Live with Braxton Hunter (Trinity Radio): How to Stop a Bleeding Church

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00:01

All right, welcome to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Elias Ayala and today is a surprise live stream

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I know everyone is Stuck in their houses trying their best not to go out too much around large crowds of people.

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And so I figured It would be a great opportunity to to do a live stream and talk a little bit about some apologetics with a very good friend of mine,

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Dr. Braxton Hunter, who is the president of Trinity College and the Bible and Theological Seminary and We'll invite him on in just a few moments.

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Just a couple of quick announcements. I am going to be having some some guests on in the future to discuss various topics.

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I'm hoping to have Guillaume Bignon, who is a French theologian and has written

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Quite, I wouldn't say extensively, but he's worked extensively in the area of Compatibilism and determinism and Calvinism in general.

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And so we're gonna be having him on in the near future To discuss issues related to that.

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Also, I'm still in the works of getting Dr. James Anderson from Reformed Theological Seminary to talk about the nature of transcendental arguments.

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So hopefully we can solidify that and Get that on its way. I think the topic of transcendental argumentation and presuppositional apologetics is

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It's one of my favorite topics of research and study and I'm a presuppositionalist myself

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And I think there's a lots and lots of misunderstandings with regards to the methodology And so hopefully once I get

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Dr. Anderson on and do a couple of episodes related to that topic we can clarify some misconceptions. Also in the near future

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No date set, but I'm looking to get Matt Yester on as well, who is a

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Christian apologist and presuppositionalist to critique Capturing Christianity's presentation or criticism of presuppositional apologetics, of course within the spirit of Charity and brotherly love, right?

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We have disagreements with regards to the validity of apologetic methodology Specifically presuppositionalism and so we'll discuss that as well in the near future.

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All right Well, if you guys are enjoying the topics that I cover Please feel free to subscribe to the

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YouTube channel Revealed Apologetics and the podcast Revealed Apologetics on iTunes and other platforms.

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If you want me to cover a specific topic, you can email me At revealedapologetics at gmail .com

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or you can private message me if you're a friend on Facebook You can private message me a question or a comment or something like a topic you'd like me to cover.

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So Looking forward to hearing from those who have some ideas. With that being said without further ado

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I'm going to invite Dr. Braxton Hunter on with me today to discuss the topic of his doctoral work which

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I think is very very interesting and very very useful and beneficial for the body of Christ to to hear about to learn about because we're gonna be talking about apologetics and Discipleship and so without further ado,

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I'd like to welcome my good friend. Dr. Dr. Braxton Hunter Hey Eli so glad to be here and it is an honor to be on your show because what many people might not know is

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That you and I are like friends. I want to say close friends. We talk every few days for about an hour each time.

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So It feels like I'm just hanging out with a with a bud here coming on your channel well,

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I You're my I'm joking around but you're my favorite. You're my favorite heretic. So, you know

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I'm totally kidding. We kind of joke around. I'm people know me as a Calvinist. Dr.

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Hunter is a Molinist. He's not a Calvinist. We we have interesting conversations about those topics and We I have learned so much from him and I think my friendship with with him

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Is a good thing for people to see with regards to the possibility of people who disagree being able to still have a fruitful and genuine friendship not just a

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Kind of I'm just gonna pick your brain when I need answers to a question. We actually enjoy

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Discussing issues and we I appreciate him and I'm sure he appreciates me and I'm just glad to have you on. Well, thanks, man

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I'm so glad to be here. So excited to be here and I hope that anyone who sees this who is

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You know a subscriber of mine I hope that you'll subscribe to Eli's channel because a lot of good discussions

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It's not just any other channel out there a lot of good apologetics discussions and things like that and theological issues

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So people that like my channel, I think will like your channel Even if we have the methodological difference that you're a presuppositionalist.

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That's right And I always make sure I have my daily dose of Trinity radio. It's what one of my favorite Podcasts, it's up up there in the top

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Seven right the top seven, right? So That's good, so so I definitely And folks who listen to my stuff definitely subscribe to Trinity radio

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YouTube channel. Dr Hunter is usually on with his sidekick Jonathan Pritchett who is a very interesting fellow

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And kind of provides an interesting contrast to Braxton But definitely they both have great insights and apologetic application that I cannot deny

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You will benefit from if you Engage their content and and listen and learn.

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So with that being said too, we can give a quick shout out Why don't you share a little bit about? Trinity College of the

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Bible and Theological Seminary a little bit for maybe those who are interested in getting a seminary education Sure.

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So Trinity College of the Bible Theological Seminary is at Trinity SEM edu We are happy to announce that we are the school where you can begin your courses today without fear of the corona virus as it's

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Online and so you can you can take your court, but seriously, it is an online program

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So if you have the technology to view what you're viewing right now on YouTube Then you have the capacity to take courses at Trinity One of the things

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Trinity has been in existence since 1969 and for many years the primary Well, it was always a broadly a theological seminary and Bible College, but for a long time it was known for Counseling but over the past let's say 10 years.

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It's become more well known for systematic theology and apologetics we have And and you know your mileage may vary but we have people like me.

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We have people like Layton Flowers on on faculty here and but we in terms of you know, those doctrinal issues where even you and I would differ a little bit we have

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Most of the reading is from the Reformed tradition some professors are

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Calvinist so it's a you know, it's it's we try to be Broad in that regard.

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We we don't want to just indoctrinate when it comes to secondary doctrinal issues. We want to inform so But but what

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I've done since I've been president since 2015 and of course I teach some of the apologetics courses is

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I found that when I was learning and I probably you Eli to when you were learning One of the ways that I learned the best was listening to audio and watching video over and over and over again

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Sometimes on double speed and so I said what we were doing was live -streaming our courses like this and we still occasionally do that But I said no no, man.

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This this is crazy We've got people in 120 plus countries that are students and when it's noon here, it's midnight somewhere

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So why don't we just make all these recorded lectures that people can put on double speed and watch over and over and over again?

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So that's what we do. So we are very much the school for theology geeks and apologetics geeks

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So and we're probably of credible schools I think the most cost -effective that you're gonna find for a credible theological education

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So so thanks for letting me give a plug, but that's Trinity S E M dot edu

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Yeah, and I like what you mentioned broad there. A lot of people ask me sometimes What is a good systematic theology to pick up and study and I think the best systematic theologies are the ones that cover topics from?

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various perspectives So for example, I love The Wayne Grudem systematic theology, but it comes from me.

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It comes from a purely Reform perspective which yeah Yeah, which I which I hold and I would encourage people to read something like this like a

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Wayne Grudem But I do like those systematic theologies that cover the broad spectrum and I think going to a school

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That is just from the reform perspective is fine. But I also think Pardon that there is nothing wrong with going to a school where you have broad perspectives people who might be listening to my channel and and heard the name

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Leighton flowers, I mean Leighton flowers is out there and he's kind of a Controversial figure always kind of tackling the topic of Calvinism, but you know what?

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I I appreciate dr. Flowers I strongly disagree with him on certain areas, but you know what?

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I consider him a brother and it's in a good example of iron sharpening iron Braxton is not a

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Calvinist and he challenges me so I don't want to be existing within an echo chamber I think it's good that when we're

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Looking for an education that we avail ourselves of the different perspectives out there and if the perspective you hold is

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Is defensible and true then great if not and something has been able to kind of point out weaknesses and things like that Then perhaps that's something that would cause you to go back to the drawing board.

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So I think that's very very important So if you guys are interested You want to look up Trinity College of the by is it

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Trinity College of the Bible? Yeah of the Bible not the

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Quran Trinity College of the Bible and theological seminary because there are actually a million trinities out there and They all have slightly differing names

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But our is Trinity College of the Bible really what you just need to remember is Trinity SEM Edu right and just one more piece before we get into the main chunk of what

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I want to talk about today with with Braxton is there might be people who are listening to this show and People who know me that I come from a strictly reformed perspective people might message me later saying why are you promoting?

