Does God Exist?

Introduction and Conference Recap

What is up, guys? My name is KJ, and this is Y Theology. So glad to be back. And I also have Jeremiah with me today. What's going on, man?

What up, my peoples?

We just did a conference Saturday, and Jeremiah is one of the speakers at my church. Can you tell them how it went, man, what you spoke about?

KJ, I had a blast. I was able to speak on, can we trust the Bible? The answer is yes. And I got to teach on the doctrine of the Trinity. That's one of my favorite things to talk about because that is the God that we worship and adore, and the Scripture does an amazing job telling us how we can understand the Trinity better and present that and share that with other people.

I also got to be a part of a question and answer panel. That was a blast. It was interesting to see people's different perspective on critical race theory, apologetics, and theology. So I want to encourage people to go listen to that.

That's awesome. And then just one more time, just to make sure people maybe they forgot something. What church do you attend?

Yes. So I attend 12 Five Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and I serve as a pastor there with Nathan Hargraves. So look us up. We'd love to have people come visit, look at our content, and we're looking to partner with churches like Creston at Christ the Redeemer and where KJ, you go as well.

Definitely, definitely. And you actually got done preaching to the Beatitudes. How was that, man?

So that was the first time I ever preached through a series, eight weeks in a row. And that was such a blessing. And I got a taste of what that type of study looks like. And I loved it. And I also love that I'm done.

So I can breathe now.

Living more free time, huh?

Which one of the Beatitudes would you say has kind of been like most impactful in your life?

Man, that's a great question. Martin Lloyd-Jones, somebody that studied heavily his work in this, he talks about how you have to understand the Beatitudes as a whole. So what was good about that was each one that I was teaching on, I also had to talk about the other ones as well.

But if I really had to key in on one that was impactful to me, I would say, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. I like that one because it challenges us not to adopt the world's definition of a peacemaker.

A biblical peacemaker is someone that has peace with God vertically, and also shares that gospel of peace, that message of peace with others. So that means talking about the hard truths, how we're sinners, we need to be restored with God by repentance and faith in the Son, Jesus Christ.

So that to me was one of the most challenging yet most rewarding truths in that series.

That's awesome, man. Now, you also got another discussion or debate coming up.

Soon about baptism, right? Oh my goodness, KJ, I am pumped about this. February 11th in Jonesboro, I'm going to be in a debate with the Church of Christ. It's going to be the Great Water Baptism Debate.

And we kind of have a lengthy proposition that the guy, my interlocutor, really wanted. And I wanted to be as charitable and easy going as possible. So we'll get more information about that, but that'll be February 11th.

It'll probably start around 6 p .m. to 7 p .m. on a Friday evening. So man, please come be a part of that. We will have it recorded. And Marlon from The Gospel Truth will also be flying him in from California.

And he's going to be moderating it, filming it. So we're just going to have a blast.

I bet that's going to be fun. Yeah. So since we're baptized, we can't speak to anybody.

Hey, nope. You got to go all the way in. Church of Christ would agree with that, but they see it as being salvific. And we're saying no way. Sola Fide, faith alone is what justifies us before God. Water baptism, super important.

That comes afterwards. Definitely, definitely. I do have a couple of friends that are part of Presbyterian, so I have to mention that.

Hey, we love our Presby brothers. They're still reforming, but we love them.

They're not there all the way. No, man, I've been doing a little reading, man. I still love eschatology, it's my favorite subjects. And I'm borderline, I'm almost going to drop pre-meal, man. I'm leaning more towards army than that.

I'm like almost there, but I always get to the book of Revelation, I'd be like, I just can't drop it. But I tell my friend, if the book of Revelation wasn't written, I would hold to army right now. But I just don't know, man.

Hey, I'm with you in that boat. I hold the right to change my mind at any given point in time. And as I've told you in the past, I understand pre-meal the best, but I love listening to our brother Zach Davis explain the post-millennial perspective.

There's some things that are just hard for me to grasp, but that doesn't mean that he's not making a good logical case. And Preston does a great job explaining the all meal. So I hold the right to continue to be a learner and learn all these perspectives.

And I bet you one day KJ will land somewhere and it'll.

Be different than where we're at now. Definitely, definitely. I was looking at some cases for army and I got some strong cases, man. Like I said, apart from the girl that makes the most sense when I get to a relation, I just be like, man, now we had a good topic today, man, for the people.

I thought this would be a good subject. The topic is how can God be revealed or known? And so the first question we can kind of dive into is like, does God exist? So when answering the question, how can God be known by people?

