married my mother, really came to embrace personal

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Christian faith. And so we were raised in a Christian home, and we, in the early part of my childhood, we went to a

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Church of England, church in the village where we lived in England, but my parents got a little tired of the sort of wishy -washy, moralistic, thin sermons that were being given there, more sort of, you know, pep talks, make you feel better.

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So they decided to start going to a local evangelical Baptist Church, even though they've regarded themselves still as Anglicans.

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And so my real first encounter with an evangelical Bible preaching church was in this evangelical

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Baptist Church in a nearby town, and that's where I really became, I think, conscious of the real truths of the gospel and the authority of the

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Word of God, and that was quite a formative process for me. However, I don't really think that I was internally converted until a later point in my teenage years, where I was challenged about whether I had personally committed to Christ, because I regarded myself as a

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Christian, I could answer all of the right questions, Theology 101,

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I could give all the right answers, but I was basically challenged with the words of Christ in Luke 11, 23, "'He who is not for me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.'"

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And I realized that there's no middle way. Either you are all in for Christ, or you're not for him at all, and I realized

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I really wasn't sure. But I prayed about it, I got on my knees and asked the

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Lord, said, I want to commit. I really want to be all in for Jesus, and I think that that was a decisive turning point in my life of committing myself fully to the

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Lord. And there were some ups and downs, as is a common story for many believers in my university years.

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I went to the University of Edinburgh and drifted somewhat for a number of reasons, but eventually a good brother in Christ almost literally grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and took me to a strong evangelical

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Baptist Church with a history of consistent, consecutive, expository

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Bible preaching. And that was transformative to me and really set me on a path once and for all to Christian ministry where I am today.

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You know, your bio says something fascinating about your heartfelt desire to see a

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Reformed theology really become a part of a dialogue with contemporary analytic philosophy.

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If you could give us more of concrete examples of what you mean by that.

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Sure, yeah, what analytic philosophy is, is it's a way of doing philosophy, so answering questions about metaphysics, the ultimate nature of reality, epistemology, how we know what we know, and ethics, right and wrong, good and bad.

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It's a way of approaching these questions that is very systematic, wants to analyze things at quite a precise level, that seeks precision in logical form and in the vocabulary used.

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And the analytic philosophy tradition isn't distinctively Christian, I mean there are secular philosophers who pursue that kind of philosophy, but there's been quite a renaissance of Christian philosophy, maybe in the last 50 years or so, where believing

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Christians have become very engaged in the world of analytic philosophy and try to bring that to bear on their

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Christian beliefs. However, the Christians who have engaged in analytic philosophy generally haven't been reformed in their theology.

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They tend to be Arminians of some stride, there's a lot of Molinists, and many of them have evangelical convictions in the broad sense, but I've always felt it's a great shame that there hasn't been more overlap and interaction between reformed theology, which

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I take to be the most biblically robust form of Christianity, and this form of philosophy, which

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I think can be very powerful when it's used in a God -honoring way, in analyzing issues that arise within Christian theology or in dealing with objections that are made to Christianity from the outside.

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So that's what I'm getting at, it's really doing that kind of philosophy within the framework of a robust confessional biblical reformed theology.

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Now you're also an ordained minister, as I mentioned, in the ARP, which is the

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Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Can you tell us something about that denomination? Yeah, that is a denomination here in the

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United States. It's concentrated mainly historically around the

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Carolinas, but we have presbyteries up in Canada, down in Florida, and, you know, pushing towards the

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Mississippi, and there's even some, I believe, in California now. But historically, that was a branch of Presbyterianism that came directly out of the

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Scottish Presbyterian Church. It has a different history than what we would call mainline

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Presbyterianism in the United States. It has its own history, and to cut a long story short, in the 18th century, there were two groups that came out of the mainline

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Presbyterian Church, the Church of Scotland, for different reasons, but basically it was, you know, theological concerns.

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One group were known as the Associate Presbyterians, and another group were known as the

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Reformed Presbyterians, and ministers from both of those groups independently emigrated to the

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United States, mainly to the Carolinas, and when they got here, they realized how much they had in common, and so they joined together and formed the

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Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, and there are a few other dramas along the way, you know, divisions and reunifications, but that's basically the story.

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Two groups that had come away from the mainline Church of Scotland and had joined together and formed a

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Presbyterian, well, first Presbyteries and then a Synod here in the United States and continuing up to the present day.

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Yes, I have some friends who are a part of the ARP, Cy Tenbruggenkate, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, he's a presuppositionalist apologist up in Canada.

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He is a part of one of your Canadian congregations in Toronto, I believe.

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Okay. And I know that Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, while he was still here in the

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States, in South Carolina, he was pastoring an ARP Church. Yep.

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And a man who I hold very near and dear to my heart, who is a great blessing to me during a dark period of my life, is

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Pastor Lawrence C. Young, who is the pastor of the Brookside ARP Church in Boone, North Carolina.

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I happened to be in Boone, North Carolina years ago when I had lapsed into a serious abuse of alcohol and went to a ministry there in Boone called

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Hebron Colony, which I highly recommend to everybody who either themselves has an addiction to the sin of alcoholism or if you are, if you have someone that you love or know someone very close that has that problem,

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I highly recommend that ministry, Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone, North Carolina. But Pastor Larry was the only

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Reformed pastor in the nearby area and he would come and visit me while I was there.

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It was just, it was an enormous blessing with importance that is too great for me to even describe in words.

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He may just view them as very simple visitations, but they were very meaningful to me and I'm so glad that we have maintained a long -distance friendship to this day.

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I'm not actually gonna give Pastor Larry a plug, his website is BooneBrooksideChurch .org

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that's Boone, B -O -O -N -E, BrooksideChurch .org and that is for the

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Brookside Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Boone, North Carolina. Well, what led you to write this book,

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Why Should I Believe Christianity? There are other, many other apologetic books meant not only for unbelievers but meant to equip

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Christians to evangelize unbelievers. Why did you see this as a needed addition to those many other volumes already on the shelves of Christian libraries?

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Yeah, that's a good question, and the short answer is I didn't go looking for it,

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I didn't initiate the project, but rather it found me indirectly.

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What had happened was that a friend of mine, Willie McKenzie, who works for Christian Focus Publications in Scotland, approached me looking for someone to edit or to co -edit a series of apologetics books, and around 10 to 12 in number, and these apologetics books would be distinctive for addressing common questions that skeptics ask about the

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Christian faith, but also answering those questions in a way that is easy to understand, more conversational in tone, avoiding

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Christian jargon, technical philosophical terms, and so forth. So very readable, accessible, but theologically orthodox, that was particularly important, answers two common questions that skeptics in Western society, whether that be

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Great Britain or America, ask of Christians. And so I did a little bit of market research among my unbelieving friends and family members to find out what some of these questions would be, and I enlisted some help in trying to gather a short list of questions that this series could address, and so we drew up a schedule that included issues like, why is there evil and suffering in the world?

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Why does God seem so mean and violent in the Old Testament? Hasn't science disproven the

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Bible? Issues like that, pretty familiar ones, but we wanted to include in that series one that was more positive in tone, because all of the other ones were responding to objections.

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They were engaging in defensive apologetics, so here's this criticism, or here's this critical question, what's the

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Christian response? We wanted one that would also make a positive case for a

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Christian faith, in very introductory terms, not going into a lot of detail, but basically making a positive case for a

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Christian worldview, and the long and the short of it is that I ended up agreeing to write that volume, which

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I was very happy to do, because for a while I'd wanted to put something down on paper anyway, sort of summarize, how would

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I make a case for the Christian faith in a way that's consistent with my approach to apologetics, but also

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I felt that while there are some very good books out there, there was nothing that made a case for Christianity in quite the way that I thought it ought to be made, and in a way that was directly addressed to the unbeliever.

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So it's not a training manual for believers, or a handbook for believers, but something that you could literally put in the hand of an unbeliever and say, read this, this makes a case for Christianity, tell me what you think, let's talk about it.

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Excellent. I want to give our listeners our email address right now, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.

