Jeff Interviews Sye Ten Bruggencate

A Biblical Apologetic for Defending the Faith

Well, we have a great opportunity right now to talk to one of my favorite people in the world. He's a good friend of ours actually done a public debate with this man not against him. But on the same team against some atheists in California.

He has just an awesome movie. It's called how to answer the fool and before you had to pay for it and download it and it was worth every penny but now Cy has released it now on YouTube for the world to see for free.

So please welcome site in broken cake guys. What's up, hey man, you look great. Man, how are things in Canada a.

Well, it's actually raining pretty good now. I was in Kansas for quite a while and the weather was a lot nicer down there than it is up here. But I'm back home for a bit and the weather is pretty miserable, but hopefully it'll clear up soon.

Isn't that what everyone says about Canada all the time? The weather's weather's bad, but but everything else.

It's a lot of times it's beautiful, but currently it's um, it's a little bit rainy. So I never pray for weather though, because there's always somebody on the other side praying for the exact opposite weather.

That's true. That's true. So I.

You have really been a blessing in a lot of ways to many Christians who are really trying to Discover, how do I actually? Engage with people today with the gospel and so you have created a film and it's called how to answer the fool available now on YouTube completely for free and the basis of that film is to try to expose people to a Biblical apologetic and apologetics, of course is the the art and the science of the defense of the faith.

And so you try to expose people to what the Bible would say about how you actually defend the Christian faith. Can you introduce people to that how to answer the fool? What's it about the Christian apologetic?

Well sure most of my life. I mean I had a passion for defending my faith, but most of my life I was doing it wrong. I was using all the traditional arguments and I was getting shut down. I was you know speaking till I was blue in the face and not getting any reaction at all and it wasn't until I saw the Bent the the in the debate with Greg Bonson against what's-his-name Gordon Stein.

Yeah. Yeah, the great debate and I think you know, you've seen that as well. That started a lot of people on the road to this biblical apologetic and you know I saw that really we should all be able to defend our faith and if we do it wrong.

You have to be brilliant, but thankfully by the break by the grace of God I was introduced to this apologetic and Greg Bonson. He did this in the university setting. He did this in debate setting but you don't really see a lot of this on the street.

So I think you know myself and yourself and people like my friend Dustin Seegers I actually really the first group of people to take this on the street and I met up with Marcus. You know, who's a good friend of yours associate with the studio there.

And of course David Shannon who worked tirelessly on this film and they were introduced to this apologetic very excited about it and from that birth the idea to make a film with this apologetic and it's actually supposed to be initially just an instructional type of video explaining the apologetic but then they actually flew them up to Philadelphia, New Jersey where we were doing a conference and they actually recorded some of my interactions out on the street and they said well.

This is going to be the movie and you can see in the film that the majority of it is the street Interactions and also we were really blessed by having a debate down in Pensacola, Florida. Which made a big portion of the debate of the film as well.

God’s Existence, Evidence, and the Christian Worldview

All right, we're gonna go ahead and show a clip of that film right now.

The other day I felt my heart beating in my chest and I thought to myself I have a pump in my chest about the size of my fist made of meat. It pumps 700 ,000 gallons of blood per year and runs for 90 years on doughnuts.

And I got to prove that God exists. Evidence for God. Look around. I don't have to give you evidence for God. You know that God exists. That's the God We have to talk about when we defend our faith.

I'm saying that this is the perfect time to open their life to give it a chance. I'd say give him a 60-day trial.

Are you kidding me. Who in Scripture tried Jesus Pontius Pilate and he only tried him for a few hours. If Pontius Pilate didn't repent he's in hell.

Try the Lord of Glory. We've got to get on our knees and submit to him. So.

Si, let's introduce people when we talk about like defending the Christian faith in a wrong way. What do we mean by that in terms of like there's an there's actually a way that's not ultimately consistent philosophically.

Or biblically, what does that mean to defend the faith in the wrong way?

Well, I have a talk. It's also available on YouTube. I believe it's on Marcus's channel. It's apologetics is easy believe your Bible and we're all commanded to give it commanded to give a reason defense of our faith.

But the thing is we're doing it in a way that the world wants us to do it. We end up arguing for a probability. We're saying that all of this evidence points to a most likely being out there. But that's not the God that we worship in church in church.

We say nothing can separate us from the love of the Father. We don't worship. We don't pray to a probability. But that's what the world is trying to get us to defend our belief in something that you know.

