The State of Apologetics in the Church

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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.gov. That's pollworker .nj .gov. Welcome to The Rap Report.

01:02

I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport. And today what we're going to have for you is something special. We did a panel discussion on the state of apologetics.

01:11

This was hosted by CARM .org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. They hosted this, many great speakers, myself one of them,

01:20

Tony Costa, Eddie Delcor, Eli Alala, and Matt Slick, all getting together, having a discussion on the topic of apologetics, the state of apologetics in the church.

01:33

You're going to want to listen to this. But before we get to that, I owe you an apology.

01:40

Yes, I'm late in dropping this episode. In fact, I almost missed the entire week.

01:46

I have been podcasting, I don't know, four or five years now, and I don't think I've ever missed a week with you guys.

01:52

I try really hard to make sure that I continue producing good content for you, the listening audience.

01:59

So I hope that you're sharing it with other people, so that they find this good content.

02:05

But I had done a two -hour response recording to Joe Biden's speech that he did in Philadelphia, where basically he called more than half of America terrorists and declared war on Americans.

02:23

It really was, he said, that those that are conservative are a clear and present danger.

02:29

That's the language of warfare. And I did this whole response, I got done with it and said, it just wasn't good.

02:35

I didn't like the way it came out. It was too repetitive, it wasn't really clear,

02:41

I was not happy with it. And I don't want you, my listening audience, to listen to garbage.

02:48

And so I just scratched it and didn't have anything ready.

02:54

Well, we did this panel discussion. I asked Carm if I would be able to have the rights to, or not the rights, but the right to play this to this audience.

03:02

And they said yes. So this is very informative. You're going to learn a lot about apologetics.

03:08

I hope you find this very helpful. And we may be doing more of these in the future. So that's coming your way right now on The Wrap Report.

03:15

One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide

03:21

Biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community.

03:28

For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org. All right,

03:41

I guess we're on. I heard this thing recording in progress. Welcome to a panel discussion,

03:46

Carm's first one. We're going to be having, hopefully, a really good discussion on the topic of what is the state of apologetics in the

03:53

Christian church today. It's a very important topic. It's really something that's been increasing a great deal in importance throughout the

04:03

Christian church. I've been doing apologetics for a long time. We'll talk about that after we introduce everybody else.

04:10

What I'm going to do is have each one on the panel here introduce themselves.

04:16

Any books they've written, contact information they can provide where we can get a hold of them, and stuff like that.

04:23

And then we'll get into discussing the issue of apologetics in the Christian church.

04:28

And then we do that for about an hour. And then what we'll do afterwards is have a time of Q &A where people can then just put in their questions.

04:37

And you can direct them to everybody or individuals. And then we can deal with it accordingly.

04:46

And hopefully everything will go fine. We are losing a new technology.

04:52

So please bear with us with any problems. I'd like to open up in prayer and we'll get going. All right. Lord Jesus, thank you for the ministry that you have given to each one of us by your grace.

05:05

You've called us. You've condescended to reach out, to reach down and touch us and allow us to attempt to defend your faith and expand your faith and speak for you.

05:17

We ask that you would bless us and allow us to speak according to your word, according to your wisdom. We ask for your mercy and for your grace and a blessing upon each one here in the panel, as well as those who would listen.

05:31

We ask for your blessing. Just seven times seven. We ask for your blessing,

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Lord, in Jesus name. Amen. All right. So I'm assuming everybody can hear me.

05:42

And since you all raised your heads after the prayer, that's good. What I'd like to do right now is have each one of you, if you don't mind, introduce yourselves.

05:52

And I want to start with my nemesis. Who would that be? It would be Andrew Rappaport. Andrew Rappaport, who

05:59

I've known for years. We've done things together, preached together, taught together, evangelized together, and battled over paying for meals together.

06:08

And so that's quite a story. Hey, Andrew, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me, Matt. I mean, look, you did eventually, after nine years by me dinner, just for the record.

06:18

It took nine years. You did do it in epic, epic fashion. Live, unapologetically live, you had dinner delivered to me.

06:27

It was epic. Yeah. For some stupid reason, Andrew has,

06:33

I will admit it, been able to outsmart me repeatedly. No, no, no. Get the term right. Outslicked you.

06:39

Outslicked me and outsmarted me. Over the years, I've got a lot of stories you could talk about where I've gotten up a half hour early at a restaurant to go pay the bill.

06:47

He's already paid it. Things like that, you know, his slime ball. So the thing is that I call him a jerk when he blesses me because that's the thing.

06:57

But I did get him. All right. So how can people get a hold of you? What ministry do you run?

07:03

Yeah. So I met with Striving for Eternity Ministries. You can go to strivingforeternity .org.

07:10

And we also have part of that is the Christian Podcast Community, christianpodcastcommunity .org,

07:15

where you can hear Matt Slick live as one of the podcasts that are on there. So we have over 50 podcasts on there.

07:22

We're primarily a discipleship ministry. So we disciple through podcasting and disciple podcasters.

07:27

But we come into churches and do seminars. But we have a very weird way of ministry because we actually target smaller churches that cannot afford to have people come in.

07:39

That's our target. We want the churches that are like 25 people and they go, no, no one's ever going to come to our church.

07:45

That's who we're looking to help out because those are churches everyone avoids. We have an online school that Matt Slick convinced me

07:52

I should try to do called the Striving for Eternity Academy. We teach how to interpret the

07:58

Bible, systematic theology, things like that. My books would be what do we believe is a

08:04

Christian systematic theology and what do they believe is basically a systematic theology major Western religions.

08:10

If you want to hear more, my podcast is called The Wrap Report. And Matt Slick and I started a podcast years ago and he got too busy and dropped out, but called

08:19

Apologetics Live. So if you like apologetics every Thursday night, anyone can come in asking any question.

08:27

Apologeticslive .com. I want to get Matt to come on with the guy that I just recently had on.

08:32

He says he is the top one percent of all Christians and he could not cite a single verse from any

08:42

Bible verses he was referring to. He also said that Christians can sleep with a prostitute in faith and it would be not be a sin.

08:51

So I would love to see Matt reacting with him. So I might try to get him to call the radio show or have

08:58

Matt and him go on for a longer period because it'd be fun. Yeah, that'd be interesting.

09:06

Obviously, he doesn't have all his paws in the litter box. So. All right. So they get ahold of you at strivingforeternity .org.

09:13

All right. And good stuff. Eddie, my man. How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing good.

09:18

Thank you very much. Hey, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Could you introduce yourself?

09:24

How people can get ahold of you? Sure. My name is Edward Delcor. And I have we have a nonprofit organization, apologetic and Christian educational called the

09:36

Department of Christian Defense. They can get ahold of me through there. Also, there are my

09:42

YouTube pages there as well. And what I do, I. I am a professor of theology at actually two and a half seminaries.

09:51

I say half because one is correspondence and in London Greenwich School of Theology. But I enjoy what

09:59

I do. And I'm delighted to be here today. Thank you very much. How can they get ahold of you if they wanted to?

10:05

I think it'll hold me through the website. Christiandefense .org. Christiandefense .org. That's probably the best way to get ahold of me.

10:12

Christiandefense .org. It has a contact page and it has, of course, a boatload of information.

10:18

Which also it has our books that that I've written. One of the last ones

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I did was I co -authored with several people, including my friend Anthony Rogers. And it's it's a massive book on the

10:31

Trinity. It says Our God is Triune. Also, I have a definitive look at oneness theology.

10:38

It's a polemic and a refutation to oneness theology. And it's a positive affirmation of the

10:45

Trinity. And we have a couple other books that we offer as well there. It's all on Christiandefense .org.

10:53

Excellent. Yeah, I've been studying the Trinity more and more in depth. And I wrote a 500 word definition, so to speak, of the

11:02

Trinity and taught it for five weeks. Really enjoyed it. Maybe we could have a discussion on the

11:08

Trinity. I think it's a very important topic. The foundation. What it is and what it's not. Yes. And how it relates to oneness.

11:16

Incidentally, you know, I met David Bernard a couple of months ago and challenged him to a debate.

11:21

Politely. It wasn't obstreperous. And he declined. And then he said he might be interested in a discussion.

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So he gave me his email address. I emailed him. And that was five, six weeks ago.

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I've heard nothing. So we'll see. But nevertheless, David Bernard, for those who don't know, is one of the top oneness guys in the country.

11:41

All right. Tony Costa. Hey, brother. Thanks for being here, man.

11:46

Could you introduce yourself? Yeah, my pleasure, Matt. Thanks. It's a great honor to be with you men. My name is

11:52

Tony Costa. I'm from Toronto, Canada. So I'm the only Canadian on this panel. And I'm professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

12:03

And I also teach as an instructor at the University of Toronto in the areas of gospel studies and archaeology of the

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Bible and the ancient Near East. I've been involved in apologetics for over 30 years and debated

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Muslims, cultists, atheists, secularists, and so forth.

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Two of my books that are in print published, Early Christian Creeds and Hymns, that was just published early this year.

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Early Christian Creeds and Hymns, What Early Christians Believed in Word and Song. And so this examines the creeds that are embedded in the

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New Testament text. So we're not necessarily talking about the historic creeds, although I do touch tangentially on that.