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you know an Establishment where someone like Braxton Hunter or Layton flowers teaches you're giving a platform for people.

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We disagree with chill out Not that's not that serious. I think as the body of Christ we can all learn from one another and so I want to encourage that spirit the spirit of kind of just Being okay with interacting and learning about differing perspectives and Hopefully with the purpose of growing your own perspective and grounding it in Scripture the best that we can

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All right. So with that being said the the title of this specific I guess episode is how to stop a bleeding church.

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Okay, and That's where I think Braxton's Doctoral or doctoral work is gonna highlight

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Why we labeled it that and and how what he's been studying relates to that go for it Yeah So I appreciate you letting me talk about that and and just to on the last point that you made my favorite professor of all time

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Was Ronald Nash and he was reformed and taught at Reformed Theological Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary So yeah, but um, yeah, so, you know, it's a little bit clickbait ish, but not entirely we are going to deliver on that title in part because Honestly, there are a lot of reasons that people slip away from the church.

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And again Soteriological issues aside whether you believe that someone that apostasy means that someone

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Abandons their salvation or loses their salvation or is not possible You know apostasy in that sense is not possible that the right way to think about apostasy from an eternal security or perseverance of the

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Saints standpoint would be something like You know just leaving the church, but they went out from us because they never were of us, you know that kind of thing

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Um, however, you want to frame that up? Okay, we what we know does happen is people who were among us who've you know

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By all outward appearances anyway seem to be among the faithful seem to be believers and perhaps intellectually, you know believing all these things and yet drifted away and became atheist or just became who knows what one of the nuns that we have so many of in N -o -n -e -s nuns that are out there and who don't identify as a particular religion.

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And so So there are a lot of reasons why that happens and honestly as an apologist.

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I don't like to say this But someone from your methodology could easily say this That the reality is when that happens.

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There is often a moral component It may be that there's some sin that a person wants to commit and they don't like the idea of God looking over their shoulder

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It may be that Someone in the church hurt them It may be the problem of evil that that that that their child died or something

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God forbid and now they are mad at God, but that is dressed up as I don't believe anymore

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You know, it could be any number of things and it's not necessarily intellectual reasons It's not necessarily that they weren't convinced on evidence basis that the

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Christian message is true But why don't you define for us real quick? What do you what do you mean by a bleeding church so we say how to stop a bleeding church

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What does it mean for a church to be bleeding? So a church that's bleeding members or Attendees church that we could say that the church in America today is bleeding

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This is the language that John S Dickerson uses in his book the great evangelical recession he talks about this is also the the book that Tom the term that Tom Rainer uses and And I think is his book breakout churches or whatever is

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This church bleed is happening. We know that it's happening among young people There is

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I have all the data on that in in my in my major writing project for this doctorate

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But it's also happening believe it or not among single women it's happening among 30 to 50 year old men it's happening across the board and for a lot of reasons even if it's mostly happening

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Or the largest segment is younger people So it's something that we have to address and when

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I was looking at the journal articles on this what I found was A lot of the a lot of these a lot of the journal articles some you know in ministry some people were saying

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Well, we need is we need to make sure that there's biblical illiteracy in the church And what we need to do is we need to address that biblical illiteracy in our preaching and foster a community of biblical literacy

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Well, absolutely, that's that's certainly true and they and they would mention other things like Making sure your children understand, you know

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What the Bible says about this that or the other? but what what I what I kept coming back to was in in many of the cases if you look at I don't have it in front of me, but there's a great work

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Christensen is the guy's last name that that goes through he did a multi -year study of young individuals

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Who from the time they were like 10 years old till about I don't know 25 years old to see what's happening with them religiously and what he found was that people in what we could call emerging adulthood are

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Slipping away and much of the time they're saying now you and I as Christians we can talk about this under the hood but what they're saying many much of the time has to do with Intellectual reasons not to believe that Christianity is true or that or that God exists

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There's all there's always going to be moral reasons there's always going to be other things that are attached to that and Even my atheist listeners who are friends of mine should understand that none of us are completely non -biased

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It's a myth of neutrality. So you have to admit that there's always going to be something like that in there.

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So Obviously the church is trying to focus on the biblical literacy They're trying to focus on the counseling emotional aspects of someone dealing with the problem of suffering

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They're trying to focus on People not getting hurt in church or offended in church and or how we should respond to that all that is being done at the pastoral level, but what has not what

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I don't think has been addressed properly is The response to the intellectual reasons to doubts now

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I know I'm talking a lot here But let me just finish saying that the the reason why that's important Even if there are these other underlying reasons these other motivators that are not the intellectual

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Reasons of well evolution means I can't believe or the intellectual problem of suffering and pain

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It means I can't believe or one of these kind of things When you peel away those intellectual reasons it reveals revealed apologetics.

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It reveals What what the real reasons are so that they can assess those and at the very least those intellectual reasons are no longer roadblocks

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To affirm faith so in wrapping up I had for years been doing apologetics at conferences and often doing breakouts with church people trying to get them to use apologetics for Evangelism and I have a book called evangelistic apologetics

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I consider myself to be an Ephesians 411 evangelist before I'm an apologist so I want to see apologetics used to see people come to faith in Christ and So but what

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I noticed was in these breakout sessions many of the attendees came to realize they are a despite what they thought they are able to understand some basic apologetic principles and Explain them back to me so they could explain them to unbelievers

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The problem is they didn't have the confidence. They were scared to talk to unbelievers But then it clicked in my mind one day.

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Wait a minute I now have a method for giving a seminar that will help people to understand apologetics so that then they can use it

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But they're scared to use it with unbelievers But we have this problem with bleeding from the church. Maybe they could use it as a form of discipleship with people that are professing believers

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But who are experiencing intellectual worldview doubt so the major writing project is not aimed at unbelievers in this case

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It's aimed at believers who are sitting on the pew right next to you who are experiencing intellectual worldview doubt

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And the goal is can we get lay church people because the pastors or elders can't do everything and in many cases

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They're not prepared for this but can lay church people Be equipped to have discipleship relationships with other lay church people who are experiencing intellectual

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Worldview doubt and so I carried out Empirical research to that effect.

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Hmm. Now, what do you find? Is is the major fear that a lot of people have within the church in engaging in apologetics

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Do you think it's it's kind of just this idea that I might be asked a question that I don't know the answer to What is the what is the thing that you think is preventing a large portion of the church from engaging in apologetics?

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Well, there are three things. I think they're they're very obvious and two of them are Exactly what you would expect from regular personal evangelism ministries that we've been doing in the church for decades

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Those first two that are the same with personal evangelism and with using apologetics even with lay church people

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But especially with unbelievers is one They they are afraid that they're going they're scared to do it be just because of the the confrontational aspect of it and then number two they're afraid they're not gonna they're gonna say the wrong thing and they're gonna confirm someone in a wrong belief or in unbelief and the answer to those two simple issues is the same now as it would have been for Personal evangelism stuff years ago and it's it's what

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I it's kind of like my tagline I always say this you can be a Christian apologist today

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Even if this video on revealed apologetics is the first time you've ever heard of apologetics.

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You can do it today Because even if you can't yet be an answer giver

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You can be an answer finder for people by going and if someone brings up a question or something

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You don't know the answer to you say, you know, that's an interesting question I don't know how to answer that but I'm gonna go find out and we'll continue this conversation later

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Yeah, the only reason it's dangerous in evangelism or apologetics to have conversations about worldview is

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If you if there's a chance You're not going to know the answer to something and you're going to try to give an answer

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Even though you don't know an answer when I was growing up as a young pastor I thought that I don't know how

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I got this in my head maybe from other preachers but I had this idea that You have to be able to thump the pulpit and say thus sayeth the

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Lord Even if you don't know what the Lord does sayeth about that And so so what I realized is no if you can say

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I don't know but I'm gonna go find out There's nothing to be afraid of right? And so that third issue that that is unique to apologetics

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I think is and I don't think this gets talked about enough, but for many people they are

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No matter how much you as a Reformed person or me as a Southern Baptist Person want to preach eternal security or perseverance of the

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Saints there are people in your church and in my church who just because of a lack of Trust or theological knowledge about this or whatever no matter how much we preach it.

