Ireland, Abortion, Andy Stanley, & the Foundation of Truth

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Hey everybody, welcome to The Dividing Line. I am not Dr. James White, but I'm here crashing the studio, crashing the broadcast for today.

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Hopefully what we talk about will be a blessing to everybody watching. Dr. White is where right now?

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Where in the world is Dr. White? He's in Scotland right now? Oh, he's on his way to Scotland.

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Okay, right on. So on his way to Scotland and isn't Ireland somewhere on the, or did he already go?

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Scotland, then Ireland, and then home, and then home.

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Okay, how long has he been gone for? Three weeks.

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Three weeks traveling abroad. That's tough actually, very, very tough on you. So prayers for Dr.

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White and grateful for all the work that he's doing around the world and excited about today's broadcast.

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I wanted to do a couple of things that I thought would be helpful to the listeners and to everybody who watches

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Dr. White on a regular basis. Some of the stuff, of course, you know very, very well because you've watched Dr.

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White debate many, many times over now at least two decades.

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And you've also listened to The Dividing Line many times. And so you know a lot of the foundational things that I'll be talking about today, but I do want to talk about how they all sort of intersect.

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And what I want to talk about today is really the foundation of knowledge. How do we know what we know?

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And I'm going to talk about a distinctly Christian epistemology. And that word, just a fancy word that just means theory of knowledge.

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How do we know what we know? What's the foundation of knowledge? And Christians hold to a revelational epistemology.

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That is to say, we're supposed to hold to a revelational epistemology. And that is to say, Christian epistemology, how we know what we know can be summed up very simply, very

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Sunday school like, and it can be summed up like this, God says, because God says.

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And that really is the essence of the Christian theory of knowledge.

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We believe in reason. We believe in rationalism. We believe in laws of logic.

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We believe in consistency. We believe in science. We believe in using our minds and being rigorous in our thinking.

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We believe in a scientific worldview in the sense that we believe that science is actually approachable in the world that God has created, the world that he governs.

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And so Christians aren't dummies. We don't believe in checking out when it comes to thinking hard thoughts.

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We don't believe that we should abandon our minds and just be merely adolescent in our thinking.

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Christians hold to a rigorous view of knowledge, truth, integrity, evidence.

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But we believe that because we're Christians and we have a fundamentally biblical worldview and outlook on life, what we would say is all those things, rationality, laws of logic, tools of science, intellectual integrity, all those things are part and parcel to a biblical outlook on life.

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And you can't have a biblical outlook on life unless of course you have Christ at the very center. And this is really important in terms of the day that we live in today because we live in a time and a culture that we are riding on the coattails in a sense of the

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Christian forebears before us. We have in the West today anyways, so many blessings and benefits from our

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Christian forebears, the things that they fought for, the biblical worldview that they squeezed into life, culture, and society, and we're reaping the rewards and benefits of that, but we're losing so much of it.

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And in terms of Christian influence, particularly in the West today, the gospel is expanding all over the world today.

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Christian people are coming to Christ. God is saving his elect all over the world today in China, in Russia, all over South America, in Africa.

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It's happening all over the world today. But in particular, we live in a time where so much of what the biblical worldview really brought into the world, and I'm talking about the pop of modern science, all these tools of technology all around us today, things that we're using today, were things that were ultimately brought into the world because of the life and labor and work of Christians.

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And so we were reaping the rewards of all that, but we are having a very, very tough time now as the church really facing a culture that wants to abandon a revelational epistemology, the kind of epistemology that says, oh, that's because God says.

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Why do we have this ethical appeal? Why do we feel this way about a particular view of ethics?

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Well, it used to be Christians had such a revelational epistemology and such an impact on culture, the biblical worldview did, that we would be able to say in culture and society, well, that's because God says.

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So for example, John Jay, actually one of the very first presidents of the United States before Washington, who was also the first Supreme Court justice, when he would talk about law, case law, those sorts of things, he didn't have a problem referring to the biblical worldview because that was sort of just in the atmosphere.

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It was the spirit of the age. It was the biblical worldview. It was just everywhere.

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And we're losing so much of that today, and we see a culture just slipping off the cliff, nearing the bottom at this point, ready to crash.

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And we also have to face the difficulty that so many today who profess the name of Christ do not root their thinking in an explicitly biblical worldview.

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We hear sort of a mishmash today in the church in the West today, whereas by mishmash,

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I mean, oftentimes we'll have a professed commitment to the word of God as the ultimate.

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But in terms of how we usually work this stuff out and how we think about the world and think about ethics and those sorts of things, we tend to sort of be a mixed bag.

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There's a little bit of pragmatism. Well, this seems to work best for me, or I've experienced this, maybe a little bit of rationalism.

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Well, reason would lead us to conclude A, B, or C. There's even maybe a bit of scientism that we've adopted in the church today, and that is to say

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Christians adopting sort of a view of knowledge that many people who are naturalistic materialists today, atheists who deny

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God's existence, who would say that all that exists is the material universe, nothing supernatural, nothing beyond material, we've adopted many times their view of scientism.

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And so then added to that, the struggle that we have is that we have such a horrible representation of Christ, the biblical worldview, on the large broadcasts around the world.

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And what I mean by that, I'm talking about channels historically, at least like TBN, and the kind of representation of Christ you'd see, say, in a

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Jim Baker today. If you, I mean, some of my favorite things to do right now is just look at some of the editing that Vic, is it

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Vic Berger? I think his name is Vic Berger, does with some of the Jim Baker videos. You're welcome if you go take a look at that.

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Not right now, of course, wait until the broadcast is over, then go check out. I think it's Vic Berger, it's Jim Baker.

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The way he edits those videos are just spectacular and amusing and entertaining, but they're entertaining and hilarious and the way that they are because that becomes the representation of Christianity today, this sort of, you know, let go of your mind, check your mind at the church door kind of thing.

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You know, we believe things that are irrational. We believe things that make us ultimately look silly.

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They're not rooted in the biblical worldview. It's just pure silliness. So, there's all these things working against us today in the culture that we live in, the culture of the

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West. And yet Christ calls us to be a light in darkness. He says to the church, you are the salt.

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You are the light. Salt's a preservative. It preserves things from spoil and decay. Light dispels darkness and Christ says that's your role.

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And again, no matter what your view is of the future, that really doesn't matter at this point. What matters right now at this point is in terms of faithfulness.

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Faithfulness, fidelity to the Word of God, to the biblical worldview, and to Christ first and foremost.

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And so, when we think about the call upon our lives that Christ makes,

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God calls us. We'll just take one example. Let's just take the Great Commission, for example,

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Matthew 28, 18 through 20. Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been, has been given to me.