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And the book also looks at the hymns that are embedded in the New Testament text. And I also have

12:55

Worship and the Risen Jesus in the Pauline Letters, which is my published doctoral dissertation.

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And so I also do a number of—my YouTube channel is Toronto Apologetics, Tony Costa, Toronto Apologetics.

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And I also do some online teaching. We were talking about the Trinity. I have a course coming up,

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October 1st, an all -day course, online course on the Trinity. And I'm teaching on cults at Toronto Baptist Seminary starting next

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Monday, and also teaching biblical Greek as well. So again, it's an honor to be with you,

13:33

Matt. I know a number of you. I've had you on my YouTube channel, so looking forward to tonight's discussion.

13:40

Oh, thank you. You got more degrees and qualifications than a thermometer. Well, my name's

13:45

Matt Slick, and I don't have a doctorate, but I have a Master's of Divinity, and I've been doing apologetics since 1980.

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I run CARM .org, C -A -R -M dot O -R -G. It's had 151 million visitors, been doing radio for 17 years, written a few books, and do debates.

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So there you go. And my wife says I'm an expert at being irritating and obnoxious.

14:08

Not just one category, but two. So I think I got that over you guys. All right. Now, okay,

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I want to get into some stuff. We're going to just have some good time talking. I want to ask really quickly, how long have you each been doing apologetics?

14:23

I've been doing it since 1980, roughly 42 years. How about Eddie? How long have you been doing it?

14:31

Developmentally, probably starting around the late, probably early 90s, early 90s. Hey, Andrew, how about you?

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Yeah, I'd probably be about the same. The earliest I could date that I started doing open -air evangelism was 92.

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So I probably started sometime shortly before that, just doing one -on -one.

14:55

So probably about 90, 91. Okay. And how about you, Tony? Yeah, same date, 1990, 1991, around there.

15:04

Okay. Yeah, I started in 80 and learned about Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and then a friend of mine and I developed a swap meet ministry.

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We'd go out, do that, go door -to -door, do stuff. So I guess they're at a start. Okay. And so,

15:19

Tony, you already kind of gave us some of your areas of expertise, which

15:25

I didn't know you could teach Biblical Greek. So that's great. Maybe I'll call you up sometime and ask you some questions when

15:30

I get really stuck on some stuff. So your areas of expertise would be

15:36

Greek, history, archaeology. What else? Yeah, Hebrew as well.

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I taught Hebrew. And, of course, if you know Hebrew, Aramaic is a sister tongue to Hebrew, which, as you know, some of the books in the

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Bible, the Book of Ezra, parts of Ezra, and huge parts of Daniel are written in Aramaic.

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And you've got a few lines here and there in Jeremiah and in Genesis. But basically, my area is also systematic theology, hence my teaching on the

16:06

Trinity. And so I do generally a wide swath of topics.

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So general apologetics is usually my thing. I don't just deal with one particular area. Some folks specialize only on Islam, for example, or creation, evolution.

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So in my field of study, I've been able to teach on a wide spectrum of topics. Okay. Yeah, I do the same kind of a thing.

16:29

General, but I really love systematics. I really enjoy that. And, Eddie, how about you?

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What would you say your areas of expertise are? Probably somewhat,

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I don't like to be broadly brushed with just apologetics. But I think a point of fact, the main area would be on textual issues, but also in cultic evangelism.

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I used to refer to Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims and oneness as non -Christian cults.

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But now I use the biblical definition that Paul uses in Ephesians 2 .12.

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They're atheistic religious groups. That's not oxymoronic, because they have a devotion to their system of philosophy.

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But Paul says to the pre -converted Ephesians, who had lots of gods, that before you were converted, you were without hope.

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And he uses the term atheo, you're atheists. So I think it's theologically proper to say atheistic evangelism, which covers everybody, right?

17:33

All non -Christians, all non -Christian religions, and so on and so forth. So probably those two particular areas, textual issues, and also general apologetics and polemics, and then, of course, general theology.

17:48

That's interesting. I'm going to check that out. All right. Andrew, what's your area of expertise?

17:55

I would probably say my area would be in hermeneutics, because really, I mean, any debate that I end up doing, that's what it comes down to.

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How do you interpret the Bible? And so that's been my focus, you know, correcting Matt all the time.

18:11

It's just, you need to know good hermeneutics. Well, he introduced me as his nemesis, so I have to throw that back.

18:19

But, you know, I do a lot in textual criticism, as you know. But I really think if there's two areas, if someone comes and says,

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I want to do apologetics, what are the two areas I should focus on to be able to do apologetics?

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I would say it's probably hermeneutics and church history. Hermeneutics so you know how to interpret the

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Bible, because once you have the right understanding of the interpretation, you then apply that throughout the

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Bible to do your systematic theology. But church history to realize, you know, there's nothing new under the sun.

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I mean, Matt, this is an area you're an expert in, in the early century heresies. And, you know, just knowing this, it's like, this is, for folks that don't know,

19:08

Matt and I would play a game sometimes when we'd be on the show, and I would just name things, and he would name which heresy it was from the first centuries.

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But because that's really what it is. You find that there's nothing new under the sun. And so if you know how to handle the scriptures, you know the errors that have come before us, you can handle a lot of the apologetics that's going to come your way.

19:32

All right, so if you guys are, you know, everybody's watching, listening, will know what I did was I asked them their areas of expertise, because apologetics is not simply one thing.

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It is a broad -based thing. I want people to understand what apologetics really is. Now, I run a

19:47

Christian apologetics research ministry. So apologetics is studying everything.

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It really is studying everything. You could study logic. You could study math. You can study evolution.

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You can study information theory. You can study presuppositionalism. You can study textual criticism. You can study airplanes.

20:07

I mean, really airplanes and the design and how it must be in place in physics. What is the underlying principles?

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Everything relates to the created order of God. And though we have certain interests because of our personalities,

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I want you to understand apologetics is not simply a narrow field thing. It is a broad -based thing.

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It takes a lot of us to be able to do stuff now and to cover it. So I have certain areas where I'm better at than others.

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And these gentlemen will have certain areas where they're better than others. I think Tony's got them all covered apparently now.

20:37

That's what it looks like. So good for him. All right. So now we can get into discussions.

20:43

Okay. I'm going to start with a very simple thing. We're talking about the current state of apologetics in the

20:50

Christian church. So zero being pathetic, 10 being fantastic.

20:56

What are your subjective opinions on the state in the Christian church in America overall?

21:02

So some churches are better than others. Overall, what would you say is the score that you would give the

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Christian churches in America today? Zero being pathetic, 10 being fantastic. Tony? Well, I'm Canadian, so I don't know.

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I don't know if you want me to comment on America or Canada. Do Canada.

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But I can say that for Canada, it's pretty abysmal. I'd probably put it at four, and that's being charitable.

21:33

Most churches that I've been invited to speak at have next to nothing in terms of apologetics.

21:39

But what I always encounter are parents telling me that their kids have abandoned the faith.

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They've gone off and married Muslims. They've gone off and married people in the New Age movement and so forth.

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And the first thing I always ask is, did you ever have any classes, Sunday school classes or midweek classes on apologetics, on how to defend your faith?

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And more often than not, the response is no. All we're told is Jesus loves me, this

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I know, for the Bible tells me so. And so the major problem here, I feel, is that the pastors are going to be held to a high account by God Almighty because they have been appointed as shepherds over the sheep, and they're not doing a good job of protecting the sheep against the wolves and the predators.

22:23

And so I would say that the state of apologetics in the

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Canadian church is abysmal. And it's very sad, to be quite honest with you.

22:35

I can count on maybe one hand churches that I know that take apologetics seriously. All right,

22:41

Tony. You gave a higher number than I would have. I would have given a one and a half to two. Yeah, I'm very charitable.

22:47

Yeah. All right, Eddie, what would you say? It's interesting.

22:52

If you start from the West Coast and go this way toward back east, the numbers start increasing.

22:58

But out here in the West Coast, and keep in mind, I've probably been in thousands of churches, and I've had thousands of discussions with pastors, and I can honestly say it's probably zero to one overall.

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There's a lot of great churches, though, that are solid and see the importance of apologetics. But too many, they have no idea what it is.

23:21

But the root cause is because they're not theological teaching churches.

23:26

And if you're not theological teaching churches, apologetics is going to be the last thing you're going to deal with.

23:35

I remember I was doing a – I don't know if you remember. Well, you might, Matt. You're like older, like me.

23:41

But Ed Cole. Remember? Does anyone know who Ed Cole is? Remember that guy? He used to speak to men at giant conferences,

23:47

Ed Cole. Anyways, I did this Ed Cole conference in the 90s, and the guy picked me up in the van, and he asked what

23:53

I do. I said, I teach apologetics. He says, you know what? That is really good because Christians are so misconstrued as mean people.

24:00

We have to learn to apologize. We have to learn to be nice to people. And that's really about the education that I find in far too many churches.

24:09

They don't go beyond a junior high education in the Bible. So when you want to bring out apologetics, and I know many people who tried to have apologetic classes in their church, but they were immediately shut down because, you know, a lot of pastors, unfortunately, do not see the importance, the biblical necessity.

24:27

They do not see it as something that they should have in their church. So the congregation suffers because apologetics and good theology is being just completely, it just evaporates.

24:39

It's never there because the pastor himself is just not aware of the importance of it.