We have to first answer the question, does he exist? How would you kind of respond to that?

God Is Known Through Creation, Incarnation, and Scripture

Yeah. So as I was thinking through this, does God exist? We would obviously say yes. And it kind of relates to that other question you're talking about. And how can he be known? Well, we have to depend on God to define who he is and how he's revealed himself.

So there's so many different ways that you can go about this, but God must exist for a lot of arguments that we're going to get into later. And he's the necessary precondition for our experience as human beings.

So yes, he exists and he can be known based on nature. Nature declares the handiwork of God. So when we talk about nature, we're talking about this external world apart from our own minds. All of the wonderful design and beauty of creation points directly to the hand of God himself.

So he can be known in some sense that way. I think historically, and maybe most importantly, we can know God through Jesus Christ taking on flesh and dwelling among us. So we can know God through the incarnation.

And thirdly, I would say God is known especially through his word, both how he has spoken in time and how that spoken word was preserved through the written word and providentially preserved so we can know God in his written word today.

So all of those things are important, KJ. Yes, God exists. We know this intuitively by observing creation and we know this internally in our hearts. There's a big difference between us and the animals and these other objects that aren't personal.

We can look past the observable world and know that this points to a greater plane of existence, if you will. But you want to chime in on that?

Yeah. Chapter 169 about this confession of faith, paragraph one about the scripture, so the holy scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible center of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

And then it says, however, these demonstrations are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and his will that is necessary for salvation. Therefore, the Lord was pleased at different times in various ways to reveal himself and declare his will to the church.

So you see how they're kind of saying that we see in the word how the word can reveal God, but it also takes a special revelation from God himself to also reveal him to us directly.

So I like that as well. Yes, I love that as well. I love a lot of these historic Orthodox creeds. It's funny because K .J., what you and I are talking about is nothing new under the sun. The saints before us have really thought through these things well.

They're open to critique and refinements, but a lot of times we're going to be aligning with brothers and sisters that have lived before us. We're standing on the shoulders of giants. So I want to get your thought on this real quick.

When you ask the question, how can this God be known by his creatures? I've almost thought, okay, let's maybe talk about two categories. God can be known intellectually through the external world and unbelieving man can still know facts about God based on his heart, which is a part of that creation.

But what the 1689, I think is really highlighting rightly so is God can also be relationally known. Now that's different than just this pure intellectualism. So we have to go to God's word to know him relationally, right?

And so one good verse that really speaks to this well, K .J., is John 17, verse three. Jesus says, and this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

So this word know entails more than just knowing facts, but it's knowing relationally. And so we know God relationally through the only savior Jesus Christ, who is the embodiment of truth, right? And God incarnate in the flesh.

And kind of on the flip side, God relationally knows his own. Second Timothy 2, 19 says, but God's firm foundation stands bearing the seal. The Lord knows those who are his and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.

I love that K .J., because we, as God's sheep, we know the voice of the shepherd, right? So when we hear the word declared from the scripture, that speaks to believers' hearts and we know him in that way.

And unbelievers are without excuse and have a knowledge of God, but they know facts because of creation, because of their heart understands that they are morally accountable to this law giver. But as we're going to get into, they're suppressing.

Those intellectual facts. Definitely, definitely. It's kind of like give the description what you just said, like if nobody ever met me or you and they say, Hey, can I see your driver's license? They will get to see facts about us.

For example, how tall we are, you know, that's our address, you know, all these things like the weight, but like, those are just facts. They wouldn't know like my mother's name, my father's name, my wife's name.

They wouldn't know me personally. That's it reveals that there's a God, but it doesn't make that personal relationship.

It's only comes from like the word and Jesus himself. So yeah, somebody would look at my driver's license. They'd look at me and be like, I don't know if this, this is you, you got this massive beard now.

And you're a baby face assassin years ago. Yeah. My job,.

First of yours, man, I use that as a test. But God changed me. So that's good. That was right there. Now, to figure that out, there's a kind of goal. You guys know, I'm sure her listening, what apologetics kind of define it as to kind of give an account of the fate that we hold to, or some people say, go on an offensive or the defense of defending the face.

That's kind of like three different perspectives on apologetics. There's classical evidentialist and presuppositional, but basically the we're arguing, you know, basically defending the faith. And so some common arguments today and apologetics, we know it's kind of like five main arguments today that you see many classical or evidentialist use the ontological argument, cosmological argument, theological argument, moral argument, and the resurrection of Jesus.