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That was a long time ago, brothers and sisters. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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And he says, therefore, because of this, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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So, discipling the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey Jesus, that's the call.

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So, no matter what differences there are amongst us believers, Reformed believers in particular, in terms of style of worship, exclusive psalms, eschatological beliefs, you know, however you want to cut the cake, what we can all settle in on as believers joined together in humble unity is that Christ commands us as his people to go with his authority into the world and to disciple the nations and to teach them to obey him.

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That's the command. So, that's where we're at. That's what we're called to do. And as we watch the culture round about us, slip off into darkness, the question we have to ask ourselves is, well, how do we approach this?

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And by what standard do we actually come into conflict with the world? And I think one way that we can approach this,

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I'm going to do three points of contact today. One, I'm going to talk about what happened in Ireland this past weekend on Saturday, officially.

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I want to talk about a little bit more sort of teasing out the foundations of Christian knowledge.

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How do we know what we know? And then what I just, by way of sort of intersecting, I'm going to talk about some of the comments made by Andy Stanley in a recent video.

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Now, I know, I know, I know that Dr. White touched on this a bit, but hopefully we can help even a little bit more by discussing some of the foundational things that Stanley says and some of the way that impacts the church.

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And I would actually argue, to be honest, I would argue some of the comments made by Andy Stanley in his message,

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Aftermath Part Three, are not actually so unusual, not so strange and far -fetched.

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Now, from historic orthodoxy, from New Testament Christianity, biblical

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Christianity, and just from the overall scope and history of the church and the kingdom of God in history, of course, it is strange and fanciful and crazy and all that.

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But I would argue that Stanley's position and the things, the sort of things that he says, sorts of things that he says in his message are not so strange to the culture around us.

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I think it's pretty much that's adopted, that's generally sort of understood, or at least it's in the back of some people's minds.

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And so I'm going to try to address some of those things today. So are you guys ready?

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Let's talk a bit about what happened in Ireland. I did have a video, and what

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I'll do is just point you this point to my page, my Facebook page. I did share a video on my

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Facebook page this past weekend, and to be honest with you, it was heartbreaking.

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It was hard. Hard to see. It was hard to see because I have so much of a love and a commitment to uphold and support and love my brothers and sisters in Ireland.

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I think maybe it would be helpful, rather than just going to the issue and to the text, I'll just explain by way of my own connection to this.

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There's a light on this one now. How did I get connected to the church in Ireland?

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So I got a phone call or a message two or three years ago from some people

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I didn't know. They were in Ireland, and they asked if I would come and be the head speaker for their denomination's national conference in Ireland.

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And believe it or not, these things are really tough. I mean, leaving my family for extended periods of time and the church and going across the world, it's a lot of hard work.

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It's a huge gift, and it's a blessing, of course. It's a lot of hard work. So I wasn't so sure, but one of the things that really convinced me to go was the people that asked me to come were part of the covenanters, the

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Irish covenanters. So they can trace their roots all the way back to John Knox. These are some devout and hardcore

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Presbyterians. I mean, as Presbyterian as you can get, and Presbyterians are my favorite.

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So they said that they wanted me, a Reformed Baptist minister, to speak and be the head of their conference in all of Northern and Southern Ireland, which

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I thought was a huge honor and a privilege, and I thought it was such a tremendous moment. There are some bad spots in Christian history and some difficult moments between Baptists and Presbyterians.

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And so now to have this amazing Presbyterian denomination ask me to come as a

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Baptist to be the head speaker for their national denominations conference, it was a huge honor.

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So I agreed to do it. And when I went out to do this, I had nothing in my mind in terms of abortion.

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There was nothing there. It was, come to this conference and talk about apologetics and addiction and some other issues.

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But what happened was, while I was in Ireland, North and South, I was traveling all around Ireland, speaking at different churches, speaking at the conference itself.

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I got to connect with so many amazing, amazing Christians in all of Ireland and so many godly, just phenomenal

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Presbyterians. I got to teach at the seminary itself and speak to men who are far, far ahead of me and just got to share with them.

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But one of the things that kept coming up in the North and the South was the issue of abortion. And again, I had no intention to go there.

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But one of the things I learned was that Ireland, of course, is this historically Christian nation, both in the

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North, South, all the biblical worldview stuff is just deeply rooted and you can't go anywhere in Ireland without seeing the remnants of this

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Christian civilization. And I learned that Ireland, of course, was one of the last standing nations that had not allowed for the murder of the unborn, both in the

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North and the South. And as I talked to my fellow brothers and sisters in Ireland, I discovered that so many of them were so passionate about fighting against abortion, which was right on their doorstep.

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And I could just see it in their eyes, just this passion and boldness to fight against it, but we're not quite sure how to go about it at the moment and it's right on our doorstep, it's looming.

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And what I committed to at the time was, I said, Apologia Church, we'll support you, we'll back you up and we'll serve you, we'll give you whatever you need to help you to fight against this, to speak the word of God into the culture on this point.

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And I just said, we'll make ourselves available to you. And what happened was, is we discovered an opportunity to go out to Ireland because now the pro -choice movement was actually working to legalize abortion in Ireland, right on the tails of my being there.

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So the timing of it was just so phenomenal, just God's providence and it was just incredible. So we went back out to Ireland, to the

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South, to the Republic, and we were there, we got to attend a pro -life march or movement that was there, about a hundred people were in attendance in downtown

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Dublin. And we got to actually be there the day that they had 30 ,000 pro -choicers protesting for an amendment to the

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Irish constitution. The Eighth Amendment in the South is, and it was an amendment that equalized the life of the unborn child with the life of the mother.

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And so abortion was illegal, and it even carried a 14 -year jail sentence, prison sentence.

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So we got to see some of that, some of that conflict, and we got to see, and this is what got us, the pro -life movement in America, the pro -life movement in America that really argues from a position of neutrality.

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We have specific conversations that we've had with the pro -life movement's leadership. I'm talking at the highest level of the biggest organizations.

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And we have recorded conversations, interviews with them saying things like, they don't want to use the

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Bible as the foundation of their fight against abortion or the biblical worldview. They say that they don't want to make it about Christ and using

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Christian terminology. They say they want to use a backdoor approach and no explicitly

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Christian language. They really want to see women as victims. Tobias, the head of the

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National Right to Life, says that she believes that the women who have abortions are as much victims as the children in abortion.

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That's what she says. You can go to Apologia Studios on YouTube and look up our video we have with her saying that. What concerned us was that we saw that the pro -life movement in America was sort of leading the fight in Ireland to fight against abortion.

