Dr. Anthony Silvestro speaks on Apologetics

And so, when we understand that as our primary focus, our goal in apologetics is not about the apologetics.

It's not about proving people wrong. It's not about trying to beat them down and prove to them that we're right.

It's actually about getting to the law and the gospel as quickly as possible. It's about using the law, like Ray Comfort and others do, to walk people through their sin and how their sin is an affront to God.

Their sin is lawlessness. Their sin is lawbreaking against God. And that because of that lawbreaking against God, who is perfectly holy, perfectly just, perfectly righteous,

He is, and He's eternal, the punishment we deserve is eternal. And so, we want to show people the law to show people their state against God and then give them the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, fully

God, fully man, who lived the perfect life none of us are capable of, and that through His death, burial, and resurrection,

He paid the penalty for those who'd repent and believe, or both repent and trust in the gospel as payment for their sins.

This is the goal, and this is what it's supposed to look like in terms of apologetics. It is about getting to the law and the gospel, which is what saves.

And so, I'm going to ask this question. This is Romans 116. The blank is the power of God unto salvation.

Now, for those of you who may not know Romans 116 very well, I can promise you that that word there is not my apologetic method.

It's not the apologetics that I give is the power of God unto salvation.

It is not the good looks that I possess, or the wonderful personality

I have, or the charisma I have is the power of God unto salvation. What Romans 116 says is that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

And so, when we understand this properly, it is not our apologetics that saves people.

It is the gospel that saves people. And what we use apologetics to do is to close the mouth of the unbeliever, that person who is at enmity with God, who is fighting the idea of being accountable to God, and that this person has lots to say.

We use apologetics to get them to be quiet, and to understand that our worldview is actually the one that is full of truth.

Our worldview is the one that actually makes sense, and that we use this in order to get to the law and the gospel.

And so, we often have heard of the three main types of Christian apologetics.

We see that there's the evidential, there's classical, and there's presuppositional.

And when we look at the evidential side of apologetics, and classical mirrors this quite closely.

We don't have time today to get into the different methods, and get into some of the nitty -gritty, but what you'll find is that these guys sound the same.

So, whether you listen to Josh McDowell, Sean McDowell, Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, and many other guys that are out there, these are all evidential apologetics, or classicists, who sound like an evidential apologist.

Ravi Zacharias, another one. And so, what do these guys do? They assume people to start at ground level.

So, when you have a new evangelistic opportunity with somebody, you automatically assume that they're an atheist, that they are down, bottom of the barrel.

And what your job then, as an evidentialist or classicist, is to say, okay, I'm going to pile on enough evidences to take them from atheism to theism.

So, I myself am going to do the work, and I'm going to add evidence after evidence after evidence to get up to a theistic perspective.

So, we get this person to now believe, okay, there must be a God that exists. And once we get them to theism, we are now going to add a few more evidences, as many as it takes, to try to get them to believe in the one

God of the Bible, versus all of the false gods that are out there. This is literally the evidential approach.

And so, this would bring me then to a question for everybody here. And it would be this.

Do evidences actually convince people? Do evidences have the power to take somebody from anything other than a

Christian worldview, where they've repented and put their trust in Christ? Can evidences bring them from any point below that up to that spot of being actually redeemed, actually saved?

And I would present to you this passage, the rich man and Lazarus.

So, this comes out of Luke 16. And what we see here at the beginning of this is there was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.

But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate. And so, as we read through the rest of this, we see that the rich man, who is sitting in what we would call hell or some holding tank, right, on the way to being put into the lake of fire at the end of time at Jesus' second coming.

The rich man is begging that Abraham, who Lazarus is sitting next to, who's sitting in heaven at that point, waiting for the new heavens and new earth to be rolled out.

The rich man asks this, Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.

Again, this is the rich man speaking to Abraham with Lazarus at his side.

But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

So we have the rich man begging for Lazarus to be sent, his servant on earth, for Lazarus to be sent and to go warn his brothers about it.

And what does Abraham say back? But he said to him,

If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rise from the dead.

And I think what this shows is this, this is a, it should serve as a warning, maybe a reminder for us that it's, it's not about what we go and tell people, other than what the word of God says.

And that, and then in this passage, we see that, look, if they don't, if they don't hear Moses and the prophets, if they don't believe what

Moses, the prophets have written about the coming Messiah, if they don't believe about what Moses and the prophets have written about all of this, they're not even going to be persuaded by somebody who rises from the dead.

And of course this was in the immediate context, Lazarus, this would have been in the grander context,

Jesus Christ himself, what this is talking about. And so I will say that I used to use this type of method of apologetics.

I used to go out there and think I can browbeat people with evidences and try to convince them otherwise.

And so that would bring me then to problems using evidences. And here's a couple of issues.

Number one, if you're using evidences as your way of trying to convince people of God of the

Bible, you're giving people the power to interpret the evidence according to their own worldview or to enact rescuing devices.

So it's kind of like this. The Creation Museum in Kentucky used to have a dinosaur bone and their opening scene, as you walk through their history of the museum, had two scientists.

One was a secular scientist, the other was a creation scientist. Same bone that both guys saw at the exact same time.

The creationist has a very different, he interprets that bone very differently than the secular scientist.

Why? It's not because of the bone. The bone's the same. It's not because of the timing. The timing's the same.

It's because of their worldview. They interpret the evidences according to what their worldview is.

And when we give evidences to people, guess what they are doing? They're not seeing it from our perspective.

They're seeing it from their own. They're interpreting those evidences from their worldview. Number two, you also have to be brilliant.

Look, you have to know a lot about every subject there is. Otherwise, what's going to happen once they stump you?

Once they come up with some scientific fact that you don't know much about and you can't refute it, that person walks away thinking,

I won. Doesn't matter how much you gave them. Doesn't matter how many evidences you threw their way. They just need one to stump you.

And they feel vindicated in that conversation. Ask me how I know. I've been doing this for years.