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James N. Anderson. The email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. I want to, before I even start asking you questions about this book, I want to read a couple of glowing commendations for this book that have been written by two men that have been guests on Iron Sharpens Iron radio in the past.

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R. Albert Muller Jr., who is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, he says of this book,

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Why Should I Believe Christianity? by our guest James N. Anderson. In a post -christian age, the need for faithful theologically rich apologetic resources has never been more important.

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Indeed, it could be argued that the task of apologetics has never been more pressing or more urgent.

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This is a critical time of cultural and intellectual transition. The Christian ministry, taken as a whole, must be understood as an apologetic calling.

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This is why books like Why Should I Believe Christianity? deserve careful reading by pastors and laypeople alike.

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In this book, believers will find a compelling defense of the Christian worldview and the resources necessary to stand firm in a faithful, in a faithless age.

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And as I said, that was Dr. R. Albert Muller, and also someone else who has been a guest on this program several times,

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Dr. Michael J. Kruger, president and professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, who was actually a pastoral intern years ago when he was still a

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Reformed Baptist at the church where I am now a member, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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But Dr. Kruger says, in a world filled with skepticism, relativism, and secular dogmatism, it is easy to doubt what we believe.

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Is Christianity really true? In this fantastic book, James Anderson offers one of the clearest and most compelling explanations for the truth of Christianity that I have ever heard.

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You will be reassured and strengthened by this book. Read it multiple times, then give it to a friend.

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That's a pretty powerful commendation by Dr. Michael J. Kruger, quite a brilliant scholar in his own right.

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And well, you know something, I am going to take a couple of listener questions since we've already got quite a number of them that have quickly come in.

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I'm going to start with a listener who is actually in your neck of the woods in North Carolina, Casey, who is originally from the

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Philippines, who is now in Kannapolis, North Carolina. He says,

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I have a very important question for Dr. Anderson. How can we use both evidential and presuppositional apologetics together and use both of their strengths to defend the faith and preach the gospel?

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Why does it have to be an either -or -some Reformed presuppositionalism advocates trash -talk any kind of evidence -sharing?

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Can't we use evidence and presuppositionalism both? Well, I think that you would agree that presuppositionalists do use evidence, but if you could comment.

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Yeah, yeah, I'd be glad to, and that's a great question, important question about apologetic method, and certainly we don't want to be more restrictive in our method than we have to be.

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Why would we cut off one hand when we could use both? So the question is whether presuppositionalists can use evidences, at least that's how

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I would frame it, because I regard myself as a presuppositionalist. I've been very much influenced by Cornelis Van Til and John Frame and that whole tradition, so my starting point for analyzing unbelief is analyzing unbelieving presuppositions, the assumptions that lie behind the surface comments, and doing an internal critique of the unbeliever's worldview to show that it can't make sense of the most basic things that we take for granted, like morality and reason and human dignity and purpose and meaning and all these things.

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So my starting point is to recognize that everyone has presuppositions, there is no religious neutrality, and there has to be a sort of head -on collision between a

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Christian worldview and a non -Christian worldview, and we can examine each by considering their presuppositions or whether they make sense of the world.

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Now where does evidence come into that? Is there evidence for the Christian faith? Oh yes. In fact,

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I think a presuppositionalist wants to say or ought to say that every single fact in this universe is evidence for God.

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If this is a God -created, God -directed universe, then there is nothing but evidence for God, and you can actually approach that in a presuppositionalist way by arguing that the very idea of evidence itself and our ability to comprehend and use evidence presupposes a biblical worldview.

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But then, of course, you have evidences themselves, the evidences of our senses, historical facts, scientific facts, all of which

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I think can be incorporated into a presuppositional method, as long as you recognize that evidences don't speak for themselves, and that people will always interpret evidences in terms of their prior presuppositions.

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So while I'll be happy to use evidences, and in fact anyone who reads my book will see that I do use evidences.

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I make some reference to the evidences of design in natural organisms, in the fine -tuning of the universe, evidences for the historical authenticity of the

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Gospels, and the reliability of the testimony to the Resurrection. So there's appeal to evidences there, but I'm always bearing in mind that if those evidences are being interpreted in a naturalistic framework or some other kind of anti -Christian worldview, then they're going to be reinterpreted to fit that worldview.

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And so I'm not going to offer evidences without also setting up a presuppositional framework in which those evidences are going to be rightly interpreted.

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And so that's the approach I take in the book. I sort of start with a more presuppositional approach by saying, this is the

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Christian worldview, and this is why it makes sense of the world, and then incorporate getting into that various evidences which really serve to confirm the

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Christian worldview. Well thank you, KC, and please give us your full mailing address in Kannapolis, North Carolina, because you have just won a free copy of Why Should I Believe Christianity?

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by our guests Dr. James and Anderson, compliments of our friends at Christian Focus Publications, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service, dot com, cvbbs .com.

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We'll be shipping that out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trap and Zion, and we thank

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Todd and Patty Jennings from the bottom of our hearts for their faithful support of Iron Trap and Zion Radio.

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Going back to something about what you were just saying about presuppositionalism,

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I know that a lot of presuppositionalism is weighted in the truth that is revealed in Romans 1, about how nature is even sufficient to reveal to man the truth that God exists and holds him accountable, although we need special revelation still to know the gospel and so forth and other things that are vital to salvation in the

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Christian life, but when Romans 1, when Paul, the inspired author of Romans 1, tells us that all men know the truth and suppress it, does that mean, like for instance, there is an old saying, there's no atheists and foxholes, does that mean that there is literally a conscious battle going on in the minds of those who reject

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God that we, not being mind readers, cannot necessarily know?

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Like for instance, I did an interview not long ago with Dr. Larry Taunton, or Larry Taunton, who is the author of The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, when he basically was just discussing his friendship with the atheist who died as an atheist, went directly to the grave, knowing that he was dying of esophageal cancer and never repented and never came to faith in Christ, in spite of the fact that he had friends who were

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Christians regularly evangelizing him and teaching him the gospel and debating him, as Larry Taunton had done.

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But was Christopher Hitchens, does that word from Paul in Romans 1, does that teach us that he actually consciously knew, even to the point of death, that he was rejecting the truth?

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Or when Paul says that we run away from that truth, when we suppress that truth, is really what he says.

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Can people forget, after decades of rebellion, that what this truth is?

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I don't know if I made sense there, I was rambling a lot. No, I understand the question, because it does sound outrageous to say, well,

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Christopher Hitchens claimed to be an atheist, but there are no real atheists. Well, are we saying he's a liar, or he's confused, or what?

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Well, the way I approach it is, as a Christian, I'm committed to the belief that the

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Bible is God's Word, and that it's authoritative, and that it speaks authoritatively to everything.

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So if I'm thinking about how should I understand the unbeliever and the claims of an unbeliever, someone who claims to be an atheist, my starting point is going to be, what does the

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Bible say about unbelief, rather than what does the unbeliever say about unbelief?

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Because the Bible is the Word of God, and the unbeliever is not God, or having the authority of God.

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The unbeliever has fallen in sin, and may not speak truly, or may be confused about some really deep matters.

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So I ask the question, what does the Bible say about unbelievers? And one of the things that Paul says, in my view, quite clearly, in Romans 1, is that God's existence is evident, clear, from natural revelation, so that unbelievers are without excuse in recognizing his existence, but also that the unbeliever internally, at some level, does have knowledge.

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There is a recognition that this is a

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God -created world. This is not a godless world, but a God -infused world.

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But Paul also says that that knowledge is suppressed, it's denied.

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And so there's a complex psychological dynamic within an unbeliever of any stripe, but particularly those who profess that there is no

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God. And that can be tricky to delineate. I think that the presuppositionist apologist

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Greg Barnson did some very good work many years ago on the issue of self -deception, and what it means to be self -deceived, and he applied that to the question of whether the unbeliever can...

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is he contradicting himself? Does he have contradictory beliefs? Does he believe in God and yet not believe in God?

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And the way he put it, and I'm simplifying somewhat here, is that unbelievers have a knowledge of God, but they also believe that they don't.