24:44

So I give it maybe a one, unfortunately. But I will say one last point.

24:50

I found in my experience, speaking to a whole lot of diverse different churches, once you, once they're exposed to good theology, and I've had this personal experience, you can go to a, you know, a kind of goofy, charismatic kind of church or some, just a non -teaching church.

25:11

You teach on something that's theologically related, you know, or apologetic.

25:17

They never heard that before. But there's always a group of people who are so, their eyes light up.

25:23

They've never heard it before, and they want more. So you do have people that if they get exposed to doctrine and apologetics, they want more.

25:36

They're very interested in it. Yeah. I used to preach in ABC churches in Southern California, actually lots of churches, did pulpit supply for a few years, and I really liked it.

25:46

One Sunday I preached in three different churches. And I started teaching doctrine, inserting doctrine into sermons occasionally.

25:54

And to my utter surprise, they just loved it. They said, we've never heard this before.

26:02

So there's a real need for it out there. All right, Andrew, what would you say?

26:08

You want to define ABC churches as someone who was a pastor? I was going to, and I didn't. American born

26:14

Chinese ABC. Thank you. Yeah. So I was, you know,

26:20

Tony said he said four, and that was being generous. I would say three, if I'm going to be completely generous.

26:27

Very simply because as we look at people that think they're in good, solid churches, and you're saying across the spectrum, what's the things that are being battled the most in churches right now?

26:40

Women preaching and homosexuality. I mean, those are so clear in scripture.

26:47

So when we say, well, where's the state of apologetics? You know, the fact that these are the issues that are being addressed shows that how weak it is, that the culture is what's defining how to interpret the

27:01

Bible for so many churches. This is, this is the major problem that we have.

27:08

I actually put this on Facebook later today, just this week. I said so many are suffering because they do not hear

27:15

God from the pulpit for the shepherd either knows not the word or studies, not the word.

27:23

And that's the problem is unfortunately the reason apologetics is so weak in America is because the guys behind the pulpit don't know the word well enough to defend it.

27:38

You know, I, I so agree with you. I once did a seminar for some men, clergy, elders, and some people and Palm Springs, Southern California.

27:53

And it was really an interesting time because they wanted me to go out to a hotel with them. And we had these rooms and we're going to teach for hours and hours a day.

28:01

It was kind of a, it was different long story short. They didn't have any scripture memorized.

28:07

I think they had the average was like 10 verses and had been Christians for many years.

28:12

Didn't we're not having devotions with her wives and her family, not teaching them. We're not studying the word of God.

28:18

Didn't know the basis of the Christian faith. And I was shocked at the ignorance that was there and a lot of places and a lot of people in my opinion, most elders are not qualified to be elders because they can't distinguish between truth and error.

28:34

And I don't want to just knock all pastors, but you're right.

28:39

The fault is with the pastors. They're the ones obligated, but sympathetically to the pastors, they've got to be counselors.

28:46

They've got to be bookkeepers. They've got to be this. They've got to be that. And to study apologetics, we know you don't just do.

28:55

I've learned it took me five minutes. I figured out apologetics. It does not work like that. So it's a problem.

29:03

And there really is a problem. So I want to ask what we can do to fix the problem.

29:08

But before we do that, I really want to go over a little bit more. If you don't mind, why is apologetics needed?

29:14

We kind of just cursory went over it. What are the real reasons? Why is it so important that we learn how to first Peter three 15 to give an answer to everyone who would ask us to give a defense.

29:26

So Tony, why do you think it's so necessary for us to do that? Well, because first of all, it is a divine command, as you pointed out, first Peter three 15 and Jude three, that we are to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

29:42

And so the Christian church has been in the business of answering questions from day one. And when you quote

29:49

John three 16 to somebody you're, you're practicing apologetics. It is, it is literally the defense of the

29:55

Christian faith and giving reasons for why you believe what you believe. And so all evangelism really is a part and parcel apologetics.

30:03

It's important because it, it gives reasons to believe it reinforces the clarity of God's word.

30:11

It, it reinforces the majesty of God, his sovereignty. It, it reinforces the truthfulness of Christ and his resurrection.

30:20

And we are told that we are to give an answer to everyone who asks of us about the hope that is in us.

30:27

And so every good team, whether you're talking NHL or NFL you need a good offense and you need a good defense.

30:34

If you don't have a good defense, you're you're, you're not going to succeed. And so first and foremost it is a divine command.

30:42

It is incumbent on all Christians, not just the pastors, not just the missionaries.

30:48

It's not just the theologians. All Christians are called to give, to give an answer for their faith.

30:53

And I think that that really is Matt, the missing link in the Christian witness. and we've downplayed,

31:00

I mean, I think of people, even, even people like Martin Lloyd Jones, who actually didn't think apologetics was overly important in the

31:09

Christian witness. He just thought just preach the gospel, but that is part of apologetics. So, so again, it's a divine command and it reinforces our, our confidence in, in the scriptures and in the sovereignty of our triune

31:22

God. Amen, brother. Amen, brother. Hey, Eddie, you want to add anything to that? Yeah.

31:28

Um, a couple of things, apologetics guards to church. Remember Paul's last, um, it really was his farewell letter to the pastors at Ephesus.

31:40

And he says, I'm innocent of all man's blood in act 17. He talks or acts 20.

31:47

He talks about, um, this is the last time he's going to see them. I'm innocent of all man's blood, because I teach preach the whole gospel.

31:55

But then he gets to the end and he tells them to guard themselves, guard yourself and the flock. So pastors need to guard themselves and the flock, which the

32:04

Holy spirit made them overseers to shepherd the church of God, the word shepherd. As we know, the linguistic meaning there would be, uh, one who guards that's the first lexical semantic there.

32:17

One who guards the primary, uh, obligation of a pastor is to guard the flock. How do you guard the flock?

32:23

By sound doctrine, by teaching apologetics, how to defend the objection. And first and foremost, you'd guard the flock by teaching them to give a positive affirmation to the gospel.

32:36

That's how you guard the flock. But he says, don't you remember? He says, the Savage Wolf will come in.

32:41

They won't spare the flock. They'll draw disciples among themselves. And he says, don't you remember for three years, night and day?

32:50

I, I warned you with tears and, you know, you got to think to yourself who out there, what pastors out there are, are weeping because of the false churches within, or the false church, uh, false teachers within the church, because he says,

33:08

Paul says, even from your own number, these men will arise who's weeping out there because of false teachings in the church.

33:16

Paul says, I warned you three days or three years, not in day with tears. So the, the question is, did these

33:23

Ephesus pastors listen to the apostle Paul? While you fast forward, maybe 20 or 30 years or more, perhaps in revelation chapter two, we find that Jesus commended the

33:37

Ephesus pastors for staying true and finding apostles false and persevering for the name of Christ.

33:46

They were commended for that, commended for apologetics today. You're, you're pretty much ridiculed if you try to introduce apologetics to the church.

33:55

And also in one more point in, um, first Timothy chapter three, when

34:01

Paul affirms the, the, uh, infallibility and sufficiency of the scriptures.

34:08

Um, it's very interesting because after he affirms that scripture alone, scripture alone equips the man of God for every good work.

34:19

And he's not, I know we had a question about this. Um, I do not believe he's, he's speaking about a list of books when he says all scriptures, but rather he's speaking of the nature of scripture as God inspired, as God breathed out.

34:35

But he says in, in a second Timothy or first Timothy, after he gives this affirmation in chapter four in chapter four, he says, uh,

34:47

I know when I leave, um, this is what's going to happen. In other words, if you don't, and he gives this commission to preach the word right in season out of season to, to rebuke, to correct, to encourage, because this is what's going to happen.

35:07

Men will not put up with sound doctrine, but to suit their own desires, they'll give doctrines that their itchy ears like to hear.

35:14

They'll turn away from truth onto mythologies. So that's what happens when you don't, when you don't preach, um, uh, when you don't practice apologetics, when you don't preach a solid understanding of doctrine, you have people that will just flock to anyone out there.

35:32

And it's really interesting because the, the tenses in chapter four, when he says, um, to preach the word in season out of season, correct, rebuke, exhort.

35:42

They're in the most, uh, urgent tenses in the Greek language.

35:48

They're areas imperatives. Those, those verbs there to preach, to be ready, to, to correct, to rebuke, exhort.

35:56

These tenses are, are as Dan Wallace says, do it now. Verbs. They stress urgency more than any other commandment areas imperative here.

36:05

That's how important this is. That's how important it is to affirm, not only affirm sound doctrine, but using scripture alone.

36:14

That's Paul's message. Scripture alone equips every, uh, every man for every good work, but be able to defend the faith because if you don't, you don't do these verbs.

36:23

This is what's going to happen. Well, we have a new face in here,

36:29

Eli, and, uh, it looks like Andrew's got to apologize for everything he was saying about Eli here before he got in there because he did show up.

36:35

Uh, no, I'm just kidding. Of course, uh, Eli, this isn't the, the retired, uh, retired apologist group.

36:43

Uh, Oh, I don't know, man.

36:48

All you guys look old. Eddie looks like he, he's got some, some spry youth to him. Everyone else, man,

36:54

I don't know what's going on. I'm just kidding. No, I'm the oldest. You're the youngest. I think I got the baby face right now.

37:00

So that's right. I'm 65. I'm up there. And I bet that Eddie can still in a gym lift more than you.