But number three is you're literally granting the person that you're talking to undue power to be the judge of the evidence.

And you're actually telling them, here's all these evidences, you be the judge as to whether you should believe in God or not.

That's not what the Bible says. The Bible doesn't put the unbeliever in the position of judge to be able to judge the evidences according to their faulty worldview.

And so these are just a few of the problems with evidences that have caused me to completely abandon this type of apologetic method in the way that it's classically used.

Here's a wonderful example. And so I'm guessing that anybody here listening knows this issue of short -lived comets, right?

And so what's the issue with comets? We as creationists say, comets?

Comets are a great evidence. Maybe even one of the best evidences there is of a young earth and a young universe.

Why? Because we have comets that orbit the sun, right? They have very long elliptical paths.

Every time it orbits the sun, the sun burns off part of that comet because comets are what?

They're nothing but a ball of ice and dust. And so they come by the sun's heat, blows off some of that, gives you a wonderful grandioso tale for us to look at through a telescope.

And then the comet leaves, the sun goes back into a farther part of its orbit, and it's lost some of its mass.

Eventually, that comet comes around enough that it just gets melted and blown to smithereens.

We saw that with comet ISON not too many years ago. And so we understand that comets could not last more than about 100 ,000 years as they go through this cycle.

So therefore, if we see that our universe, according to secular scientists, is billions of years old, there should be no comets left.

Henceforth, we say it can't be billions of years. It must be thousands of years because we still have comets, to which those of you who understand short -lived comets will also know this issue, that there was a scientist named

Dr. Ort who said, you know, somewhere out there where we can't see and we can't detect, there is this just cloud full of comets that for some unknown reason kicks a new comet out into the solar system.

It gets trapped by the sun's gravitational field and it gets pulled into orbit, and that's why we still have comets today.

And so this is where we get the Ort cloud from. What I'm telling you is that this is a rescuing device.

We've got wonderful evidence in short -lived comets, and yet a person who is clinging to their worldview, their anti -God worldview, by believing in old age and evolution, is going to say, rather than me believe what you're telling me,

I want to hang on to my anti -God worldview and I'm going to come up with something that can explain this evidence away.

This is one of a myriad of examples that people have used over the years, another reason why evidences don't work the way that I used to think they did and why a lot of people still think they do.

And here's the thing. Arguing from evidences, I love evidences. I enjoy the books by Strobel and McDowell, but here's why.

It's because I'm a Christian. It's because I enjoy to read things that show my worldview to be true.

I mean, I already know it to be true by the Bible, but to see evidences that also support what I know to be true by the

Bible, what a wonderful thing it is. That's why I enjoy them. The problem is that those evidences don't get interpreted by the unbeliever we're giving them to the same way that they're interpreted by us, who has a correct worldview.

They don't work in the conversion of the unbeliever. And so what instead does the

Bible teach us? Well, we already said earlier, Romans 1 .16, the gospel, not my looks, not my evidences, not my powerful arguments.

The gospel is the power of God and salvation. How do people get the gospel? Romans 10 .17.

So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. This is part of the great commission is that people believe through God's granting of repentance and faith through the power of his word, us giving the word and the unbeliever hearing his word.

And that's where faith is obtained. It is not done through the evidences. Nowhere in the

Bible do we see evidences convicting the unbeliever unto salvation. So what is presuppositional apologetics?

Well, presuppositional apologetics would say that the Bible is the necessary starting point. It doesn't allow people to filter evidences through their incorrect worldview.

Instead, what we do is we attack the faulty worldview they have and show the folly of that worldview.

And so I realize I'm using some bigger words, so I want to break them down for us a little bit here. When we talk about presuppositional apologetics, we have the word presupposition.

We break it into its prefix and its root word. We have pre and supposition. Pre means before or prior.

Supposition would be beliefs or assumptions that are held to be true without proof. So that means a presupposition is what every single person has and what they assume to be true from the beginning.

So when we walk into a conversation with somebody about anything, it doesn't have to be about the Bible or science. It could be about anything in this world.

It could be about politics. It's that we walk into that conversation with beliefs that we already have in our head, and we're going to filter our conversation through what our beliefs are in our head.

That's going to be the tendency always for us to do. And so what presuppositionalism does is it says, look, we all have pre -beliefs.

Well, that includes the Christian. And there are things that as a

Christian we believe true to be true from the beginning. The sum of these presuppositions that we have, which are a number of them, they make up what we call our worldview.

So how we view the world, how we interpret everything we see in the world is going to be done through our worldview made up of these presuppositions.

And so the way I like to liken it to is sunglasses. So imagine for everybody here that's listening right now, imagine

I gave, I split you up into three groups, and I gave one a pair of blue sunglasses to one group, one group a pair of orange, one group a pair of green, and then

I myself didn't have any colored sunglasses on. And let's say we walk through an art museum and we walk through it, we make our notes, we interpret what we see on the walls, all the different paintings, all the different art, and we walk out of the museum and we now compare what we have all seen.

Are we going to all have seen the same thing? Well, no.

We've seen the stuff, right? We saw the actual painting, but the interpretation is going to be different because the person who has blue is going to see everything shaded blue, orange shaded orange, and one with green shaded green.

Myself who didn't wear the glasses, I was the rebel, I saw it exactly for what it was.

But the point is that our worldview is much like the sunglasses that we can wear that are going to filter what we see and we're going to see things according to what those sunglasses are that we're wearing.

And so every worldview that's out there makes use of what we call faith commitments. For example, the origin of the universe.

And so there's a couple different faith commitments out there. As a Christian who is a Bible -believing

Christian, which means young earth and no evolution, God created all things and he did it in short order over six days about 6 ,000 years ago versus the worldview that would say the origin of the universe from a secular worldview is the universe either created itself, always existed, or there's a multitude of universes.

Same evidence, but because of different worldviews, two different interpretations of that evidence.

And the reality is our worldview determines everything. It determines our viewpoint of creation versus evolution.