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So there's a sort of a first level, deep first level belief that there is a God, or some sort of consciousness of God, but also that has been overlaid and suppressed by a belief that they do not, in fact, believe in God, and that they have, in fact, been convinced by arguments or evidence against the existence of God.

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And that leads to quite a, you know, complex psychological situation, because on the surface, an atheist is going to say,

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I don't believe in God, I don't think there's any evidence for it, but also that recognition of God's existence is going to betray itself in various ways, because there are going to be other things that he says or does that are inconsistent with his atheism, like appealing to moral values, to making assumptions about his capacity to reason and know truth, about the idea that there is value to human life, that there's purpose in human life.

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It's the analogy that I sometimes use. It is like the guy who's trying to hold a beach ball under the surface of a swimming pool.

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You know, you can hold the beach ball down for so long, but sooner or later it's just going to pop up, and you're going to have to grab it and quickly push it down again.

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And that's, I think, somewhat like the unbelievers' deep -seated recognition, consciousness of God, that has to be continually and actively suppressed.

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Now, that doesn't mean that atheists are being duplicitous about it. They may be, as far as they're concerned, quite sincere in their belief, but we,

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I think, have to insist that while they may be sincere about what they think they believe and how they think they look at the world, they're sincerely mistaken, and that God knows better about what exactly is going on inside.

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Well, I know that my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, lit up like a Christmas tree when you mentioned

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Greg Bonson, because he is Buzz's most beloved hero of the 20th century,

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I believe. Well, one of them, definitely, but actually even before you said Greg Bonson, you said

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Cornelius Van Til. That's right. And I'm sure that there are a lot of our listeners who have no idea who you're talking about or what they believe, so could you just briefly introduce us?

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Yes, and if you could do that, Dr. Anderson, when we come back from a break, because we have to go to a break, we're already four minutes past when we should should have gone to one, but I wouldn't dare stop you where you were.

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So we're gonna go to a break right now, and we'll have Dr. Anderson answer Reverend Buzz's question, and also if you'd like to join us with a question of your own, those of you listening, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. One sure way all

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

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Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE radio.

40:03

www .wlie540am .com.

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We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

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Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

40:27

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the first 90 minutes of the broadcast is

40:33

Dr. James N. Anderson, specialist in philosophical theology, religious epistemology, and Christian apologetics at Reform Theological Seminary, and we are discussing his book,

40:44

Why Should I Believe Christianity? If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

40:51

chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and I thank all of you who are still waiting for your questions to be asked and answered for your patience.

40:57

We will get to you as soon as we can, but before we do, Reverend Buzz Taylor wanted you to introduce to our audience

41:04

Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bonson, since their names are really synonymous with presuppositional theology or apologetics.

41:14

If you could. Oh yeah, sure. Yeah, I'd be glad to.

41:22

So Cornelius Van Til was a pioneer of what is now called presuppositional apologetics, although he would have claimed that he was just bringing into clearer focus something that had been implicit in the theology of Calvin even earlier, but Van Til himself was one of the founding faculty members of Westminster Theological Seminary, and his approach was really to make some criticisms of traditional methods of apologetics, so particularly a

42:02

Roman Catholic approach that relies very much on Thomistic, sort of medieval metaphysics and arguments along those lines, but also a generic evidentialist approach that what these all have in common is the idea that reason itself is neutral, and that there's this sort of neutral common ground between the believer and the unbeliever, and we can identify that.

42:29

We can say, look, here are these principles of evidence, and here are these facts and so forth that we all share, that they don't have any kind of religious commitments to them, and we can use those as a starting point to build a case for Christianity that we trust will persuade any reasonably minded unbeliever, and Van Til had a number of issues with that.

42:52

One was the idea that there could be any such thing as evidence or facts that speak for themselves, brute facts, he would call them, that are just given to us without requiring any interpretation on our part.

43:06

He argued that while there is common ground between a believer and an unbeliever, that common ground isn't neutral.

43:14

In fact, strictly speaking, it's Christ's ground, because this is Christ's universe, and so what we are doing, we are bringing

43:21

Christ's facts and Christ's evidences to the unbeliever, but we're also asking him to interpret them in a

43:29

Christian way. So you have to address the anti -Christian presuppositions of the unbeliever that are causing him to misinterpret the evidences and the facts.

43:41

So the point being here that you can use evidences, you can appeal to observations, experiences, and so forth that are common to the believer and unbeliever, but there's no neutral starting point for doing that.

43:55

There's the believer's perspective and there's the unbeliever's perspective, and you have to actually attack the perspective itself.

44:01

You have to show that the unbeliever's perspective is self -defeating. It can't make sense of evidence or anything else, whereas the believer's perspective, the biblical worldview, is the only one that will actually make sense of things.

44:14

And so what Van Til called this kind of argument, well, he called it a presuppositional argument, but he also called it a transcendental argument, and the idea behind a transcendental argument is that the things that we take for granted, like reasoning, our capacity to make moral judgments, our ability to know things, to evaluate evidence, all of these things we take for granted, but they have presuppositions.

44:40

There are certain things that must be true in order for us to know anything at all, to reason anything at all.

44:46

That is to say, our reasoning capacities depend on a certain worldview.

44:51

They take for granted a certain worldview, and Van Til argued that this is actually the biblical worldview where there's an absolute personal

44:58

Creator God who creates an orderly, rational, moral universe and creates us in his image so that we have the capacities to understand truth and to make right moral judgments and so on.

45:13

So this was, in many respects, a very pioneering approach to apologetics, and there's been some debate since on exactly how much of Van Til's approach is required.

45:25

There's some people who think, well, the way that Van Til advocated it is the only way, and we should stick with that.

45:31

Others have said, yes, the core insights are correct, but there's maybe a little more flexibility in the way that it's applied, and so you have different folk like Greg Barnson and John Frame who have somewhat different takes on how to apply

45:47

Van Til's presuppositionalism, but in my view they're all hitting on the same core insight, namely that only a biblical

45:55

Christian worldview can make sense of anything at all, any aspect of human existence and experience that we take for granted.

46:03

Now not to belabor the issue of historical figures connected with apologetics, but how does

46:08

Gordon Clark fit into this mix? Because I realized there was a parting of ways between Dr.

46:15

Clark and Dr. Van Til. Yes, so Gordon Clark was an

46:22

American Reformed philosopher, and he is regarded as a presuppositionalist as well, and he is in the sense that his method in apologetics focused on the presuppositions of the unbeliever as well.

46:38

He was much more negative about the use of evidences in apologetics

46:46

In fact, on my reading, he denied the reliability of sense experience altogether.

46:52

He was an anti -empiricist and said that our senses don't actually give us knowledge of the world.

46:59

So you can imagine that that really does dominate your method in apologetics and rule out the use of things like historical and scientific evidences.

47:08

But his approach to critiquing unbelieving worldviews was a little different than Van Til's.

47:16

Both of them engaged in an internal critique of the unbeliever's worldview, but whereas Van Til asked the question whether the unbeliever's worldview can actually account for itself and whether it can account for the sort of reason and truths and the laws of logic that are used to defend that worldview, what

47:42

Clark asked is simply, is it logically consistent? That is, he basically had one tool in his toolbox, and that was the law of non -contradiction.

47:53

And so he would ask of an unbelieving worldview, does it involve any internal logical contradiction?

48:01

If so, it must be false. And the way that we defend the Christian worldview is by arguing that it is logically consistent, that it does fully adhere to the law of non -contradiction.

48:18

And that leads to a somewhat different approach, I think, in practice as to how you engage in a critique of a non -Christian worldview.

48:29

Well thank you, and we do have a question from a listener in Bakersfield, California, Daniel, who says,

48:37

I have been in conversations where the other person starts to put Christianity on the shelf with every other religion out there.

48:45

They make the case that they are all the same. What is a compelling argument that you would give for the uniqueness of Christianity among other world religions?

48:59

Yeah, well, we do encounter that a lot in our day, don't we, that basically religions are saying the same thing, and it's just differences on minor details, and that's probably the spirit of the age, isn't it?

49:15

We've got to tolerate everything. We don't want to say that anyone is wrong, or that there's any such thing as absolute truth, and so everything gets relativized, and that's the situation.