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They're gonna think But if I do X sin I'll lose my salvation or what if I'm not really saved because of this or that and many times what they attach to it is

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If I don't believe hard enough, maybe I'm really not saved or if I ever experienced doubt Maybe I'm not really saved and I know from conversations that you and I have had

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Where we differ a little bit on epistemology and things we would both agree just because you experienced doubt doesn't mean you're lost right, and so but they think but but this is a hidden doubt is

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If like I don't want anything to make me maybe doubt Because then I'm my salvation might be in jeopardy

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So if you're telling me to have worldview conversations with someone who's gonna bring up questions that might cause me to doubt

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That could challenge perhaps my own salvation and no one wants to protect anything more than their own salvation

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So those are some of the main hindrances to people doing this with others. Mm -hmm now that that's great

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I I want to make this somewhat practical for the person who maybe doesn't have any experience in apologetics, but They really want to just we want to look at this

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How can I say this, how can we frame this within the perspective of God's sovereignty without getting into the the issues of debating the different differences there, how can a a firm grasp on the

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God on God's sovereignty help in Overcoming those first two reasons this idea of fear this idea of kind of like, you know,

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I don't want to say something That's gonna push someone away. How is understanding God's sovereignty so important in approaching that topic?

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Well, I think I don't think it has to be a difference between our soteriological positions

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I think it's fair to say that everyone should keep in mind that in any Evangelistic or what we're talking about specifically here a discipleship

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Relationship between believers who might be where one person might be experiencing doubt. We understand that ultimately, you know,

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William Lane Craig I know he gets a lot of heat in among presuppositionalists But what he would even say that I think presuppositionalists would somewhat resonate with is

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Apologetics can help us to show that Christianity is true But it's by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that we know that Christianity is true

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And so that's in some sense a recognition of God's sovereignty God's in control My salvation doesn't rest on whether or not

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I have all of my questions answered My salvation is in him and in fact,

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I have a great I can find it real quick in my in my major writing project. I may not be able to but I have a great

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Quote from C .S. Lewis where basically C .S. Lewis is saying we apologists take our lives in our hands

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Because we we tend to think we tend to oh here it is He says I have found nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist

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That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and we can be saved only by falling back

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Continually from the web of our own arguments as from our intellectual counters into the reality from Christian apologetics to Christ himself and I think that's something we remind people of when we're when they're experiencing doubts when we remind ourselves of Listen, the evidence is important and we want to and and thank goodness

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We have plenty of good reasons to believe it can help with doubting Christians But ultimately your salvation is not bound up in your intellectual capacity to reason up to God It's not bound up in whatever evidence we have in front of us

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Ultimately your salvation is in the Lord Jesus Christ And I think that's that's important.

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The Holy Spirit is how we know that Christianity is true. Awesome. Awesome, and that's important to know Jess Hope she's not she doesn't she doesn't mind me posting what she has here

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I think it's important to bring scripture into this and I think this is a good scripture that will help us put into perspective the reality that we should not be so much worried or worried to the

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Point that we don't say anything in defense of the faith or sharing the faith Isaiah 55 11 So will my word be which goes forth from my mouth?

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It will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which

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I sent it I think that's very very important right when we when we are used of God when we allow ourselves to be used by God He will accomplish his purpose even with our clumsy attempts

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Have you have you ever had a situation? I mean This is good coming from a seminary president who people would perceive as this guy has so much experience and you do

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But by the way, if you haven't already you should definitely check out Braxton Braxton debate with Matt Dillahunty Which I think he did a superb job, even if we are completely different in our apologetic methodology

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I thought you brought up so many great points in that debate But someone who's experienced as as you

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Have you ever had an experience where you just messed it up and how how did you frame that? What was the context and understanding that for you for yourself?

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well, I can't I don't know that I could think of a Specific example, but I know that I've screwed it up many times

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I remember when I was this is an apologetic type issue, but because of my growth in knowledge as I've Aged in my early ministry.

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I was pastoring from the time I was 20 years old probably too young to be pastoring but I had pastored two churches by the time

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I was 26 years old and one thing that I that I Listened back to some of my sermons

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And I think that's completely wrong. What was I think? Who's who did

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I mess up by telling them that and when I can I try to contact people and say hey you remember When I said this and they never remember

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You ever just preach a sermon and then you shake everyone's hand at the end. You're like That was heresy

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You know, you might mess it up and and it's important to tell people that that you know that That you and but you know, that's an interesting thing.

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What she mentioned is true Scripture is is gonna be powerful. The Word of God will not return void and and that so we always want to include in fact in the

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I haven't really gotten to what I did for my empirical research, but Involved in that was an explanation to the participants of the biblical foundation

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For each thing that we were going to be doing Because I think it's important to lay out that biblical foundation and show that what we're doing is not foreign to Scripture this is based in Scripture and Because of that we we are only doing that which we think that the

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Apostles did or even in perhaps what Jesus himself was advocating for or doing so So I think that Scripture has to be a major part of this has to be all over this we shouldn't do anything or say

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Anything that doesn't that is in conflict with Scripture and I I advocate for us to only do that Which it has some underlying basis in Scripture That reminds me you did do a very brief video a while back where you talked about how you were so much into Apologetics that you had to kind of step back

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I think it was some some professor or some someone kind of pointed out the fact that we need to be grounded in Scripture Why don't you share that a little bit?

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I think that's important for people to know especially people who know who you are You're very much engaged in online apologetics and you've done public debates and things like that Why don't you explain to us briefly and then we'll jump right back into some of the details of your study

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Why don't you why don't you kind of express your journey in in apologetics and where you kind of notice?

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I need to step back a little bit and ground myself in Scripture Yeah, so it'll involve a little bit of my testimony not my testimony of salvation

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But my just my testimony as in a life as a Christian when I I have a close friend

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He's still a friend who began who was raised the same place and way that I was but he began to experience same -sex attraction and he decided very early

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I can I've got to choose between living a biblical biblically faithful lifestyle or Living out this this lifestyle and so this homosexual lifestyle and he ultimately chose against the biblical lifestyle and that began

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Again, however, we want to frame this up. So teologically speaking that led to a degradation in his Beliefs and to the point that he is now an atheist and he began to challenge my faith.

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And so I I began to You know, I was rattled by it but not in the sense that it really made me doubt

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But I wanted to give an answer I didn't know how to give and so I began reading books case for Christ and things like this read a lot in Norman Geisler read

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John frame to throw in a reformed character there, but but but read read a lot read widely and But wanted to learn how to do apologetics and how to give an answer

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Well by the time I was 26, I was in full -time Evangelistic ministry traveling and speaking in churches and conferences and so I included apologetics in my evangelistic ministry and so I I was focusing primarily on writing sermons and learning apologetics

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But it became disproportionate and I was mostly learning apologetics and I knew the Bible better than the average

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Christian, of course and I knew the Bible probably as well as most pastors do but it was seriously disproportionate toward apologetics and so Somewhere about three or now probably four years ago.

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I Recognize this listening to Steve Gregg. Steve Gregg has had debates with well -known atheists and has had the theological debates

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But what I found interesting was he had and that's where I found him was through debates But he has verse -by -verse through the entirety of Scripture and not sermons, but verse -by -verse

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You know lectures and he goes off on every theological rabbit trail and what I appreciated about him was he didn't just say

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Here's how it is. He'd say here's four views. I'm gonna explain them all to you fairly and you decide I'm gonna tell you which one's mine but you decide and I went through almost the whole

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Bible with him all of the New Testament most of the Old Testament and And and somewhere early on in that process

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I decided I got to put down the apologetics I need to grow in Bible knowledge and in my knowledge of church history.