It determines our viewpoint on pro -life versus pro -death. It determines our opinion on morality, why am

I here, religion, view on marriage, and the list goes on. And obviously we've seen with this

Black Lives Matter movement how unchristian it has been in so many ways.

Our worldview determines how we view these things. And so I would surmise that from a biblical perspective, this is what our correct worldview is.

It's that God exists and his word is true. That's our starting point as a worldview.

I'm going to talk a little bit about that. I'm going to talk about why later, but this would be our starting points.

God exists, his word is true. Our foundation is built off of this. If we don't have this, we don't have a foundation.

We don't have a Christian worldview at all. And so basically this biblical worldview says, read your

Bible, believe what it says, in a correct context, but believe what it says. In that Bible that we read,

God exists, his word is true, the word says things like this. Psalm 14 .1,

the fool says in his heart, there is no God. Proverbs 18 .2, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion.

We're going to talk about this later why as well. Look, God doesn't believe in atheists.

He calls them foolish when they say that they're atheists. And there's a reason for that because of general revelation

God has given us, every single person. So here's a question, might be a trick question.

We've got all kinds of religions out there, right? Here's a few of them on these signs. With all the religions and belief systems out there, how many worldviews exist?

This is a good one, right? So we see battles of worldviews out there.

On one side, we see abortion, euthanasia, marriage, moral relative is a man's word.

Other side, life begins at fertilization, sanctity to life, biblical marriage, moral absolutes, God's word.

Just a few of the battle in the worldviews. Obviously, the right side of this, the blue side, would be the

Christian worldview. But scriptures do tell us how many worldviews there are.

Matthew 12 .30, he who is not with me is against me. He who does not gather with me scatters abroad.

Romans 8 .7, because the carnal mind is enmity, that's being an enemy or at war against God.

For it is not subject to the law of God nor indeed can be. Obviously, talking about carnal mind versus the mind that is in line with God and his word.

James 4 .4, it gets harsh. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And so, now

I ask, how many worldviews are there? Two, two worldviews.

According to the Bible, there is God and there is not God. There is

God and there is everything else. God, while humans have constructed the idea of the false religion of Islam, the false religion of Roman Catholicism, false religion of Mormonism, the false religion of Hinduism, and so on and so forth,

God views them all as being at enmity with him, at war with him. God views them all as false religions and all in the not

God worldview. Colossians 2 is another one that people are either in Christ or their mind has been stolen from them.

Colossians 2, verses 8 through 10. And what I want you to appreciate here is, in the

God versus not God worldview, is that there is no neutral ground.

And this is one of the problems we have with evidential type apologetics out here.

When I do this sermon live, it's a lot more dynamic than it is sitting at a desk, of course. And one of the ways

I demonstrate this is, I'll stand on a chair and I'll say, this is the Christian worldview.

So I'm standing on a chair. This is what I'm standing on. God exists. His word is true.

Now, let's say I've got somebody on another chair right next to me and says that, well,

I don't believe what you believe. But you know what? Let's talk science. You leave the Bible aside and let's talk science and let's see some common ground we can have, right?

And so what happens is, is that I, that person's willing to step off their chair, okay?

And meet me halfway, so to speak. I step off my chair and I meet them halfway. What did

I just do? I literally left my worldview and I stepped into enemy territory.

I literally stepped onto their grounds to try to reason with them. I've left everything behind that I am supposed to keep sacred.

I left everything behind that God says, this is how people get saved. It is through the gospels, the proclamation of my word that Jesus Christ said it is by the law and the prophets that they know who

I am. And we would leave that behind to go try to argue a little bit of science in supposed neutral ground.

And this is why some of the greats in years past have said there is no such thing as neutral ground.

And they even term this the neutrality fallacy. They're not neutral, you shouldn't be.

When they step off their box, they're still in enemy grounds. They're still in the not

God worldview. So the only one that's moving is us off of the God worldview, off the

Christian worldview. And so we see Romans 5, this plays out.

Our identity is either an Adam or a Christ, right? So everyone's born with sinful flesh, with a sin nature because of Adam.

And for those who are saved through repentance and faith, they are now adopted from Adam's family, adopted into sonship with Christ to be co -heirs with Christ, right?

So we're either at enmity with God when we're an Adam or at peace with God when we're in Christ.

Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, very clear in those passages, in those chapters and passages.

Romans 7, you're either in the flesh or in the spirit. John 14, 6, I mean, look, talk about exclusivity.

Jesus said to him, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus isn't neutral. Jesus says, I'm the only way. Like it or not,

I'm the only way. It is not by any other way. It's not by any other false

God. It's not by science. It's through Christ and his atoning sacrifice.

And so this no neutrality has to apply in every way. It applies in science. We're either with him or against him.

Apologetics, with him, against him. Same thing with homosexuality, evolution, the list goes on. We either agree with what

God says in his word or we don't. There is nothing in between. Public schools, they say that they're neutral.

They say they don't endorse any specific religion, but are they actually neutral themselves? Absolutely not.

They're completely against the Christian worldview. The entire unbelieving world is against the

Christian worldview. You want evidence of this? The next time you listen to somebody curse and take the

Lord's name in vain, ask them why they didn't use Muhammad or Allah with his name in vain.

Why didn't they use Gandhi and take his name in vain? There's a reason for that.

It's because the world hates God, the one true God of the Bible, the one they're going to be held accountable to on judgment day.

And so we see the entire world is literally against him and, therefore, against us.

So with all this talk of proof, how do we know that God actually exists?

Well, it's clear. It's because he tells us. Genesis 1 -1,

Psalm 19, Romans 1 -18 -21. We're going to talk about those here in a few minutes here.

But Genesis 1 -1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He's establishing himself as God, the

God of the universe, created everything. Psalm 19 says that the sky, it proclaims his handiwork, right?

This declares the glory of God. And then Romans 1, we're going to exposit here in just a few minutes. We see in Proverbs 1 -7, again,

God's word. We as Christians who say that we believe God and his word is true, it says the fear of the

Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. God is literally saying that we can't have true knowledge unless we start with him.