49:25

We find ourselves that Christianity is being put on a shelf like some sort of breakfast cereal, and you know, you can take your pick if you like cereals, or you like just pull it off and whatever suits you.

49:38

The main problem with that, that we need to correct, is that it shows a profound ignorance of the actual claims of these religions.

49:49

The person who approaches them in a pluralistic way may think that he's being very affirming of all these religions, but in fact he's denying all of them by their own lights, because Christians themselves cannot accept the core claims of Islam, or of Hinduism, or Buddhism, and the same goes for a

50:14

Muslim. A Muslim, by his own commitments, cannot accept the core claims of Christianity.

50:20

In fact, the Quran explicitly denies some of them. So, really what we need to do, first of all, is to gently, politely, graciously, but firmly educate people about what the major claims are of different religions, and you don't need to go through all of them.

50:39

In fact, in my book, I just use one simple example. I say Christianity and Islam make contradictory claims about Jesus.

50:50

Christianity claims that Jesus is the Divine Incarnate Son of God, who died on the cross to make atonement for sin, and rose again from the dead.

51:00

Islam denies every point of that. It teaches that Jesus was a mere human prophet, that he didn't die on the cross, and therefore he wasn't raised from the dead.

51:10

So, on the most fundamental points of Christian faith, Islam denies them, and so it makes no logical sense to say that it doesn't really matter, that these are just peripheral matters.

51:26

These are the core claims of these religions. And then you get into Eastern religions, and you find that their conception of God is fundamentally different than Christianity.

51:36

Christianity teaches that there is an absolute, transcendent, personal God who is distinct from the creation, and exists in three persons,

51:45

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's essential to the Christian faith, whereas Eastern religions typically treat

51:54

God as being a non -personal being that is often overlapping with the world in some sense.

52:02

So either God and the world are one, or the world is within God in some panentheistic way.

52:08

And again, these are not footnotes. These are not mere details.

52:14

These strike at the very heart of the claims of these religions, and how they approach the world, and how they approach matters of salvation, which should be of concern to all of us.

52:24

Yes, I can remember years ago on the old Iron Sharpens Iron radio program that I hosted out of two radio stations in New York, when

52:34

I had a debate, a live debate, between a Muslim and a Christian apologist on my program, and they were both with me in the studio, and I asked the

52:42

Muslim debater, I said, the Roman Catholic Catechism says that Catholics and Muslims adore the one true

52:53

God. I said to him, do you actually adore the same God as Roman Catholics or Christianity in general?

53:02

He said, absolutely not. So obviously that claim of the

53:08

Roman Catholic Catechism, the modern Catechism, is utterly false, that they together with the

53:14

Muslims adore the same one true God. It's nonsense. They do not worship a

53:20

Trinitarian God, and all the things that you said attest to the fact that they have a different God.

53:26

But we have to go to another break right now, and by the way, Daniel in Bakersfield, California, you've also won a free copy of Why Should I Believe Christianity, so make sure we have your mailing address.

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We're going to be right back after these messages, so don't go away. There's more to come with our guest on this fascinating subject.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

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.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the

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Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

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Join us this Saturday at 12 noon, Eastern Time, for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

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01:05:07

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, our guest today for the first 90 minutes, with about 25 minutes to go, is

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Dr. James N. Anderson, and we are addressing his book, Why Should I Believe Christianity? If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.

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And that's ironsharpensironradio .com and click support. Well, we are now back into our discussion with our guest today,

01:08:17

Dr. James N. Anderson and the discussion of his book, Why Should I Believe Christianity? And we have another

01:08:24

North Carolinian who has written us a question, Seth in Randleman, North Carolina.

01:08:31

He says, I enjoy listening to several of your lectures on the Reformed Theological Seminary app,

01:08:38

Dr. Anderson. What is your interpretation of the verse, don't cast your pearls before swine, from Matthew chapter 7 verse 6?

01:08:48

How does someone determine when this verse applies? If you could, Dr. Anderson. Wow, that's a great question.

01:08:56

And, you know, it's important. This is an imperative from Christ himself, from his very lips.

01:09:03

And we want to understand what that means. I think, without engaging in too deep an exegesis, and in a sense this

01:09:14

New Testament interpretation is not my immediate area of expertise, but I think the gist of it is that the gospel is a precious thing.

01:09:27

And with any precious thing, it should not be subjected to maltreatment.

01:09:34

Now, if we held that as an absolute principle, we might not preach the gospel at all for fear that it might be ridiculed or rejected.

01:09:43

And clearly that's not Christ's intent. So it's not to say, don't waste your time with unbelievers or critics of the faith.

01:09:52

But I think it is telling us that there comes a time when you realize that the words that you are speaking, the arguments that you are making, the appeals that you are making, although they are meant in the best of faith and with sincerity and with biblical warrant, they are being consistently degraded and mocked and ridiculed.

01:10:20

And in a sense there's nothing to be gained from that. Like casting pearls before swine, they're only going to be trampled on and debased.

01:10:31

And so we're required to strike a balance between what in my church tradition we call the free and indiscriminate offer of the gospel, that we preach the gospel, we sow the seed widely and indiscriminately, knowing that only in certain cases will it take root and be blessed.

01:10:53

And so we do that. We are liberal, in a good sense, with our gospel proclamation.

01:11:00

But also there are certain contexts or forums, maybe certain people that have a track record of having already heard the gospel and yet being bitter opponents of it, where we say, no, we're done.

01:11:18

As Paul said, I want to preach the gospel where it's not been preached before. There's fresh ground to be reached here.

01:11:27

And so we need to apply wisdom in that. I think as Christians we want to be charitable and give people the benefit of the doubt.

01:11:36

But we don't continue to persist in contexts where the only thing that is happening is that Christ is being held up to ridicule.

01:11:47

And exactly where you draw the line is difficult. There's no hard or fast rule, and in many cases it's a judgment call.

01:11:55

But it's important to know that there is a line and that we need to be thinking about whether it is appropriate in a certain context, in a certain forum, to be holding out the water of life when the cup is simply going to be knocked out of our hands.

01:12:13

Now, wouldn't you say that this is another one of those wonderful examples as to why

01:12:19

Reformed theology is so precious? Because we do not have to be filled with anxiety if we were to cease in our evangelism of a certain person or group of people because they are non -stop, unrepentantly mocking what we say.

01:12:41

In fact, perhaps even doing more than just verbally mocking us. They may be threatening or actually conducting physical harm in some way or anything like that.

01:12:52

When we move on, when we kick the dust off our sandals, as it were, if they are truly of God's elect, we know that someone else will come at the right time and that they will plant and water seeds and God will give the increase.

01:13:05

But the salvation of these individuals that we have encountered does not hang on our evangelism to them.

01:13:14

Yeah, that is exactly right, and that is one of the preciously practical consequences of the doctrines of grace.

01:13:23

On the one hand, we have confidence because we have the authoritative

01:13:28

Word of God, we have a gospel that is real life offered out to sinners, and we have confidence that whether that will be rejected or accepted is not in our hands, it's not on our shoulders, we are to be as winsome and persuasive as we can be, but the response is in the domain of the

01:13:51

Holy Spirit. So we have confidence, but also we have realism as well, because actually rejection of the gospel, resistance to it, mockery of it, that's the default response of an unregenerate unbeliever.

01:14:06

Now they may be polite about it in a certain cultural context, but that's the expected response.

01:14:12

So we shouldn't be disheartened, we shouldn't be surprised, but we do have confidence that the

01:14:19

Word of God will not return void, and that God will fulfill His purpose. And even in the case that you mentioned where we maybe share the gospel with someone and they mock it, they reject it, if they are elect, then as you say, either someone else will come along later, or the

01:14:37

Word that we have preached may be lodged in their consciousness, and it's only a matter of later time that the

01:14:44

Holy Spirit brings them under conviction, and actually perhaps under deeper conviction because of that delay.

01:14:52

So the Holy Spirit is a master, He blows where He will, and we can't predict how things will turn out, but our responsibility is just to be faithful with the proclamation.