31:04

I've got to fortify myself in the word I want to be like this guy who even if I may differ from him on some secondary issues

31:11

I want to know the Bible exhaustively like he knows it and this is gonna sound really ambitious But I think it's a goal that every

31:18

Christian should work toward even if they're not in professional ministry The Bible is as vast as it is and as deep as we can plumb its depths and never reach the bottom it is a limited amount of information and That's contained in those pages.

31:31

That means it's doable You can have at least a general understanding of the whole

31:36

Bible and so I set out on that goal that I knew I would never completely accomplish and to know the Bible as thoroughly as and deeply as I could and then it was only when

31:45

I I was asked to debate Matt Dillahunty that I came back into the world of apologetics now

31:51

I was teaching all along apologetics, but I wasn't learning much new information, which wasn't really good for the students either

31:57

So I'm back now and I think with a more balanced Understanding of this it's not even balanced

32:02

The Bible should still take preeminence but but coming to apologetics with that firmer foundation in the word

32:09

Yeah, and I think you you hit it right on the head when you spoke of balance I think people who are engaged in apologetics are very imbalanced many of the times because it's it's more of this kind of obsession of I want to get into these arguments.

32:22

I want to debate I want to do this that and the other thing and they're not actually engaging in some of the the the other spiritual disciplines and I say other because I do think that Apologetics is a spiritual discipline because when we're doing apologetics and we're doing it biblically we're obeying scripture and that honors

32:37

God But when we're doing that to the exclusion of other While neglecting other areas of our spirituality,

32:43

I think it creates an imbalanced and and I think it's very dangerous With regards to someone's own personal spiritual health

32:50

I know people who do apologetics and they begin to go down the trail of of doubting they begin

32:56

They're always thinking in terms of arguing so they lack the capacity to have normal conversations with people

33:02

Everything's a debate, you know, you're at a Bible study you're sitting in a circle You're just waiting you're waiting for that person to spout out something that even remotely sounds heretical so you can clobber it and destroy it

33:12

And I think that is something that we need to be very very careful with There's another scripture here that I want to share someone post a same person

33:19

It's alright If you if you if you post by the way, I'm Braxton is as is always open to taking questions

33:25

If you do have so there is one question here not so much theological, but here's a scripture

33:31

I'm gonna put here's not a question, but Matthew 4 or 4 But he answered and said it is written man shall not live on bread alone

33:37

But on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God if I could edit the scriptures a little bit And I'm just kind of joking but man does not live by apologetics alone

33:45

But by every word every word that includes every God inspired word from Genesis to Revelation.

33:51

That is our Foundation, thank you so much for that Jess now someone was asking a question with regards to your paper

33:58

Which which hopefully we can get into some of the details of that Here we have are there plans to popularize this large research paper you're working on into a book at some point

34:08

I think that's a good question for people who are interested in what you're researching Yeah, because what I really want to do is

34:14

I want to put it in book form but I want to add to it what what's not in the paper is The details of how to explain these concepts to lay people and I don't hope that's not offensive to say lay people

34:27

But I just mean people who don't have formal training in this and I want to explain how to conduct What I did

34:33

I did I did basically in eight hours, so I better just go ahead and explain this now and and but yes

34:39

The answer is I will release it as a book and hopefully a manual that Pastors can use and small group leaders can use going forward and I should say as we begin this

34:48

I'd I come from a classical Apologetics background, but one could easily supplant what

34:53

I did with presuppose it with a presuppositionalist approach and frankly Maybe have an easier time doing it

35:00

You mean you could have done you could have given yourself a break by just taking a preset Position your research would have been easier.

35:07

It would have been better to fit together. Come on, man. Probably so probably so so so but anyway so what

35:13

I did was I came up with a Likert scale test and a lot for those that don't know a Likert scale test is

35:19

A test where you have from one to five. You have a series of questions. I had ten I think ten is a good number.

35:24

I had more than that. But one of my The chairperson for my committee wanted me to limit it to ten. So you have ten questions these questions dealt with your the the person's ability or current knowledge of apologetics or their confidence level in Having a worldview conversation with another

35:43

Christian who's experiencing doubt and so you have numbers one to five one being the least

35:51

Option or strongly disagree and five being strongly agree. So the statement would be something I don't have it in front of me, but the statement would be something like I could probably pull it up real quick, but it might be something to do with Do you?

36:05

It wouldn't be a question to be like I Could talk about the biblical data related to the resurrection with someone who doesn't know about it one to five

36:15

You know and so you do that so you have ten questions and then what you do is you give that test at the very beginning before anybody has

36:22

Heard it heard you say anything and then you and then you tap you get all of those

36:27

Tests and you take all those up and then at the end of an eight -hour seminar which takes place over two days

36:35

We provide a lunch and all that and takes place over two days at the end The people that were there for the whole thing

36:40

They take that same exact test again and then what you do is you calculate your results to see did you have an increase or decrease or was a

36:48

Substantial increase or whatever and we chose a group. It was a church I'd never been to and had no relationship with a pastor before it was

36:57

First Baptist Church of Sellersburg, Indiana, which is just outside of Louisville so it's perfect because it's it's a suburb, but it's close to a major city and It and it was a group of young to old people and and we had all that And so I did the eight -hour seminar and I covered

37:14

I covered the biblical data that supports explain what apologetics is the biblical data for it the biblical data for the methodology that I take which if we could talk about that if you wanted to and then we talked about Some of the theistic arguments arguments for God's existence the resurrection case

37:30

We talked about problem of evil and how Christians can respond to that and we talked about a couple of ways that you could have meaningful conversations like a structured approach to having

37:39

Conversations with someone who's experiencing doubt and we did a whole segment on doubt and and how to address that So with that we did all of that.

37:47

We did the Likert scale test. I brought it back to my offices and Tabulated the results and as we saw a 17 .5

37:55

I think point increase in confidence and Capability in having these kind of conversations with others so now what we did in eight hours was we got a group of people from thinking that they largely couldn't do this and Didn't know enough to do it

38:12

And now a point where they are open to it and could start that ministry right now in their church And so that's kind of what we did and I said if we if I release this as a book

38:21

It'll include all the data that was in my major writing project But it will also include how to do this in your church because I want people to do this in their church

38:30

Yeah, and I think what's great about that is you're not you're not researching a topic that is like something that is a pet

38:36

It's like a pet interest. You're researching something with the purpose of actually allowing the body of Christ to use it and kind of Contribute to that area within the church that's lacking and I think that's very important again when we're doing apologetics

38:52

Or you have kind of these armchair theologians We tend to just focus on those areas that interest us and really not do much about it except Debate about it on the internet and I think

39:02

I think this is a great I mean obviously not everyone's gonna have the opportunity to do doctoral work and things like that But when just kind of a personal word of encouragement for those who are listening and saying hey

39:11

I would love to research a topic whether you do it in a seminary or within the comfort of your own home or office

39:17

Always try to think in terms of how you can contribute to the body of Christ Don't just do it for your own because intellectually this stuff is fun to talk about right and we're talking about apologetics and theology

39:28

We can talk about this all day long, but it's not just thinking it's also putting into practice what you're thinking about So we do it for the the honor of Christ.

39:37

So I think that's great work that you're doing. I'm looking forward to Giving that a read and pointing people in that direction

39:43

All right. So can we take a few more questions and then we'll continue to move on. Is that okay? Okay, let's see here

39:53

Let's see, I know there's one that you'll like Braxton Okay, so ready someone we don't have to get way off topic, but someone asked that has nothing to do

40:02

Absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about. But why is Braxton a Molinist? You could give a brief answer to that if that's if that's cool.

40:11

Yeah, I'd be happy to so I am NOT I just said this yesterday on somebody else's show.