That might exist that we hope exists, but that's not the guy that we believe in in church. So what this is it's it's a biblical apologetic and you know. The more that I do this apologetic the more that I realize it's not about the argumentation.

It's about reaching lost sheep. So when I go out and confront people now, I start off preaching the gospel to them because that's what saves people. It's the gospel but when you get the objections to the gospel when you get your objections to Scripture and I believe that this is a biblical way to To defeat those objections and you can see in the film that really unless you start with God.

There is no basis for any argument against what you're saying and instead of getting bogged down and all these evidential type arguments.

You know.

This is a I think more of a biblical approach and the example that I use in the film and I've used with you a number Of times as well is where do you hear evidence out in the world? You hear evidence in the court of law.

Somebody comes up to you and says I don't believe in God and you give them evidence. You're doing it like a court of law. But in court who do you give evidence to. You give evidence to the judge and to the jury.

So somebody comes up to you says I don't believe in God and you give them evidence. You're saying that they're the judge and jury and that God's on trial. And this apologetic turns that's on its head and exposes the fact like it says in Scripture throughout Scripture that everyone knows the God that exists and They have sufficient knowledge of him for their condemnation.

So this apologetic exposes that they know him and that they need to repent and put their trust in Jesus Christ.

Romans 1, Repentance, and the Limits of Evidence

Right and I think that one thing that needs to be clear and understood by everybody when we talk about the issue of evidence. What we actually are saying is that philosophically speaking? You can't actually provide a coherent argument for why evidence matters at all.

Apart from the Christian worldview. There is no logic. There is no science. There are no ethical responsibilities of integrity and argumentation. Or even not getting physically violent in an argument or debate.

Without the Christian God you need the biblical worldview as a framework to launch any of those things. And and I think that is in contrast. I think in terms of what you're saying. It's in contrast to many solid men of God who are Capable intellectual strong-minded men and women who have memorized tons and tons of data that clearly does.

Refute the skeptic the atheist and we can refute people on the transmission of the text of the Bible has God preserved his word. Is there evidence for a global flood? But I think sigh what you're saying you can maybe expatiate on as expatiate on this.

Is that the evidence is not the problem? It's not a problem whether the unbeliever has enough light or evidence or reason to believe in God. God actually says in Romans 1 that they're on apologetes. They're without a defense before God.

What we're saying is it's not a problem of evidence. It's a problem of the heart. It's a problem of sinful rebellion, right?

One of the things that I'll say to an unbeliever or professed unbeliever is if I could give you sufficient evidence to believe in God. You know the Bible says you already do but you know I'll take your position for a while if I could give you sufficient evidence to believe in God.

Would you worship him. And you'll see time and time again. We did that in the film as well time and time again. They said no they wouldn't worship him and there was one particular podcast that I was on and they said that very thing.

They would not worship God even if we provided sufficient evidence for his existence, right? And the interesting thing about that is they would not let me back on their podcast unless I did what? Argued evidence with them.

I say, you know.

What a colossal waste of time to to give them evidence when they say even if they had sufficient evidence that they worship wouldn't worship God, but this is the question that I asked on the street and I did it in the debate that we had on California as.

Well, I say what evidence would convince you of the God who says you already have enough evidence and. If they answer that question it shows that they didn't understand the question because God says they have already have enough evidence.

So logically no evidence could convince them of the God that says they already have enough evidence. It's not an evidential problem. It's a spiritual problem, right? They need to bow the knee to Jesus Christ because we get Christians and I have well-meaning Christians.

I used to do that as well. Try and prove miracles to unbelievers. You know, we're trying to get them to see the truth so that they repent and put their trust in Jesus Christ. But that's not what scripture script says.

2nd Timothy 2 24 25 says in the hope that God will grant them repentance. Leading to a knowledge of the truth truth. They need to repent of their sin against the God. They know it's just for any of that to make sense.

I'm not going to try and prove a miracle to an unbeliever because really without God miracles are nuts. I mean, let's face it without God an axe head floating is crazy. You know a man and a fish for three days without God is nuts, but God could do that.

I say your problem is not with miracles your problems with the God of miracles. And if you have a problem with the God of miracles, you have no you have no objection to what my Bible says. You have no objection to miracles because you can't make sense of the reasoning which would forbid them, right?

You know, it's interesting the you'll see everybody if you go check it out right now. How to answer the full. The whole film is up by the way side real fast. Where can they go? What's channel on YouTube is that now?