01:15:06

Yes, in fact, an example of that that I can remember clearly is a friend of my late wife, this woman who was a widow, she was not a

01:15:18

Christian, she needed furniture moved out of her apartment because she was being evicted, and I got a bunch of folks from my church to volunteer to help this woman move her furniture out.

01:15:30

And there was a member of my church, precious brother in Christ, but I think he lacked tact, and very first words out of his mouth when he met this woman, he said to her,

01:15:46

Hi, my name is Bill, do you know where you would spend eternity if you die tonight? And she was terrified, she thought this guy was a nut, and she pulled me aside, is this guy a serial killer or something?

01:15:57

I mean, what's the deal with him? And so I said, he just loves his faith and he wants you to share it with him, and he is concerned about the eternity of those who don't believe like we do, but he doesn't really have the best of tact, and just please forgive him for that, and we went about our business helping with the furniture.

01:16:22

That woman, about five years later, I found out she became a born -again believer in Christ, and I asked her what happened, and she said,

01:16:30

You know that guy that was helping with the furniture? That question kept me awake at night, it haunted me, and finally the

01:16:38

Lord brought me to my knees and saved me. I mean, that's just something somewhat like we were just talking about.

01:16:46

There you go, there you go. One quick thing though, I think a good time to realize you're casting your pearls before swine, is if your relentless evangelism of this person or group of people is doing something that is in some way detrimental to others.

01:17:08

For instance, if your time is being robbed because of your being consumed with evangelizing with these people who are constantly rejecting you, and you are not taking care of your duties in other areas of life, whether it be your own family's needs, the needs of your own church, or even the evangelism of others, it's time to move on, wouldn't you think?

01:17:31

And so that would be at least one good reason where... I have even blocked people on Facebook for the same reason, who are relentless in attacking what

01:17:41

I am saying, and I'm like, You're taking too much of my time. Sorry, goodbye, and I don't have to worry that if...

01:17:49

because I have cut them off, that they are going to go to a Christless eternity if they die, because if they are of the elect,

01:17:57

God will bring someone else to them eventually. Yeah, that's right. It's a matter of Christian stewardship, isn't it?

01:18:03

We have limited time, we have limited resources, we want to use them in the most God -honoring way, and there's nothing to be gained from continuing to hammer on one particular door that has been slammed in your face repeatedly, and there's no indication it's going to change.

01:18:21

So yeah, it's a matter of wisdom. And Seth in Randleman, North Carolina, you have also won

01:18:27

Why Should I Believe Christianity? by our guests James and Anderson, compliments of our friends at Christian Focus Publications, and compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, we'll be shipping that out to you free of charge.

01:18:39

That's C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com, that's what will be on the shipping label when it arrives at your home,

01:18:48

C -V -B -B -S dot com, so keep your eye open for that package. And we have all the way in Slovenia, we have a friend, a listener in Slovenia, Joe, and I am enlarging the email that Joe has sent because the font is too small, and let's see, here it is.

01:19:10

Dear Brother Chris, thank you for having Dr. Anderson on your show. As I'm confident you both know, it is often said that truth is the first casualty of any conflict.

01:19:20

That certainly seems to often be the case in my experience. I've heard several well -known apologists say that it is very common for unbelievers to say that even if Christianity were true, they still wouldn't believe it.

01:19:34

I've also seen this in my evangelism efforts. Most people are so biased against Christianity specifically, or all exclusive religious systems generally, that they don't even care to engage in an honest consideration of our truth claims.

01:19:50

Understanding that ultimately it is only the Holy Spirit who overcomes resistance to truth, what are specific things we can do in the way we present the truth claims of Christianity so as to keep people from dismissing the whole notion of objective truth?

01:20:08

Thank you for your ministry and service to the Body of Christ. That's Joe in Slovenia, if you could.

01:20:14

Wow, that's a great question. I'm not sure if I could do justice to it in the time that we have, but there is a real problem in our day that the idea of objective truth itself is being undermined.

01:20:29

Although there have been philosophical movements throughout the centuries that have questioned the idea of objective truth, it's really becoming part of the cultural air that we breathe now, and people are, as our friend there says, they don't really care whether it's true or not.

01:20:48

Now, there's a sense in which that's quite a superficial thing to say, in that people may say, you know,

01:20:56

I'm not even interested to know whether it's true. But, of course, there are areas of their lives where truth matters very much to them.

01:21:05

For example, if they were accused of a crime and put on trial and the question was raised, are they guilty, are they innocent?

01:21:14

Oh, they're going to care a great deal about the truth then. Any relativistic view of the truth is going to go out the window.

01:21:22

No one's going to say, well, you know, the jury believed this truth and the judge believed he had his own truth.

01:21:29

No, that's where the rubber hits the road. And so I think partly we need to challenge that skepticism or maybe just indifference about truth and press people with the self -defeating implications of their claims about truth.

01:21:47

And I think this is part of a process that we need to engage in that even before we present

01:21:53

Christianity as a positive alternative for them, as a positive truth claim, we need to unsettle their own worldview.

01:22:05

And this is something I think that Van Til got at. I think this is something that Francis Schaeffer was very good at as well.

01:22:12

Schaeffer talked about tearing the roof off the unbelievers' worldview and exposing them to the harsh, self -destructive implications of their current worldview.

01:22:26

And so, for example, if we're dealing with modern secularists, if they're atheists who deny the existence of any objective meaning or morality, then we want to press them with the implications.

01:22:40

How far are they willing to accept the implications of their worldview? Have they really come to terms with the nihilism that follows from an atheistic worldview?

01:22:49

Or if they are more postmodernist relativists, well, are they willing to live with the consequences of a denial of objective truth if it comes to matters of justice, of someone being accused of a crime, or even whether the bank and you agree about the balance in your bank account.

01:23:08

Is that an objective truth or not? People do care about these issues in matters of everyday life.

01:23:14

And what we need to develop is some skill in showing them that their own existing commitments are problematic.

01:23:23

You know, you can invite someone to say, Hey, jump on my boat, but unless they know that their boat is sinking, they have no reason to jump.

01:23:32

You need to show them that their ship is hold fatally and it's going to the bottom of the sea, and that will give them a reason to pay more attention to the boat that you are offering them.

01:23:46

Excellent. And you have also won a free copy of this book,

01:23:52

Why Should I Believe Christianity? by our guest, James N. Anderson. And thank you,

01:23:57

Joe, from Slovenia for providing an American address where Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can send that book at a much less expensive shipping rate.

01:24:08

Your daughter should keep her eye open for a package from CVBBS .com. That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service .com.

01:24:17

And that should be there within a week or so. Thank you very much, Joe, in Slovenia. Keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Slovenia and beyond.

01:24:25

In fact, something that Joe said about people who say that, I don't even care if it's true,

01:24:31

I don't want to hear about it. I can even remember hearing on several occasions from Armenian Christians that if the god of Calvinism is the real god,

01:24:42

I want nothing to do with him and I will never worship him. I remember getting chills up my spine hearing that from somebody who professed to be

01:24:51

Christian. We have our final question for you, the final question that we have time for anyway.

01:24:58

Jerry in Charlestown, New Hampshire, he says, A lot is said in evangelical circles about the inerrancy and truthfulness of Scripture, but it seems that an area of weakness that we have when it comes to sharing the gospel or defending the faith is a lack of confidence in the

01:25:15

Scriptures. We may believe the Scriptures are without error, but we often shrink back from their truth claims in regards to others.

01:25:23

What role does confidence in Scripture play in evangelism and apologetics? What are common pitfalls in this regard, and how can we be strengthened in our convictions in the authority of God's Word?

01:25:37

Yeah, well, there's a lot packed into that question. Again, I'm going to have to be a little selective in the way that I approach it.

01:25:44

Well, the first thing is that before you even engage in apologetics or evangelism, you have to be well grounded in your own faith.

01:25:53

You have to have solid core doctrine, and that includes your doctrine of Scripture.

01:26:00

And I think you are going to be ineffective in apologetics and evangelism if you do not have full confidence in the

01:26:09

Scriptures as the inspired Word of God. Now, if you accept that basic biblical teaching, which has been held by Orthodox Christians ever since the

01:26:20

Apostolic Age, that the Bible is the Word of God, that it is God speaking to us, then inerrancy follows logically from that.