40:17

I started out as a Molinist because my understanding was because I was

40:23

I thought that it was the way the best way of understanding and navigating the

40:28

Supposed tension that I thought existed between God's sovereignty and man's free will

40:33

And then when I say free will in that context, I mean libertarian free will most

40:39

Reformed and Calvinist brothers and sisters would talk about a compatibilistic free will compatibilism

40:44

But I I affirmed a libertarian freedom and I thought that there was good biblical reason to do that and I'm happy to talk about That too, but thought there was good biblical reason to do that.

40:53

And so I thought okay. Well, then what am I gonna do? With some of these passages that seem that's that are

41:00

Calvinist proof texts and I thought that Molinism just answered both of those really well But as I've progressed,

41:07

I don't think that anymore I do I mean if you took it that way Molinism would help but the thing is

41:13

I don't think that I'm not a Molinist For any soteriological reasons. I don't use any

41:19

I don't use Molinism to help me explain any biblical passage I think it's all explainable

41:26

And I want to be Benevolent to you as my host. This is a Calvinist show, but I think all of those things can be answered from a non -Calvinist perspective without Molinism, and I think they can be answered pretty well, but then when it comes to Why I'm still a

41:43

Molinist. I believe there are biblical passages that I Don't I want to be careful to say

41:49

I don't think it's the purpose of any particular passage of scripture to teach Molinism I think that there are strong implications

41:56

From passages that that Molinism is true. And so because of that I believe it so for example,

42:03

I don't have the passage in front of me, but the path that there's a passage where David is in a particular city and God reveals that hey if David stays in a city

42:14

X and Y is gonna happen when Saul comes and so David leaves he doesn't stay in the city and Then we asked the question.

42:20

Okay, but God said that if he had stayed there Then X would have happened, but he didn't stay there.

42:26

So now as theologians, we've got asked the question was God right or wrong Well, we would say

42:31

God would have been right. Could he have possibly been wrong? Well, no, not God. God couldn't possibly been wrong, but it didn't end up happening, right?

42:39

God said that's what would have happened. So it sounds like God knows what would have happened under other

42:44

Circumstances and that's what Molinists call middle knowledge That's the belief that God not only knows what will happen in the future.

42:51

What has happened in the past What is happening right now, but knows what would have happened under other circumstances And I submit to you that many church people

42:59

I'd say even in Presbyterian churches excited their backs little knowledge whether they realize it or not because If you go up to any little old lady or a little old man in your church and say let me ask you a couple of questions

43:11

Does God know that everything that's ever happened? Yes. Does God know everything that ever will happen?

43:17

Yes Do you think if we didn't have this conversation right now, but we left church already that he knows what we would be doing right now

43:23

Instead well, of course, ah, you're a Molinist See thanks a lot

43:29

Jacob you got him rolling with that one. He can go on forever on that topic in my perspective is

43:36

You're wrong. That's it And that's what our conversation sound like isn't it? Well Again the topic of Molinism is a big topic and there's so much to consider and there and there in My experiences are a lot of misconceptions about Molinism as well.

43:53

And so as a Calvinist Calvinist often complain that there are a lot of misconceptions about Calvinism from the

44:01

Arminian camp and the non -reformed camp But I would actually say well, that's true to some extent

44:07

I think there's a lot of misconceptions about Calvinism from the reform camp Many Calvinists think that Molinism is just a kind of a more sophisticated version of Arminianism and that's not that's not quite true

44:18

So if people are interested in knowing what Molinism is about I mean you can check out

44:24

You know the well, there are many people who written books and there are different varieties of it but look up the term and kind of get a nice summary understanding of it and You know

44:35

Wikipedia page is pretty good. Yeah, that's I was gonna say Wikipedia. I'm like, can I say Wikipedia if I say we could yeah

44:40

Yeah, you could say. Oh, yeah Wikipedia actually gives a good summary of what Molinism is.

44:45

I disagree with it I used to be a Molinist but it is a topic that is very interesting to me and as Braxton can attest

44:52

I love talking about it. It's it's it has relations to so many other areas. No. All right well, thank you so much for that and I know you've got a little excited there towards the here's the thing about it is

45:06

When I first went on Leighton flower show years ago to talk about Molinism, that's right I said toward the beginning he said what would you do to convince someone else of Molinism?

45:16

And I I don't have any interest in convincing someone of more like I don't there's not a lot of stakes in it for me

45:22

I'd like people to believe true things and I think it's true. So to that end, I'd like to convince people of it The thing about it is when it comes to these soteriological issues our secondary doctrinal issues are important Of course because theology is important, but the very idea that we would divide over this

45:39

I mean look the the reason that you and I disagree is because you and I both for primarily biblical and secondarily philosophical reasons

45:47

Think that our position is the truth about the world that God made or or the

45:53

God or a God the God that we worship And so neither one of us is believing this

45:58

I know about you and I know you know about me We're not believing the things and affirming the things we are for malicious reasons now

46:03

There are cult leaders who could say that too but these are secondary doctrinal issues that we're talking about and I just think everybody needs to chillax a little bit and And and recognize we're brothers and sisters, right?

46:14

And before someone says something and it has a problem to say chillax does not mean that they're not important.

46:20

All right You know Saying theology is not important and they are important but but chillax

46:27

All right, we'll take one. We'll take one more question and then we'll continue on with With what we were talking about before so this is a fun one.

46:36

Okay. All right. So this is a question for both of us Hey guys, I've recently watched a couple of debates and videos of site and Bruggen Kate May I ask what you both think of his method?

46:46

God bless you Both how about you give your take on that and we can keep it brief

46:51

We can move on to our main section here But why don't you share your thoughts on on how you feel about size methodology and I'll give my thoughts and then we'll move on So I'd really be more interested in hearing your thoughts, but I'll say this

47:02

I believe that just as I've just said, I believe that side timbering Kate is my brother in Christ I love him with all my heart.

47:09

I would extend the right hand of fellowship. I would hug his neck if he was here I have great admiration for his

47:17

Reliance on Scripture his love of Scripture his high view of Scripture. I admire his courage in just talking to anyone and everyone about the truth of the

47:27

Christian message and as an evangelist as a In that sense as a defender and all those things where I would disagree are

47:36

And and I understand his methodological Reasons behind this so it's not as though if he were sitting here.

47:42

He would not have Responses so I know that he would and if he ever sees this I want him to know that I know that he would and that's fair but take for instance his debate with Matt Dillahunty, which is now famous and I've also debated debated

47:55

Matt Dillahunty and during the I can't remember if it happened during the debate, but I If you're thinking what

48:01

I'm thinking about the Q &A where someone asked about a Bible question Yeah And his response was I don't do

48:06

Bible studies someone asked about the atrocities of what is commonly called the atrocities of the Old Testament You know

48:12

God ordering the Israelites to go in and slaughter the Canaanites and all these kind of things and someone asked him about that It's an it's a common apologetic answer.

48:19

I'm sure Psy has an answer to that It's one of the most common ones that comes up particularly among Those kind of atheists and YouTube atheists and it's a fair question frankly and so But his answer was

48:30

I don't do Bible studies with unbelievers. You become a Christian I'll do a Bible study and we'll talk about that, but but I don't do Bible study and to my mind

48:37

We first Peter 315 calls us to be ready and willing to give an answer to anyone who asks us a reason for the hope

48:42

That is within us, but to do it with gentleness and respect and so I think if someone asks you a question during a

48:48

Q &A where the whole point of that debate is to stand there in that portion of the Debate and answer the questions that unbelievers have that are hindrances to them coming to Christ whether you think

48:57

That they're gonna come to Christ or not whether you think they're a scoffer or not The fact is you should give that answer if you have that answer

49:05

I see no reason not to give that answer and of course every reformed person I've ever met would say

49:10

God uses means and if he can use the means of preaching he can use the means of your answer about the truth of the

49:17

Scriptures and that person may come to Christ on your view God may elect that person and irresistibly grace that person on my view that person may

49:27

Respond in faith and and and be born again So the truth is I just don't understand that aspect of the methodology and I don't know where you stand on all that But maybe now it's your turn