And so me and Jamar kind of knock one of these out one by one together. And so Jamar man, what's the ontological argument? And then you have any feedback on apologetics for somebody.

That has no idea what we're talking about. Yeah. And I'll, I'll start with that second one. First apologetics, like you said, is giving a defense for the faith and that defense also quickly turns to be offensive as well, because as we are sanctifying the Lord in our hearts, always being ready to give a defense for the hope that lies within us with gentleness and respect.

Since we're sanctifying the Lord in our hearts, that it's appealing to the whole word of Christ, the whole counsel of God, we're going back to all of what Christ has taught us. So yeah, we are equipped to tell people, Hey, you have questions.

We'd love to share with you God's word who knows all things and has given us truth. But that quickly becomes contending for the faith, putting on the whole body armor of God and destroying any arguments that tear down or that, that try to attack the knowledge of God.

So we are actually going at war with that, but that is a spiritual warfare. Um, so simply, uh, apologetics, I think is just walking closely with our Lord and being obedient to what he's commanded us. So, um, the, the Christian apologetic is just founding everything upon the word of God in every facet of life, since we're always desiring to honor Christ in our hearts.

So that's kind of like you said, there's, there's a lot of different attempts to demonstrate that, uh, to contend for the faith. And I have a lot of respect for all the views of apologetics. And then obviously just like eschatology, we, we end up landing in one, right?

So when people disagree to me, this, these are in-house disagreements that sharpen one another. And so we're kind of getting into, um, Aquinas is five ways, the, these five different arguments that, um, a Christian theologian and the history kind of first coined kind of, uh, was able to write these out in a very concise way.

And I love these for many reasons. And then we're going to also talk KJ about some of the pitfalls with these as well, but we can definitely acknowledge the things that we really appreciate about it. So number one, when we go to the ontological argument, I want to say this was first coin.

Now, like I said, Aquinas comes, you know, church history and kind of articulates this, um, and kind of his flavor, but I want to say Anselm of Canterbury was one of the first ones to really have this ontological argument about the greatest conceivable being.

And since existing is greater than non-existing, he was trying, I think he was making a presuppositional argument, but in a very proto form is basically saying the greatest way that human beings can conceive of reality rests upon an ultimate, um, an ultimate being of existence.

So that's kind of one of my notes. And we, and I didn't write out all the syllogisms for these arguments, but just thought we could talk about them. The ontological argument says that God is a necessary, absolute being for our temporal existence, our contingent being.

And I think this is a very good point to make. When you look at the world that we live in, we see how our life has beginning and end all this rests on an eternal being, right? Otherwise you would have to try to make the case that our existence is eternal.

And that's absurd on its face. Most, most philosophers and theologians never want to go down that route because it just doesn't seem to correspond with our reality, right? Things are breaking down over time.

Like I said, we see things with beginning and end. So something must be more foundational than that in order for our existence to even hold it. Our existence is temporal. So something must exist outside that that's not temporal, that is eternal.

So I think the first argument is kind of pointing to God being a necessary being.

Of existence. Yeah. And a quote from the Canterbury kind of describing this argument, he states that, um, the idea of an absolute perfect being in existence is an attribute of perfection and that therefore absolutely perfect being must exist.

It's kind of kind of what you were saying as well. So just kind of quoting him.

Are you reading that from GotQuestions by chance? I am using a Lewis Burkoff system at theology book. Okay. I was going to, I was going to do a quick plug for GotQuestions. Um, I don't agree with all the articles that come from this ministry, but man, it is a wonderful ministry to kind of give you a fly over of so many biblical topics, uh, philosophical arguments, um, things within, um, Christendom, um, just to kind of get different sides of an issue.

So I, the, what you're reading is way more in depth, but definitely got questions. You could quickly do a search on all these different arguments that are going to be looking at,.

And they do a good fly over version. Definitely, definitely. Now, do you want to get into the pitfalls after we go through all of them? You wouldn't. Like, we might can do a little bit.

Along the way, but I'll go ahead and sprinkle one of those in there. Um, the ontological argument at face value seems to make sense, but it doesn't give you certainty and it doesn't, um, distinguish Christianity from all the other religions of the world.

So, so much more can be said on these arguments. And I like what, um, R .C. Sproul said one time, I think he was actually in a debate with Greg Bonson. Now, R .C. Sproul was a classical apologist and I actually have, um, his book that he wrote with, um, John Gershner, uh, classical apologetics.

