Does God Exist?

The Apologetic Dog

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What is up guys? My name is KJ and this is Why Theology. So glad to be back. And I also have

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Jeremiah with me today. What's going on, man? What up my peoples? We just did a conference

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Saturday and Jeremiah is one of the speakers of my church. Can you tell them how it went, man? What you spoke about?

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Hey, 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

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Trinity. That's one of my favorite things to talk about because that is the God that we worship and adore.

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And the scripture does an amazing job telling us how we can understand the

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Trinity better and present that and share that with other people. I also got to be a part of a question answer panel.

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That was a blast. It was interesting to see people's different perspective on critical race theory, apologetics, and theology.

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So I want to encourage people to go listen to that. That's awesome. And then just one more time.

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I'm sure people maybe they forgot something. What church do you attend? Yes. So I attend 12 -5 church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and I serve as a pastor there with Nathan Hargraves.

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So look us up. We'd love to have people come visit, look at our content.

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And we're looking to partner with churches like Creston at Christ the Redeemer and where KJ, you go as well.

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

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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.

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And I loved it. And I also love that I'm done. So I can breathe now.

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Living the free time, huh? Which one of the Beatitudes would you say has kind of been like most impactful in your life?

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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

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Beatitudes as a whole. So what was good about that was each one that I was teaching on,

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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,

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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.

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A biblical peacemaker is someone that has peace with God vertically, and also shares that gospel of peace, that message of peace with others.

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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

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

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That's awesome, man. And now you also got another discussion or debate coming up soon about baptism, right?

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Oh my goodness, KJ, I am pumped about this. February 11th in Jonesboro, we are going to be,

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I'm going to be in a debate with the Church of Christ. It's going to be the Great Water Baptism Debate.

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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.

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So we'll get more information about that, but that'll be February 11th. It'll probably start around 6

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PM to 7 PM on a Friday evening. So man, please come be a part of that.

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We will have it recorded and Marlon from the Gospel Truth will also be, we'll be flying him in from California and he's going to be moderating it, filming it.

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So we're just going to have a blast. I bet that's going to be fun. Yeah. And so since we're baptized, we can't speak to anybody.

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Hey, no, you got to go all the way in. Church of Christ would agree with that, but they see it as being salvific.

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And we're saying no way. Sola fide, faith alone is what justifies us before God.

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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.

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

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They're not there all the way. No, man. I've been doing a little reading, man.

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You know, I still love eschatology is my favorite subjects and like I'm borderline. I'm almost going to drop pre -meal, man.

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I'm leaning more towards army and I'm like almost there, but I always get to the book of revelation. I'd be like, I just can't drop it.

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But like I told my friend, if the book of revelation wasn't written, I would hold to army right now. But I just don't know, man.

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Hey, I'm with you in that boat. Like I hold the right to change my mind at any given point in time.

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And as I've told you in the past, I understand pre -meal the best, but I love listening to our brother

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Zach Davis explain the post -millennial perspectives. There's some things that I just, it's hard for me to grasp, but that doesn't mean that he's not making a good logical case.

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And Creston does a great job explaining the all meal. So I hold the right to continue to be a learner and learn all these perspectives.

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And I bet you one day, KJ, we'll land somewhere and it'll be different than where we're at now.

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Definitely, definitely. The, I was looking at some cases for army and I got some strong cases, man. Like I said, apart from the revelation, it makes the most sense when

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I get the revelation, I just be like, man. Now we had a good topic today, man, for the people,

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I thought this would be a good subject. The topic is how can God be revealed or known?

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And so the first question we can kind of dive into is like, does God exist? So when answering the question, how can

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God be known by people? We have to first answer the question, does he exist? How would you kind of respond to that?

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Yeah. So as I was thinking through this, does God exist? We would obviously say yes.

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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.

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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.

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And he's the necessary precondition for our experience as human beings.

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So yes, he exists and he can be known based on nature.

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Nature declares the handiwork of God. So when we talk about nature, we're talking about this external world apart from our own minds.

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All of the wonderful design and beauty of creation points directly to the hand of God himself.

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So he can be known in some sense that way. I think historically and maybe most importantly, we can know

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God through Jesus Christ taking on flesh and dwelling among us. So we can know

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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

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God in his written word today. So all of those things are important,

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KJ. Yes, God exists. We know this intuitively by observing creation and we know this internally in our hearts.

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There's a big difference between us and the animals and these other objects that aren't personal.

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We can look past the observable world and know that this points to a greater plane of existence, if you will.

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But you want to chime in on that? Yeah. Chapter 169 about this confession of faith, paragraph one about the scripture.

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So the holy scriptures are the only sufficient, certain, and infallible center of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

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And then it says, however, these demonstrations are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and his will that is necessary for salvation.

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Therefore, the Lord is pleased at different times in various ways to reveal himself and declare his will to the church.

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So you see how like they're kind of saying that we see in the word how like the word can reveal

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God, but it also takes a special revelation from God himself to also reveal him to us directly.

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So I like that as well. Yes, I love that as well. I love a lot of these historic

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Orthodox creeds. It's funny because, KJ, what you and I are talking about is nothing new under the sun.

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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.

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We're standing on the shoulders of giants. So I want to get your thought on this real quick. When you asked the question, how can this

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God be known by his creatures? I've almost thought, okay, let's maybe talk about two categories.

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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.

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But what the 1689, I think is really highlighting rightly so, is God can also be relationally known.

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Now that's different than just this pure intellectualism. So we have to go to God's word to know him relationally, right?

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And so one good verse that really speaks to this well, KJ, is John 17, verse three, Jesus says, and this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true

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God in Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. So this word no entails more than just knowing facts, but it's knowing relationally.

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And so we know God relationally through the only savior, Jesus Christ, who is the embodiment of truth, right?

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And God incarnate in the flesh. And kind of on the flip side, God relationally knows his own.

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Second Timothy 2, 19 says, but God's firm foundation stands bearing the seal.

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The Lord knows those who are his and let everyone who names the name of the

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Lord depart from iniquity. I love that KJ, because we, as God's sheep, we know the voice of the shepherd, right?