49:37

Yeah, um, I very much appreciate Cy He's we talk every now and then when

49:43

I have a question or want a clarification at some point, you know Because we're thinking in similar context. I find to be very helpful in that regard

49:50

I think people need to be very careful though that when people think about presuppositional apologetics at least online

49:57

Cy has become for a lot of people kind of the paradigm of presuppositional ism and Just before I kind of share my brief thoughts as to how

50:06

I feel about the way he employs the methodology is we need to understand that there is a great difference between how

50:11

Cy uses the methodology and What is intrinsic to the methodology itself? So the idea of responding to a question within the context of a

50:20

Q &A in a debate someone would ask Well, you know, how would you respond to the old the atrocities in the Old Testament? There is nothing intrinsic to the presuppositional method that would make someone say well

50:30

I don't do Bible studies with unbelievers. And so I'm not going to answer that question Greg Bonson who is in my my opinion the best example of Presuppositional ism in its purity in the sense that it's closely connected to how van

50:46

Til saw things He would not hesitate one bit giving an answer, right? There is an answer from a biblical perspective

50:52

Even if you think the unbeliever is in no position to be judge over God's Word I agree with that But that doesn't mean you can't give the

50:59

Christian answer an answer that is consistent within the Christian paradigm so in that instance you got to be very careful between how

51:06

Cy usually goes about his methodology and not confuse that with what is intrinsic to the methodology itself

51:12

So overall like Braxton said I do appreciate Cy and I think he's done a lot for the kingdom

51:18

Especially for myself and being a presuppositional is I think he's a great introduction to the topic

51:23

But I think there needs to be and I don't mean this in any demeaning fashion I think Cy in his own right is brilliant in a lot of ways

51:29

But you need to move beyond that and get to some of the content for example Even Cy would be the first to admit he's just a factory worker, right?

51:38

You know, it's like I'm I'm using the best I can with the little that I have and that's fine and he's done excellent But there's just so much more to the methodology that's connected to so many different areas and applications

51:47

That I think people need to learn to kind of dig a little deeper and and kind of make new segue

51:53

Applying biblical apologetical principles to different areas and show how robust the methodology is as well as as biblical

51:59

So that's what I would I would say one other thing one other criticism I would have Just in the spirit of cooperation and maybe he has no interest in that but I don't know

52:09

I'm not saying he doesn't but is I have heard him say that when it comes to Theistic arguments that a classicalist would use and that in some cases a presuppositionalist would use perhaps

52:21

Arguments for God's existence things like the design argument the moral argument the certain cosmological or contingency arguments

52:29

He I've heard him say at least twice that those things those things Have major fallacies in them or they don't work logically or something like that.

52:38

And when asked well, what can you lay them out? It's like well, I leave that to others to you know, lead that look

52:45

There are a lot of people for whom God has used those kinds of apologetics during the process of reaching someone for Christ So I think it's a

52:52

I just think it's a bit careless to say those kinds of things You know just because you have a different methodology but hey, you know, that's me at well, that's not just you

53:04

I agree with you Again being a presuppositionalist doesn't mean you have to reject the validity of the arguments of an arguments valid It's valid if you can support it, you can support it

53:13

Even Greg Bonson, although he had issues with I think the cosmological argument, which

53:18

I disagree with. Dr Bonson's criticism of the cosmological argument rejecting

53:25

Rejecting or accepting traditional proofs is not something that it doesn't matter if you're presuppositionalist

53:31

You can still find those arguments valid But before Bonson's death in 1995 when I years back

53:37

I spoke with dr. Frame when I visited RTS Reformed Theological Seminary and he said that before he passed away

53:43

He really wanted to work on how to restructure the traditional proofs within a presuppositional framework So there's nothing intrinsic about the proofs itself that you know a presuppositional

53:53

I can't I can't you know deal with any of those things. I'm a presuppositionalist and I think the traditional proofs are valid I do believe they need to be taken within the context of a

54:02

Christian worldview But you know, I can still use them in a certain context and things like that Although someone like Psy might reject them or some presuppers would completely find any form of natural theology repugnant again, that's not in well, there's other issues there, but you don't have to You can be a presuppositionalist and still find those arguments valid as long as you see them within that broader presuppositional framework

54:27

And I'd like to know what you think about this. So in the case of In the case, so and I also use some arguments that are most at home among Presuppositionalist for example the tag argument transcendental argument

54:41

I included in my book evangelistic apologetics, which is my other doctoral work But I'd like to know what you think about it.

54:47

So for discipling For doing discipleship apologetics talking with believers about their doubts or at least professing believers in that context

54:57

Would it be more appropriate? To use theistic arguments and resurrection cases.

55:03

I think it'd be appropriate to use anything that is within the realm of biblical consistency with the purpose and end of encouraging a believer in In his or her faith.

55:16

I've heard some presuppositionalist say hey theistic arguments are great for the Christian Now, I think that there's wider application for that but I think but I think there's a truth to that going through going through a cosmological argument with a

55:30

With a Christian that's doubting and struggling showing some of those specifics, right? Can build someone's faith, right?

55:37

Those are those are one of the many evidences of of God for the presuppositionalist

55:42

Scott Oliphant who is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary says that the presuppositionalist is the is eminently evidential in the sense that as presuppositionalist we think everything is evidence for God and so if I could appeal to one specific thing like the beginning of the universe or Biological complexity or something like that I can

56:02

I'm free to use that to encourage my fellow believers to stand firm in the faith and that there's Evidence that we are that we are also standing on as well as the benefit of having that coherent worldview perspective

56:12

That makes the concept of evidence coherent to begin with so yeah And I think I think giving various types of evidences depending on what believer

56:21

I you know, one of the things I did in this getting back to the major writing project is any good dissertation is going to have a literary review and a historical overview instead about the subjects in the past One church history book

56:35

I thought was really good talking about Even the Gospel of John now typically when people think about the Gospels They think

56:40

Gospel of John is the one you give to an unbeliever because it's written that you may believe right? And he said about this he was talking about how scholars recognize a

56:51

Regenerate audience in the Gospel of John that perhaps the Gospel John was written to believers He says the subtle liturgical and sacramental illusions throughout the gospel would surely pass over the heads of even highly educated

57:01

Pagans thus it would be an error to look upon this work any more than any of the New Testament writings as primarily addressed to Those who do not yet Profess the

57:10

Christian faith John's gospel is aimed at sustaining and intensifying the life of faith of all its readers and in this sense has affinities with apologetic literature, so he seems to be saying

57:20

There's a there's a group of scholars out there who see even the Gospel of John as primarily driven toward a

57:28

Christian audience and firming up their faith because like the author references the Jews when he's referring to those hostile to Jesus But Israel is used more hospitably

57:37

The Old Testament scripture is rallied in order to demonstrate why Jesus experienced rejection and why the

57:42

Jews were wrong to reject him and then you know when you get into like when you get into like the

57:48

Middle Ages typically church history is divided up into the you know, the early church and then you have

57:54

Like moving out the church fathers perhaps the Middle Ages you have Peter Damian admitted That ignorance of defenses against anti -christian

58:02

Jewish arguments could lead doubt lead to doubt among believers So he wrote that we should have the

58:07

Christians in his day should have responses apologetic responses to Jewish arguments against faith

58:13

John Calvin John Calvin Says for unbelief if so deeply rooted in our hearts and we are so inclined to it that not without hard struggle is each

58:24

One able to persuade himself of what all confess with the mouth Namely that God is faithful.