37:10

And I think if you and I got into a gym where we do Jitsu, I'm sure that, well, you'd be on the mat unconscious, but you know, be careful.

37:19

I never stopped those since I was 18. I never stopped. That's the, well, I, I, you might not know this, but I am a black belt in Kung Fu movies.

37:27

So, uh, I can look like, I know there was Matt's black belt in run foo.

37:33

Yeah. I have a black belt in run foo, several black belts and run foo. That's right. Like Jitsu.

37:38

Yeah. Yeah. And Glock fool. And, uh, at any rate. So Eli, introduce yourself.

37:43

Uh, you and I have known each other for a few years and we have interesting conversations. Introduce yourself. My name is

37:49

Eli Ayala. I've revealed apologetics. I am a full -time, uh, teacher at a

37:55

Christian private school. I'll teach middle school students, uh, eighth grade logic and sixth grade Bible. And, um, and I'm happy to be on here.

38:04

I have no idea what you guys are talking about, but I'm looking forward to kind of joining in a little bit late in the game. The cookie recipes.

38:11

Oh, okay. And, uh, and Arabic, uh, war cries. So that's what we were talking about.

38:18

So, uh, no, we were discussing various things. So I'm going to review with you really fast. We get us from our discussions here.

38:24

So we're talking about the state of Christian apologetics in the church from zero to 10, zero being pathetic, 10 being fantastic.

38:32

What would be your overall opinion as an average that the Christian church in America is at from zero to 10, the

38:39

Christian church in general, or like the realm of apologetics, which is extension of the church, but it kind of runs as his own entity in a large, large quarters of, of the church churches.

38:50

Yeah. I think it's pretty low in a lot of local churches. Uh, not a lot of people are doing it and in the

38:56

YouTube world where there's a lot of people interested in it. I think there, um, some of the more popular apologetic organizations or YouTube channels are compromising,

39:07

I think in a, in a lot of important areas. So if you take a look, for example, I won't, you know, throw any wood in the fire, but if, if you were to mention a couple of channels that are probably some of the biggest apologetics channels on YouTube, I think there's a lot of, um, compromise and in key areas.

39:23

And I think a downgrading in the role of the authority of scripture and how we are to go about doing apologetics.

39:30

So I think, um, it's awesome in one sense. And in another sense, we need to be very cautious and discerning, uh, and who we're listening to.

39:37

Um, if it's not attached to say a specific church, local church, where there is a strong foundation, a high regard for scripture and things like that.

39:46

Right. So you, you just, uh, you just, uh, broach on the next topic. I wanted to kind of get into, I was thinking about it's the issue of the authority of scripture.

39:54

Uh, someone asked the question, we'll go to you, Eli, we'll go to Andrew next.

39:59

And then you guys want to talk. Are the Christian churches taking the word of God seriously? Well, it depends when you say the

40:07

Christian churches, I think the ones that are, um, I can't even say that it really depends in general.

40:14

I think there is a, a, um, a disregard for the authority of scripture, at least in the way, um, the

40:21

Christian life is being played out. We'll preach the authority of scripture, but a lot of people don't really function in a consistent fashion, but again, it's going to depend.

40:31

I'm sure there are churches who try to do that and do it well. Right. And there are some churches that do a very good job and there are churches that do a very bad job.

40:39

I've been a lot of churches with a lot of the panelists here, been a lot of churches. I find my opinion is this is subjective.

40:45

My opinion is that the churches just basically aren't taught very much. Don't know very much. The average

40:50

Christian knows so little, but you did bring up something that's, that's interesting. I've noticed, uh, you know,

40:58

I'm older than you guys, but I've noticed that, uh, there are, uh, there's an increasing number of young men who are interested in apologetics and Christian theology online.

41:08

And I I'm so pleased for that. Uh, and you're one of them because you're still a young guy.

41:15

So anyway, you are, you know, you're a young guy. I'm I'm 40. So I'm young.

41:21

I'm a young guy. You're a young guy. That's still, that's still young.

41:27

I don't feel young sometimes, you know, it's, uh, my back is going, uh, I get tired all the time, but, uh, yeah,

41:33

I'm fairly. Yeah. I wonder what that's like. All right. All right. So, uh, what, what do you think,

41:40

Andrew? Uh, I know it's kind of a very vague question. It's a searching question. A church or the

41:45

Christian church has really taken the word of God. Seriously. The simple answer. No. Uh, I, I think when people ask me, what is the greatest problem in the church today?

41:56

It is the lack of sufficiency of scripture. I think that's the number one issue.

42:01

We see it in a whole bunch of ways, but you, you see it in the fact that when it comes down to what is the authority for the majority of churches, the authority is culture.

42:14

It's not God and it's not his word. How many churches have had to deal with issues after George Floyd died with black lives matter and social justice issues, churches being split and, and people not having an answer for very simple reason, because they were not grounded in the word of God in the first place.

42:35

So they actually think that social justice is biblical justice.

42:41

Why? Because they think they have to add something more to scripture. Now put those groups aside.

42:48

Now you take all the word of faith and, and folks that are saying, well, we're getting a word for God speaking to me today.

42:54

And they are. Yeah. All that stuff there. What are they all looking for there? You look in, in some of the, the, some of the charismatic, especially the extreme, everything's about an experience because they, they, what the word of God is not enough for them.

43:08

They need to hear from God verbally. They need an experience from God. They're not trusting in God's worthy.

43:15

They're trusting in something outside of that to, to give them more because the scripture is not sufficient for them.

43:22

Then you take the whole realm of people that are trying to say that we can,

43:27

Hey, it's okay to have feelings for someone of the same sex, as long as you don't act on it.

43:33

Well, they're just trying to compromise little by little because the same people that were saying that just a few years ago in the revoice conference are, are now going, well, no, you can actually live with someone, have feelings for that person and, you know, just be having those feelings, but not act on them, but they're just inching it closer and closer.

43:54

Right. And so I would say that's the number one thing. I mean, in, in the realm of evangelism, the quote that I'm most known for is the fact that people don't water down the gospel because they care about people's souls.

44:07

They, they water down the gospel because they want to be liked. And quite frankly, we have to get over ourselves.

44:13

If I could, if I could just chime in real quick. So there are two things, if I can break it up into two segments, I think within the local church, there is a, a lot of ignorance and basic Christian doctrine that we, that we need to know.

44:27

And churches aren't teaching that in the way that they should. And in the apologetic realm, we can call it the intellectual aspect of Christianity.

44:34

There is a downgrade of the authority of scripture and an idol and I, a form of idolatry and putting man's philosophy over the word of God.

44:44

And I know people who hear that be like, Oh, here we go again, philosophy versus the word. No, seriously, there are people who are adopting philosophies that are downright contrary to the scriptures.

44:54

I'm not against philosophy. I think philosophy undergirds everything we do, but the kind of philosophy that's being adopted by a lot of these kinds of intellectual types are things that I think cater way too much to an unbelieving perspective and doesn't really give the proper respect in place of the authority of God's word.

45:11

That's just, in my opinion, in my own experience, you mean something like churches actually catering to service to make unbelievers feel comfortable instead of equipping the

45:20

Christians for the work of ministry. You mean something like that? It can definitely, definitely include that. Yeah.

45:25

Yeah. All right. I got a question. This is going to be a kind of an interesting question.

45:32

In Matthew 16, 18, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Gates don't do anything. Gates are defensive.

45:38

In light of that, I'm going to ask Eddie first and I'll go to Tony. Are the churches following or leading?

45:46

Are they following or leading in society related to the issue?

45:52

And you could, if you want to include it, the issue of the gates of hell will not prevail. What do you think?

45:58

Are they leaning toward that? Leading or following? Yeah.

46:05

I was going to say, are they being, is the church, I'll put it this way.

46:13

The gate, Jesus says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. I don't, I've never had any instance where gates chase me, where gates come after me.

46:22

Gates are defensive. The implication is we kick the gates of hell down.

46:28

It's going to happen when we do that. In order to do that, we have to lead. We have to be not aggressive in a negative way, but aggressive and positive.

46:37

So is the church in its commissioning in that context, is it leading or is it following?

46:45

If, and if it's following, what's it following? Yeah. In point of fact, it seems that the following part is increasing and the leading part is, is decreasing.

46:56

Because the Bible is decreasing behind the pulpits these days. So when you have something like that, where philosophy replaces scripture and, you know, if you want to be the pastor, you want to be the pastor of a popular church.

47:10

You really do got to be a cruise ship director. Those are the ones who are growing the big churches. And so they're, they're following.

47:19

In a most peculiar way, if you listen to their bizarre doctrines, but the fact of the matter is that people follow, people follow these kinds of teachings.

47:30

So I would say it's, it's the following is increasing. To be sure.

47:35

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I think what you said, it was really important. Segues into something else, but I want to jump in off the ship on that one.

47:45

I want to ask Tony what he thinks. I, I think the problem is that instead of following the shepherd, we're following the herd and what happens when you follow the herd, as you know, sheep are known to jump off cliffs because they're one of the dumbest critters on the face of the earth.

48:01

There's a reason why Jesus called the sheep. He didn't say feed my whales, feed my dogs. He said, feed my sheep.