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So when we hear the word declared from the that, that speaks to believers hearts, and we know him in that way.

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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.

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But as we're going to get into, they're suppressing those intellectual facts. Definitely, definitely.

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It's kind of like, give the description what you just said, like, if nobody ever met me or you, and they say, can

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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.

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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 kind of what you're getting at that like creation, it reveals that there's a

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God, but it doesn't make that personal relationship. That's only comes from like the word and Jesus himself.

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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.

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Yeah. My driver's license is worse than yours, man. I used that as a testimony. But God changed me.

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So that's good. That was right there. Now, um, to piggyback off this kind of goal, you guys know,

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I'm sure her listening, what apologetic to kind of define it as to kind of give an account of the faith that we hold to, or some people say, go on an offensive or the defense of defending the faith.

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Um, there's kind of like three different, um, perspectives on apologetics. There's classical evidentialist and presuppositional, but basically the we're arguing, you know, basically defending the faith.

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And so some common, uh, arguments today and apologetics, we know it's kind of like five main arguments today that you see many classical or evidentialist use, um, the ontological argument, cosmological argument, theological argument, moral argument in the resurrection of Jesus.

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And so me and Jermiah kind of knock one of these out one by one together. And so Jermiah man, what's the ontological argument.

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Um, and then you have any feedback on apologetics, but somebody has no idea what we're talking about. Yeah. And I'll, I'll start with that.

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Um, second one, first, uh, apologetics, like you said, is giving a defense for the faith.

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And that defense also quickly turns to be offensive as well, because as we are sanctifying the

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Lord in our hearts, always being ready to give a defense for the hope that lies within us with gentleness and respect.

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Um, since we're sanctifying the Lord in our hearts, that it's appealing to the whole word of Christ, the whole council of God, we're going back to all of what

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Christ has taught us. So yeah, we are equipped to tell people, Hey, you have questions we'd love to share with you

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

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So we are actually going at war with that, but that is a spiritual warfare. Um, so simply, uh, apologetics,

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I think is just walking closely with our Lord and being obedient to what he's commanded us.

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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

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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.

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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?

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So when people disagree to me, this, these are in -house disagreements that sharpen one another.

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And so we're kind of getting into, um, Aquinas is five ways, the, these five different arguments that, um, a

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Christian theologian and the history kind of first coined kind of, uh, was able to write these out in a very concise way.

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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.

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So number one, when we go to the ontological argument, I want to say this was first coin.

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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

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Anselm of Canterbury was one of the first ones to really have this ontological argument about the greatest conceivable being.

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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.

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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.

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The ontological argument says that God is a necessary, absolute being for our temporal existence, our contingent being.

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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.

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All of 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.

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Most, most philosophers and theologians never want to go down that route because it just doesn't seem to correspond with our reality, right?

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Things are breaking down over time. Like I said, we see things with beginning and end.

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So something must be more foundational than that in order for our existence to even hold it.

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Our existence is temporal. So something must exist outside that that's not temporal, that is eternal.

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

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

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It's kind of what you're saying as well. So just kind of quoting him. Are you reading that from Got Questions by chance?

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I am using a Louis Burkhoff system of theology book. Okay. I was going to, I was going to do a quick plug for Got Questions.

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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, philosophical arguments, things within Christendom just to kind of get different sides of an issue.

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So 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 we're going to be looking at and they do a good fly over version.

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Definitely, definitely. Now, do you want to get into the pitfalls after we go through all of them? You wouldn't like.

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Sure. We might can do a little bit along the way, but I'll go ahead and sprinkle one of those in there.

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The ontological argument at face value seems to make sense, but it doesn't give you certainty and it doesn't distinguish

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Christianity from all the other religions of the world. So much more can be said on these arguments.

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And I like what R .C. Sproul said one time, I think he was actually in a debate with Greg Bonson.

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Now, R .C. Sproul was a classical apologist and I actually have his book that he wrote with John Gershner, Classical Apologetics, and he actually did a critique of presuppositional apologetics.

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But he has said one thing that I is good that presuppositional apologists need to keep in mind. These arguments are that doesn't doesn't represent the triune

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God of scripture of Christianity, but it doesn't misrepresent anyway.

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So it's at least these arguments are at least true. But yes, you can go a lot more in depth.

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So I don't want to throw out these arguments as being bad. But yeah, they do have their pitfalls and so much more needs to be said.

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And so as long as the classical apologists recognize that there's the God of scripture is not less than these, but is more than these.

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And I think that's more closer to what R .C. said. So as long as people of these different apologetic camps can acknowledge that this doesn't give you the whole enchilada, if you will,

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I'm OK with it. But but yeah, that's probably one of my biggest critiques up front is it doesn't give a certainty.

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I do the I do think that the triune God of Christianity, of scripture does give a certainty in many things.

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And I want to quickly show the uniqueness of Christianity rather than making arguments that Islam can can affirm as well.

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So that's yeah, I agree. I was going to get into that. Like what you just said, talking about how like that argument, it doesn't necessarily point us to like theism or like we wouldn't know which guy we're talking about when we're using these arguments.

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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 guy, you know, you should believe in or it just points to basically theism in a sense.

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So I like what you say right there. I'd say one more thing, too, and and we maybe can continue to hash these out.

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But the God of Christianity, the true God tells us that he's not struggling to reveal himself to man.

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It's not like a probabilistic thing. And inherently, all these arguments are probabilistic.

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The God of truth is certain. So that's where all these all these arguments fall short.

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And that's why I think priest up at the end of the day captures what we're going for.

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We're going for certainty. And we're actually trying to point out the folly of all these other presuppositions that are built on unbelieving thought.

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But we'll get more into that. Definitely. Now, the next one, the next argument is a cosmological argument.

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And I'm pretty sure this is like the main argument that many classical apologetics use. And I'm sure many Christians use this argument.

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But what would you say this is? Yeah, so I think it's similar to the ontological argument, but like you said,

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Anselm was talking about perfect being and what all that meant. So cosmological argument is saying, look at the world around us, the cosmos.

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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.