58:29

So there it's not about God's existence or the truth of Christianity, but but When we look at the world around us and what's going on to convince ourselves that God is still faithful So else can come in a variety of ways

58:42

Lewis again dealt with doubt in modern days a thoroughly evidentialist

58:47

Mike Lycona Experienced great doubt about the truth of Christianity and it led to one of the most

58:53

Masterful works on the resurrection that we have in the 21st century so far So doubt has a deep tradition in the church

58:59

I think we see New Testament writers and then people in every era of church history addressing the doubts of Christians and using a variety of apologetics to get there whether that's against the

59:11

Jews or for God's existence or the resurrection I mean first Corinthians 15 Is written to a

59:17

Christian audience, but yet he's trying to do apologetics about the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

59:24

So So I think all that stuff's in play and so I think there's a good basis for lay

59:29

Christians being prepared to do this with other lay Christians, hmm and last question here

59:35

So as I know if I skip it now then If everything exists can be understood the Christian evidences. It doesn't stand to reason.

59:41

Nothing can be seen again Okay, so real quick. I know this what kind of word you by the way, yeah,

59:47

Jared Craig Before you say anything else is a super nice guy

59:53

I don't think I don't think he's a Christian but comments on my channel a lot. We've had great discussions and Very charitable friendly atheist if he's an atheist, are you

01:00:03

Jared? Go ahead Eli. Oh, that's okay Okay, so he says here. What's the point of natural theology within precept worldview?

01:00:10

Uh, a lot of precepts reject natural theology others find a place for it I'm not going to quite

01:00:17

I'm not going to comment on the appropriateness either way I have criticisms of natural theology and I'll just say that just off the cuff and that needs to be

01:00:25

Expanded upon which would require far too much for this episode He also asked if everything that exists can be understood as evidence for the

01:00:33

Christian worldview Does it stand to reason that nothing could be seen as evidence against it? Yep. That's right It does stand to reason that there is no evidence against the

01:00:40

Christian worldview if the Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for the coherency of Everything and anything then for the very concept of evidence itself to be coherent

01:00:49

Requires the truth of the Christian worldview now the temptation is that that's just a mere assertion but In a different context,

01:00:56

I would be happy to hash that out for you. Okay. All right So now here's a question and then maybe we can you can expand on this and then we can kind of wrap things up So we don't go too long and I'm sure you're busy and I have to attend to my family as well

01:01:11

How do you stop a bleeding church? It's if you're walking down the church and the pastor grabs you by a shirt and says we're bleeding help, you know

01:01:18

What how do I stop a bleeding church? How do we stop a bleeding church? Okay, so primarily what we there's a few things we found

01:01:25

Obviously, I'm speaking primarily about the intellectual reasons that people say is why they left the church

01:01:30

Okay, what there I presented in fact, I did a recent episode in response to Pine Creek about doubt and there

01:01:37

I presented journal journal article data that from research that has shown that if If someone in the church is experiencing doubt

01:01:48

If they have close relationships a close network of friends in the church that they trust

01:01:55

More than 80 % of those people will remain in the church and not only remain in the church they will grow stronger in their faith than they were before and That's powerful if they don't have that They tend to slip away at a much higher percentage

01:02:10

And so what that tells us is we know that people get their feelings hurt in church and things like that But we don't understand the degree to which those kinds of things that have nothing to do with evidence or God or Jesus or anything directly

01:02:24

Can impact the bleed that is going on in the church. So we need to be aware of that. Obviously the pastoral stuff

01:02:31

The making sure that when someone's hurting we love on them when someone Is in sin that we preach hard on sin and make sure people have that biblical literacy.

01:02:39

What does the Bible say? What are we as human beings? How do we relate to God? What is sin those kinds of things the ramifications of all that?

01:02:46

But in terms of my work and the intellectual side of things, how do you stop the bleed you explain?

01:02:52

I I advocate for for pastors and elders To teach seminars like this to do an eight -hour seminar or perhaps an eight week once a week hour long

01:03:03

Discussion and go through Reasons to believe in how lay church people can take this stuff my book core facts does it in a very understandable way that I think and it even gives ways for pastors and elders to use this stuff to To train it to people in the church so you could use something like that and begin doing that right now if you're a presuppositional

01:03:30

You could take something you could probably advise them on something That's good for explaining that to lay people and do that over a series of weeks

01:03:37

And so so what you'd want to do there, but whatever methodology I do think we need to present Evidence or responses related to the problem of suffering because that's just gonna come up no matter what so anyway

01:03:48

I think I think we need to do that and we need to just let church people know that We know and whether you've thought about it or not

01:03:56

Here are some of the reasons why people like you lay church people are scared to do this or don't want to do this or hesitant

01:04:01

To do this. Let's confront that. Let's talk about that. And then let's do it now one thing

01:04:06

This is the exciting thing with research. I did not expect this I love it when there's data that you did not expect that you discover through the research

01:04:16

My what I thought would happen. Is that what I would find was a system where Basically discipleship apologetics would look like one person in a church

01:04:25

Who is a lay person but understands apologetics? who then can partner with someone who's experiencing intellectual doubt and Disciple them one -on -one

01:04:35

What I found out was now this is so cool So if you guys aren't excited about this just pretend that you are because it's so exciting to me

01:04:42

I'm so excited how excited you are what we found out was Even among people who don't who admittedly don't know much about apologetics.

01:04:51

The younger the person is The youngest person we had was 22 I think the younger the person is the more aware they are of What apologetics is and what apologists do

01:05:03

I think partly because as a Christian? The internet markets apologetics to you at that level the church puts you in groups on that to that level more than they do older people

01:05:12

For the same reason men are slightly more aware of apologetics and what it is than most women are in general and on average

01:05:19

There may be women in this chat that are far more knowledgeable than your average man. That's not the point The older the person but those young people are less have less

01:05:29

Confidence in it before they do the learning so in other words when I first met these people they the younger the person was they knew more already and were

01:05:39

But were less confident in having those kind of conversations The older the person was the less they knew what apologetics was but the more confident

01:05:48

They were in having apologetics conversations What but what but here's what that here's what that showed me

01:05:55

The way I interpreted that was okay Here's what that means. That means if I'm a pastor and a person is

01:06:03

Experiencing intellectual doubts what I'm gonna tell my people is say a young man tells another young man

01:06:10

I'm experiencing doubt and this other young man He knows the information more But he's not as confident

01:06:17

So guess what go get an older man to be a partner with you in Discipling this person who's experiencing doubt because that just draws on the sagely wisdom that that older man's gonna have

01:06:29

He's probably gonna have more biblical knowledge anyway from a lifetime in church and then the younger guy that's the partner is gonna have more of the

01:06:37

Built -in apologetic knowledge from the way that it's being marketed to him in the culture now

01:06:42

That's for men for women. Guess what? It's not the older the woman the more confident she is

01:06:50

The middle -aged women women over 40 and I'm gonna say what is what is middle -aged mean?

01:06:56

over 40 Under 69 or 69 or under so between 40 and 70 those women are the most confident

01:07:05

In having these conversations among women now what now I think there's actually some interesting

01:07:11

Sociological reasons why that is those women were very much aware of what was going on and I mean the older women were too

01:07:16

But this was the this was the generation that saw a lot of you know that the stuff with feminism the stuff in the culture about how do men and women relate in the workforce all those kind of things and I don't know some of those.

01:07:28

I'm just a lot of those women are just more Happy to tell you what I think right? So maybe that's why maybe it's something

01:07:34

I haven't thought of yet but in that case because we know that now based on this research if You if you're a younger if there's a younger woman who's experiencing doubt and she comes to a young woman or a young man

01:07:45

Hey grab that grab that middle -aged woman and get her in here on this discussion.

01:07:51

So that gives us some real practical ways to form groups with people who are experiencing intellectual doubt and Give them the best chance of having those alleviated and stopping that bleed

01:08:04

Interesting now now what if okay, so let's let's let's make some apologetic application I know a lot of people hear something like this.