48:06

And that's because he chose again, one of the dumbest critters on the earth to show that, look, we are totally, we're really dumb and stupid without we're dumb as sheep or where we are lost as sheep.

48:16

We need a shepherd. And so instead of following the shepherd, what most churches are doing today is they're following the herd.

48:22

They're following the latest fad, whether it's progressivism, whether it's social justice, whether it's a

48:28

CRT, black lives matter. They want to virtue signal and act like they really care when in fact they don't.

48:36

And I really believe that what Jesus is talking about. And I agree with you, Matt, that that the gates of Hades, the gates are not something that opposed you.

48:43

The gates are meant to keep you out. But what Jesus promises is that his church will advance it with such might that it will trample down the gates of Hades.

48:53

And where Jesus made that proclamation, as you know, was in Caesarea Philippi, which was a pagan region dedicated to the

49:01

God pen, the Greek God pen. It was a place of idols. And it's interesting that it was in that region that Jesus took the occasion to ask his disciples, who do men say that I am?

49:11

And then he said, who do you say that I am? And so when Peter acclaimed them to be the Christ, the

49:17

Messiah, the son of God, that was a declaration of victory. That was a declaration that, that Christ, the

49:24

King, the son of God, the son of the one true God. That's why Peter calls him the son of the living

49:29

God. And whenever that term living God is used in scripture, it's always used as a polemic against false gods and false idols, because unlike the dead idols, that those dead gods, this

49:39

God is living Yahweh is the living God. And so I really believe that the church, if I can use

49:45

Augustine's phraseology, the invisible mystical church, those who the Lord knows are his, they have been granted victory.

49:52

They conquered the beast by their testimony and by the blood of the lamb. And so the, the, the visible apostate churches that, that are all around us, they're simply following the world.

50:04

They're simply following the latest fad. But I do believe that, that the church of Christ, those who are truly regenerate, the elect, those that the

50:13

Lord knows we are conquering, we are defeating the kingdom of Satan by the power of the

50:19

Holy Spirit. And so the, the victories is ours. And as the great hymn says, onward Christian soldiers with the cross of Jesus going on before.

50:27

And it uses that language of bringing down the gates of Hades and so forth. brother, you know, pastors are supposed to equip the

50:34

Christians on my radio show. Periodically. We'll talk about this kind of a thing. And I'll say that pastors need to preach to thin the church out.

50:40

It shouldn't be preaching to get people in. It's supposed to be preaching to equip the Christians, to equip the Christians, mean teaching the

50:46

Trinity, hypostatic union, communicatio, idiomatum, imputation, justification, propitiation,

50:53

God's sovereignty, predestination, election, compatibilism, libertarianism, pre -trib rapture, post -trib rapture, also equip them for the work of ministry.

51:04

And I don't find many pastors doing that. And I'm not, and it's easy to sit here and point fingers, you know, because I'm not,

51:12

I'm not a pastor. I used to be, but I'm not a pastor, but I do know what it's like. And you're, you have got to keep your hands on a lot of different pots in order to keep things rolling.

51:20

And so it's difficult. And what, so in light of that, I want to ask, we can go through this because I think we've got some questions.

51:30

Before you get to that, let me, I want to answer that because you know, in the, in the question you're asked, really, you have to ask what is a church when you're saying the church with the gates of hell, the real question is what is a church?

51:41

Because most of what people call churches are nothing more than goat farms. Okay. That's good.

51:50

I'm going to use that and claim it for myself. That's right. Kind of like church, a goat farm, church of someone was to say, you know, yeah, it's, it's almost mad.

52:02

Like someone was to say, you know, demons of a feather flock together. We could say that that was first written out online by me.

52:10

Oh, I've said it first, buddy. I was very clear in what I said. It was first written, written by me.

52:17

That's right. Matt said that we were on an apologetics cruise. He and I were speaking. He said, I said, that's a great line. I quickly typed it.

52:25

I had internet and he did it. I said, that's slick. We'll steal my, my line. That's right.

52:30

I like goat farm. And it gets really good. The churches are nothing more than goat farm.

52:36

So it's not that, that the gates of hell have to come against it. They're already there. So there's nothing for them to come up against.

52:45

All you do is walk out the door. Yeah. All right. So, all right, gentlemen.

52:51

So here we go. I, maybe Luke can tell me, text me on the phone there. If we have questions from people or in the chat, we have questions from people coming in because we've got another scheduled half hour, but I do have a very good question.

53:05

I think is really important. I think this is something that we need to discuss for a while. What are some of the things that could be done to improve apologetics in the church?

53:13

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it's not that apologetics is the end all of everything.

53:18

We're only talking about when this segment of Christian existence in Christian life, there's sanctification, there's purification, there's relationships, there's marriage, there's children.

53:28

But we're talking about this particular field. So in light of that, what are some of the things that could be done to improve apologetics in the church?

53:37

Eddie, what do you say? The problem is there's a lot of Lone Ranger pastors who do not take advice kindly on these kinds of issues because they don't understand it.

53:48

So, you know, we come in and, you know, I mean, in a perfect world, we can have a vetted committee to go to each church to put the pastors on probation that aren't doing their job.

54:01

That's their job. Their job is to teach doctrine. That's their job. Their job is to teach apologetics, evangelism.

54:08

It's all part of Scripture. And I will say dealing with apologetics, you know, our hallmark passage, 1

54:13

Peter 3, 15, where it says, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, always be ready to give an answer.

54:20

Well, in that whole verse, the only commandment there, the only commandment that you find there is to sanctify

54:28

Christ. That's the only commandment, that whole verse to set apart

54:34

Christ in your heart. If you're not doing that, you have no business teaching. You have no business trying to enact in apologetics.

54:44

And there's a lot of Lone Ranger pastors. So it's hard to say what would work because, you know, you can't go to every single church and, you know,

54:53

Hey, I got some good advice for you. You know, some things you're not doing, I'm going to have to fire you. There was one guy that would committees that would fire all the bad pastors.

55:01

Okay. Then we can look for like any other company. But the fact of the matter is church. If we had a

55:06

Pope, maybe it could remove, you know, the Mormon president, like the

55:12

Mormon church. The fact of the matter is we don't have anything like that. So I don't see, you know, and then the people can complain and, and, you know, leave or try to encourage the pastor.

55:23

But we got to pray these things because pastors just aren't doing their job. We need to, you know, if I had the ability,

55:30

I'd fire a lot of them, put them on probation, put them on quiet time or better yet, make them go through some kind of formal training for two years to understand basic theology, not complexities, basic theology.

55:45

You don't have to know languages. Just learn the basics of the gospel first. Look, when

55:50

I speak, I've, you know, speaking a lot of churches around the world and out here as well.

55:56

But one question I asked the congregation at large churches. Also, I was in South Africa.

56:02

The first time I did this in the late nineties at a big church in Victoria, I said, who here has ever heard a message on the

56:13

Trinity at any church in the last 10 years? Raise your hand. I don't get any hands.

56:19

I can ask the same question about justification. I don't get any hands. No wonder Christians, when they define the

56:26

Trinity, they do it in the context of oneness or when they define justification, they, they define it like a

56:32

Roman Catholic, of course, because they're not being taught. So I don't know the answer because pastors aren't going to listen to me.

56:39

They're going to listen to you. You know, you, you Calvinists who are all head knowledge, you know, that's how they look at us and they just don't want anything to do with us.

56:48

So they're not going to, they like where they're at because they're getting a lot of folks. I don't know the answer. I'm not sure.

56:54

Eddie. It's interesting. When I first started, I got a pastor position. We had a already had a retreat set up.

57:02

So we had a speaker. So I said, my, my bride and I, we would take the kids.

57:08

We're talking like basically five to 12 year olds. Most of them, the average age was seven or eight.

57:14

And here's what I said. I said, we're going to teach them the doctrine of the Trinity. And parents were like, what you can't, you can't teach seven -year -olds the doctrine of Trinity.

57:21

So after three days, they understood the Trinity, the definition, they could support it in scripture.

57:27

By the third day, what I did is had every parent. I said, kids, you're not going to be able to leave.

57:32

Your parents come in every parent one by one. They had to come in by themselves in front of all the, all the kids.

57:39

They came in to pick up their kids. I said, okay, here's, if you want to pick up your kids, you have to answer two questions.

57:47

What's the definition of Trinity. Can you support it in scripture? Your kids can help you.

57:52

And parent after parent couldn't answer. And their children had to help them with the answers.

57:59

And they, they couldn't believe their kids can understand this. They just aren't being taught. Yeah, Andrew, that's excellent.

58:05

Because I, as a teacher, it's interesting working middle school, high school, we prepare, for example, middle school students to take math tests, to do science labs and learn about, you know, cell division and osmosis and mitosis and all this other stuff.

58:22

And then they have to study. Then they have to take a test. And then they often pass the test.

58:28

And we encourage our students to be intellectually rigorous and disciplined when preparing to take a stinking test on a topic that they most likely will never use for the rest of their life.

58:37

And all of a sudden, when it comes to biblical truths up, that's too difficult to, to talk about. When in fact it's not, it's sure.

58:45

There are some challenging things, but they middle school students, high school students, and even younger have the capacity to get the basics of which the average adult in most churches don't even know.

58:55

You know, you asked my sixth graders, my sixth graders. I teach the Bible the first week before we do anything pertaining to the specific elements of the course itself.