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And so if we follow this chain of reasoning, this cause and effect, we're going to eventually get back to this unmoved mover, because what's hidden in all these arguments, especially when we look at Thomas Aquinas, he is saying you can't have an infinite regress of reasoning, whether that be design, like we're going to be getting into or cause and effect, you have to ultimately have an unmoved mover.

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And so I think the cosmological argument is saying, look at the cause and effect.

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If you follow this back, you're going to get to this ultimate cause who is uncaused.

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And the God of Christianity, the triune God absolutely fits this criteria, right?

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So 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 spoke the world into existence, right?

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Definitely, definitely. You said it, but just to quote it again, every existing thing in the world must have an adequate cause.

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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

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God have a cause? And so that's why I like that when we get into precept a little bit later,

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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 in how you structure the syllogism because yeah,

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I 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.

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Now in their minds, they only have a couple options. They're going to either affirm that that's coherent, or they're going to really adopt this infinite regression of contingencies.

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And that's philosophically absurd, but for the Christian, that's not trying to stand on scripture, but somehow neutral ground.

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Well, I think that's a valid critique. Well, who, who caused the, the creator, right?

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Um, as Christians, we're over here saying we have valid reasons to say, no, no, no, you don't understand the argument.

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He is the, um, he is the uncreated creator, the un, um, moved mover, if you will.

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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?

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

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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.

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

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I'll let you knock it out right there. Yeah. I'm writing down a name. I want to recommend a book to your audience.

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Stephen Meyer, I think is his name. He wrote a book called the signature of the cell X. I mean,

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I I've read really good talks about how you see design in, um, the human body in DNA.

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And basically when you see design, it points to a designer. That's what we observe in this world.

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When you look at a painting, it speaks to the create or the, uh, the, the painter, right?

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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 presupposes a creator, right?

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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.

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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.

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It points right back to the handiwork of God. So that's like you said, it's real similar to cosmological and ontological, um, arguments.

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Um, but I, this might be one of my favorites because it's so easy to point out to people that I, this world has been, um, fine tune crafted for us.

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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.

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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.

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So I do like that argument. Now, um, the next two pretty good ones.

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I'm pretty sure me and you both like the moral argument. We use that in our evangelism with atheists or whatnot, but, um, 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 basis, more opinion -based.

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Well, I think rape is wrong because this is what the culture says, but we're in another culture that has a dictator that thinks rape is okay.

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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.

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Um, I think we can see the moral bankruptcy and unbelieving thought. Cause you know, as Christians, we were sharing the faith, the faith, and a lot of atheists will say, well,

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Hey, don't impose your beliefs on me. And it's like, okay, well, let's, let's talk about that.

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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,

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Hey, that's somehow wrong. Well, the atheist at this point is in, um, is in a corner because absolutely they're going to try to, um, stop somebody from harming another person, right?

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But that's because they're an image bearer of God, not because of their own bankrupt and moral system.

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And so when we're talking about morality, like you rightly said, um, we're talking about right and wrong.

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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?

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What's our purpose? It kind of goes back to the other argument. So morality must reflect a person's worldview.

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It's easy for Christians to say, God gets to determine morality, right? We are image bearers of him.

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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.

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Uh, but yeah, unbelieving thought, um, they're constantly living in a world of cognitive dissonance, right?

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Um, they're living in opposition to how they think and they think differently than how they actually live.

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And so we just simply want to demonstrate that lovingly, but we, we want to demonstrate how they are image bearers of God.

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That's why they, um, want to love their neighbor rather than eat their neighbor.

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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.

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Yeah. I like that too. So like in a priest, that position apologetics, the method of moral argument, it makes perfect sense if it's consistent with scripture and the

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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?

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If we're not grounded, this standard comes from the trinity of God, which how you got them in. This is a book

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I'd like to recommend to your audience, our audience at this point, right? Um, the book called the five views of apologetics.

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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.

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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.

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And what's neat because William Lane Craig represents the classical apologists, uh, view. And I love

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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,

30:31

I don't like the Christian's standard of morality, well,

30:36

William Lane Craig Riley is saying, okay, you have to have a standard of morality in order to have a moral complaint against the

30:45

Christian God. So they demonstrate how you have to actually borrow from the Christian God in order to have a complaint against him.

30:52

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.

30:59

Definitely, definitely, man. Um, now those are the four main arguments that many classical apologetics use and many

31:05

Christians that they use now, many, um, evidentialists, they love the argument of the resurrection, which is Paul says is in Corinthians that, uh,

31:13

I think it's correct. Instead of Christ, not risen from the dead and our faith is in vain. So by no means are me and your mind not saying that Christ's resurrection is not important, but the question is, does

31:22

Christ's resurrection prove that God exists or unbeliever? If man, you were sitting down with eight that he's like, man, your mind,

31:29

KJ, I want to follow God, but I'm just not sure if Jesus rose from the dead. What it means your mind went through like all throughout history, kind of proven that this is why

31:37

Jesus rose from the dead. And this is the proof. This is the proof. All these dots point to each other. Would that bring salvation?

31:43

Which kind of thoughts about that? Yeah. Um, I'm glad, I'm glad you set that up like that.

31:48

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.

32:04

Because I would firstly say the resurrection is a guarantee because God predicted that it would happen and it, and it did happen.

32:14

He's revealed that to be so, but that doesn't mean that we can't show unbelievers the evidences.

32:21

KJ, you and I know that proof doesn't always amount to persuasion, right?

32:26

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.

32:34

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.

32:49

So as, as a presuppositional apologist, we love evidences for the resurrection of Jesus.

32:57

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

33:10

Testament. And we see that these are very reliable eyewitness testimonies that have been preserved.

33:17

In fact, the, the new Testament is the most well -attested historical document in all of history.

33:25

I would say it even is more reliable than the old Testament, which to me,

33:30

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

33:40

Testament fulfills them. 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.

33:52

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.

34:05

But like I said, those are all only probabilistic arguments. Um, but we have, we have certainty in God's powerful word.

34:13

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.

34:21

Um, but, uh, this kind of distinguishes between the evidentialist and the classicalist, uh, because the classicalist is going to argue two points.

34:31

They're going to argue, number one, for God's existence and kind of the Aquinas' five ways model.