We're going to show that as well here in the next few minutes. Colossians 2, verses 2 and 3, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Christ, Christ himself, has all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and that it's through his word that we can also partake in some of that truth and knowledge.

Paul goes on in Colossians 2 to say this, Now I say this, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.

So on one hand, he says, all wisdom and knowledge is in Christ, and the outside of Christ are persuasive words by people who would deceive.

This is the theme that we're seeing through scripture here. And so he warns us in Colossians 2 -8,

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the traditions of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

We see two different worldviews here. And so I'm going to make a bold statement here, and then

I'm going to start establishing why, because I'm throwing a lot out at you right now, and I'm doing it quickly because of our time.

But I'm going to make a bold statement here. If the Bible were not true, we couldn't know anything at all.

It's pretty bold. And here's why. This is one of my myriad of witnessing encounters, and this was a

St. Patrick's Day parade, where I had the pleasure of speaking to somebody before they were completely full of drunkenness.

And I did an interview with him. It was a fun interview, actually. And one of the things we talked about was this understanding of knowledge.

And so it went like this. I asked him, how much knowledge of this entire universe do you have?

Because this is a guy who is making knowledge claims about things. And so I said, how much knowledge of this entire universe do you have?

And I said, you know, we've got billions and trillions of stars. There's lots of knowledge even on this planet itself.

How much knowledge do you have overall? And he said, well, not much. And I said, you're right. You know, you and I hardly know anything in this entire universe.

But I'm just going to assume you know 1 % of all knowledge, 1 % of it.

And I go, I'm giving you way too much credit. I'm giving myself way too much credit. It's no 1%. But let's assume it's 1%.

I say, is it possible for the 1 % of knowledge you have, and there's 99 % out there that you don't know, is it possible that that 99 % could refute everything you think you know?

Look, you don't know what you don't know. How do you know what you think you know? Because if there's all this stuff out here that you don't know, it could literally be the exact opposite of what you think you know.

And it kind of got him for a moment. And, of course, what did he do? He said, well, you're in the same position as I am.

You can't know everything either. I said, you're right. Except here's the thing. To know anything at all so that there's nothing out there that can refute what you think you know, you either have to be omniscient yourself.

You have to know everything so that there is nothing out there that you don't know that can refute what you know, or you have to have the revelation of someone who is omniscient.

That's the Christian worldview. The fact that we can know things is because of God who is omniscient, who's chosen to share some of his truth with us, that we can know it for certain.

That same God is who developed, I should say developed, he assigned the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, mathematical laws.

He did all these things for us to be able to understand his creation better. But it's because it originated in the mind of almighty omniscient, omnipotent

God that we can have knowledge. And so in establishing this, we see that atheists seem to have a lot of knowledge, right?

And yet they don't believe in God. What's the issue here?

Or they say they don't believe in God anyway. And so I want to talk about ultimate standards.

I know I'm hitting a lot of different pieces. You're going to see how all these intertwine together real soon. When we talk about ultimate standards, everyone has to start with an ultimate standard, and that an ultimate standard cannot be proved by another standard.

And so this is getting into our presuppositions of God. We say from the

Christian worldview, God exists, his word is true. So in a worldview, we all have these ultimate standards that we go by, or at least we should if we're being logical.

And so an ultimate standard can't be proved by another standard. So what this means is that our ultimate standard is

God and his word being true. If we could say I have evidence to prove

God is true and to prove the Bible is true, what is that, where does this evidence belong then?

It actually goes above God's word. If this evidence is the one that is proving

God's existence and proving the truth of God's word, this evidence now becomes the ultimate authority, and it's not

God and his word anymore. This leads to a problem called an infinite regress, is that if we continue to use evidences to try to prove

God and his word, all we're going to do is, well, we've got A that proves this. Well, how do we prove

A? Well, then we need B. How do we prove B? Well, then we need C. And how do we prove C? And this goes on literally forever.

So there has to be a stopping point. There has to be an ultimate standard. And the ultimate standard in our worldview is one that is a true ultimate standard, and an ultimate standard by definition must prove itself.

It must be a self -attesting standard. And so we see this even with God talking about how when he was proving himself to Abraham that he said that there's nothing greater by whom

I can swear, therefore I swear unto myself of who he is. This is in the

Old Testament and repeated again in the New Testament. So God literally is self -attesting.

And so when we understand the Bible and its self -attesting nature, we can also look at prophecy.

And so there's a reason why God gave us prophecy in the Old Testament, 300 -plus prophecies all pointing to predicting the future

Messiah, every one of those fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Just one more way that the

Bible is self -attesting in its nature as an ultimate authority. And so when we understand our worldview,

God is the ultimate authority. His word, ultimate authority, they're together, right? The word is

God. And that we can only have knowledge with God who is an actual absolute authority.

And so when we look at the ultimate standards, Christian ultimate standard, God and his word, the source of truth, the one who is omniscient, what is the materialist ultimate standard?

They don't have one. They don't have an ultimate standard. They have what their thought is or what some scientists say, and they've built some evidences up to give them some ideas of what they want to believe, but ultimately they don't have an ultimate standard.

Now, I know some of this, you know, I throw a lot of information again at you and, and I want to start parking on a couple of verses here because a lot of you are probably thinking, well, you still haven't proven to me why

I can't use evidences. And so I'm going to give it to you right now.

Romans one verses 18 to 20. And so when we, when we look at this verse here or this passage here and I'm going to read it to you right now.

So for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Because what may be known about God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power and Godhead so that they're without excuse.

This passage, if you go back and study it says that everybody knows the true

God that exists by his creation in the things that have been made. Everybody.

God is so confident in that that he says they're going to be held without excuse. And the

God, God doesn't just say in this passage that they know a generic God exists. Some designer out there, but they don't know who

God is. That's not what it says. This passage says that, that his invisible attributes are clearly seen his attributes, his omniscience, his omnipotence, his justice, his love, his mercy, his grace, his attributes are clearly seen by every single person by his creation of things that have been made.