And he actually did a critique of presuppositional apologetics, but he has said one thing that I thought is good, that presuppologists need to keep in mind. These arguments, um, are, that doesn't, doesn't represent the triune God of scripture of Christianity, but it doesn't, um, it doesn't misrepresent anyway.

So it's at least these arguments are at least true, but yes, you can go a lot more, um, in depth. So I don't want to throw out these arguments as being bad. Um, but yeah, they do have their pitfalls and so much more needs to be said.

And so as long as the classical apologists recognize that there's, uh, the God of scripture is not less than these, but is more than these. And I think that's more closer to what R .C. said. Um, so as long as people of these different apologetic camps can acknowledge that this doesn't give you the whole enchilada, if you will.

Um, I'm okay with it, but, but yeah, that's probably one of my biggest critiques upfront is it doesn't give us certainty. I do the, I do think that the triune God of, of Christianity of, of scripture does give a certainty in many things.

And, um, I want to quickly show the uniqueness of Christianity rather than making arguments that Islam can,.

Can affirm as well. So that's, yeah, I was going to get into that. Like what you just said, talking about how, like, um, that argument, it doesn't necessarily important as to like theism or div, like we wouldn't know like which guy we're talking about when we're using these arguments.

So it's kind of like, give us a broad idea that yes, there's a chance that there is a God out there, but they didn't tell you like which God, I guess, you know, you should believe in or points, it just points to basically theism in a sense.

So I like what you said right there.

I'd say one more thing too, and I'm, and we'll, we maybe can continue to hash these out, but the God of Christianity, the true God tells us that he's not struggling to reveal himself to man. It's not like a probabilistic thing.

And inherently all of these arguments are probabilistic. The God of truth is certain. So that's where all these, uh, all of these arguments fall short. And that's why I think precept at the end of the day captures, um, what we're going for.

We're going for certainty. And we're actually trying to point out the, the folly of all of these, um, other presuppositions that are built on unbelieving thought, but we'll get more into.

That. Definitely. Now the next one, uh, the next argument is a cosmological argument, and I'm pretty sure this is like, um, the main argument that many classical apologetics use. And I'm sure many Christians use this argument, but, um, what would you say this is?

The Ontological, Cosmological, Teleological, Moral, and Resurrection Arguments

Yeah. So I think it's similar to the ontological argument, but like you said, Anselm was talking about perfect being and what all that meant. So, um, cosmological argument is saying, look at the world around us, the cosmos, what do we observe?

Well, we observe so many things like cause and effect. So this world is breaking down according to the second law of thermodynamics. And so if we follow this chain of reasoning, this cause and effect, we're going to get back to this unmoved mover, because what's kind of hidden in all these arguments, especially when we look at Thomas Aquinas, he is saying you can't have an infinite regress of reasoning, right?

Whether that be designed, like we're going to be getting into or cause and effect, you have to ultimately have an unmoved mover. And so I think the cosmological argument is saying, look at the cause and effect.

If you follow this back, you're going to get to this ultimate cause who is uncaused. And, you know, um, the God of Christianity, the triune God, absolutely, you know, fits this criteria, right? So I don't, I don't knock it completely, but my faith doesn't hang on the cosmological argument at first must be grounded in scripture, which does affirm that he, he spoke the world into existence, right?

Definitely, definitely. Just to look, you said it, but just to quote it again, every existing thing in the world must have an adequate cause. And if this is so the universe must also have an adequate cause.

Now, I mean, immediately already, if I was an unbeliever, like we can automatically kind of pitfall this already by saying, well, does God have a cause statement? And so that's why I like that when we get into precept a little bit later, I would be kind of ground that thought more in depth, but I just touched on that though real.

Quick. Yeah. So it's all on how you structure the syllogism because you got to think unbelievers are going to unbelieve, right? So they're not going to be super charitable when we're talking about a necessary being, because we're really getting at an uncreated being now in their minds, they only have a couple of options.

They're going to either affirm that that's coherent or they're going to really adopt this infinite regression of contingencies. And that's philosophically absurd, but for the Christian, that's not trying to stand on scripture, but somehow neutral ground.

Well, I think that's a valid critique. Well, who, who caused the, the creator, right? Um, as Christians were over here saying we have valid reasons to say, no, no, no, you don't understand the argument.

He is the, um, he is the uncreated created the unmoved mover, if you will. So I appreciate the philosophical train of thought, but KJ, I'm just so wanting to get back to scripture to ground is something objective, right?

Trying to get outside of, um, Oh goodness. I can say so many things, but, um, but anyway,.