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And you might be surprised to hear me say very humbly that that very much concerned us.

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And it concerned us because of what we started the broadcast with today, this question of Christian epistemology.

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How do we know what we know? What's the center of what we're standing on, what we're proclaiming?

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And what we've discovered in all those years of ministry outside of abortion mills, thousands of children saved at this point, over 250 churches, now local churches, now involved in the fight, over 100 children saved just from the work of Apologia Church ourselves.

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What we've learned about the pro -life movement in America is that it tries to distance itself from a biblical worldview and an explicitly

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Christian proclamation in the area of abortion. And we think that that is devastating to the cause of the pro -life movement.

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Because you see, we believe that the problem of abortion is a problem of the heart.

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Whenever you have a culture that says that it is perfectly acceptable for a mother and a father to walk into an abortion mill and to pay somebody to destroy their boy or girl in the womb, that's not a problem of education.

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That's not a problem of a lack of evidence. That's a problem of the heart.

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And what we have noticed outside the abortion mills is we've noticed that when we call out to these mothers and fathers that we say, we'll help you.

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We will serve you. We'll give you money. We will give you food. We'll give you shelter. We will adopt your child. Please don't kill your child today.

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When we've had discussions with them as they've stopped to talk to us about the life that's inside of them, heartbeat, fingernails, toenails, all the brain activity, all of the objective scientific analysis of what's taking place in the womb, what we have consistently and always heard from these mothers and fathers is,

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I know it's my child. I have a right to kill my child, something to that effect. And so what we've noticed, of course, is what we've known all along that the problem is not a problem of reason, logic, rationality, evidence.

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It's a problem of the heart. And what has concerned us is that the pro -life movement in the

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United States tries to move itself away from an explicitly biblical proclamation where the

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Bible says that it's the gospel that is the power of God for salvation, that it is God's good news that God uses by his spirit.

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He empowers that message and he opens the eyes of the blind and he gives hearing to deaf people through the proclamation of God's good news.

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That's how people go from a place of spiritual death to spiritual life. You can't get somebody to turn away from sin.

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You can't get somebody to become ultimately moral apart from a heart change.

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And that only takes place according to this word, according to this book, that only takes place when

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God's truth, his word comes into the heart of a fallen person. So back to what happened in Ireland, when we went to this pro -choice protest last year, there were about 30 ,000 people in attendance.

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It was incredible. Almost got arrested for no reason.

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And that's the honest truth here. We weren't at this point even standing up and preaching anything. We weren't even engaging with people.

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All we did was we walked up to some people who were there at the pro -choice rally and we said, can we ask you some questions?

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And because of that, the Garda came and started surrounding us and very abusive to us.

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And we hadn't even done anything. We hadn't even started a conversation, nothing. And so obviously it was very, very risky even to have a conversation.

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If you would have heard some of the things that the pro -choicers were saying, it would blow your mind. The fact that they weren't being arrested for saying these things in public surprises me, but people who were on the pro -life side weren't even allowed to engage with them that day.

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So over this last year, we have been praying for and working with the church in Ireland.

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We went out again to hold a conference, which was sold out in Northern Ireland, huge gift and blessing,

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Christians from all over Northern and Southern Ireland, churches across Ireland, cross denominational barriers, pastors, church leaders,

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Christians from all over filled this place up. We held a conference just appealing to them. Please don't make the mistakes that we've made.

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Don't make the mistake that the American church has made by walking away from the word of God as the foundation of the fight.

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Don't make the mistake of handing over this fight to a pro -life movement that refuses to stand on word of God as the basis for their fight against abortion.

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By the way, I just wanna make very, very clear, I'm grateful, grateful to the pro -life movement in America and all the work that they've done to save the lives of children.

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I believe like Van Til says, God can strike straight blows with crooked sticks. But as I often say,

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I don't believe that we should go looking for crooked sticks to hit people with just because he does.

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And so what we did was he held this conference and we even met with Christians in the North and the

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South. We held private meetings with pastors, church leaders, an entire denomination to tell them, we will serve you, we'll help you, let us know how we can help you.

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And so I'm gonna encourage you with this. While abortion is now legalized in the Republic of Ireland, there are

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Christians that have been working hard and are on their feet and they are ready to fight as Christians against this culture of death.

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And there's all kinds of things in the background right now in the works that I can't tell you about at the moment, trust me when

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I say God is at work in Ireland right now. But what happened after the vote this weekend on the amendments is they're calling it a landslide, a landslide victory for the pro -choice movement, which is surprising to be honest.

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If you're in Ireland, everybody's pro -life. Our cab driver was an atheist and he was fiercely opposed to abortion.

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If you talk to the average Irish person in Ireland, they'll tell you Irish people are pro -life predominantly.

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However, the media has been controlled by the leftists. The media has been controlled and funded by big, well -known people and organizations to make this thing a reality.

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And what happened on Saturday was it was made official. And if you look at my page, you'll see the video that I've shared and what you see is the women, their reaction to the legalization of the slaughter of your own unborn child.

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Their reaction was horrific, heartbreaking, terrifying.

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The reaction of women huddled together, shouting in praise that they now have the right to kill their child in the womb.

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It was amazing to see. If you watch that video, go look at it. If you watch that video, you'll see the women huddled together, just thousands of them.

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And what else you see flowing in the background is you see the LGBT flags.

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One of those things that just drives me bonkers. I just can't even imagine it. The LGBT lifestyle doesn't support human offspring.

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You don't get it. You have to leave your commitments in the LGBT lifestyle, lesbian or gay, you have to leave your commitments in relationship that you have, male to male, female to female, and you have to leave that worldview commitment and you have to step back into God's world.

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You have to step back into God's world and you have to pull things from God's world to make it work to where you can have offspring.

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You have to abandon those commitments to even have children. And you see these people cheering as they hear the words come down that they won.

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The vote to kill children had won the day. You see tears. You see applause.

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You see people with flags, LGBT, just praising this moment. Then mothers in Ireland, the

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South, are now given the right to kill their own pre -born boys and girls, and they just came with applause.

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Now, I think many of you know where I'm going with this. I couldn't help but think when I saw it about what

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God says in Romans 1. I couldn't help it. Romans 1, God says that everybody knows him.

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Romans 1 .18, we suppress the truth about God in unrighteousness. That's active, active suppression.

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What's known about God is evident within them for God has shown it to them. That's knowledge from God that he's put there for all of us.

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The creation itself testifies to us. It shouts to every one of us about God, so much so that we are left,

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Dr. White says often, unapologetus, without a defense, without an apologetic, without a reasoned defense before God.