59:04

We go through what a worldview is. And we go through the foundations of every worldview. My sixth graders can tell you what metaphysics is epistemology and ethics.

59:12

They're big, fancy words, which mean very simple things. They know that metaphysics deals with what is real.

59:18

How do we know, and how should we live our lives? They're just fancy words, which means simple things that kids can understand. When I worked childcare in elementary school, there was this third grader who his name was

59:28

Sam. I still remember him and he was really small for his age. And he would walk around. The school with this giant

59:35

Pokemon encyclopedia. And if you know anything about Pokemon, this is Japanese animated cartoon and the trading cards, whatever.

59:42

And these creatures have these really weird names. You know, you have the Pikachu that evolves into the right shoe and they have these different powers that they can evolve.

59:49

And the names and of the, these creatures and their powers are so complicated yet. This kid memorized.

59:54

All of them can tell you all of what these creatures can do when they evolve. I was like thinking to myself, listening to this kid,

01:00:00

I'm like, if this kid could say these words, these really difficult Japanese sounding words, why can't we teach a kid what, you know, the hypostatic union is and just tell him what it means.

01:00:10

Like, yeah, they can do it. They have the capacity to do it. But for some reason, you know, theological knowledge is a different category than say, you know, studying for a math test or science test.

01:00:21

And I think it's just bizarre, the weird way we think about these things. You know, when

01:00:28

I was in college, I was on a Southern California and I had a theory, my social science class, my theory turned out to be wrong, but in the process of researching it,

01:00:38

I went to Calvary Chapel, the big Calvary Chapel where Chuck Smith was teaching.

01:00:44

And I went to a Bible study, I think it was a Thursday night. And I asked the Bible study teacher, it wasn't him.

01:00:50

I think there were about 200 people. I said, look, I'm doing a research, blah, blah, blah. Here's my theory. My theory was that if you have more doctrinal understanding, you'll be more inclined to witness.

01:01:00

Turned out that wasn't the case. But nevertheless, I learned something else in there.

01:01:06

And I went back and I told him, I had a meeting with him. I said, look, I found some very interesting results. I said, 80 % of all your people who took the survey are functioning

01:01:16

Roman Catholics in their soteriology, their doctrine of salvation. And he was shocked.

01:01:22

80%. And he'd been teaching there for a couple of years. And I'm not knocking him or Calvary Chapel. I'm just saying,

01:01:28

I think it's pretty much across the board. People take it for granted that people understand stuff, but no, it needs to be taught.

01:01:34

Things need to be taught specifically. And we need to be very, very astute in how we relate things.

01:01:39

And Eli, you're right. You know, children can understand these things. I was teaching my kids to hypostatic union when there were three.

01:01:45

And they were able to recite it. Now I'm going to say understood. That's another thing, but that's another topic.

01:01:52

All right, let's get to some questions because we got to the bottom of the hour. And we have a lot of Q and A in here.

01:01:57

So if any of you want to jump in and, and write a little response type of answer, you know, he would like to answer that one, however it works.

01:02:05

So I'm going to just go from the top down and let's see. Andrew would like to answer the question.

01:02:11

Did the Israelites view any kind of tradition as co -authoritative along with the scriptures? Yeah. I mean, the issue that you have here is that what a lot of people don't, when they say

01:02:23

Israelites, you have to get into understanding pre second temple

01:02:28

Israel. I mean, before Rabbinic Judaism. Okay. So the Israelites that we read in the old

01:02:33

Testament, no, they would look to the scriptures. They would have traditions that they found in scriptures.

01:02:40

However, after the period of time where we would see what we refer to as Rabbinic Judaism, you end up seeing there that there was a change.

01:02:51

What you end up seeing is that everything was based off tradition. They created the oral tradition.

01:02:56

And if you're not familiar within Judaism, there's there's four authorities. To save you on the

01:03:02

Hebrew, you have the written law. You have a commentary on the written law, written law being what we refer to as the old

01:03:09

Testament. You have oral law that was then written down and a commentary on that. And so those are the four things.

01:03:15

But what, what you end up seeing is the oral law is tradition that even when it was written down, then you have commentaries on those things.

01:03:22

Those are traditions. So yes, modern Judaism. Yes. However, part of his question also refers to the reference to second

01:03:29

Timothy three 16. Okay. And I know someone, I think it was

01:03:35

Eddie already touched on this, but what you have there is the argument that he,

01:03:40

I think Joshua was making, especially with some of the other questions he asked is almost trying to make the claims that you, cause he's asking, ask questions about Apocrypha, things like that.

01:03:50

How do people know when the old Testament was written, that it was written by God? That was one of the things

01:03:56

I think of the writing of the scriptures is they knew immediately. It was not something they knew years later.

01:04:02

You see that in Peter referring to Paul's writings as scripture. And yet Paul can write,

01:04:08

I believe two other letters at least one other, but I think two to Corinth that are not scripture because they were not seen immediately as scripture.

01:04:17

So was there tradition? Yes. But is that tradition authoritative in modern rabbinic

01:04:23

Judaism? The answer would be yes in biblical Judaism. And the answer is no, because that was not an authority.

01:04:30

And so we wouldn't hold to the, you know, just to mention the Apocrypha that wasn't considered scripture until the 1500s responding to the, you know, the reformers

01:04:41

Jewish people did not see that as scripture when I was in Hebrew school. And for folks who don't know,

01:04:47

I was, I was raised Jewish being bar mitzvahed being in Hebrew school for nine, 10 years.

01:04:53

We didn't learn from the Apocrypha that wasn't considered scripture.

01:05:01

So that that's something Catholic church invented. Yeah. If I can, if I can just add that, that scripture, yes, all the scripture.

01:05:09

I mean, there's no doubt the old Testament Jews understood the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the prophets, the

01:05:15

Ketuvim, the writings that these were the words of God. Now it's, there's no doubt that tradition evolved, that there was that what's called the tradition of the elders in Mark seven, one to 13.

01:05:27

There you have a case where tradition clashes with God's revealed word. And Jesus, of course accuses the

01:05:33

Pharisees of introducing man -made teachings. He quotes Isaiah six against them, but Jesus was not averse to tradition as long as tradition did not violate scripture.

01:05:43

So for example, at the Passover, the drinking of the cup is, is not part of the Torah. The Exodus 12 says nothing about drinking wine at the

01:05:51

Passover table. It mentions the unleavened bread, the mitzvah, the matzah. It talks about the bitter herbs and so forth, but the introduction of the cups were later introduced.

01:06:01

And Jesus took that cup, of course, to be precise, the third cup of redemption and said, this is my blood.

01:06:07

So there's nothing wrong with the use of tradition. I mean, we have it in the Protestant churches, right?

01:06:12

I mean, we do have Father's day, Mother's day. These are all traditions. Even Christmas evolved as a tradition in the church.

01:06:19

But we need to be careful that, and a lot of our Roman Catholic friends or Orthodox friends accuse us of being against tradition.

01:06:25

We're not against tradition. What we believe is that tradition should be subservient to scripture. Where it violates scripture, we reject it.

01:06:32

Where it doesn't violate scripture, then we can, we can simply go with it as a gray area.

01:06:39

So, so the Apocrypha, I think it's pretty well settled. Luke 24, 44, Jesus tells us that the parameters of the

01:06:46

Hebrew Bible was the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Ketuvim. Second Chronicles is the last book in the

01:06:53

Hebrew Bible. And, and so I think it's very clear that the Hebrew Bible, the

01:06:59

Hebrew canon was the Old Testament of the early Christians. Hey, Tony, real quick, because some

01:07:05

Christians may not understand what you said with second Chronicles being the end of it. So the ordering of the

01:07:10

Hebrew scriptures is not the same as the Christian scriptures. So it, it, it didn't just stop at that point.

01:07:18

Like the prophets are not included. It's just, it's ordered differently, but, but the same, yeah, the same books that we had that we would have in the

01:07:25

Christian Old Testament are there. But, you know what you'd said is right to what I said is the problem in the church, right?

01:07:31

Sufficiency. It's what's the ultimate authority, right? Is the scripture, the ultimate authority for the

01:07:36

Christian, or are we going to add tradition, culture, whatever. Exactly.

01:07:44

Amen. I've got so many questions, but we can't get to them all. Let's try with Eddie. Alex from Van Nuys asks, when does someone know he's ready to start debating?

01:07:55

Good question. Well, first, unfortunately, some people like to debate and they're very myopic in their understanding of doctrines.

01:08:03

Say they want to debate the deity of Christ, but they're very myop, meaning that they don't have a full, full range of, of basic knowledge and other doctrines.

01:08:12

And a lot of times when people, sometimes when they get very zealous, they'll go into debate without understanding the, the objections.

01:08:23

And if you go into a debate without understanding the objections that they're going to be posed, all the objections, you're really not going to look good because you're not going to know how to answer a lot of the questions.

01:08:32

Or if you don't have a, a, a solid understanding of every verse or at least the basic sufficient ones that you're going to use in whatever the topic is, you're not going to do a really good job either.

01:08:45

So I would ask number one, why do you want to debate? And number two, are you equipped theologically to debate?

01:08:51

You got to be fast on your feet. You got to be, you have to have an understanding of the particular subject matter, but not just a basic understanding.