I'll just leave it there. You're okay, man. Now the next one is a theological argument. Now this is kind of similar to the cosmological argument, but the use of the thought is that the world everywhere reveals intelligence, border, harmony, and purpose.

And that's implies the existence of intelligent and personal being. I can get the words out, but yeah, knock it out right there.

Yeah. I'm writing down a name. I want to recommend a book to your audience. Steven Meyer I think is his name. He wrote a book called the signature of the cell X. I mean, I I've read excerpts of it's really good.

It talks about how you see design in, um, the human body and DNA. And basically when you see design, it points to a designer. That's what we observe in this world. When you look at a painting, it speaks to the create or the, the, the painter, right?

So when you, when you see a building, it points to the builder that's intuitive, right? Um, so the scripture tells us this to me, it's super coherent, but when we look at all of creation, it presupposes a creator, right?

So this world has been so finely tuned for life. Um, I think this poses huge problems to the unbeliever that we know is actively suppressing the truth. Um, but they're self-deceived in many ways. A lot of them have seared their conscience, right?

So, um, this argument just points out to the wonderful design and creation that points right back to the handiwork of God. So that's, like you said, it's real similar to cosmological and ontological, um, arguments.

Um, but I, this might be one of my favorites because it's so easy to point out to people that, Hey, this world has been, um, fine tuned crafted for us. And, and, uh, like I said, it's easy to ground that in scripture.

Um, but even to somebody that's not well.

Equipped with that, that's, you can't overlook that fact. Definitely. Definitely. It's definitely helpful too, though, that like, there is a purpose in life too. Yeah. Telling people that there's a purpose and that there may be a purpose.

So I do like that argument. Now, um, the next two pretty good ones. I'm pretty sure me and you both like the moral argument. We use that in our evangelism with atheists or whatnot, but on the moral argument, we can kind of start off that there's a standard of righteous and evil, and that has to be a standard outside of the human beings.

Because if it was just up to humans, then it's all subjective base. It's more opinion-based. Well, I think rape is wrong because this is what the culture says, but if we're in another culture that has a dictator that thinks rape is okay, then who are we to say that's right or wrong?

If there's no standard outside of humans, who would you say Jeremiah? Well, you already did a.

Fantastic job defining that. Um, I think we can see the moral bankruptcy and unbelieving thought because, you know, as Christians, we, we're sharing the faith, the faith, and a lot of atheists will say, well, Hey, don't impose your beliefs on me.

And it's like, okay, well, let's, let's talk about that. Um, because do you think rape is wrong? Murder is wrong. They would say, yes. And so if we ask, if you see somebody getting harmed, you know, and some of those things, are you going to interact and try to prevent someone's belief system, their own morality, and try to stop them and say, Hey, that's somehow wrong.

Well, the atheist, this point is in, um, is in a corner because absolutely they're going to try to, um, stop somebody from harming another person, person, right. But that's because they're an image bearer of God, not because of their own bankrupt and moral system.

And so when we're talking about morality, like you rightly said, um, we're talking about right and wrong. And we're talking about a standard of ought, how ought we to treat one another? How ought we to live in this, in this life?

What's our purpose? It kind of goes back to the other argument. So morality must reflect a person's worldview. It's easy for Christian to say, God gets to determine morality, right? We are image bearers of him.

We reflect his nature. We are obedient to the commands that he's given us. So I would argue that, that we have a consistent worldview because it's the necessary one. Uh, but yeah, unbelieving thought, um, they're constantly living in a world of cognitive dissonance, right?

Um, they're living in opposition to how they think and they think differently than how they actually live. And so we just simply want to demonstrate that lovingly, but we, we want to demonstrate how they are image bearers of God.

That's why they, um, want to love their neighbor rather than eat their neighbor. Right. And we have a legitimate complaint when somebody, um, wants to harm somebody, we can go back to the standard of.

God's revelation. Yeah. I like that too. So like in a presupposition apologetics, the method of moral argument, it makes perfect sense if it's consistent with scripture and the Christian worldview. But if I was not presenting the moral argument within the Christian worldview, again, it points to, okay, well, what guide does the standard come from?

If we're not grounded, this standard comes from the trinity of God, which how you got a man.

This is a book I'd like to recommend to your audience, our audience at this point, right? Um, the book called the five views of apologetics. Um, I can't see from my library of the author, but it's, it's awesome because you get the five different views of politics.