01:26:28

I mean, it's just an immediate implication that if what the Bible says God says, then what the

01:26:35

Bible says must be true, because God does not affirm, false it. Now, you can get into all kinds of details about, you know, exactly what inerrancy means in such and such a case, but the core idea of inerrancy is simply part and parcel of our understanding that the

01:26:50

Bible is the Word of God. And whenever I encounter people, Christians, who are wrestling with that, my advice to them is always to go back to Christ, to go to Christ's view of Scripture.

01:27:03

What did Christ himself believe about the Scriptures, about their authority, about their infallibility, about the idea that Scripture cannot be broken?

01:27:12

And, you know, we're going to get our confidence in our doctrine of Scripture from Christ's own doctrine of Scripture.

01:27:20

So we want to be well grounded in our doctrine of Scripture, including inerrancy.

01:27:25

Inerrancy is not the only thing we want to say about the Scriptures, but it's a very important thing. And then, you know, if it comes up in conversation with an unbeliever, then

01:27:35

I'm not going to hide for a moment that I'm committed to biblical inerrancy, and I may get some, you know, immediate ridicule for that, but I need to get them to understand why

01:27:48

I hold that, why Christians hold that as part of a broader Christian worldview. I want them to understand that not as just some weird fundamentalist doctrine, but actually that it's part and parcel of a broader worldview that makes sense of the world.

01:28:07

And so I'm partly committed to it because I'm committed to Christianity as a whole, as a package, and I need that worldview to make sense of the world.

01:28:18

And so I'm going to want to talk about what their worldview is in contrast to that. So I guess partly what

01:28:24

I'm saying is I am going to defend inerrancy. I'm going to own that doctrine. I'm going to stand firm on it.

01:28:31

But there's not much to be gained from defending inerrancy in isolation. So, you know,

01:28:37

I'm going to defend this verse and that verse, and every possible supposed error or contradiction that the unbeliever levels at me,

01:28:46

I'm going to try and answer that and establish inerrancy that way. No, I think you have to take more of a top -down rather than bottom -up approach to inerrancy, where your top -down is establishing the general claim that the

01:29:01

Bible is the inspired Word of God, and then on that basis you have a better footing to deal with some of the questions, the specific textual questions that come up about this verse and that verse.

01:29:15

Well, Dr. Anderson, I hope you enjoyed our time together as much as I did because I certainly want you back, and often, as often as your schedule will permit and as often as God will allow.

01:29:26

I would love to have you back on the program, so I'll be contacting you shortly to invite you back on the program, and hopefully you will accept the invitation.

01:29:36

And our listeners who want to purchase this book, if you live in the UK, you can go to ChristianFocus .com.

01:29:45

ChristianFocus .com, they are located in the UK, so it will be much more reasonable to have them ship it to you.

01:29:53

But if you want to purchase it here in the United States, go to CVBBS .com, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com.

01:30:02

Thank you, Dr. James Anderson. We look forward to your return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Thank you.

01:30:08

I've really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot, Chris. Take care. All right. Well, God bless you. And coming up next, folks, don't go away, because over the next half hour, believe it or not, the long -awaited discussion that we are going to have with Reverend Buzz Taylor on his book that he has been laboring on, on eschatology, is going to be our discussion for the final half hour of the program.

01:30:34

And if you have any questions for the Reverend Buzz Taylor, email us at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:30:41

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back, God willing, after these messages with more of Iron Sharpens Iron and the

01:30:50

Reverend Buzz Taylor. I'll be right back. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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01:35:24

Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen and for the last 25 minutes or so of our program we have as our guest today,

01:35:31

I think this is the second time, right Buzz? Something like that, yeah. Where you've actually switched from being a co -host to a guest.

01:35:37

It's almost as surprising as the first time today. I think the last time it was like, oh, no guest, so I'm just going to talk to you.

01:35:47

Well, the Rev. Buzz Taylor is an ordained minister. He has served as a minister in Fundamentalist Baptist congregations, in the

01:35:56

Church of God Finley, Ohio denomination, in Charismatic and Pentecostal denominations, and in a

01:36:02

Presbyterian congregation, and he is currently a member of a PCA congregation,

01:36:07

Presbyterian Church in America, and he has devoted much of his Christian life to the study of eschatology, and is actually in the process of, a very long process, which

01:36:20

I think is nearing its conclusion, God willing, on his investigation of Biblical eschatology, and it's my honor and privilege to have you back as a guest on Iron Trip and Zion, Rev.

01:36:32

Buzz Taylor. Thank you, and there's not a subject I'd rather talk on. But I do need to make a couple of little disclaimers here.

01:36:40

If anybody wants to email a question to get a free book, if I don't send you a book,

01:36:46

I have the same excuse that Bale had at Mount Carmel. He didn't show up because he didn't exist. Yes, all you'll get is several pieces of construction paper with crude stick figures drawn on them, stapled together.

01:37:02

Something like that. Like you said, it's been a long process. It was a lot more than I expected it to be, and unfortunately, this has been going on for years now, and I've had very limited time to work on it, so I'm at a little bit of a lull right now.

01:37:19

So I'm able to spend some more time on it. I've been spending hours every day, so I'm working on it. I'm trying. And remind me of the title of this work on eschatology.

01:37:28

Well, as it is right now, Puritans like long titles, so I was getting a little bit concerned about it, but it's

01:37:34

Bible prophecy like you've never heard it before, dot, dot, dot, but should have. And, of course, by the most humble author,

01:37:42

Reverend Posteller. Yes, yes. Very humble claim you're making there. Well, you know, the reason for the title is because pretty much how

01:37:50

I got involved in the subject myself. I had been talking to a friend of mine. This is back like 1987, 88, somewhere around there right now, and I made some reference to the rapture of the church, and he said to me, no, that stuff's not true, the way that we believed it.

01:38:09

And I'm like, oh, no, because I kind of like this guy's scholarship. You know, I respected him for his learning, and I'm like, don't do this to me, you know?

01:38:19

And I asked him then, well, what do you believe? And he wouldn't tell me, but he handed me a book.

01:38:26

Now, if anybody's read this book, I read it, you know, decades ago, and I don't remember what I read, and I remember there's a lot that I didn't agree with, but I read a book.

01:38:33

He handed me Jesus Has Returned to Planet Earth by Ivan Grove, and I read that, and I didn't know a whole lot about what he was saying except for the fact that he adequately ripped apart everything

01:38:46

I had been taught concerning Bible prophecy. This is why, and I had never heard it before, and that's what got me was like, why is this so new, and it makes so much sense?

01:38:59

Now, what made sense? Well, consider the fact that I was a Baptist pastor. I had spent two years preaching through the books of Daniel and Revelation in my pastorate, and I have to admit,

01:39:11

I got it all wrong. So, you know, I knew what everybody else believed.

01:39:17

I know the common teachings of evangelicalism. I was a pre -tribulation, pre -millennial dispensationalist and all that myself.

01:39:28

You know, I had a Schofield Bible, the whole nine yards, you know, and I saw that taken apart biblically, and I spent a few years in limbo, wondering now where is this all going to end, and I got my hands on just about anything

01:39:40

I could read concerning Bible prophecy, stuff from Seventh -day Adventists, everywhere I could get my hands on stuff about prophecy, and I started coming to some conclusions, and I was explaining to one of my pastors then, you know, well, this is kind of where I'm ending up in prophecy right now.

01:39:57

This is what it looks like to me. He said, oh, David Chilton? I'm like, who? And he said the name, and I thought, well,

01:40:05

I don't know who he is, but okay. And then I saw an ad for one of Chilton's books, and I read it, and I found out that the direction

01:40:13

I was going was called post -millennialism. Now, the reason I found that out was because in all my

01:40:19

Bible training before, I had never been given a real definition of post -millennialism.

01:40:25

So I knew that I wasn't one of those. So in other words, you were hearing definitions of post -millennialism from opponents of that view.