34:37

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.

34:44

So they have a two -step approach. The evidentialist just says, we have arguments for Jesus' resurrection, and it's only one step.

34:53

That in of itself is an argument for God's existence. And I don't knock those, but we're arguing for certainty, not just probabilistic arguments from a neutral playing field.

35:04

So maybe that was a shotgun of thoughts, KJ. Now, definitely too.

35:09

Like if we, for example, like Jeremiah said that he is a pastor of this church. I'm sure if a student came up to Jeremiah and asked,

35:17

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.

35:26

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 in Luke 16, verse 27.

35:36

Then he said, I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him my father's house, five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.

35:44

So basically this rich man went to hell and it's so hot. He just said, I just want a tip of water in my tongue because it's so hot.

35:50

And once he realized he couldn't escape hell, he says, why can't I go tell my brothers about this? And this is the response that we're told right here.

35:56

Verse 29 says this. Abraham said to him, they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

36:02

And he said, no father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to him, if they don't hear

36:08

Moses and the prophets, neither would they persuade to one rise from the dead. I think about that. Even though someone arrived from the dead and tell them about hell or heaven, people still wouldn't believe.

36:18

And the crazy thing is that story actually happened in real life because Jesus rose from the dead and as a

36:23

Christian telling people about that and people still reject the truth. So I don't think the matter is, we're going to get into this a little bit later, but I don't think the matter is more of evidence, but I think it's more of a sin problem.

36:34

People don't want the evidence to be true because they love their sin. Well, that is maybe one of the clearest passages of scripture that we can appeal to to say, look, man has sufficient knowledge of God and God has clearly spoken to us in his word and let the people hear the word of God.

36:54

They don't need a miraculous miracle to persuade them because just like you pointed out, we have the amazing miracle of Jesus raising back from the dead and so many people reject that.

37:07

So it's not a problem of proof or people don't have enough evidence to believe God, but like you said, there's a deeper sin problem.

37:14

There's actually a moral problem. Man doesn't like the things of God naturally. He loves his sin and he wants to be sovereign over his own life, not bend the knee to the one who made us.

37:24

I have another passage. There's actually a couple of these things that illustrate how in order to have a coherent worldview, in order to know truth, you need to let

37:35

God give us truth for God to reveal truth about him, about us and how we ought to live in this world.

37:42

The apostle Paul in Colossians 2, he actually says that our hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and of the knowledge of God's mystery, which is in Christ.

37:58

Now there's a strong phrase in there, full assurance of understanding. This is how we get certainty, right?

38:06

Now there's some things that we can't know with absolute certainty, but I would say I have more confidence, more certainty in the triune

38:14

God's existence than my own existence. And I'm absolutely certain that I exist to have this conversation with you.

38:21

But Paul goes on to say in Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

38:27

I say this in order that no one may delude you of plausible arguments. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, but according to the elemental spirits or principles or presuppositions of this world, but stand firm in Christ.

38:50

So I think that maybe is a little bit more nuanced. I think the passage you read is better, but we must have a worldview that says we get truth from God.

38:59

We know truth exists, so it must be from God. And another way we can demonstrate that is by looking at any other worldview that's built on unbelieving thought, a worldview that rejects

39:11

Christ. Now, one of the questions that we're going to discuss today is since that God can really be known mainly primarily through the word of God, does presuppositional apologetics, the method, does it articulate these truths about God the best?

39:27

And I'll kind of set you up. How does presuppositional apologetics differ from classical and evidentialist?

39:35

I'll try to make this brief, KJ, but presuppositional apologetics basically is getting at a worldview paradigm.

39:44

Now this is important because a worldview is made up of three pillars. It's made up of ontology, the study of being and existence, and then epistemology, which is the study of knowledge.

39:55

It asks the question, how do we know what we know? It's very interesting. And then you have value theory or ethics or a standard of morality.

40:08

Now, in order to have any insight of any one of those categories, you have to have a worldview.

40:14

You have to have each one of those categories qualifying the other. And so each one of those reflects the truth.

40:21

And so you can't get away with just saying, well, I don't know anything about the ontos of our existence.

40:27

All I can give is knowledge or assertions about our existence.

40:33

Well, you're already assuming a whole lot about existence in order to say,

40:38

I don't know about existence. So you can see how it gets really nuanced very quickly.

40:45

But presuppositionalism says you have to assume a type of worldview, one that assumes all three of those categories resting on one another.

40:54

And so Christianity is saying nobody is neutral. Everybody has a worldview. Now, the

41:00

Christian God, the Trinity, says that there's only one worldview, that he exists and we exist in his world.

41:08

And we basically see that from Genesis 1 .1. In the beginning, Elohim, God created the heavens and the earth.

41:15

And we see that God is diverse there. And Genesis 1 goes on to articulate that he is also

41:22

Yahweh later in Genesis. So he is diverse, but he's also unified.

41:27

So there's this profound unity and diversity with God. And the rest of the scriptures articulate how that is a triune

41:34

God who is one in three, one in being, three in persons. And so presuppositionalism says, okay, we have to grant different worldviews because no one is neutral.

41:47

And then we simply see if these different worldviews are coherent or do they lead to logical absurdities.

41:55

Now, presuppositionalism says that presupp is actually reflecting the biblical worldview.

42:02

So we stand on the word of God at every point and turn as we live and we interact with people, especially unbelievers.

42:10

So presuppositionalists are trying to actually stand on the word of God at all costs, right?

42:16

But in order to progress the conversation, we're saying, okay, let's hypothetically grant whichever brand of unbelieving worldview you have.

42:23

And then let's do some internal inspection. Let's see if there's any logical contradictions and demonstrate that out.

42:30

Okay. So, and you might ask me a little bit more about that because I would actually say that we can also know the

42:39

God of Christianity by the impossibility of the contrary, as we're saying that all other worldviews will break down and we want to demonstrate that, but we need the triune

42:50

God of Christianity to exist eternally in order for our intelligible human experiences to be true.

42:58

We all agree we have them, but we're asking what's the precondition? What's the necessary step in order for our experience to be true?