Did you change the name of the channel. Made a new channel called answer anyone and as you said, it's available at the Dutch price.

Free that's right.

The Dutch price so you'll know. I mean a Dutch heritage so I can use that kind of humor.

But yes, it's at the Dutch. That's right. You have to be careful in today's climate anything any racial jokes. So the film does illustrate a lot of what you're talking about in terms of how does this come into conflict with the world?

And I think it's really amazing you challenge a lot of College students on how can they know anything at all? And it's just you have to see it. It's tremendous. One more thing I wanted to address here sign in terms of how this can be helpful to Christians not just in the area of debating with the agnostic or the atheist or the typical sort of a liberal skeptic in some way.

But this apologetic how you're approaching this problem this issue from a Christian biblical perspective. Does also make its way over into cultural issues issues of legislation and how you will address them.

So for example, you're well aware brother of our ministry. The heartbeat of this show is end abortion now and abortion now .com is to equip Christians around the world. Literally now around the world to go out and to minister in the area of abortion with the biblical worldview with the scriptures.

It's interesting if you look at the perspective of many pro-lifers. Really? I think internationally but specifically in my own country side. Many pro-lifers will say things like no we need to take a neutral approach.

We need to try to take a backdoor approach. Let's not make this explicitly Christian in terms of our fight against abortion the culture of death. And so I think it leads to many many many failed attempts to end abortion very inconsistent.

Legislatively philosophically it collapses and falls apart because they're pretending neutrality. Our perspective with end abortion now is that we actually need to fight against the culture of death with consistency.

Philosophically Legislatively and as Christians and that's the only way we can ultimately end this culture of death. Can you talk about that issue of neutrality for a moment sigh? Yeah for sure.

No Neutrality in the Abortion Debate

Well, Jesus said there is no neutrality now. The thing about this issue is that you'll see that a lot of people that are I was on the way I just visited my mother and I was on the way home here and on the radio was a discussion about two people in their 90s have been married for 75 years who had agreed to a pact to have each other euthanized and I would just discuss it as appalled by it.

But I was even more appalled by the people calling in who are even opposed to it because none of them were opposed to it based on biblical standards based on the sanctity of life and people will make all sorts of Other kind of medical arguments on you know.

Kind of arguments from reasoning from their mentality and stuff like that. But none of them would go to the source and that's what this apologetic does it being bring people back to the authority of Scripture?

Because without Scripture there is no authority without Scripture. We're just another clanging gong out there. We're just giving our you know, our arbitrary opinion. We have to get back to arguing from the authority of God's Word whether they accept it or not.

That's not up to us because when I stand before my maker I don't want to say that I was using some other argument because I didn't think that you were powerful enough. I didn't think that your word was sufficient.

We should not be embarrassed. You know arguing from the authority of Scripture and if people see the film. They'll see that I did not stray from the authority of Scripture and I had people that were way smarter than I am Discussed with me and you'll see that if you go to my YouTube channel as well or to my website there's people a lot smarter than I am who are held without excuse because I argue from the truth of Scripture and it closes mouths.

And that's what we need to get back to is get back to God's Word and the authority of his Word and that's what will Empower Christians and you know, you say what it does to people it gives people it allows would have it.

You know a sigh of relief, you know, because they have all this weight upon them I can't go out and defend my faith because I'm not smart enough I might get an answer, you know objection that I don't understand if you know the Word of God if you know your Bible.

You can defend your faith. You can engage the culture on all of these topics and say well This is what God says about it. They say well, I don't believe in God. Well, actually that's that's not what the Bible says and then you can get into that kind of apologetic as well as you can be.

Taught in this film. Very good sigh. Brother, I love you, man. I love you, too, man. Thanks for being on the show. I don't see you. But so I hope to see you soon, man. So everybody how to answer the fool.

My good friend and brother side ten brook. Okay, make sure you guys go check it out and just sigh also that your website right now.

Tell everyone your website that God proof that God exists org and you can see hundreds of hours of me talk with you. I believe even there's a link to the debate that we did and I Recommend that you don't read the comments Jeff because the people hated you and I and I know you know.

We can get a little passionate in those debates. But that debate they did really not like our behavior and we both will admit that we can improve our behavior. But these are people that were blaspheming God in a church and we do get a little bit riled up.

But there's also links to that debate and all sorts of other discussions that people can under come to understand the biblical apologetic.

Very good sides in broken kid everybody. Next week with Jeff Durbin the late-night show with the unpopular opinion. Tuesday only on Facebook live.