This, this is the parallel to Psalm 19 that I read earlier about the sky proclaiming his handiwork.

This is also the reason why God in Psalm 14, one says the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God because clearly he says,

I've given everybody enough knowledge to know I exist. They know the true

God that exists. And then we see in the, in the next passage that in Romans, as we forward to Romans two verses 14 to 15, it says here that the moral law is written in everyone's heart.

Our conscience bears witness. Our conscience testifies to God and it has to do with morality because the only way we can have morality in an absolute sense, a universal sense, a transcendent sense is not by us coming up with laws, not by us having personal opinions or feelings.

It's not by, it's not by the majority rules. It's because omniscient omnipotent God projected those morals down onto us and wrote them onto our hearts.

And so what God is saying in these two passages here is that we do not have the burden of proof to prove to somebody

God exists. Let me say that again. We do not have the burden of proof to prove to somebody

God exists because I'm going to trust, not the unbeliever who says prove to me

God exists. I'm going to trust God in his word that says they know that person you're talking to knows

I exist. And so the beauty of apologetics is we, we use apologetics to close the mouth of the unbeliever so that we can use the moral law.

We can ask them things like, have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever lusted after someone before?

Have you ever used the Lord's name in vain? We can point out their sins against the Holy righteous and just judge

God himself. And as we use God's law and, and allow the law to show people their sins,

God's word to show people their sins, they're being shown their sins to the God they already know exists with a moral law, an absolute sense of right from wrong that's already written on their hearts.

And so that's what we are supposed to be doing in our apologetics method is using the

Bible and going and going to it. Now we have,

I have many other slides to go to. I'm not gonna be able to get to them tonight. I usually have a part one and a part two that I do.

It takes me two to two and a quarter hours, but I want to leave you with one last thing and then open up for questions until, but I want to leave you with this one last thing.

I said earlier, presuppositional apologetics assumes God to begin with. And, and I want to establish why.

So obviously God tells us scripturally that we, that we must start with him, but we can also get there from a philosophical perspective and, and really it is rooted biblically as well.

And so it goes like this. When I speak to an unbeliever, almost always it's somebody who believes in evolution.

When it's somebody who believes in a false God, that's a different conversation. But when it's somebody who believes in evolution, this is the conversation

I take them through. I say, okay, so you, you believe that you came from pond scum or dirt or something billions of years ago.

Is that right? And they'll say, yes. So, okay. And then you believe that billions of years ago, somehow stuff just came together and formed the first living cell, right?

Through random chemical reactions that do nothing but obey laws of chemistry and physics. Now, now mind you,

I'm not going to ask you where the laws of chemistry and physics came from. I'm just saying, we're going to assume they're there for your sake.

And, and, and all these things just came together and they, and they say, yeah, that's right. I go, okay. So now we have that cell that over billions of years till today has, has through trillions of random chemical reactions gone from that single, what you would call simple cell and, and given us everything we see today in terms of animals, humans, and plant life.

And they would say, yeah, I go, okay. So that means that you standing in front of me are the results of billions of years and trillions, trillions of random chemical reactions doing nothing but obeying laws of chemistry and physics.

You're a bag of those. Is that right? And they say, yeah, I go, okay. So you're a bag of random chemical reactions doing nothing but obeying laws of chemistry and physics.

How is it that you're having a conversation with me right now? You've got a problem.

You are using your brain. And you're coming up with thoughts.

You are using your ability to reason. You are using something called knowledge that isn't material.

You're using logical laws and you are having a dialogue with me back and forth.

Now you have a problem. Your entire worldview for billions of years says that everything that comes out of your bag of random chemical reactions should be nothing more than more random chemical reactions that are obeying laws of chemistry and physics.

And yet you're standing here telling me that you are having a conversation with me where you're controlling your thoughts and your words.

When did that switch over happen? That's a problem. And that's the catastrophic problem of the evolutionary worldview is that if you believe in evolution, you believe in a materialistic worldview.

Nowhere does a materialistic worldview lend itself and morph itself into giving things that are immaterial.

Nowhere does that occur. And so they're using laws of logic that are immaterial.

That doesn't come from material things. They're using knowledge. It's immaterial. They're using their ability to reason, which is immaterial.

And that they are controlling something they should have no control over. They should just be a robot that has random chemical reactions spewing out of it.

All the words should just be things that are jumbled coming out of them. Of course, that's not what's going on.

They're having a conversation. And that's where we can say, look, I know that you're having a conversation with me.

I know you're controlling your words, your conversation, your ability to reason. But it's not because of a materialistic worldview.

It's because you're made in the image of God, the God that you know exists that you've been running from. And I implore you to repent and believe the gospel.

And this is how we work through these conversations. But that's the presuppositional view is that instead of starting down here where we're building evidences and building a case to God, we're saying, look, you can't even think unless you start with God.

You can't use knowledge, laws of logic, or anything else, unless you start here and borrow from my worldview in order to somehow try to denounce my worldview.

So that is a good ending point. I'm going to stop there. I thank everyone for being attentive in this short time.

And I just want to open it up to any questions that anybody has. Okay, so I am unmuting all of you.

Since we're still a pretty small group, if you want to ask questions, you can unmute yourself to do so.

No, we got to have some. Dr. Sinestro? Yes. Can you hear me?

Good. I can, yep. Do you have a website where I can go to, where we can go to and find some of these things that you were talking about?

Are you talking about my slides or? I'm talking about just the idea of presuppositional apologetics.

So I don't have a website where I put this stuff on. I have a book that I wrote that walks through.

So what I did in my book, it's called On the Origin of Kinds. And it's on the website originofkinds .com.

But this book, I take creation apologetics, I take biblical evangelism,

Ray Comfort style, and I take presuppositional apologetics, and I literally weave them together and show how all three of these disciplines fit perfectly together.