43:06

And we're arguing the triune sovereign God who knows all things is all powerful and has made us in his image is the necessary foundation for our human experience to be true.

43:21

Now, the evidentialist and the classicalist, they're very similar in my opinion, but they don't think you have to start from the worldview perspectives and then demonstrate these internal critiques.

43:32

They can just say, oh, all of us as human beings, we want to be logical. We can therefore start on that ground with one another as this neutral playing field without having to start with the triune

43:46

God of scripture. And we can go through these arguments of proving God's existence and then linking it to the resurrection of Christ.

43:54

And we can give these highly probabilistic arguments in order to be persuasive to the unbeliever.

44:02

I think that that's problematic because when you start that way, then you're agreeing that we can't have certainty and you can only have probability, which

44:14

I would in turn say, okay, then what you're saying by these things are probabilistically true is they're actually not true in the fullest sense.

44:24

They're actually not things that you can know with certainty. And I would say that the

44:30

God who has spoken, the triune God has made the case for us that no, you know who

44:35

I am with certainty. So I think it's fundamentally going at the questions completely backward.

44:44

But like I said, as presuppositionalists, evidence is as wonderful. We should be equipped with that mainly for the saints.

44:51

And if the unbeliever has questions, we can show that. But as soon as they say, well, I'm not convinced.

44:57

Well, we can then ask, well, what standard of criteria would convince you? And we can begin that internal critique.

45:04

Definitely, definitely. Now, just take a couple of steps back. Maybe me and Jermiah can kind of do a full episode on presupposition, apologetics, one on one.

45:12

But just to kind of start kind of what Jermiah was saying, obviously Jermiah quoted

45:17

Genesis, making the God, Elohim God, the triune God, the father, son, Holy Spirit created everything around us. We get to Genesis chapter two.

45:24

We say that we're creating an image of God. So therefore everyone that's created is an image bearer of God.

45:29

And so we live in a biblical worldview automatically. And so like the default position is theism,

45:35

Christian theism, because there is no worldview that's default because we're all image bearers. Now, on top of that,

45:42

Ecclesiastes kind of hints at it. And then Paul hints at it as well. Paul says that creation is created in the creator.

45:49

And Ecclesiastes said God has put eternity in all of our hearts. And so all of us know that there's a God and we know that this

45:54

God is the Christian God. Now, I love this verse in Proverbs. I'm pretty sure many priests know if we use this verse.

46:00

Proverbs 26, verse four, it says, do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.

46:07

So what Jeremiah was kind of hinting at earlier is that like these internal critiques of these worldviews that one may hold to.

46:14

So I love, just to give you a quick example, the atheists may say that there is no God and he has evidence for that being no

46:19

God. And so for example, let's just say me and Jeremiah was dealing with atheists right on the podcast. And the atheists, when there's arguments against God, they say, how can a moral

46:28

God allow evil if he's perfect? Well, already there's a kind of contradiction in that kind of acquisition against us because in the atheistic worldview, there is no morality.

46:39

There is no standard. We're all just molecules. There's no purpose. Everything's by chance, by random. So in order for an atheist to even care about morality, he has to borrow from the

46:48

Christian worldview in order to make sense of their own statement. And so that's kind of one way you could do it as well.

46:54

Now, a lot of people, I even actually reminded this sometime when I first learned about this. So, you know, we get how to do it on atheists, but how do we do it on other religions?

47:03

I literally can't tackle that. Well, man, my mind is racing like, man, we got to condense this down just to whet people's appetite to go study it.

47:13

But like you said, Proverbs 26 kind of gives us that twofold method and it's clearly seen how we can demonstrate that with unbelieving thoughts.

47:24

Don't answer a fool according to his own folly. We're not going to embrace his unbelieving worldview, right?

47:30

So in one sense, we're not going to answer him. And then in another sense, we will answer him. We'll say, okay, if I hypothetically grant your unbelieving worldview, then how do you account for this, this, this, and this?

47:41

How do you account for laws of logic that are immaterial? Why in a universe that's purely nature, matter, random chance is bouncing around.

47:51

How do you arrive at the conclusion of truth existing in that morality is also a representative of the truth given that worldview.

48:01

So we silence the fool in that sense. When we say fool, we're not being mean. The scripture tells us the fool has said in his heart, there is no

48:08

God. It's foolishness. It's absurdity to be living in God's world and to slap him in the face because we live and move and have our contingent being based on God's eternal existence, making us in his image.

48:25

So it's, it's a little bit easier to demonstrate that with an unbeliever, I think, but like what you're asking is, okay, how can we be consistent and demonstrate that with someone that says, no, no, we believe in the transcendent.

48:38

We believe that there's more than just matter in the observable world. So once again, the presuppositional method, um, vindicates the

48:48

Christian worldview, right? We present this full orbed, um, coherent worldview that the triune

48:54

God has spoken, made us in these, in his image and so forth. So we would have to ask the person, what is their worldview?

49:03

No one's neutral. No one gets to just simply take the negative and say, oh,

49:08

I, you know, I'm agnostic over here. And even agnosticism is a worldview of its own and can't produce truth.

49:14

They would have to leave the world of agnosticism, um, and adopt a different system in order to be able to critique ours.

49:21

So, um, atheism and agnosticism can't pay the bills. If you will, they're going to have to hypothetically grant a particular worldview.

49:29

And as Christians, we can justify, um, why logic is possible.

49:35

Rationale is, is possible. So let's just take Islam for example, because this is the question

49:41

I get asked the most. Okay. I'm starting to understand presuppositional methodology, how we do the internal critique, but what about somebody who believes in God?

49:50

Well, we have to ask them what kind of God are they positing, right? So Islam, there's so many

49:57

KJ, I'm going to just try to go through a couple here. Islam is different than the triune

50:02

God, right? So right off the bat, we're arguing for a necessary, uh, foundation.

50:08

So we're going to be able to, if we know the Trinity really well, then we know that we bear the image of the triune

50:14

God. And that's going to be one of those gaping holes in all these other unbelieving worldviews.

50:20

Islam asserts that God is unitarian, that he is one being in one person.