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We don't want God in our knowledge, Paul says. We don't want him, so we exchange the truth of God for a lie, and we worship and serve the creature rather than the creator, so it says

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God gave them over. God gave them over. God gave them over to do what?

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To do what's against nature. You could see that. You could see it in the video, the flags waving, what's against nature itself just waving.

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And then you see the list that Paul makes in Romans 1 .28, and since they did not see fit to acknowledge

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God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

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They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

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They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, heartless, ruthless, ruthless.

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Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

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You know, it's amazing. It's like we live in a time where so many atheists, agnostics, secularists, humanists, you know, just attack

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Scripture and the Word of God. You know, give me evidence. Give me evidence for your belief in God.

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Give me evidence for the existence of God. Give me evidence for the historic Jesus. Give me evidence that the

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Bible is divinely inspired. And I think it's a powerful thing. We can go there with them. Absolutely.

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And I'm so grateful for the ministry of Dr. White over all these years that he's done exactly that. He's gone there and he's gotten them on their own grounds and refuted them on their own ground.

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But you know what's amazing is that some of the greatest evidences for the divine inspiration of the

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Scripture are moments like last Saturday in Dublin, where you see this testimony in bright, shining, high -definition, vivid detail.

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It's right there. This is the result of a culture that abandons the Word of God, that abandons

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Christ at the center. Now, here's why I bring that up today. One is I want you to please join us in praying for, of course,

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America and what's happening today. If you watch this today, by the end of this day, there'll be 3 ,000 children killed today through abortion, so please pray for our country.

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But now we need to start praying for Ireland in terms of how we're going to save lives in Ireland, how is the

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Christian church going to be a light and a witness for the gospel in the context of this culture of death? But I bring it up for this reason.

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We're talking about epistemology today. How do we know what we know? What do we say to people in terms of this is a truth claim and you must follow this, you must obey this?

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Well, one of the things that's interesting is that some of the results that came out of what happened in Ireland, they said that some of the voters voted based upon the particular emotional appeal, and they did it here in the

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United States too. Believe me, the pro -choice movement has been helping in Ireland and unfortunately so has our pro -life movement in terms of some of the really bad arguments to resist the pro -choice movement.

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But one of the appeals that's made is the pro -choice movement often appeals to what about the life of the mother?

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What about rape? What about incest? They use what accounts for less than 2 % of all abortions.

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They use the argument that accounts for less than 2 % of all abortions to legalize abortion at will in every circumstance.

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Now that won the day here in the United States. It continues to be a very bad argument the pro -choicers use over here, but boy did it ever win in Ireland and a lot of the undecided voters said that they ended up making their decision based upon the emotional strength of the arguments that the life of the mother, rape and incest.

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What do the arguments that are used by the pro -choice movement, my body, my choice?

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We saw all of the signs. It was as if the pro -choice movement in Ireland went shopping in America to the pro -life or pro -choice movements websites to make their arguments.

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It was just tremendous. Now I want to say that we have really an option in terms of how do we fight against the pro -choice movement?

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Do we go with them when they argue from emotional appeals and pragmatism and all the things they do?

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Do we go with them and start firing back with emotionally laden arguments? Because that is often what the pro -life movement does in the

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United States of America. From an epistemological standpoint, we are using the same kind of shaky foundations as the pro -choice movement.

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Emotionally laden, driven arguments. What about the life of the mother? What about if it was rape?

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What about if it was incest? And the pro -choice, pro -life movement in America fires back with the same kind of emotionally driven argumentation.

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Give you an example, when the pro -choice movement says, well, what if she was raped?

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Just think about this for a second in terms of epistemology. How do you know what you know? Well, I have a question we have to ask.

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How do you get any basis to argue against rape with your humanistic presuppositions?

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You see, you're borrowing from a biblical life and worldview in order to make your argument that rape is wrong and to appeal to those emotions.

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Because only with a Christian worldview can I ultimately have a basis to say that rape is objectively, really, ultimately evil and wrong.

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And yet the pro -choicers use that emotional argument of rape against people to argue for abortion at will.

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And just think about it in terms of epistemology. If you're standing on a biblical world and life view, if Christ is at the center, you have every reason for that emotional appeal to work on you.

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Because what do we believe from a Christian worldview? That rape is absolutely, objectively wrong and evil.

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As a matter of fact, in God's law, God so values a life of the woman that in what he said in the

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Old Testament was that it's worthy of a death penalty. That's how much God values a woman in the

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Old Testament is he says that rape is objectively evil and wrong. And it's so awful, so horrendous that justice is capital punishment.

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That's how when we approach this question, Christians stand. We stand on the word of God and his revelation and his testimony.

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Rape is objectively, morally evil. Now, the unbeliever who abandons Christ, who abandons

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God's word, ultimately has no epistemological foundation for arguing that at all.

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They're borrowing from Christ in order to argue against life. God says, those who hate me love death.

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And that's what you get with the issue of abortion. We hate God first, and then we start loving death.

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We love all kinds of death. We love death, the death of the family. We talk about homosexuality, homosexual marriage.

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We love the death of the family. We love the death of our children. We love the death of social institutions.

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We love the death of economics. We just love death when we abandon God. But think about that argument just as an epistemological foundation.

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If we don't use the word of God as a foundation to argue against the culture of death, if our epistemological foundation is found elsewhere, as the pro -life movement often does today, instead of the word of God rooted there, how do we argue against the person who says, what if she was raped?

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I say this. I'm a Christian. I stand in the word of God. I know why I believe that rape is absolutely, objectively, morally evil, but why do you?

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What I say to them when they bring it up is, what's wrong with rape? Again, I know why I think it's wrong, but why do you think that it's wrong?

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And of course, the humanist, the secularist, the atheist today, the person who embraces that culture and worldview says, what do you mean?

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What's wrong with rape? Do I need to really spell this out for you? Rape? Well, rape is a violation of another person's body.

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Rape is a violation of a person's own body. You don't have a right to do things to someone's body.

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It's not your body. It's their body. You have no right to do that. It's a violation of their own person, their body.

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And I would say, thank you for that very pro -life argument, because what's in the womb of the mother is not the body of the mother.

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And those presuppositions that you have no right to do something to somebody's body like that are the very things that are happening in abortion.

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But watch this. It goes deeper than that. It's not just answering the fool according to their folly, which is what it is,

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Proverbs 26, 4 -5, but it's also not answering the fool according to their folly.

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That is to say I'm standing on the word of God and the biblical worldview as my foundation to argue against that emotional appeal.