Uh, three of them are very similar, but they get to make a case against each other. And it's just like this wonderful in-house debate. And what's neat because William Lane Craig represents the classical apologists, uh, view.

And I love William Lane Craig for so many things. Uh, but what's interesting is, you know, he's very, uh, opposes the presuppositional method, but a lot of times when it comes to the moral argument, he sounds very presuppositional because if a, if an atheist says, I don't like the Christian's standard of morality, well, William Lane Craig Riley is saying, okay, you have to have a standard of morality in order to have a moral complaint against the Christian God.

So they demonstrate how you have to actually borrow from the Christian God in order to have a complaint against him. And I'm just like, Hey, that's wonderful. Just apply that to your epistemology and you're good.

So I just wanted to say that.

Definitely, definitely, man. Um, now those are the four main arguments that many classical apologetics use and many Christians that they use. And now many, um, evidentialists, they love the argument of the resurrection, which is Paul says in Corinthians that, uh, I think it's Corinthians that, uh, if Christ is not risen from the dead and our faith is in vain.

So by no means are me and Jeremiah not saying that Christ's resurrection is not important, but the question is, does Christ's resurrection prove that God exists to an unbeliever? If me and you were sitting down with atheists, he's like, man, Jeremiah and KJ, I want to follow God, but I'm just not sure if Jesus rose from the dead.

It means your mind went through like all throughout history, kind of proven that this is why Jesus rose from dead. This is the proof. This is the proof. All these dots point each other with that brings salvation.

Which kind of thoughts about.

That? Yeah. Um, I'm glad, I'm glad you set that up like that. Um, it's interesting because, you know, you and I know if we're talking to an unbeliever and they're just like, I'm just not sure, you know, if Jesus actually rose from the dead, well, there's so many other problems going on, um, with their suppressing the truth of God's existence in their love for sin.

Because I would firstly say the resurrection is a guarantee because God predicted that it would happen and it, and it did happen. He's revealed that to be so, but that doesn't mean that we can't show unbelievers the evidences.

KJ, you and I know that proof doesn't always amount to persuasion, right? So we never want to try to appeal to this neutral ground that if we just give them enough evidence, then that'll be the ticket to persuade them.

No, I mean, we can share with them evidences and we can argue that persuasively, but in the core of that, and really this fifth argument is we do need to get to how the resurrection is the key to the gospel message itself for unbelievers to have their sin forgiven.

So as, as a presuppositional apologist, we love evidences for the resurrection of Jesus. And I was honored to be able to talk a little bit about this in the conference just a couple of days ago, because, uh, the resurrection of Jesus, we can look at the textual manuscript, uh, evidences of the new Testament.

And we see that these are very reliable eyewitness testimonies that have been preserved. In fact, the, the new Testament is the most well attested historical document in all of history. I would say it even is more reliable than the old Testament, which to me, I mean, is also, uh, historically reliable.

Um, you have all these, uh, prophecies that were made hundreds and hundreds of years before even the life of Jesus and the new Testament fulfills that. And so, yeah, we can talk about how, when you look at all these manuscript copies of manuscripts, they all point back to the first century.

They all point to the eyewitnesses of the apostles or people close to the apostles. And there's no reasonable way that these apostles were going to lie for something that they knew to be false. But like I said, those are all only probabilistic arguments.

Um, but we have, we have certainty in God's powerful word. I would say, why did, how can we know that Jesus resurrected? Well, the word of God told us that he was going to, and that he did. Um, but, uh, this kind of distinguishes between the evidentialist and the classicalist, uh, because the classicalist is going to argue two points.

They're going to argue, number one, for God's existence in kind of the Aquinas' five ways model. Like we've talked about some of those, and then they're going to make a historical argument from history for the resurrection of Jesus, and then link those two together.

So they have a two-step approach. The evidentialist just says, we have arguments for Jesus' resurrection, and it's only one step. That in of itself is an argument for God's existence. So I don't knock those, but we're arguing for certainty, not just probabilistic arguments from a neutral playing field.

So maybe that was a shotgun of thoughts, KJ.

Now, definitely too. Like if we, for example, like Jeremiah said, he is a pastor of this church. I'm sure if a student came up to Jeremiah and asked, Hey, how do we know that Jesus rose from the dead?

I'm sure Jeremiah would not mind going through history and kind of showing that, but the case is that that in and of itself has improved salvation. And I have a good scripture too, that I just thought about.

You guys remember this, the rich man and Lazarus? The rich man obviously went to hell and while he was in hell, he says, this is Luke 16 verse 27. Then he said, I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.