50:26

Well, I won't spend too much time going into this, but that's a radical unity.

50:31

Okay. Well, how does a, a unitarian God account for the radical diversity in this world, right?

50:38

KJ, you and I both exist, but we are radically different from one another. How would a unitarian God account for that diversity?

50:44

KJ, you and I exist, but how do you and I distinguish ourselves from the planet Mars, right?

50:51

Or this lamp that's turned on in front of me, we both exist in a radically unified way, but how are we also diverse and different?

50:58

That's so many different things within that umbrella. We can say Islam fails to account for that.

51:04

And my favorite is as, as people, right, we can think about things in, um, unified categories like chair -ness, lamp -ness, humankind, these, these categories that are unified principles.

51:23

And yet we can apply that unified principles in so many particular different instances.

51:28

You and I can think about all these different kinds of chairs mentally, and we can observe them, um, tangibly in front of us, right?

51:37

So the fact that we can have these logical categories of unified principles and also diversified principles, we reflect

51:47

God in that capacity. So God must be unified and diverse to be able to account for our existence.

51:54

Judaism, I would say Pharisaical Judaism fails in that respect and Islam as Unitarian gods.

52:01

Now more can be said about that, but as we're continuing the internal critique of Islam, um, they are built on the

52:10

Old Testament. Okay. Now Islam affirms the Old Testament, but rejects the New Testament.

52:16

So we would say, okay, um, how do you account for all these prophecies that predicted the

52:22

Messiah coming? They don't even think that Jesus died on the cross. Well, my goodness.

52:28

Um, and I hope I'm getting that fact right. Um, they, they don't believe that, that Jesus died on the cross.

52:33

No, no. I mean, obviously they don't believe that Jesus arose from the dead. Well, now they have to account for all of this historical reliability.

52:40

They have to account for what the New Testament actually says, because what's interesting is within Islam, given the

52:46

Quran, they would say that the gospels are good and true. I can't quote the

52:51

Sira within their book and verse that says that, but they have, they have internal problems on their own system.

52:58

Basically Islam says we could say, okay, if Islam is true, then the gospels are true.

53:04

And since the gospels are true, Islam is false. So they have an incoherent worldview and we demonstrate an internal critique that point.

53:12

Um, so you kind of get what I'm saying. And before I throw it back over to you, a lot of times we're not even talking to, to Muslims about this.

53:20

We're talking to atheists that say, how can I distinguish from Christianity being true and Islam being true?

53:27

Firstly, I'd want to say, given atheism, there's no way that you could distinguish between what is true.

53:33

You're going to have to leave your broken worldview that can account for truth and knowledge. And you're going to have to jump into Islam with me.

53:41

And I'm going to show you there, there are broken basement of foundations that has cracks and water spewing from every corner.

53:49

And I'm going to say, look, this is broken. This can't give you truth. Come over to Christianity. Let me show you how to try you and God accounts for everything and made us in his image.

53:58

What do you think? Perfect, man. Perfect. I've heard one argument too, against Islam is that in Islam Allah is a transcendent so much to the point that he does not speak to his creation, angels in that matter.

54:11

So if Muhammad was a messenger of God and the angel came and spoke to Muhammad and, you know, just find it,

54:18

I guess it's the answer creep, but how could Allah speak to an angel if he set apart from his creation? How could an angel didn't speak that message to Muhammad?

54:26

If Allah doesn't speak to his creation, it's already the basis of how Islam is built upon is built upon Muhammad and these prophecies or whatever you want to call it.

54:34

But how could he receive that message? If within Islam, they, they teach us that Allah does not speak to his creation.

54:42

That's excellent. That's an excellent point. And that kind of reminded me of another one that goes hand in hand with what you're saying. The Quran says that Allah is basically the master deceiver.

54:53

Actually, in order for us to have truth and to have knowledge, God cannot lie.

54:58

He must be the God of truth that we need confidence in that. Well, surprise, surprise, the God of Christianity cannot lie.

55:04

So we can, we can trust in the greatest conceivable, perfect being because he cannot lie.

55:10

Islam, he's the great deceiver. So anything, so like you said, for one, they can't give an adequate answer for how he could even communicate to mankind.

55:19

But even if we grant that step, how would you have any confidence that he's not also deceiving you with what he says?

55:26

Yeah, that's tough right there. Now, just to kind of present a case, because the topic is, does

55:31

God exist? So me and you arguing for pre -deposition apologetics, what routes would we take to kind of present this case of what does

55:39

God exist? So to start with, we can kind of tag this together, but I will start off with, again, on the basis of scripture that we're created in the image of God, the triune

55:48

God, the father, son, holy spirit. Therefore, we know there's a God. I like how Greg Bonson says that the atheist, he needs there to be a

55:56

Christian guy where he can't even brush his teeth. You just think about this if you want to for a long, maybe I'll explain it later, but he also says another one,

56:03

I'm talking about Romans, that one passage how in creation, there's the God of the rhythms of creation, but mankind suppresses that truth.

56:12

It gives the illustration how a mother, she has two boys and both of these boys are criminals. They're always going into jail.

56:18

They beat people up, they're gangsters, whatever you want to call them, they do all these terrible things, but she always tells her friends that these boys are good.

56:26

But when her boys come home, she hides her valuable possessions in her room. So right there in that statement, she says that her boys are good, but when her boys come to her home, she hides her possessions.

56:36

So right there, it tells you that she really doesn't believe that her boys are truly good in her heart, but she's suppressing that truth for a lot.

56:43

Well, in the same way, mankind, who's created in the image of God, they do the same thing. They know deep down in their heart that the triune

56:50

God, Jesus, the father, the son is true, but they suppress that truth for the lie because it's sin.

56:56

And so me and Jeremiah are arguing that in their own worldviews, they can't give an account of the truth in their own room without their first being a foundation of truth or morality or how we know something.

57:06

So I kind of give to Jeremiah from there. Yeah. And those are great examples because the presuppositional method is trying to demonstrate that all these other platforms are broken and everybody's having to borrow from Christianity.

57:21

Like you rightly said, as they're making their arguments against God, they're having to sneak over into our worldview and stuff all the principles and truth that exists in our worldview, put it in their pockets.