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You see, I feel the weight of the argument. What if she was raped? Because I think rape is such a horrific and immoral and awful evil thing.

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How do I know that it is? It's just not on my say -so. It's God has defined.

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This person is in the image of God. Love does no harm to its neighbor.

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God has called rape immoral. He says that it's worthy of punishment and death. That's how

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I know that rape is objectively morally evil and wrong. And you're using a Christian worldview to argue against me, but you don't have any basis to use those tools if you use your standards of epistemology and your worldview.

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From an atheistic or secularist worldview, rape isn't wrong. It's just something that happens in this cosmically indifferent universe.

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It's just something that bags of biological stuff and protoplasm in this godless universe do.

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Don't forget, in the atheist perspective or the secularist perspective, if you abandon the word of God, there's no justice ahead of any of us.

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It's only sky above us. There's no justice ahead of us, behind us, below us, around us.

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There's no objective standards. There's no prescriptions. There's just what is, time and chance universe.

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As Dr. Bonson used to say, quoting Shakespeare, it's sound and fury signifying nothing.

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It's just nothing. It's stuff moving around. Why are we complaining when one bag of stuff runs into another bag of stuff?

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It may be painful. It may affect somebody's nervous system, but it's not evil.

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But you see, here's what's important. We can't argue against that emotional appeal by abandoning the word of God and the fact that we ultimately should say as Christians without shame,

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I believe what I believe about the unborn, not because of my own feelings and perspective and history and tradition, but I believe it on the basis of the word of the living

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God. God calls this evil, immoral, and he commands us to repent and turn to Christ, to flee to him for life, forgiveness, and peace.

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You see, I would say that we need to fight against this culture of death all over the world, not with pragmatism, not with traditional arguments in terms of, well, this is our

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Western tradition, family, you know, children, all those things. That doesn't work in a culture that loves death.

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We need to argue against it on the basis of the word of the living God. And we need to call people to repentance and faith.

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We can't win this fight, brothers and sisters, either in our nation or theirs. We can't win it in either place without changing the heart of our culture.

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And that starts with individual hearts being changed through the gospel. It can't happen.

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It can't happen by abandoning Christ. Listen, Jesus says, I am the way and the truth.

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He's the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. We can't argue for truth apart from the one who's the embodiment of truth.

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And we can't argue for life at all apart from the person who is the life.

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And I fear that one of the reasons we're losing so much all around us, so much spoil and so much decay around us in our culture, of course, of course,

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I acknowledge that God is sovereign. This is judgment. There's no question it's judgment. God is judging our nations.

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But just because God is judging our nations doesn't mean the church can now sit back and not be light and witness to it.

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But I believe that we're experiencing so much because, in many cases, we refuse to even allow the gospel to be the vehicle that opens people's eyes to the truth.

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Now, I just want to, just before we get to the Stanley thing, I just want to pull from a couple different things in terms of a foundation of knowledge.

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If we have an explicitly Christian epistemology, then that means that we believe that God has revealed himself in history.

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He's condescending. He has spoken in history, and on that basis, we know.

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We know because God has revealed himself. We know because God has entered into history and touched us.

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We know because God has spoken. And so what you see as a pattern in the New Testament is you see when the apostles want to make a point, there's the common tool or instrument that they use.

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Well, they'll say things like, what does the scripture say? They will appeal to scripture by saying, as an example, right here in Romans, when we look at Romans chapter 4, when

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Paul is trying to buttress the point that he's making about Christ and the law, it'll justify nobody.

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Christ is our propitiation. God remains just and the justifier, the one who has faith in Jesus. He says in Romans 3 .28,

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we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. He also says, by the way, there in Romans 3 .31,

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do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. To make his point, he says, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh?

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This is Romans 4 .1. He says in verse 3, what does the scripture say?

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The apostles root their proclamation of the truth in the very words of God.

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Jesus did the same. If Jesus wasn't appealing to his own authority as God in the flesh, he would always appeal to what does the scripture say?

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So, for example, in one dispute he had with the Jews, he says, have you not read what was spoken to you by God?

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And he uses the word of God as the very springing off point to make a point to them.

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Have you not read what was spoken to you by God? Have you not read what was spoken to you by God?

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In Mark 7, when there's a conflict for the Lord Jesus, there's an accusation made about how come your disciples aren't following the tradition of the elders.

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This was seen by them ultimately as like divine tradition. He has a conflict to address.

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Jesus, of course, could have appealed to his own authority. He's God, fully

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God in the flesh, tabernacled among us. This is the creator of the cosmos.

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This is the creator of all of you. He could have appealed to his own authority, but what does he do?

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Jesus says in Mark 7, he says, Moses says, there's the words of God, Moses says, he says, but you say, he says, thus you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

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When Jesus or the apostles are in a conflict over truth, they appeal to the words of the living

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God, God's own word and revelation. If you go back to the Old Testament revelation, you'll see that this is the pattern of God.

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This is what God does consistently from the beginning to the end. Just take, for example, the first couple of chapters of the

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Bible. What's that first conflict? Adam and Eve are created by God, blessed by God.

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God says, do this, don't do that. Words of God, no evidence, no corroboration, no other people around like angels looking over at Adam and Eve going, yeah, yeah,

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I agree with him on this. There's no other corroboration. It's the words of God. You can do this, but don't do that.

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And what is the very first challenge that's presented by Satan? He says, hath

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God said? And what does he do? He begins to have them question the word of the living

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God, their own creator. This is an epistemological fight at the beginning of the

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Bible. Yes, it is. It's an epistemological fight. How do you know what's true?

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How do you know ethically what you ought to do? God says this, do this, but don't do that.

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The day you do, you'll die. Satan says, hath God said? He deceives

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Eve, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11. And what does he do? He says, you won't die.

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He contradicts the word of the living God. See, that's where it all comes down to. It comes down to how do you know what's true?

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How do you know how you ought to live? God says, or I say. And of course, Satan says, he says, you won't die.

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You'll be like God, knowing good and evil. That is to say, I believe, determining for yourself what is ethical, what is good, what is evil.

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Now, as you move through scripture, what do you see each and every time through scripture? As God is condescending and he's speaking to his people and he's blessing his people, loving his people, you see this constant appeal that God makes to rest upon his revelation, his word.

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One example is Deuteronomy 13, 1 -4. God says this, false prophet comes, even if he has signs and wonders.

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It looks legit. The ministry looks like it's from God. Signs and wonders, the miraculous are there.

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He says this, but if he leads you after other gods, gods which you have not known, that's how you know.