And so that would be the best source of it is in that book. Now, I could certainly point you to other websites that have stuff.

I will tell you that, unfortunately, most of the presuppositional apologetics books out there are very high level.

I mean, they're on the level of Bonson, Van Til. Even some of the guys recently that have written books on these, they're a high level and it's hard to get the basic understanding of it to use.

And so in my book, we break it down to make it very, very simple. And this is stuff

I've used on the street literally for years with people. Why would they write books that the average person couldn't understand?

Good question. And so, you know, this started with Van Til and Bonson. And I think what it is is that, and I'll be honest with you, presuppositional apologetics is not something that comes natural to anybody.

This is something that you study, you get facets together, and then eventually you wake up one day and you're like,

I got it. And so the people that tend to study it out long enough to understand presupp well, tend to be heavy in philosophy.

And so they just tend to write, and they tend to be smart people. So they tend to write books that are full of really big words and hard concepts.

And the thing is, is that Bonson and Van Til and the guys more recently today, I don't want to mention any names, but they wrote, they write books that if they're in high level debates, that's the type of knowledge you have to have.

You have to understand the philosophy of the other side to refute them. The type of presupp that we use here is a very, it's the correct presuppositional apologetics, but it's made to be on street level.

It's made to use and easily use. And so I think that's why, Robin, is because these guys are just smart and they write at the high level for debates.

Okay. So they're just, they're not coming, taking it to the street like you are. They're just not taking the street.

That's right. So when you're out on the street witnessing, you know,

Ray Comfort has his gimmick, you know, have you ever told a lie? What, what do you do to draw the people in?

You know, so I love Ray. I help him on his ambassadors Academy every year in leading a group and helping to train a group of people on the streets for a few days.

I use something very similar. And, and so the, the law was designed for a number of reasons.

We don't have time to get into him tonight, but one of which is to convict the soul. And so Ray does

Ray does, does not do anything. It's novel. We see this in the Bible. We see guides throughout church history using this.

It's using the law to convict a sin. I mean, Jesus woman at the well, what did he do? He went straight to her sin, right?

And then transition to a gospel proclamation about him being a living water. We were rich, young ruler,

Jesus speaking to him, right? He goes through several commandments to which are the ruler, you know, said,

Oh, I've kept them all. And obviously he hadn't kept them all. And Jesus pointed that out pretty quickly. But so I do something very similar.

Usually my opening question is going to be, and this is literally just walking up to somebody. I do this in grocery stores.

I do this in the mall. I do this in my debt. Well, I don't own the dental practice anymore. I sold it a year and a half ago to do ministry full time, but but I, I still work part time.

And so I even do this with patients. I asked this simple question. Hey, so what do you think happens when you die?

Like, where are you going to go? Heaven or hell? And so I ask a very easygoing question like this to which almost everybody will willfully respond to.

And that's what opens up the door. Because what ends up happening is, is almost everybody says, I'm going to heaven.

And you ask, well, why do you think you're going to heaven? Well, because, and they'll either directly tell you,

I'm a good person, or they say things that they've done in life that they think God's going to look at them favorably for.

Or they say that I've done more good than bad, and therefore I think God's going to let me in, right? So, but they're all, they all say the same thing, essentially, is that I'm good enough to go there.

To which I'm now going to say, well, hey, would you mind taking a good person test with me? I'm going to do it too, but let's see how good we actually are.

And people usually will say, hey, that's, that's, let's, let's try it. And that's when I walk through exactly what

Ray does. So have you ever told a lie? I mean, I have, I've told, I've told plenty of them. And they'll say yes, and I'll say, okay, so you told a lie that makes you a what?

You know, a liar. And then I'll walk through a few more of the commandments with them just to, just to let the law do the work, right?

I'm not doing anything. I'm not telling them they're a sinner. I'm not telling them they're going to hell. I'm saying what

God's word says, and I'm letting the law do the work. So, so the law does the work.

And then I ask them again, are you going to heaven or hell? You know, what do you think based on your responses? Sometimes they say hell,

I give them the gospel. Sometimes they still say heaven, you know, God's merciful, God's, God's graceful. To which then

I will give them in this example next is I'll say, well, you know what, let's say, and, and, you know,

I'll guess their age, but I always guess like 10 years younger than what they are to make them feel good. So, uh, so, so, so you're, you're 25.

Oh no, I'm 35. Let's just assume you're 25. So let's say you, you've gone 20 years in your life living perfectly.

Now that's impossible. You couldn't do this. I couldn't do this. It's impossible to do, but let's say you did.

And you live perfectly for those 20 years. And then five years ago, you decide to rob a bank.

You got away with a million dollars, didn't get caught. And then you will five more years till now living perfectly again, impossible.

Well, let's say it happened. So that means in 25 years, you broke one law. Now let's say that the police come knocking on your door and they arrest you.

And they say, you know what? We know you robbed that bank five years ago. We have video that we couldn't uncover before. We now can decrypt it.

We gotcha. Goes in front of the judge. Judge says, how do you plead these charges? You're clearly on this video. And so I'll lay all this out to the person.

I'll say, how would you plead in this situation? Would you plead innocent or guilty? And the person would, the person always says guilty.

I said, you're right. Now here's the problem. Are you going to be able to tell that judge? Yeah, I'm guilty, judge.

I did rob that bank. But you know what? I'm a pretty good person. I do all kinds of good things. I walk old ladies across the street.

And I treat people well. And I donate lots of money. And you know what? I haven't even robbed another bank since. Do you think that the judge is going to now let you off?

And guess what? They all know the answer. And so what we've done is we've established, if a judge on earth is still going to punish them according to their lawbreaking, guess what the perfect judge of the universe is going to do for the thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of laws they've broken in their lifetime.

And so that's how I walk through. I essentially gave you guys about an hour and a half presentation in like five minutes.

But this is essentially what I do on the street each and every time. And it gets to the point.

Now how apologetics works in is there are people who have apologetic questions. I seem to come very hard against evidential apologetics tonight.