01:40:33

Right. You are typically, whenever you hear an opponent of a view describing something, very often you are hearing a caricature that very often doesn't even exist, such as the case with Calvinism in general.

01:40:47

But the main thing that got me, you know, I'm not writing so much on the isms as I am looking at what has become known as the modern prophecy movement.

01:40:59

When I came to Christ back in 74, everybody was watching those movies in the church,

01:41:07

The Prodigal Planet, Thief in the Night, Distant Thunder. I was spared all of that because I actually went right from nominal

01:41:17

Roman Catholicism to being born again in a Reformed Baptist church. So we didn't have any of that stuff.

01:41:23

The first book I read as a Christian was The Late Great Planet of the Earth by Hal Lindsey. And I joked with my mother about this, that she says she was saved by reading

01:41:31

The Late Great Planet of the Earth because the gospel was presented. I'm happy for that, but it's kind of chemical, you know.

01:41:38

I keep reminding her of that, you know, that you had to have been elect. Anyway, but so anyway,

01:41:45

I was steeped in what is common out there, and I wondered, well, now this other view seems to make so much sense.

01:41:54

Why didn't I hear this before? Hence, like, you should have heard it. I wish I had heard it sooner, but it took years.

01:42:01

And then, like I said, when I read Chilton's book, I realized, oh, this is post -millennialism, okay.

01:42:08

But like I said, I'm primarily looking at the modern prophecy movement where we've all been to those church services where they have the huge charts going across the front of the auditorium and all these different arrows and trumpets and bowls and everything.

01:42:24

And like one guy said, it looks more like a sketch for the sewer system of New York City. But all these things that are going to happen in our near future, and everybody looks at the signs of the times, and, you know, they'll assure us that Jesus might come before I'm finished preaching this message.

01:42:41

And you're hanging onto your seats because Jesus is coming so soon. And I took what I have referred to as a second look at the second coming and came to some radically different conclusions as to what

01:42:52

God's plan for the ages actually was and where we fit in and the fact that there's still a lot to be done.

01:42:58

We have responsibility as the body of Christ. We're not going to get rescued. Now, a couple of things

01:43:05

I want to clarify. Number one is you use a phrase called the modern -day prophecy movement.

01:43:11

You are not referring to charismatics and Pentecostals who believe in extra -biblical revelation.

01:43:18

Hal Lindsey was dubbed the father of the modern prophecy movement. With the writing of the late great planet

01:43:25

Earth, he popularized, basically, Schofieldism. And you're using the term prophecy as in regard to biblical prophecy.

01:43:31

Bible prophecy. Yes, Bible prophecy eschatology. Yes, yes. So, yeah,

01:43:38

Hal Lindsey was dubbed the father of the modern prophecy movement. And, of course, he made the prediction.

01:43:44

Now, he won't call it a prediction, but it was, okay, that 1948 saw the regathering of Israel.

01:43:54

And the Bible says, you know, Jesus said, this generation shall not pass away until all these things are fulfilled. And a generation is about 40 years.

01:44:02

So he says, now, this is the rebutting of the fig tree in Matthew 24. That's talking about the rebirth of Israel.

01:44:08

So within 40 years of that time, we can expect the return of Christ, which, of course, brings us up to, you know, from 48, it's 88.

01:44:17

But then you have to subtract the seven -year tribulation period, so the rapture should have happened somewhere around 1981.

01:44:23

Now, he didn't come right out and say it was going to happen, but he strongly insinuated that.

01:44:30

And everybody was expecting that to happen. And other writers grabbed on to that same idea. And then you have, you know, 88 reasons why

01:44:37

Christ is going to return in 1988. And, of course, he made a mathematical error.

01:44:42

And then it was 89 reasons why he was going to come in 89. And I was steeped on all this stuff. And, you know,

01:44:48

I taught this stuff myself during that time. But, you know, I never heard anything different.

01:44:55

So when I heard the difference, oh, boy, it made a lot more sense to me.

01:45:01

And I see now that we have the responsibility to, yes, preach the gospel.

01:45:07

And, you know, you think about it, there are many Christians who were behind the Iron Curtain that probably wondered why

01:45:13

Jesus didn't come when they were going through some of their worst times of suffering. It's amazing sometimes what

01:45:19

God will allow his church to go through. So you're basically right now talking about you're giving a critique of the idea that when tribulation becomes so overbearing and persecutory on this planet that God, in the understanding of the pre -tribulationalist,

01:45:41

God would never allow his church to undergo it to that degree. And he's going to rapture the church. He's going to rapture the church out before this great period of tribulation is unleashed on the world to judge men for their sin.

01:45:53

Yes. Now, one thing I want to also clarify is that I know that you don't like the word rapture because it's not actually a biblical term.

01:46:02

Well, yeah, okay. But you have to be careful because, as you know, there are hyper -preterists who believe that there will be no future occasion where the saints are caught up in the air with Christ.

01:46:16

And so you believe that is going to happen at the last day. Let me explain. Yeah, and you just said it right there.

01:46:22

You know, first of all, let me give you the underlying principle of everything I'm trying to present in my book, is the

01:46:29

Bible is the final authority. Let the Bible interpret the Bible, and it really does. I was amazed.

01:46:36

So many of the rebuttals I've heard, if people simply read a few more verses, their questions are answered many times.

01:46:43

And, yes, that's the whole point there. Is Jesus going to rapture his church?

01:46:50

Well, what happens at the rapture? We know that the dead in Christ are raised first. Well, now, if you compare

01:46:56

Scripture with Scripture, and I'm not talking about just taking a verse here and a verse there, but looking at the way the

01:47:02

Bible actually presents topics. I'm not talking about stringing a bunch of pearls in the way I want them to fit. But four times in John 6,

01:47:12

Jesus said that all those that the Father gave him, he said, I will not lose one, but I will raise him up on the last day.

01:47:19

Now, you can have last days as a period of time, but you can have only one singular last day, and that would be the last day of history as we know it.

01:47:28

In the previous chapter, John 5, Jesus said, there is an hour coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice, the voice of the

01:47:37

Son of Man, and come forth. And, of course, some come forth to salvation, and some come forth for punishment.

01:47:43

But the point is there is a single hour in which all who are in the graves come forth. And then you compare that with a very central teaching on the resurrection in 1

01:47:53

Corinthians 15, where Jesus comes back, and it says that all his enemies are subdued except for one, death.

01:48:03

And the reason death is, well, let me first quote Psalm 110, which is the most quoted

01:48:08

Psalm in the New Testament. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

01:48:16

The last enemy to be defeated is death, and the reason death is defeated at the second coming of Christ, if you will, is because that's resurrection day, the hour that Jesus was talking about.

01:48:26

Now, if you have a rapture happening where dead in Christ are raised, there can only be one day that that can happen, according to what

01:48:35

I've just pointed out, and that is the last day. So the big thing about the rapture isn't being snatched away, it's the fact that when

01:48:42

Christ does return for resurrection day, there will be billions of people on the earth that have never died.

01:48:49

They have to be changed into their eternal glorified bodies, whether for eternal life or eternal punishment.

01:48:56

That is the big thing. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed in the moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet.

01:49:04

So, you know, you have to have double vision to put a resurrection 1 ,007 years before the last day, or even 1 ,000 years before the last day.

01:49:14

And if you look at those charts, there's all these resurrections of the dead, and it just doesn't fit. So the interesting thing about this is, unlike the common accusation by our dispensational and pre -tribulationalists, and even pre -millennialist friends in general, and of course, please,

01:49:32

I'm not attacking you brothers, and as I've said, some of my greatest supporters are dispensationalists.

01:49:38

In fact, one in particular, Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, is a dispensationalist.

01:49:44

But the accusation is that you cannot be anything but a pre -millennialist or even a pre -tribulationalist, depending upon who you're speaking to, unless you cannot take a literal interpretation of the

01:50:02

Scriptures unless you are a pre -millennial or pre -tribulationalist. But you are using the literal interpretations of these passages to come to your conclusion.

01:50:12

Well, yes, yes, of course. And let me explain that, too, because that is a valid argument, because you have other passages that talk about, well, there's a thousand years between the resurrections and so forth.