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So what's the basis there? That's an epistemological claim. You see all this, all this philosophical talk and all these difficult conversations, as far as they can go, you can make them very academic, but that is an epistemological claim.

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If somebody comes and is making claims about God, about the world, they're claiming they're from God, but they contradict the revelation that God has already given of himself.

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That's how you know. So according to God in Genesis 1 -3, what ought to have been the standard?

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God's own claim. In Deuteronomy 13, what should be the standard for God's people if somebody comes making claims about God?

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God's own revelation about himself. In Isaiah 8 -20, it says, to the law and to the testimony, to the law and to the testimony.

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If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no light in them. What's the standard there?

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To the law and the testimony. This is the standard. These are the words of the living God. If somebody comes and doesn't speak according to this revelation, they have no light in them.

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Don't listen to them. So we can move through scripture, and you see from the Old Testament to the New, the standard is always, what does

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God say? Proverbs 1 -7, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That is to say that it is the fear of the Lord that's the launching off point of knowledge.

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If you don't start with reverent submission to God in awe, fear of God, there is no knowledge at all.

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It's the starting point. Now, it doesn't say unbelievers can't have knowledge. It doesn't say that.

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It doesn't say that unbelievers don't know things. It's to say that apart from God, there is only so -called knowledge.

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There's no foundation for knowledge. God is the very reference point. He's the starting point. And of course, and I think we'll end on this one right now,

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Colossians. Actually, I'm going to read it to you. If you have your Bibles with you, go there because I think it's important for you to actually see it, to know where it's at, to work through it.

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Colossians 2, this is an extremely important point. The Apostle Paul knows the philosophers of his day.

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He clearly did. He was highly trained and highly educated. At the

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Areopagus, the Apostle Paul, I believe was on sort of a preliminary trial there.

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I don't think they were just interested in what he was saying. I think he was being brought up on sort of preliminary charges there at the

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Areopagus. He clearly knows the philosophy of the Greeks and the world around him. He quotes from Eratos of Cilicia and Epimenides of Crete.

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These were pagan poets. He cites their testimony itself. So he knows their worldview.

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He knows the philosophy of the day and it was rigorous. It was really rigorous. I think that we are sometimes shameful in how we treat the ancients in terms of we're so much more enlightened and know so much more.

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Those guys could think. They really, really could. I mean, that place where Paul spoke in Mars Hill was the epicenter, the place where you have the

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Stoics and Epicoreans. And these people thought long and hard thoughts.

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They weren't right, but they weren't dummies. And Paul knows that.

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And this is what he says. He says in Colossians 2, about Christ, verse 2, that their hearts would be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

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Christ, in whom, Christ, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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So now I have to confess something, and I think we can all admit to this if we're honest with ourselves.

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Sometimes you read the Bible, I read the Bible, and I see things that are said, grand statements, earth -shattering statements, world -shaking and transforming statements.

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And I don't let it impact me the way it ought to. I don't believe it. I don't trust it.

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Now, don't get me wrong. I believe it. What I'm saying is I don't embrace it. I don't think about all the implications of it.

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And I think oftentimes when I had read this before, before God really worked me over on this,

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I just missed it. In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Yay and amen.

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Of course, I agree with that as a Christian. But have you thought about what this means?

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This is coming at a time, of course, you know, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, you know that these guys are around doing philosophy.

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They're doing, they're talking about the foundations of knowledge. You know that. They're talking about logic. They're talking about reason and rationality.

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They're talking about the world of different forms and the material and the immaterial, and how do we find a basis for knowledge?

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They know this discussion. And you know, Paul says in that context, in a context where philosophy is the in the thing, it's in vogue, it's part of pop culture in a sense.

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Do you know what he says? Christ in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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You want knowledge? You want wisdom? You're not going to get it apart from Christ.

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In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That is a huge statement. That is saying that Christ is the foundation of knowledge and wisdom.

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If you don't start with him, you don't truly have knowledge and wisdom. You don't, because they're all hidden in Christ.

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That is the foundation of a Christian view of epistemology, a Christian worldview. And Paul says this, he says,

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I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. Now, this is where it gets heavy.

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He says, verse 8, See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

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So there is a philosophy that is not according to Christ.

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The inverse is that there is a philosophy, an outlook on wisdom and knowledge and life that is in accordance with Christ, that has

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Christ at the center. And Paul says, See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

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So for the apostle Paul, this is foundational. Don't let anybody rob you.

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Don't let anybody persuade you. Don't let anybody ultimately take you captive by these arguments that are not according to Christ.

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Now, I have to say that I believe that we need to be transformed by this text in our philosophy, in our apologetic, in our view, how we approach the world, because the world is making knowledge claims.

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Now, we're either going to make knowledge claims back, truth claims back, that are consistent with God's revelation with Christ at the very center, or we're going to take the approach of the world, we're going to pretend neutrality, and we're going to have some other foundation for knowledge that is only so -called knowledge, and it does not have the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that we have in Christ.

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And no matter where you cut it, whichever way you're looking, think about it for a second this way.

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Watch. We tend to understand this as Christians in our conflict with the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. Christians get it. We understand it completely. When you have the normal Christian experience of a

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Christian who comes into conflict with a Mormon, that Christian loves that Mormon and wants to reach them for Jesus, what does that Christian do?

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Just sort of natural, the Christian goes, what did Joseph say? He said, what?

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Wait. And Christians start turning to our Bibles. We start looking at some of the claims of Joseph and Brigham Young and Orson Pratt and Hyde and Joseph Fielding Smith, and we run through the gamut throughout all the

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Mormon history, and we say, what did he say? And we start filtering what they say through the words of God.

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That's a Christian epistemology. How do I know if Joseph or Brigham are telling me the truth?

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I look to the words of God, and we do it, watch. Again, we do it with the Jehovah's Witnesses. Same thing we do with them.

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Charles Taze Russell said, what? Judge Rutherford said, what? The Watchtower says, what?

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We go to our Bibles, and we speak the word of God to that Jehovah's Witness at our door at 7am on a

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Saturday. We just speak it to him. This is what God says. You say this, but God says that.

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Now watch. We tend to abandon this revelational epistemology and this foundation of a philosophy in apologetics and truth.

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We tend to abandon that when we now come into conflict with the atheist.

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Why? Well, because they don't accept God's word. They don't believe it, right?

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But that doesn't make this any less true. God's word doesn't lose its authority because somebody rejects it.

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Think about that. Think about it in terms of the minimal authority you have in your home with your kids, right?

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You make a claim to your child. You say, you're not to do this in my home, and if you do, you're going to be punished.