01:08:59

You have to have an understanding that's in detail or you're not going to win. And look, we all know that's watched of us who have watched debates many times.

01:09:09

If the opponent, if the enemy of the cross is a better, more skilled debater, it's going to look like he wins, right?

01:09:17

Not every Christian have just has the skill debate. It doesn't mean they don't have truth because truth isn't, isn't established by who's the better, better debater.

01:09:29

So, but you do have to have debating skill and you have to have sufficient knowledge of the particular topic at hand and understand the objections that you're going to get.

01:09:39

I, I'd really like to just chime in real quick in the debate between James White, who is obviously a very experienced debater, right?

01:09:49

Probably got the most debates, formal debates out there. I think at least to my knowledge, he debated another

01:09:55

Christian on the topic is Molinism biblical. And during the cross examination,

01:10:01

Dr. White kind of strayed away from kind of the more philosophical discussion and asked a question about a particular

01:10:07

Bible passage as to whether this idea of Molinism was taught in the Bible or this concept was taught in this particular passage.

01:10:14

And the guy who was unprepared to cross, to do a cross examination with Dr.

01:10:20

White, he answered the question, well, this idea is taught all throughout scripture. And Dr. White was like, no, no, no, this specific passage that you brought up in your presentation, where do you get that idea?

01:10:31

And of course it's presented all throughout scripture was a diversion because he was not ready to interact with the specific texts that he was being asked about.

01:10:39

And I think that's what Ed Eddie's talking about. You need to know how to respond to specific texts, specific objections.

01:10:45

Even when you're debating kind of internal in -house Christian debates, if you're going to use scripture to support an idea, you need to be able to expand on that scripture and not just generalize.

01:10:55

You need to generalize sometimes, but know how to strategically dive into the deep end on specific issues to show that there's actually meat to what you're saying.

01:11:03

So I think that's vitally, vitally important. Also, you need to be able to play chess in your mind.

01:11:10

As all of you guys know, being experienced debaters, you need to know how to be two, three, four, five steps ahead of your opponent.

01:11:17

So that requires you not only to know your own position, not only to know where you want to go with your argumentation, but anticipate where your opponent wants to go two or three or four or five moves ahead of him.

01:11:29

And that's very difficult. Not everyone is skilled in that area. You can work on it, but you need to be able to kind of train yourself to be a few steps ahead of your opponent by knowing their own position as well.

01:11:41

Let me give an answer that Matt Slick gave actually. Yeah. Sorry to quote

01:11:47

Matt Slick folks. It's that's bad, you know, but, but we, we were apocryphal.

01:11:53

Yeah. You say awful or apocryphal. But Matt and I, I think it'd be fair to say

01:12:03

Matt, you and I have debated each other more than we've debated anybody else. I think

01:12:08

I've, I know I've debated you because we've, we've debated a whole slew of topics, but who won? That's the question in our own minds.

01:12:16

We both won. When we debate, we do it such a way where we help each other out. It's in front of people at seminars so they can see that opposing people can get along, et cetera.

01:12:26

And that's why I'm so easy on him. Yeah. So, so what you have is I think there's a difference when we are debating people outside the faith and within the faith.

01:12:35

And someone asked Matt the question, when we did a debate on the, on the, that apologetics cruise, we were debating dispensationalism versus covenant theology.

01:12:43

I was trying to answer the strongman arguments that dispensationalists make against covenant theologians.

01:12:49

Matt was answering the strongman arguments covenant theologians make against dispensationalists. And someone asked the question to Matt of why it is we, we show so much concern about the other side.

01:12:59

And Matt had a great answer. I know I'm going to regret actually saying what I just said, but Matt actually did have a great answer.

01:13:07

He's, he's, he's got two thumbs up. He said, Andrew and I both know that we're wrong in our theology somewhere.

01:13:14

We don't know where, because if we did, we would change it. But we know when we sit at the feet of Christ, he will correct us.

01:13:22

It was a brilliant answer because it shows that one of the things we have to know when we're having in -house debates is that we're all wrong in our theology.

01:13:32

You know, if you're so proud about your theology that you have to win, that becomes the problem.

01:13:38

And I, I hate to say this, but yet Matt taught me something that. He taught you that covenant theology is correct.

01:13:46

And it's great. Oh, boy.

01:13:53

If someone wants to debate. For whatever reason. And you, you know, you got to get your motives in check.

01:13:58

Not just to debate. I know when

01:14:04

I've done debates, I always. Every single time I always somehow. You know, wherever I can find a slot,

01:14:12

I'll proclaim the gospel. Because you're always going to, even when you're not formally debating, you're always going to, You're always going to meet smarter people who are enemies of the cross.

01:14:19

You're always going to meet more intelligent people that have really good arguments for their. You know, bad doctrines and all these things where a lot of Christians don't know how to give the answers, but never underestimate the power of the gospel of the proclamation of the gospel, because that's

01:14:35

God's normal means it doesn't matter how intelligent the opponent is. But I think if you want to.

01:14:41

If you want to go into debate, The best practice you can get is to do open air evangelism, go out to third street in Santa Monica.

01:14:50

I have a friend, Luis. Truth defenders. He would owe him for years. He went out on Santa Monica because you'll get all kinds of objections that you have to answer.

01:15:00

You have to be fast on your feet. And you know, that that would be a good training ground, but a lot of people that want to get into the base, they've never done open air evangelism.

01:15:09

And then it's everything. So foreign to them. They don't know what to do. You know, especially when it gets heated and all these things.

01:15:15

And they just, they feel bad. They feel embarrassed because they didn't get the answers. They were nervous. You know, they just want to go home and just sink.

01:15:23

But so I would suggest anyone who wants to debate, start with open air evangelism and learn all of the Bible, not just some of the

01:15:29

Bible on these kinds of topics. And Eddie, we'll take you to New York city as we brought Matt slick there. That was fun.

01:15:36

I wanted to just add something is that one of the things I'd recommend people do is outlining.

01:15:43

It's something I've been doing for years and years, and I'm actually going to do a video on it, how to develop an outline, how to work an outline inside of Microsoft word.

01:15:52

My outline notes, my outline notes, eight and a half by 11 on Catholicism is 190 pages.

01:15:59

And I have everything indexed, alphabetized. I've got all kinds of stuff. You just click and stuff like that. And it's easy.

01:16:04

Look, because we have a lot of experience here, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't mean we have all the answers.

01:16:10

There's always something to learn. And it's just what it is in apologetics. So you have to be able to know everything, but you don't need to know very much of anything.

01:16:21

It just depends on how God uses you in the context, what you want to do, because sometimes the best apologetic approach is to say nothing, believe it or not to say nothing, to pray, to give a minimal answer.

01:16:32

So don't think that we're the examples of what needs to be done.

01:16:37

We're just people who are thick headed enough and stubborn enough to get out there and do it a lot and learn from our mistakes.

01:16:44

At least that's my philosophy. I've learned a great deal from my mistakes. Tony Costa, we've got about 10 minutes left before we got to go.

01:16:52

This is a question from Manny. Would sequential expository preaching, that's verse by verse, for the people who don't know what, sequential expository preaching, force pastors to not only teach difficult topics, but the theology and doctrine needed to defend the faith.

01:17:11

So what was the question? I thought he was going to ask what sequential expository.

01:17:20

Can you put that in a question form? So are they asking about expository preaching, sequential expository preaching, as opposed to thematic preaching?

01:17:29

Is that the sequential expository preaching? Yeah. Yeah. I think personally speaking, that's what

01:17:35

I do. That's how I preach the word. I think that MacArthur has the saying, interpreting

01:17:41

God's word one verse at a time. I think that that's important. There's nothing wrong with thematic preaching, as long as you don't make that your standard.

01:17:48

I think that the word of God, these are like pearls that are strung together. And I think that reading verse by verse and loving the word of God, to digest that, to meditate on those words,

01:18:01

I think is absolutely important. I know some churches up here in Canada, one of the largest

01:18:07

Asian churches up here in Canada, the pastor was a good friend with Rick Warren, and he told his pastoral staff not to do any expository preaching on Sundays, only to leave them for Sunday school.

01:18:19

And that just brought about a horrendous result. People were coming into the church as fast as they were leaving.

01:18:27

It was a revolving door church. And so I think that expository preaching is a must. I think it's absolutely important.

01:18:34

If we believe that all scripture is God -breathed, then that means every nugget of God's word has to be expounded on.

01:18:41

So I think that was the way the reformers preached. I think Calvin preached that way. Luther preached that way.

01:18:47

Whitefield, I think, did the same thing. And Augustine in his commentaries, many of the church fathers. So I think that that is the preferred way to preach.

01:18:56

And because that way you're getting the full counsel of God. And Tony, I think, and Matt as well,

01:19:02

I think the awesome thing as to how this relates to apologetics and better equipping the sheep to be better apologists is preaching in an expository fashion, because when people see the pastor expositing the word verse by verse, people learn what the pastor is doing as they follow the text, and they develop skills of interpretation that will be vitally important in defending the faith against people who are misusing, abusing, and misinterpreting the word of God.

01:19:31

So that has great apologetic value as well. You know, when I preach and when I do Bible studies,

01:19:37

I'm doing the same thing, expository preaching. And what I'll – because I have a slight different emphasis in preaching.

01:19:44

But the thing is what I'll do is use the text when it talks about something. Like I'm going to start on Romans chapter 1, verse 1 on Thursday.