01:50:22

Well, there's certain Bible symbolism that's already been established, and I'm talking, like, way back to the

01:50:28

Garden of Eden in some cases. In other words, context determines whether you can use it. Context, right. There are didactic passages, and there are passages that are obviously to be taken figuratively.

01:50:38

Now, a lot of people don't like that word, figuratively. They make it sound like, well, like, you know, the accusation against my view is that we allegorize the

01:50:47

Scriptures only. We can't really interpret them because, you know, we just make stories out of it.

01:50:52

You know, we can't take anything literally because a literal interpretation would lead us to, as they would say, like, you know, pre -millennialism and pre -tribulation and all that stuff.

01:51:00

But, you know, we look at the language the way the Scripture uses it, and there is a system set up that way in Scripture.

01:51:09

And there are certain passages, like, for example, well, what we call the didactic passages.

01:51:15

If Jesus is just simply talking to somebody, like Martha, for example, at the tomb of Lazarus, he said, your brother will live, your brother will rise.

01:51:27

She said, oh, yes, I know he's going to rise again at the resurrection on the last day. And Jesus never corrected her eschatology because she was right.

01:51:34

She was in keeping with John 5, John 6, you know, all the things that we see about the final resurrection.

01:51:40

She believed that. And, of course, Jesus went on and went beyond that, that he was going to raise

01:51:46

Lazarus and he is the resurrection and the life. But the point is, even Martha understood there's the resurrection on the last day.

01:51:52

Yes, we take it literally, let the texts speak for themselves. And if there's a text that seems to say otherwise, well, probably if you look at the context, it'll be like, for example, in Revelation where things are, we're told in the very first verse, things are signified, which, you know, look at the word signified, signified.

01:52:14

It's written in signs. I mean, nobody believes there's this big creature down in the Mediterranean getting ready to come out, you know, in the last days.

01:52:21

We understand that there's figurative language. Even the term 1 ,000 is figurative. Yes, even the literalists use figurative language.

01:52:29

Like, for instance, God owns the cattle on 1 ,000 hills. Exactly, right. Well, who owns the others? You know, maybe we start a movement about which hills are we talking about?

01:52:39

Or Satan owns. Yeah, how many of those are Satan's, you know? Yeah, and in fact, there are a number of the literalists or self -professed literalists who are anti -Calvinist, and yet they will say that it is a figure of speech.

01:52:56

One poll, quoting from the Old Testament, says in Romans 3, no one seeks

01:53:04

God, no, not even one. Then they'll say, oh, well, yeah, people do seek

01:53:10

God. Look at Nicodemus. He was seeking God. Yeah, but why was that? Because God was drawing him.

01:53:16

So even they will say there's hyperbole here. He's exaggerating. And by the way, that's not to take away.

01:53:25

And I understand a lot of reasons I would say something like that in many cases because the Bible is very, very colorful.

01:53:32

It's a much more interesting book than just giving us didactic teaching. You know, this is the way it is, one, two, three, four.

01:53:40

It's done in such a way that it becomes a beautiful story, but there's a message to that story.

01:53:47

There's a logic to that story. By the way, there's a comical e -mail that I just received from my old friend

01:53:53

Dr. Larry Young in North Carolina. He says, today is March 31st. I'm trying to catch the last 15 minutes, and it does not seem to be

01:54:02

Dr. Anderson, but someone with an American accent talking about the second coming of Jesus.

01:54:08

Well, I'm glad that you found that. At least I have the American accent, you know. Dr. Larry, that's because Dr.

01:54:18

Anderson was only on for the first 90 minutes of the program, and we have the

01:54:24

Reverend Buzz Taylor, who is my co -host, being my guest for the last part of the program. But thanks for writing in,

01:54:31

Dr. Larry. I don't have an accent, by the way. I just want you to know that. By the way,

01:54:37

Dr. Larry, I will send you an MP3 of the broadcast today, so you will have Dr. Anderson's portion as well.

01:54:43

Here's a question for you, Buzz, from Jerry again in Charlestown, New Hampshire.

01:54:50

Great to have you as a guest today, Buzz. What do you think is the strongest argument in favor of postmillennialism, and conversely, what do you think is the strongest argument against postmillennialism?

01:55:01

Thanks, your amillennial brother in Christ, Jerry from Charlestown, New Hampshire. Okay, before I answer that question, let me explain the difference between postmillennialism and amillennialism, okay, because this is why

01:55:13

I said at the beginning it isn't so much to compare the isms as it is to get down to the bottom of the modern prophecy.

01:55:20

And there is a lot in common between the two. The main difference is, first of all, as a postmillennialist,

01:55:27

I believe that the thousand years that is referred to in Revelation 20 is the time period we're in.

01:55:35

And since Christ comes on the last day after this age, that is after the thousand years, hence postmillennialism.

01:55:43

Amillennialists also believe that the time in Revelation 20 pertains to the time we're in right now.

01:55:51

The only difference between the two has to do with the nature of the kingdom of God, whether it's actually going to make a difference in society, whether the nations are going to be converted, or whether it's just talking about the spiritual blessings to the believers in heaven and so forth.

01:56:07

So I consider the amillennialists to be cousins, although I will say there are definite differences.

01:56:14

Now, as far as the strongest argument for postmillennialism, I think

01:56:19

I just basically gave those where Jesus said that he's going to raise all that the

01:56:25

Father gave him on the last day, and we know that death is defeated on the last day because that's when

01:56:30

Christ comes back and the dead are raised. That is the resurrection that we're talking about in 1

01:56:36

Corinthians 15. That's the thing that I read about at funerals as a pastor, that there is hope, there's going to be a final resurrection.

01:56:43

That makes the blessed hope the blessed hope for all generations, not just the one that's going to see the rapture, you see.

01:56:51

Well, since we're running out of time, give the verse that he asked for against your own view. Oh my goodness,

01:56:56

I've heard so many arguments against it, but I'll tell you the arguments— That's hard to say, the best, because I hear things like, well, doesn't the

01:57:05

Bible, you know, well, like one guy asks Jesus, are there only going to be a few who are saved?

01:57:14

And we stop there and supply our own answers. And we go, yeah, that's right, that's what the

01:57:20

Bible says, you know. And following that, Jesus said, But if you read further, he talks about people who were eating and drinking in his presence, there was face recognition there.

01:57:36

You taught, oh, I know you, you know, on the judgment day, I know you, you taught on our streets. Yeah, we remember you.

01:57:42

And he's going to say, I never knew you. There's only one generation that could make that claim, and that's first century

01:57:47

Israel, when Jesus ate and drank in their presence and taught in their streets. They're going to see him on that day, but they're going to be cast out.

01:57:55

And he says, there's going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But then he says, and if you look at the cross reference to it also, many will come in from the east, the west, the north, and the south, and recline the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

01:58:08

But you, the sons of the kingdom, will be cast out. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Those who are last will be first, those who are first will be last.

01:58:16

If we read the whole paragraph, we can see he's referring to the first century Israel who rejected.

01:58:22

And this is the story of the New Testament, the change from Judaism as the covenant people of God to the church being the covenant people of God.

01:58:34

It so permeates the New Testament that the first words out of John the Baptist's mouth is, the ax is already laid at the root.

01:58:41

And even if you take the fact that the narrow is the gate that leads to eternal life and broad is the way to destruction, collectively over the centuries, there will be more people in hell, but that does not have anything to say about a future period where droves, where millions, where great masses of humanity will come to Christ.

01:59:10

And even if the number does not outnumber those in hell, there's still at that time a great number.

01:59:18

But we actually have run out of time. We've run out of time, so there's plenty more. Yeah, well, we'll have you back on when you have actually finished the book and you can go into the entirety of the book.

01:59:29

But thanks for being our guest for the last half hour, Pastor Buzz, or Reverend Buzz, I should say.

01:59:34

And I want to thank everybody who took the time for writing in. I want to thank Dr. James Anderson for being our guest for the first 90 minutes.

01:59:42

And I hope that you all have a safe and blessed and happy and joyful weekend and Lord's Day.

01:59:48

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.