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And then the kid later on, you find out was doing that exact thing, and the kid then says to you, well, I don't believe what you have to say.

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It doesn't make a difference if they believe what you have to say. You have authority here, and their rejection of your authority doesn't change things.

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And in terms of the overarching thing, macro view of life, God is the ultimate authority, and he in himself is truth.

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If God makes a claim, it doesn't matter if somebody rejects it. It's true whether or not they reject it. It's not my job as a

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Christian to abandon God's word as the center and foundation because somebody else rejects his authority.

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My job as a believer is to love this person and to love God. Those are my two primary commandments, love

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God and love neighbor. And in loving God and loving neighbor, that means I'm going to stand on the word of truth as I speak to that person, whether they receive his revelation or not.

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That doesn't mean I can't step into his worldview and do a little bit of internal critique to show the collapse of the system, but it certainly means that I ought not abandon

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Scripture and pretend neutrality to work with this new culture that we live in.

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And this also works. And I'm talking about in terms of what we normally do as Christians. We stand on the word of God, we come to conflict with the

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Mormons, the Jehovah's Witness, the Rosicrucian, the Muslim. This also needs to be understood in the context of the pro -life, pro -choice discussion.

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Right back to the issue of Ireland. We cannot win our nations to Jesus by abandoning

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Jesus to do it. We can't convince somebody that the word of God is supreme by abandoning the word of God to do it.

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We can't convince somebody that Jesus is worthy of our whole lives, that he is

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King of Kings and Lord of Lords, when we abandon him as supreme and ultimate treasure to do it.

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We have to stand on his word. We have to stand on his revelation. By the way, just quickly, how much time do we have?

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I don't even know how long we're going. As long as, whatever. I was still going to play through some of Andy Stanley's thing, although one thing here.

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Am I doing Thursday too? Oh, good. Okay. Well, why don't we do that? How long have I been going now for? An hour?

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Okay, let's do this. I'll keep you sort of just chomping at the bit, waiting.

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And yeah, it's a teaser. So this is a teaser start, and it works out well because the screen just went blank here and I don't have the video to play up there anyway.

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So it works out just perfect. So let me just have a few final thoughts. What's that? Oh, it's not?

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Yeah, just on this screen, I guess it is. It's okay. So we'll get it ready for Thursday. And what I'm going to do is

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I want to try to bring some of these thoughts together in terms of foundations and the word of God as supreme and interact a little bit with Andy Stanley's Aftermath Part Three, Not Difficult message that he has up on YouTube.

01:00:13

It has about 18 ,000 views on YouTube. Obviously, it's not gone viral or anything like that, but he says some things as an influential pastor that are honestly really, really difficult to listen to.

01:00:29

They're contradictory. They are not Christian by any means in terms of how we approach the word of God, how we approach

01:00:37

God's covenants. I mean, he contradicts the New Testament revelation more times than I can even remember within the space of 12 minutes.

01:00:47

And it's a 39 -minute message. And I'm only going to be dealing with about 12 or 13 minutes of it.

01:00:52

I'm not going to do the whole thing. Just like I said, 12 or 13 minutes between like 20 minutes to 32 minutes or so.

01:00:58

But some of the things that Andy Stanley says here, the reason why I think I want to deal with it is not just that they're contradictory.

01:01:08

It's not just that they're just not true in terms of New Testament revelation. It's that they're so destructive to individual

01:01:18

Christian praxis, my life and walk and practice as a believer with God, but also in terms of the witness of the church to the culture around us.

01:01:29

I mean, he literally argues that you untether the Old Testament revelation from the

01:01:35

New Testament, but he doesn't just stop there. And it's one of the things that it just dawned on me as I was reviewing it.

01:01:41

He doesn't just say that you untether the Old Testament revelation from New Testament revelation. He says the whole worldview of the

01:01:51

Old Testament, the whole worldview. Amazing.

01:01:57

Amazing. And the thing that amazes me the most, and I think Dr. White touched on this, I vaguely remember, is there no one in his congregation?

01:02:06

Is there nobody around him to speak up and say, excuse me,

01:02:12

Andy, that's just not true. You made claims here that are just pure, purely false.

01:02:23

It's a fiction. You realize that you went up there before the people of God, quoting from the words of God, and you contradicted not only yourself and historic biblical revelation, but you said things that were outright lies.

01:02:42

I'm going to handle Andy Stanley a little bit differently than I would the average person on the street.

01:02:47

I want you to know that, because this is a man standing before the people of God, opening the word of God and teaching them on the

01:02:55

Lord's day. He knows better. He's read his Bible. And if he hasn't read his

01:03:00

Bible and he doesn't know these things, then I would argue that he doesn't belong in this position. Some of you guys may be thinking

01:03:06

I'm treating him harshly. I would say as a minister of the gospel, I have a responsibility to warn people.

01:03:13

And I think judgment starts within the church. And I think we need to handle people within the Christian communion a little bit differently.

01:03:19

And I will say that these were outright lies. The things that he claims about Paul and about Paul's standard for ethics, about not using the

01:03:29

Old Testament for ethical appeals. Now, by the way, I just want to say this just to encourage us. This really,

01:03:37

I don't think, has anything to do with degree here in terms of what we can all agree with what's wrong with Andy Stanley here.

01:03:45

And I'm talking about, like, I'm not saying how far do you want to go with the Old Testament revelation and what applies to today, what general equity applies.

01:03:51

We don't even need to get to that discussion. I'm talking about Andy Stanley argues for a complete disconnect from the

01:03:57

Old Testament revelation, goes so far as to say that the Ten Commandments, those aren't even in any way obligatory today.

01:04:06

Detach yourself from the entire Old Testament revelation. And he says it all centers around the revelation of Jesus.

01:04:13

Well, let me end on this because it does dovetail quite nicely with everything we've done today.

01:04:19

You guys know the passage in Luke where Jesus gives the story of the rich man and Lazarus, rich man and Lazarus.

01:04:31

And, well, I'll just tell you the story here. I know we're running on time here. When Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, it's a horrific story, by the way, because it does testify to so much that will be true about human beings when they die.

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But Jesus gives a story of rich man and Lazarus, and this man is in torment, and all he wants is for someone to go back, someone to go back and to tell his loved ones about this awful place, to warn them.

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That's all he wants, just go back and tell them. And what's said to him is so powerful.

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It's a divine revelation. It's from God. The story that Jesus gave, we ought to listen to Jesus. He's the one that was risen.

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The message that goes to this man in torment is they have Moses and the prophets.