Please hear me. I'm not against evidences. Evidences are fun. I enjoy them. I enjoy being able to tell people that, yeah, you know what?

The evidences that are out there actually support my worldview. The thing is, is what I'm not ever going to do with evidences is try to prove to them my worldview.

I prove them my worldview using God's word, using the method I just showed you. I use evidences to show, you know what?

My worldview is coherent. Yours isn't. And that's how I wrap it in. What if you have somebody who is a believer?

So you know what you don't have. If we have somebody who is a believer, but they're kind of,

I don't know, 15, 17 years ago, I was a believer, but I'd never heard about creation before.

You know, I don't think there was any question about my salvation, but I didn't really know anything about creation.

I never learned it. Would it be okay to present the evidences then?

I'm an evidence kind of person. Look, we all have a tendency to be an evidence type person.

And that's why I have this presentation today is to show why it doesn't work the way we think it does.

Now for a believer, yeah, use all the evidences we want because this is a person who has the correct worldview, at least at a base level.

God exists. His word is true. So we can use evidences to help them. Now, keep in mind something.

While they might have a Christian worldview at base level, they obviously still have some problems as to why they haven't adopted biblical creation.

And so we can give evidences. But I would also tell you that still the most important thing for us to do is to give them scripture.

And we've got a plethora of scripture that we can use. And I've used a ton of it.

Some of the courses that I helped teach with Mike Riddle in our basic training goes through biblical evidences on scripture passages that if you interpret either old age or old age and evolution, then the

Bible, not just in Genesis, breaks down, but many other areas of the Bible. One great one is

Mark 10 or Matthew 19. These are parallel passages on when Jesus is asked about remarriage.

He's asked about divorce and remarriage. And so what did Jesus respond?

His response was going back to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

And so he said that in the beginning, God made the male and female in Genesis 1.

And then in Genesis 2, he quotes directly out of and says that what God has joined together, let not man separate.

So Jesus is literally quoting directly out of Genesis 1 and 2. Do you believe that Jesus looks at the

Genesis account as literal history? Of course, right? That's a great one to use.

We can go to Exodus 20. Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments, one of the ways I set people up.

So as an apologist, this is what you learn to do, right? You ask questions early to kind of trap them later.

And so I do this with pastors especially. I'll say, hey, so do you believe in or do you know what

Exodus 20 is? And they'll say, usually they know, sometimes they don't, but it's the

Ten Commandments. And so then I'll ask them, do you believe the Ten Commandments are true? It sounds like a no -brainer.

And they always say, well, yeah, of course. To which then I go to Exodus 20 verses 8 through 11.

This is the fourth commandment. And in the fourth commandment, keep the Sabbath day holy. What does God say as his explanation for that?

He says, for I, the Lord God, made everything in six days, rested on the seventh. And he's modeling our work week off of his work of six days of creation and one day of rest.

Exodus 20, in his explanation of keeping the Sabbath day holy, resting on the Sabbath, would not mean what it means today to us, right?

We are technically called to work for six and rest and worship God on the seventh.

If we believe the old ages, well, then these would be millions of years, and we would still be in our six million years of work before our one million years of rest, right?

I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but this is one of the problems if we interpret Genesis in any way other than what it says, clearly.

So, again, without getting into too many of them, this is how I would primarily handle them, Robin, is through scriptures.

And then I would pepper it with lots of good evidences to show, yeah, my worldview, it's coherent.

The biblical worldview in terms of creation, it's coherent. Very good.

I've had a lot of people asking, so. Yeah. No, it's a great question.

I've been dominating the questions. Anybody else? Just so you know,

I'm used to open -air preaching for hours at a time, so this is nothing. I'm just getting warmed up, so feel free.

Fire away. You guys are a much nicer crowd than I normally see in downtown cities, so.

Oh, we were at Balboa Park this past summer, and there was just a – he was stealing from God and calling it his own.

Remember him, Stacy? The guy from the atheist booth?

We were at a loss, and I think that your idea is probably more solid to use with that kind of person.

Yeah, it works well for atheists. I remember him. Oh, yeah.

Wasn't that just terrible? He walked away because he was just not having any of it.

Yeah. As far as the evidences go, he had an answer for everything. Yeah, and I can promise you guys one thing, too.

He had an answer for everything. I agree with you. Let me tell you what happens on the streets. When you think you've stumped somebody by the evidences, you know what they do next?

They whip out their iPhone, and they find something. Or they walk away, and they whip out their iPhone, and they come back 10 minutes later and throw another one at you.

This is just what evidences do. They will always come up with something else. But I will say this, too, is remember, the gospel is the power of God and the salvation.

So even the most militant of atheists still know God exists. His moral law is written on their heart.

And so we can use the law and the gospel, and God can use that to break anybody. And it's what's beautiful about his word.

And plus, you guys planted seeds. I mean, I read something about, like, I don't remember the number, but it was a staggering number of times that somebody, on average, hears the gospel before they finally believe.

So every time that you present it, you're putting a notch on that. You're marking on the tally until it gets to that point.

Yeah, I mean, look, God uses those things, absolutely. And we don't know in his sovereignty how and when or anything.

But, yeah, our job is just to provide the information. It's just the order should be scripture first that we give them.

Yeah, that kind of goes along with the question I wanted to ask. Sometimes you give them the gospel.

You tell people that. But if you know somebody that has an interest in a certain area, but they don't really understand it, sometimes that evidence will be enough to make them think a little bit more about what you're telling them.

That's what I've seen from my own experience at times. Yeah, and so I don't disagree.

So, you know, we saw 1 Peter 3 .15. I didn't put up 2 Corinthians 10 verses 4 and 5 where we can demolish strongholds.

So I don't doubt that evidences can't help to pierce their veil.

Evidences certainly can help break down some strongholds, can show them that our worldview is the coherent one.

All I'm saying is what it does not do and cannot do is convince them of God's existence, convince them of the gospel.