01:19:53

And I think we might finish it in an hour because there's eight topics in there, and each one of them are thematically necessary to understand the purview of what he's saying.

01:20:05

So I tell people, look, you go through the text, you see something, teach on it because the it is systematic, is connected to that verse and that verse and that verse.

01:20:15

That way people see, oh, that's how it's all interrelated, and that's what they need. You don't see how it's interrelated, but expository preaching, occasional thematic preaching, absolutely.

01:20:25

Okay, let's see. We've got about seven minutes. And we have a question for Eli Ayala.

01:20:33

I like saying Ayala. Ayala, I think you just say it several times fast, and then you got to – that's great. Ayala, Ayala, Ayala. I thought it was offensive at first, but now when

01:20:41

I say it to myself, I'm like, it does sound like a Muslim war cry. Darn it. It does. It does. I hear that in charismatic circles,

01:20:48

Eli. I hear that a lot in the charismatic circles. Ayala, Ayala, Ayala. And yabba -dabba -doo.

01:20:55

And yabba -dabba -doo to Flintstones. Yabba -dabba -doo. Oh, man.

01:21:01

If we get to heaven and the charismatics are right, it's going to be awesome. They will say,

01:21:06

I told you in tongues, but you didn't listen. There's no interpreter. Okay, okay.

01:21:14

So, Eli, do you have – there's a question there. So, Eli, do you believe those big channels might be going for clickbait and views rather than informing the body in God's word and his truth?

01:21:25

I think there could be a concerning trend for some of these channels being seriously compromising. You're on.

01:21:31

Yeah, sometimes. A little bit on kind of the YouTube game, and I've got this from a reliable source from someone who has a very successful YouTube channel and I think does solid

01:21:41

Christian apologetics. There's nothing in principle wrong with clickbaity titles as long as you deliver what you are clickbaiting.

01:21:49

You do want people to click on your video. I don't want people to scroll through and be like, oh, that looks boring. Like, I want it to look nice.

01:21:55

I want it to look attractive so that I can speak truth. So there's nothing wrong in principle with clickbaity titles as long as you deliver the goods.

01:22:02

Now, that being said, I do think that there are people who do try to create extreme -looking thumbnails, very provocative things, and, you know, just for the sake of getting clicks and they don't really deliver on content.

01:22:18

And when they do, it's not grounded in scripture. There's a lot of philosophy that is not grounded in scripture.

01:22:25

That's important because I'm not rejecting philosophy, but there's philosophy in these big channels that they emphasize the supremacy of this scholar, that scholar, this school of thought, and the

01:22:36

Bible is relegated to kind of this secondary role. And so, you know, you'll have these channels that are supposed to be apologetics channels and they're promoting things like open theism as viable options,

01:22:48

Roman Catholicism as viable options, and they're not even Roman Catholic channel universalism as viable options.

01:22:56

And I think that gives kind of the wrong idea as though the scriptures, this is where you have the implicit degradation of the scriptures.

01:23:03

The scripture is almost when you, when you give all these options, you're implicitly assuming that the scriptures are not sufficient to give us an answer with respect to a lot of these issues.

01:23:12

And so I think, I think the topics that are, that one permits to be on their channel and the way they present it,

01:23:19

I think can contribute to kind of a perception that the scripture isn't clear enough on some of these important issues.

01:23:25

And I think a lot of big YouTube channels, unfortunately, tend to give that impression. Amen. Well said, you keep surprising me.

01:23:33

You say smart things. Tom is big. Tell that to my wife. There you go. A long time.

01:23:40

That's why. What was that? You've been having way too many conversations with Matt. I think

01:23:46

I've had conversations with everyone here. And at least, you know, a little bit here and there,

01:23:52

Matt, probably with the most Tony, Andrew, I've benefited from all Luke, even Luke. I know his, his mic is muted.

01:23:58

I've never met Luke, but I've read a lot of his articles on calm. I've learned something from everyone here and I'm still learning.

01:24:04

So I'm the young buck here. You guys are the old school guys that laid the foundation for a lot of us.

01:24:10

So I highly recommend for people listening, highly recommend continue to learn from these guys. And hopefully we can scrape a little bit from their, from their intelligence.

01:24:20

Amen. Amen. Well, we're going to close it up now, but I'd like Luke if he could, if it's quick and easy to come in and just introduce himself, he works with Carmen's work for a long time, but you want to make sure people know who he is.

01:24:30

He's behind the scene producing, doing things so that we can make sure that we're doing this right.

01:24:36

Luke, are you able to come on quickly and it should be on now. So yeah,

01:24:41

Luke Wayne, like, like Matt said, I, I, I work with Matt at calm. I've been doing that for going on seven years now.

01:24:50

And so it has I'm a missionary out in Utah.

01:24:56

I work with a church plant out here. I'm an elder at the mission church in South Jordan. So if you're ever in the

01:25:01

Salt Lake area, we'd love to have you come check us out there. And we do a lot of street evangelism out here.

01:25:07

So a lot of what I write and publish comes from the conversations I have in real evangelistic conversations.

01:25:15

And so anyway, I'm not nearly as interesting as these other guys. That's why I'm in the background running the tech. But it's an honor to be on here and just making this conversation possible.

01:25:26

Well, thanks a lot, Luke. Really appreciate it. All right. I would like to do is just have each one of you close out for a minute, if you want, where they can contact you, whatever you want to say for that minute.

01:25:34

I want to thank you guys very much for participating, because this is our first attempt was obviously,

01:25:41

I think, a very great success because of you guys. And, of course, Luke working and arranging everything.

01:25:46

But you guys just making it great. Even Eli, even though he came in late, but that's OK. So let's start with Eddie first.

01:25:53

Go ahead, Eddie. Well, this was a good show, Matt, and I was delighted to be on it.

01:26:00

If you want to reach me again, ChristianDefense .org, ChristianDefense .org.

01:26:06

All my contact information is there, all the information on the books, as mentioned, all the information on the

01:26:12

YouTube channel, everything you need, ChristianDefense .org. Amen, brother.

01:26:18

Thanks. Andrew. Yeah, I think

01:26:24

I'll answer one question real quick that was asked like four or five times is giving evidence for God.

01:26:30

Romans one, they already know God exists. There's nothing more we have to say about that.

01:26:36

So you can get a hold of me at StrivingForAttorney .org. From there, you could be able to find our

01:26:43

Christian podcast community, which is on there, or just go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org. There's plenty of material out there.

01:26:51

If you're interested in apologetics, we have podcasts for you. We have articles. So check that out.

01:26:56

You can always come to ApologeticsLive .com any Thursday night, 8 to 10 Eastern Time. Ask any questions you have.

01:27:02

Anyone can come in. So that's how you get a hold of me. And just anytime you see

01:27:08

Matt Slick, just remind him he owes me a dinner. You know, it's going to get bad for you.

01:27:15

I can tell it's going to get bad. We're going to figure something out about that. Tony. Yeah, I just want to say thanks, guys.

01:27:22

You know, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. So I really enjoyed this time together, this fellowship, even though it's virtual.

01:27:30

So if you want to contact me, my YouTube channel is Toronto Apologetics. Tony Costa, Toronto Apologetics.

01:27:35

I'm working on a website, but not up yet. And if you want to email me, TorontoApologetics, all one word, at gmail .com.

01:27:43

TorontoApologetics at gmail .com. Thanks, guys. Blessings. I think what I'm going to do is put up a contact page on this event.

01:27:51

I'll figure out how to do that and put that information up there if we can. Eli on CARM, that is.

01:27:57

Eli. Yes. Well, again, my name is Eli Ayala. I have a YouTube channel called

01:28:02

Revealed Apologetics. If folks are interested in learning presuppositional apologetics and going really deep into that specific methodology,

01:28:09

I think they'll find my content very helpful. I interview theologians and scholars. I've moderated a couple of debates, and I have a couple of debates that I've done myself on there.

01:28:19

So if folks want to see what a presuppositional approach looks like in an actual engagement, I think that would be very useful for people.

01:28:25

You could also check out my podcast on iTunes and other platforms. I don't remember off the top of my head which other ones there, but just search

01:28:31

Revealed Apologetics. You can contact me at RevealedApologetics at gmail .com.

01:28:37

That's the best way to contact me if you have a question or a topic you'd like me to address or write on. I'm also a traveling speaker.

01:28:44

So if you want me to speak at your church or an event, you can contact me through there as well. And check out the website,

01:28:51

RevealedApologetics .com. And yeah, that's it. All right. And I'm Matt Slick, of course, the founder and director, president of the

01:28:59

Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, CARM .org. If you want to get ahold of me, all you got to do is email us at info at CARM .org.

01:29:07

We have actually dedicated people who answer emails. So please be patient. We do have a lot of traffic that comes in.

01:29:14

And thank you very much. Each and every one of you, seriously, it's been a pleasure to get to know you.

01:29:19

I've learned a lot from each of you except for Andrew. And so I've really had a good time discussing things.

01:29:27

And we're going to do it again. We'll do it again. And if you guys register, we can do it again as well.

01:29:32

Thank you very much, Luke. Thank you for being in the background and helping out. And by God's grace, we'll be doing this again.

01:29:39

And God bless you guys. Thanks. God bless. God bless.

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