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If they won't listen to their word, they're not going to believe if someone rises from the dead. And it's interesting because Andy Stanley tries to make the point that we need to disconnect the

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Old Testament revelation from the New Testament revelation and just make the Christian appeal, like the entire

01:05:47

Christian worldview and epistemology ultimately, rests on the resurrection of Jesus.

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That's all we need people to see. That's all we need them to believe is the resurrection of Jesus. We just need to get people to the resurrection.

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The resurrection, someone rose from the dead. He rose from the dead. That's what changes everything. Disconnect from the

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Old Testament, the myth of creation, Andy Stanley says, all these different things. The whole house of cards can go away because you have this man who rose from the dead.

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And what does Jesus say in that story? He says, they have Moses and the prophets.

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They already have God's revelation. If they're not going to believe God's revelation, if they're not going to believe what

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God says, then neither are they going to believe if somebody rises from the dead.

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The problem then and today is not that someone needs a miracle.

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They just need more light. They just need more evidence. They need something supernatural. They need a guy to rise from the dead.

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The problem is fallen human beings that refuse to start their knowledge and their thinking with the word, the revelation of the living

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God. That's the story. If they're not going to believe what God said through Moses and the prophets, they're not going to believe if somebody rises from the dead.

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By the way, I want to say the evidence for the historic resurrection of Jesus Christ is insurmountable in terms of the unbelievers.

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You can't take it down. I believe that with all my heart, it's amazing the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

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But guess what it won't do? It's not going to make someone a believer. It's not going to do it.

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It's not the source of it all. You guys know, we all know, Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, he raises a dead guy.

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He's been dead so long, he stinketh. He comes out, they unwrap this guy. And what's it say in the text?

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Some doubted, some didn't believe. What? This guy rose from the dead and some didn't believe?

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Jesus rose from the dead and it didn't convince some people. And Andy Stanley wants to bring the

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Christian message down to Jesus rose from the dead. You don't need God's previous revelation.

01:08:00

You don't need any of it. You just need to know that someone rose from the dead. It doesn't convince fallen people.

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People just have an excuse for it. They'll say, well, crazy things happen in this world. Someone rose from the dead.

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Call National Geographic. Call the magazines and tell them something insane happened.

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Somebody rose from the dead. And I'll leave you with this. Christopher Hitchens actually said in his debate with Douglas Wilson, he said, powerful,

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I think we'll probably play it on Thursday. He said, I'll give you it. I'll give you the resurrection of Jesus.

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He rose from the dead. He goes, doesn't mean he was a son of God. Doesn't mean I'll follow him.

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Doesn't mean ultimately anything to me. That's what an atheist said. He said, I'll even give you the resurrection.

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Doesn't mean I have to listen to him. Because the quest for knowledge and truth starts much lower than that.

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It has a firmer foundation than just an event. That doesn't mean

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I'm diminishing the value of the resurrection. It was evidence par excellence of God, of Christ, of who he is.

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No doubt about that. It's just this. That doesn't convince fallen people that they need

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Jesus. And it's not going to convince Ireland to turn away from a culture of death.

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You need the words of the living God. You need God's word as the foundation, and you need the gospel at the center.

01:09:26

So that's it for today, guys. Hey, Jeff. Yeah. So can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, good. So I wanted to share with you, my wife and I were discussing this somewhat the other day.

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Yeah. And it occurred to us, because we're going through the law right now in our study together, and it occurred to me, what is the story of the

01:09:46

Good Samaritan rooted in? It's rooted in Leviticus 19. Oh, yeah.

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We don't think about that. We so often take these parables and stories from the

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New Testament, stories that Jesus tells, and we only connect it to the

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New Testament, completely disconnected from the old, has no relationship. And yet you really can't have the

01:10:11

Good Samaritan doing what he does. That's right. You can't have the

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Levite, the priest, walking around. That's right. What is he doing when he walks around that man?

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He's disobeying God's law. That's right. And there's a point to that. Oh, yes.

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But I often wonder, since our conversation with her, what would

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Andy Stanley think of the story of the Good Samaritan? Is that something we can dismiss, too? Because I think he would like the story of the

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Good Samaritan. Of course. I think he would tell his congregation, we all need to be Good Samaritans. But what he fails to do in so many circumstances, and I'm sorry,

01:10:56

I'm going to say it, these cult leaders or potential cult leaders tell you what to think, they don't teach you how to think.

01:11:04

Very good, yes. And the problem here is is that he's so busy telling these people what to think that he utterly fails to show them, hey, this is this way because of that.

01:11:19

Right. Because God tells us this is how we're supposed to behave.

01:11:25

That's right. And yeah, and I'll tell you, Rich, that's good, too. Maybe we'll have some interaction on Thursday on this exact point.

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It's interesting because when you look at one thing that I know

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Andy Stanley would want as a vocational minister, and that is a paycheck, it says in Scripture that you're not to muzzle the ox while it treads.

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That's what Paul says to Timothy. You know what he does is he pulls not just from the

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Ten Commandments, he pulls from an animal husbandry law of the

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Old Testament. And he just tells Timothy, you're supposed to know this. Don't muzzle the ox while it treads.

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That's, of course, New Testament ethical basis for a vocational minister to be paid.

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And it's based upon what? Not Paul's word. It's based upon God's Old Testament revelation.

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Don't muzzle the ox while it treads. Or how about receive no accusation against an elder unless it's on the basis of two to three witnesses.

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That's Paul post -ascension. Jesus has already been dead and raised and ascended.

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And Paul speaks after all of that, he appeals to God's judicial law there about justice in terms of accusations.

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He says, don't receive an accusation against an elder unless it's on the basis of two to three witnesses. The point being is what

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Andy Stanley did there was it's a mess because he wants to detach and divorce the Old Testament revelation entirely.

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He says the whole worldview from the New Testament, and it does complete damage. And that was one of the saying is that Paul does the very things that Andy Stanley says he doesn't do.

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And he roots everything in the base. That's what the whole point of this today was Christian epistemology.

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How do I know? Well, for the apostles, it was God says, God says, and that's how we know.

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It's a powerful thing and it's important. And all of this does intersect with so much of just Christian practice and life and church life, family life, how we're to engage the culture.

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So I think it's an important discussion. We'll finish it on Thursday, everybody. Thank you all for watching. Encourage you guys to go to aomen .org.

01:13:34

Get connected with Dr. White some more there. And of course, go through this amazing channel right here,

01:13:39

Alpha and Omega on YouTube, get more content. And we'll see you guys on Thursday. What time? Same time.

01:13:46

Okay. Two o 'clock on Thursday. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching The Dividing Line. Pray for Dr. White. Thanks for letting me sit here today,