All it does is it helps to fertile the soil in the meantime. And so, yeah, evidences do a nice job of that.

It's just, as I said earlier, we have to make sure that we view evidences in the right way and utilize them in the right way and understand the powers in God's word.

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. You're welcome. I think

James really. There we go. Okay. I have a question if I might interject here. So just so that I fully understand your point.

Did you say that if an atheist said they wanted to talk to you and they asked you to talk about purely science and not talk about the

Bible and their discussion with you and you said yes to that. You said that is not a valid way to discuss and bring someone towards God.

Nope, it's not because we don't see that in Scripture. Okay, but in, in john one one in the original

Greek it says Jesus is the logos and the Greek word for logos means logic reasoning understanding.

So if we can talk about logic and reasoning on things like science and since God is the author of all creation and of all true science.

His fingerprints are going to be on it. And if we look at the logic and reasoning, even if we're not inherently talking about the

Bible, we can help them lay out and understand all the logic and reasoning behind science and then all we have to do is point to the

Bible and show where it matches up. Right. Well, I would, I would disagree on your, your version of john one.

Every I've never heard that before every theologian that that is out there that talks about in the beginning was the word, the words with God and the word was

God is talking about the word. It's talking about Scripture. It's not talking about logic and reasoning. So, so I don't

I don't think that that premise is right that that you brought out. So, yeah, so I guess

I guess that's where it kind of ends is is the word is literally talking about Scripture, not logic and reasoning.

Now, within Jesus is logic and reasoning, but this passage is clearly about Scripture itself.

Now, having said all that, when it comes to sciences. Again, I'm not against science.

All I'm saying is that if we are looking at science in a proper view. Science doesn't convict the soul, and I have to then go back to Romans 116 it says the gospel is the power of God and salvation.

I don't see anything else in Scripture that gives anything that would contradict that or give an addition to I should say to that.

It says the gospel. And so if I leave my worldview, and I want to make sure that we understand this clearly.

I'm not saying that I can't have some fun trading some science barbs with somebody. I have no problems doing that.

What I'm saying is is that my presupposition my base has to be God's word and not science.

My method for them being converted has to be God's word, not my science knowledge.

But that would then suggest that science and the Bible are at odds. No, it doesn't.

No, not at all. What it's saying is that the highest authority is God's word not science. And because of God's word, that gives us the ability to do our knowledge in God's word in terms of us being made in His image.

Him giving us dominion over creation and that creation we have dominion over to learn about and to control, to subdue.

He has established scientific laws. He has established our ability to do science and learn about the creation in order to do just that to subdue creation.

And so I don't see these at odds whatsoever. What I'm saying is that there's a proper order to it.

And the order foundationally has to be God's word and not science. And here's the thing

I would throw back at you. If you think that science is at the same level as scripture or higher in scripture, give me science that proves the

Bible. And you can't do that. Nobody can. Right. Science can't prove the

Bible. It's the reverse is what happens because of because of God's word.

Therefore, we can do science, good science at that point. Does that make sense?

I'm not quite because when we believe that God is the author of all creation, his fingerprints prints would clearly be on all creation.

Right. Absolutely. It's what Romans says. If we're doing true science, which is by nature, exegetical rather than isogetic, we're learning from what we see, not taking what we see to fit what we want to believe.

Then it should lead us to the same conclusions that the Bible would.

So you're putting science on the same level as scripture. Now, I'm not putting it on the same level as scripture.

I'm saying it supports scripture. I'm saying everything that scripture says can also be proved by science because they have the same creator.

One of the biggest things that evolutionists point to is is that so many different creatures have similar traits, like primates all have the same number of digits on their finger.

They have similar bone structure. All animals, all mammals have similar bone structure in their arms.

They'll point to that and say that's because of a common ancestor. But as creationists, we say no, that's because of a common creator.

The same person made that same, all these creatures. He found one thing that worked and he kept going with it.

So if we can say and we can, we understand that God is the one who made science. God's the one who wrote the

Bible. They should both have the same truths within them. And since they already believe in science, by showing them that the

Bible aligns with science in contradiction to what they believe, because most atheists believe that the science and the

Bible are in direct contradiction. But if we can show you, if we can show them that that thought is false and that science and the

Bible are not at odds, and in fact they agree, then that's a great way to change hearts and minds towards believing in creationism.

So I would like you to prove to me scientifically that Jesus is the creator of everything.

Prove to, that's not what I said I was trying to do. No, I know, but this is what I'm trying to establish is, see,

I'm not doubting the fact that science has a role. I'm not doubting that science, that it's not effective in helping to break down strongholds.

Merely what I'm saying here is that if we use science as our foundation to try to convert somebody, the

Bible says that that's not what happens. The Bible says it's the gospel, it's the power of God and salvation.

It's the one that can do it. I didn't say use science as the foundation. I said use science as the bridge to get them towards it.

So we can step out onto the bridge of science to get them to understand where we're coming from and then draw them towards our side so they can see where the

Bible and science meet. So let me ask you this then. So maybe I'm understanding you a little bit better now.

As a clarifier, now as I was talking earlier, I have no problems using science if we're standing on our foundation.

So if we have not left the Bible aside, if we are still

Bible foundation, the Bible's our starting point, the Bible is what we continue to use and we pepper science through that, there's no issue with that.

We have every ability and I think we have a responsibility to actually do that. We should give people some science when it's in that framework.

When I'm talking about getting off of the chair and getting into what's supposed neutral ground, which again, every presuppositionalist will tell you there's no such thing as neutral ground for all the reasons

I laid out, if you're saying, yeah, I'm going to forget about God and the

Bible for a moment and we're going to talk just science here, we have a problem.

Because again, what are we accomplishing with science alone? The fact that we might stumble a few times before they walk away?

The fact that we might have a gotcha moment? And ultimately, even in that scenario, we still have a major assumption.

You're assuming that that unbeliever is looking at your evidences the exact way you are, which they're not.