01:08:11

I know why people are leaving the church It's because of intellectual reasons the more educated people get the more they realize how you know, how ridiculous

01:08:21

Religious faith is how would you respond to something like that? You're saying like the smarter a person gets the more they go away from faith

01:08:27

Yeah, and you could appeal to all those smart people in the past, you know, we know much more

01:08:32

Scientifically we've made progress And so there are a lot of things that perhaps if the people back then knew then they would not have been

01:08:39

You know, they would have changed their perspective So, you know, maybe that's the reason why people are leaving the more we're educated the more we realize that religion is just a joke

01:08:47

And it's just the blind faith commitment. Well, I would ask such a person to provide me with Such as what what what what have we learned that is a major challenge to the

01:08:56

Christian faith and let's talk through that You know, I thought one of the great things I I know it's a bit awkward here

01:09:03

I am on a channel with a presupposition. So I'm pointing twice now to William Lane Craig, but There was a recent video with John McRae on the channel

01:09:16

What do you mean where they sat down together and he showed dr. Craig internet memes that atheists.

01:09:22

Yeah I don't know. I did I did it's fantastic. Well, one of them was that that issue was okay

01:09:28

Well the smart people throughout history have believed that the it's the fools who believed in religion and all these kind of things and Craig's like I just think this shows that this person.

01:09:38

Here's my Craig impression. I Just think this reveals a lack of awareness on this man's part regarding great thinkers in the history of the

01:09:50

Christian faith men like Augustin and Aquinas and Calvin and these kind of people

01:09:57

I mean honestly and right up to today. I mean just yesterday on the news I saw Francis Collins who is the boss of the guy who's the head of the

01:10:05

NIH or whatever the NIH the National Health Whatever. This is a Bible thumping Christian now He's got some views that I don't hold but he's a

01:10:11

Bible thumping Christian One of the greatest scientists of our time head of the human genome project one of the greatest scientific advances in our time and a

01:10:21

Bible thumping Evangelical Christian so, you know, this is just a misguided view

01:10:26

Now that that was a good impression by the way of dr. Craig my wife and I sometimes do impressions of dr

01:10:34

Craig because we always we will always lay out things in premises, so for example

01:10:41

You know, I love you. And here are three reasons why I love your reason number you have to do the reason number one

01:10:49

And Reason number two and there are four philosophical reasons say so it that was great

01:10:57

That was great. Very good. And you have to end it with and there are no good reasons to believe that I do not

01:11:05

Draw together the threads of this discussion. That's That's good stuff man, and I don't mind you referring to dr

01:11:14

Craig he is and I tell people this all the time as a presuppositional is there are two apologists that have had a great influence over my thinking one is dr.

01:11:25

Craig and the other is Greg Bonson and also Van Til's by the way, people don't know

01:11:31

I actually have a signed copy of Van Til's defense of the faith that is man

01:11:37

Cornelius Van Til's autograph. This was given to me By a pastor who who knew him and this was actually written.

01:11:45

He's has a Yeah, this was this was given to my pastor friend when he was walking along the campus of Westminster and he

01:11:55

Van Til was known for giving away free stuff of his books and things like that So but dr.

01:12:01

Craig when I was a permanent substitute at a high school, they put me at Bathroom duty, so I had to sit outside the bathroom checking everyone's hall pass

01:12:10

And so I was there from the morning to the afternoon and get what did I have on my front desk?

01:12:16

Where I just spent the entire day reading through it was William Lane Craig's reasonable faith and I and it came with the workbook and I plowed through that entire book and even though Different methodologies.

01:12:28

I learned so much from dr. Craig and so Don't ever hesitate. You can mention. Dr. Craig. Only one there are disagreements for sure, but I definitely will not

01:12:38

Downplay his influence. So, all right. Well, are there any last things you'd like to say here before we wrap things up?

01:12:45

I think we covered a lot. We've gotten some priests up and then we got some Interesting Molinism questions and then of course the topic of your own study.

01:12:53

Is there anything you'd like to say to summarize? I think in wrapping up on my own study I did there was another component to it where I sent out questionnaires to pastors in all major regions of the

01:13:05

United States and outside of the United States a few countries people just voluntarily sent back the questionnaire from there too and What we found out was that in the opinion of the pastor based on his answers to the questions

01:13:16

What was true about those people in the sample group that I used is true broadly speaking not only

01:13:24

In the church that I did it but but across the United States in Mexico in South Africa in Ireland in Australia So all of that's in the study as well

01:13:32

I think that what we can do with this then is we can put together an approach that that could be used in churches everywhere to Helpfully hopefully stop that bleed now

01:13:45

I want to say that I don't believe that that the Lord's Church is is ever going to be squashed out completely

01:13:52

By the enemy and that's a powerful and important thing. So while we hear about People leaving the church we again this is where we should point to the fact that God is in control

01:14:02

God's not confused about what's happening. God knows what's going to happen It doesn't mean that the church in America won't get smaller

01:14:08

Although I thought it found it very interesting that when Craig was on Ben Shapiro recently He pointed out that while there is a shrinking of the denominations in the

01:14:16

United States the the old denominations the reality is that that that's

01:14:23

Evangelicalism seems to be holding its own as Non -denominational churches are springing up and and things like that So it may be that the church in America takes a different form

01:14:33

It may be that some of these so maybe that some of the people who want to divide fellowship over secondary doctrinal issues and consign me to the fires of hell because I don't hold whatever particular view are gonna have to Stop that silliness and join arms with brothers in general and we get this evangelism done

01:14:50

But ultimately the point is we we do need to work And do what

01:14:55

God's called us to do in running is in being the the hands and feet of the church But we don't need to fear we don't need to be fearful because he is in control and we can rest in that assurance

01:15:06

Mmm, very good. Yeah, we worship a sovereign God and he has everything under control but that doesn't mean that we sit on our hands and don't do anything right, especially, you know,

01:15:16

I I Don't know of any Calvinists in major ministries that dug that they don't participate in evangelism

01:15:23

I am only familiar with it with Calvinists that do engage in evangelism. However Sometimes people could have this impression.

01:15:30

Well, you know those who were who left us were never really of us, right? You have this mindset.

01:15:35

And so we some people can have this mindset. It doesn't really matter, you know How the quality with which we do things

01:15:42

God's gonna do his work and that's not true God calls us to higher standards and we need to do our best to To work for his kingdom to teach and to educate

01:15:53

Knowing all the while that of course the Spirit of God sustains us But he's using us as his hands and his feet to do the best that we can for his glory

01:16:01

So let us hold got the the view of God's sovereignty and the reality of our responsibility in a balanced perspective

01:16:08

However way you you hash that out. All right. Well, thank you so much Braxton for coming on man

01:16:14

I think I think a lot of people who have not yet listened to this will find this very helpful and Looking forward to when you release the the content of your study and people who are listening and don't know about Trinity Radio, which you probably would know more about Trinity Radio than Revealed Apologetics because there's definitely a larger audience over there

01:16:34

But if you are not familiar with Trinity or Trinity Radio and Braxton Hunter Go over to YouTube right now and subscribe to the

01:16:40

Trinity Radio YouTube channel There is excellent material there. Even if you're you know, if you're from the reformed perspective

01:16:47

There's still a lot there to learn Of course, you can subscribe to my youtube channel as well reveals apologetics and the podcast on iTunes just will real quick I missed an announcement towards the beginning.

01:16:58

We're also gonna be having Dr. Kirk McGregor from McPherson College to talk about the historical evidence for the resurrection

01:17:04

What a presupposition list getting a classical apologist to talk about evidence. Yeah get over it.

01:17:10

That's right We believe in evidence too and it's important that we know about that So if you don't like me interviewing Molinist and non reformed people then get me some reformed people who?

01:17:19

respond to their phone calls For some reason it's all the non Calvinist say yeah,

01:17:25

I'll go on with you. I'll talk to you about that stuff. So so Keep an eye out on for those things and if you're really interested in the

01:17:32

William Lane Craig impressions You might want to try and find okay, and I know you've probably seen this

01:17:38

Braxton, okay ready David Woods impression of William Lane Craig find it somewhere on YouTube.

01:17:46

It is very very hilarious in the case for Christ movie review that would did That's right.

01:17:52

right. All right. Well, thank you so much guys Take care and God bless. Bye.