57:35

They're stealing capital from us and having to walk back over into the worldview. And we're like, Hey, we saw you do that.

57:41

Empty out your pockets, right? We're trying to show that you're an image bearer of the triune

57:46

God. That's why you can have existence. That's why you can think in these different categories. That's why you have moral complaints in this world.

57:54

And we're trying to say the borrowed capital is inconsistent with the ground that you're standing on over there and atheism or Islam or Mormonism and things like that.

58:04

So yeah, you gave some good analogies. Two that I really like is when we're trying to demonstrate that they're borrowing from Christianity.

58:14

It's kind of like trying to argue against air. You have to take a deep breath, borrow air in order to try to make your case against air.

58:25

Okay. It's also like trying to argue against logic. You're about to try to use a logical argument to show how logic doesn't exist.

58:34

You necessarily need air to communicate, to live and breathe, right? It's like this precondition we're talking about.

58:41

You need logic. And logic is interesting because KJ, another podcast episode is we talk about how logic exists as it reflects the eternal, unchanging thinking of God.

58:55

Christianity wins and being able to give an account of what logic is, the ontology. And so once again, through the transcendental arguments showing how all these other world views are impossible.

59:10

It's the impossibility of the contrary. If Christianity wasn't true, then we couldn't know anything whatsoever. Right? And so we're simply trying to demonstrate that the atheist, the

59:21

Muslim, everybody's acting like the, as image bearers of the triune

59:27

God. Right? So there's a way of articulating that. And I'm all for evidences, right?

59:33

Let's talk about the resurrection. Let's talk about, and I would say, we want to tether those arguments to the gospel because you and I believe that the word of God is living and powerful.

59:43

God breathed and the gospel has the power to transform lives.

59:49

Yeah. So again, it would depend on case to case, like which particular person you're dealing with.

59:55

I'm sure it's my way. Okay. How do I do this? I know some good books that recommend a Greg goes to, if you're, you know, you're going to do a lot of reading

01:00:03

Cornelius Vantill. That's a good one. I know Jeremiah has one as the Trinity and the vindication.

01:00:09

How does that work? So, I mean, it's an excellent book, but KJ, I would just say that is by far the most challenging rewarding book, but I would tell people two things before I'll say the full title, but I would read at least two books before I'd start tackling

01:00:27

Cornelius Vantill. And this book I'm about to say, but definitely read Greg Bonson's always ready book.

01:00:33

That's going to break down the presuppositional methodology. Well, I would also say subscribe to Eli Iyala's revealed truth podcast,

01:00:42

YouTube channel. He gives them a very elementary level understanding of precepts.

01:00:48

You got to have a good grasp of the elementary understanding of precept before going to these other books.

01:00:55

And I would recommend books on the Trinity because you got to have this understanding of being in person, being different categories in order to be able to articulate these things.

01:01:05

So read Greg Bonson's always ready. Read the forgotten Trinity by Dr. James White.

01:01:11

And then you can graduate to the vindication or the Trinity and the vindication of Christian paradox and interpretation or refinement of the theological apologetic of Cornelius Vantill.

01:01:23

That's a mouthful. That was written by B .A.

01:01:29

Bosterman. And I hope to interview that man one day. I have so many questions for that book, but he makes the philosophical case that God must be one in three, not just arbitrarily one in many, but a binary can't give us the foundation for knowledge and truth.

01:01:46

And a quadrinity plus can't give you that foundation. God must be try and use their unity.

01:01:54

He must be one in three. So if you can just wrap your mind around, wow, if you could articulate why that's a necessary foundation, then you can see how the payoff is wonderful.

01:02:03

It was wonderful, man. So again, um, and the presupposition, presupposition apologetic method,

01:02:09

I'm starting with God and then arguing from there. Um, again, the atheist that may come up now with first share the gospel first to make sure that the gospel is kind of heard.

01:02:19

And then from there we can do a ton of critiques. Same with any other religion, person dealing with, I'm going to share the gospel first and then try to address those internal critiques of their own review.

01:02:29

And so that's how I would do it. And then what about you, Jamari, would you share the gospel first as well? Absolutely.

01:02:35

And it kind of depends on each person, um, like their initial question, because if someone said, what proof is there of God?

01:02:41

I would say, oh, well, God has revealed himself in creation and in his work. Like that's, that's the proof.

01:02:48

Now they're going to reject that proof. Um, but we're going to just, that's quickly going to move into how do you know what's correct proof, right?

01:02:56

So when you start asking epistemological questions about knowledge and truth, well, then that's where you'd be like, oh, what's your criteria and given your worldview because Christianity, those are, are facts that we know is, um, coherent within its own worldview system.

01:03:13

And I think within that you gotta be prayerful about, um, realizing the power is not in your persuasiveness or your giving transcendental arguments.

01:03:25

No, it's, it's in the powerful word of God and the gospel. So I think we need to be discerning and prayerful how to show how, yeah, you got this coherent

01:03:35

Christian worldview, but the apex of that, the very core of that is the gospel message itself. And, you know, people walk away, you know, you may think, man, they seem confused more than they began.

01:03:46

Uh, but when you present the truth of scripture, when you present the gospel, you have no idea what they're thinking about when they go to bed at night, what they're thinking about, because the gospel, that's an arrow aimed directly at the heart.

01:03:59

And we trust God to do that work. And we continue to use divine weapons of prayer.

01:04:05

Right? So I just don't want to discourage people thinking, man, KJ and Jeremiah use so much fancy terminology.

01:04:11

Look, the best apologetic method is knowing the word of God, standing firm on the word of God, hiding

01:04:18

God's word in your heart, right? Not trying to meet somebody in this fabricated neutral, uh, worldview.

01:04:24

We're saying, no, no, no. We, the word of God is powerful. So we're going to use it regardless that they say, well, I don't really believe you have a sword in your pocket so you can use it.

01:04:32

No, we're going to whip out that, that two edged sword and we're going to, we're going to use it on the unbeliever. Just to kind of get her to close this up.

01:04:40

I heard a quote. I think it was Bonson. He says that like, um, other apologetics methods, they help you dodge the bullets, but presupposition have to take the gun away.

01:04:48

So they help you guys kind of lean more towards our perspective. That's kind of where we're coming from.

01:04:54

So, but yeah, I would say kind of add onto what Jeremiah is saying by no means, um, is presupposition the magic to use kind of like, um, as more of like, you know, oh,

01:05:04

I made this atheist be quiet. That's never the goal. Or I made this person, you know, loving doing a loving way to kind of show that,

01:05:12

Hey, this is, this is who Jesus is. It's all about Jesus and on us to Jesus. And so that's kind of my last thoughts.

01:05:19

You have any last thoughts, man? Yeah. Well, I mean, when somebody, we want to be so loving, um,

01:05:27

I like how you pointed to Greg Bonson saying, we take the gun away. We expose double standards.

01:05:33

Um, the unbeliever, they're going to say, well, how do you know that God exists? But we can know that God exists because he's done a miraculous work in our life.

01:05:42

He's giving it, he's given us his objective word that vindicates, um, our reality.

01:05:50

Right. And so what precept does say I can account for all of these things, but how do you giving your most basic presuppositions account for these things?

01:06:00

Oh, well, they weren't prepared to talk about their own worldview because you can't, you can't, um, just say that we have a burden of proof.

01:06:09

Everybody has a burden of proof because everybody has a worldview. Now, fortunately God has equipped us with the truth.

01:06:16

So we can just, once again, KJ stand, uh, firm on his word and share that truth lovingly with everyone.

01:06:23

Right. And if unbelievers listen right now, you made it to the very end and maybe some of these thoughts, does

01:06:31

God exist? And what's the difference between other religions and Christianity? I would simply just start with the number one, that Christianity, we worship the triune

01:06:39

God, the father, son, all the spirit. And this being, he created everything around you to see today with purpose, including our lives.

01:06:46

And we bear his image, but in the beginning of two people, they rebelled against God that he made Adam and Eve. And because of that sin is in the world.

01:06:54

And so everything that's wrong with the world today, it points back to Adam and Eve and the original sin.

01:07:00

That's the reason why murder exists, rape, injustice, um, calamity, even one day we're all going to die one day when

01:07:07

God's original design, the triune God, there was no death and it wasn't even eat each other because death didn't exist.

01:07:13

But now when sin came to the world, everything was in turmoil, but there is hope. But before you get to hope, there is bad news.

01:07:19

The bad news is just like how Adam and Eve sin, we've also sinned against his holy God. When I mean holy, I mean that God has set apart.

01:07:26

He's truly perfect. There is no sin within God. And so someone who's perfect and love business hates evil.

01:07:32

For example, if I love children, I would hate children murderers. It just contradicts what I love one the same way.

01:07:39

If God loves true, he hates lying. If God loves marriage, he hates adultery. It kind of goes on.

01:07:44

You go to take amendments. They all reflect God's character. And I'm sure right now, if you're listening right now, just two commandments real quick.

01:07:52

One says, don't lie. We've all lied before. Another one says, do not commit adultery. Adultery is not just a sex before marriage, but it's also less than after a guy, a girl thinking sexual thoughts in your mind.

01:08:05

And so if you're listening right now, you've broken both those standards and the Christian worldview, no matter how much good that you do, you cannot earn favor with God because that God is holy.

01:08:16

He can, he will not be mocked. And your righteous deeds are like 50 racks to God. But the good news that me and Jeremiah hold to the day, the triune

01:08:23

God, he's provided a redemption and a hope and escape from this wrath. And that's in Jesus Christ.

01:08:29

Jesus Christ was both God, fully God and fully man. Yet he died an innocent life. He was innocent and died a death that he didn't deserve because of what we've done for our sins.

01:08:39

So if you're here today, you're unbeliever. And you think about following Jesus, I would guarantee that it's so much better in Christ than it is an unbelieving world because there's no hope.

01:08:47

There's no joy. None of those things, the concepts you're looking for in your worldview, you cannot find in worldview.

01:08:53

But all the things that you're searching for is found in Christ. So turn to Christ today. What would you add?

01:09:00

Well, that's the gospel message, which is wonderful because I would simply appeal to the unbeliever and say, look, you see the brokenness in the world, right?

01:09:09

All the sin that KJ just mentioned, and that's the world we live in.

01:09:16

But God did not leave us in that state. He did provide redemption through his son,

01:09:22

Jesus Christ. And to the unbeliever, since you know that there's brokenness that exists in the world, you know that you do wrong things, do not turn to yourself to try to make amends or anything else in this broken world.

01:09:38

Don't do that because you know deep down that that's ultimately going to be meaningless.

01:09:44

But look to God who transcends this world that has lovingly laid his life down for sinners.

01:09:50

And the Bible says that if you repent and put your trust in the only Savior, Jesus Christ, change your mind, acknowledge that you are a sinner worthy of God's just eternal punishment, and you turn to put all of your faith, all of your love, all of your trust in Jesus Christ, then all of your sin can be put on the cross.

01:10:09

In exchange, you will receive justification. You will receive forgiveness of all of your sins.

01:10:15

And now you will have a right standing with God almighty. And we can look forward to one day walking with him in glory.

01:10:24

So once again, that is the gospel message that yeah, there is brokenness, but God has made a way through Jesus Christ.

01:10:31

So look to him. I love a quote, Steve Lawson, I think he says that we can't out sin

01:10:36

God's grace. I think that's good. That shows you how much that, you know, God's love is.

01:10:42

I mean, think about Paul, man, he was a murderer. He was killing Christians the same people, I guess he would have killed or gotten us killed or went to jail.

01:10:48

But yet he's one of the pillars of the Christian faith wrote majority of our Bible. You see that like he's in heaven now because of his faith in Jesus.

01:10:56

So no matter how much you've sinned against God, you still can come to the cross and turn from sin and trust in Jesus.

01:11:02

And he sees you as perfection, not because of what you may do because of what Christ has done. So that's the message.

01:11:08

I'm sure me and Jeremiah are going to do a part two on this and kind of do some presuppositional one -on -one together.