Apologetic Conversation Tactics (Greg Koukl)

Introduction to Greg Koukl and the Book *Tactics*

All right. Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. As always, I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have a super duper, very special guest. Super duper, very special guy. That's a pretty good introduction to

I have never been introduced as super duper before, so this is a first for me.

Well, I do consider you a very super duper guest. I do understand that you're probably very busy and so I greatly appreciate you being able to take the time. I'm happy to do it. Really am. I'm glad to be here.

Thank you, Eli. Awesome. Well, today I have Greg Koukl with me. He is the author of multiple books, one of which is Tactics, which is an awesome book that goes through really tactics and strategies as to how to navigate a conversation.

And of course, that has application not only within the context of apologetics, but it also has application to just reasoning and thinking and conversing in general. And so I highly recommend the book Tactics, and of course there's an updated version that recently came out.

I'm not sure how recent that was, but there we go.

By the way, this little red emblem is important. That's the 10th anniversary edition one. That's the updated one, 35 or 40 more material, lots more tactics anyway. There we go. Yeah. And so I read the older...

I do have the updated version. I did read the older edition, but I mean, it's excellent stuff. Definitely very applicable, very practical, and not over anyone's head, which I think is sometimes something that we run the risk when we're doing apologetics because we're dealing with such a big topic.

So without further ado, though, why don't you take some time to introduce yourself? I'm sure folks will be more familiar with you than they are with me, but why don't you go tell us a little bit about yourself?

Greg Koukl’s Conversion, Ministry, and the Birth of Stand to Reason

Well, I didn't become a Christian young. I became a Christian as a young adult, actually, which to me is a big advantage in some ways, although not walking with the Lord when you're younger gets you into trouble that you have to deal with the rest of your life.

But I became a Christian at university at UCLA in 1973. I was 23 years old, and it was a long time of me assessing things. I wasn't really doing apologetics then, and it wasn't, ironically, it wasn't apologetics that made a big difference in my conversion like it's done with the others that do what I do, J. Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel, Frank Turek, etc.

These guys were all deeply influenced by apologetics. In my case, it was just the faithful witness of my younger brother over time and other people that had some things to say, but it was mostly Mark.

And when I became a Christian in 1973, this changed everything for me. And my whole worldview shifted. And deliberately, I realized that I was entering into an entirely new way of understanding how reality is structured.

I wouldn't have put it that way, you know, 50 years ago or so, but still, that's the way I look at it now. It's everything changed for me. And so it wasn't like, you know, get Jesus to get your ticket into heaven.

I was a follower of Jesus, and I had really fabulous people around me, got discipled early on very intensely for two and a half years. I was part of a Christian community there in Westwood Village by UCLA.

And that's when I developed my interest in apologetics. And I just naturally gravitated for that because I was on the street a lot. That was during the Jesus Movement in Southern California. I was on the street talking to people and on the beach, and, you know, people would push back.

And so I'd have to figure out how to answer their pushbacks if I wanted to make a credible presentation of the gospel. And so that's where my interest in thoughtful Christianity and defending the faith came in.

And early on, I had read some of Josh McDowell, which was great. His material was kind of encyclopedic, you know, in the evidence that demands a verdict. So it just flipped to the pages you need. But I was really deeply influenced by Francis Schaeffer because he provided for me a whole broad way of understanding the Christian project and how the Christian worldview actually spoke aggressively and soundly to the broader issues of life.

And so he was somewhat philosophical in his teaching. I was the first exposure I had to that kind of stuff. But it really, really began to ground me well. And I visited Labrie there in the mid -70s. And so by the time, I guess about now, I think, about 20 years later, I guess I was 20 years old when I became a Christian.

I did a lot of different things. I was a pastor at a church, an associate pastor, a teaching pastor, basically. And I spent time overseas in Europe working with Christians behind the Iron Curtain. I spent time in Thailand.

I lived there for a while working with Cambodian refugees. Anyway, lots of crazy experiences. But I started radio in 1990. And I was doing weekend talk radio, three hours Saturday, three hours Sunday, in addition to my other job.

And that kind of introduced me to a whole new way of engaging people in a way that's effective. I wasn't really wild about being on the air like some people are, but it was something that I could do and that worked.

And so I thought, OK, as a stewardship, I'm going to keep doing this. Now it's 30 years later, and I'm still doing it. But about four years into that enterprise, 1993, that's when I decided to focus my efforts on an enterprise that now is known as Stand to Reason.

Melinda Penner helped me start out that organization. She's ailing now, so she's not actively with us. But the goal that I had, Eli, was I looked around and I saw that, first of all, for my education, at that point, I had a bachelor's degree or rather a master's degree in apologetics, and I was beginning to work on a master's degree in philosophy.

And I thought, man, we got the best thinkers on our side, but so many Christians, they're arguing in such an engaging and such a shallow fashion and shrill. So there's a lot of yelling going on. I thought, that's not good.

It's shallow and shrill. That's part of the body of Christ. The other part was silent because they were scared. They weren't going to get off the bench. They didn't like the opposition. They didn't know what to say.

So they're not going to stand up in the line of fire. And so we started Stand to Reason with a goal of training Christians to think more carefully about their convictions. And in the process of that, being able to engage in a thoughtful, gracious, but incisive way with those who didn't share their convictions.

And so that's pretty much our enterprise at Stand to Reason has been that. Our longer-term goal, our vision, is confidence for every Christian, clear thinking—let's see, how do we put it—clear thinking for every challenge, and courage and grace for every encounter.

And those three things really capture what we're doing. We're trying to build a person that we call an ambassador who has those qualities. They have confidence because they know the reasons for the truth.

They have, therefore, courage to face the opposition, and they are doing it in a graceful way with clear answers regarding the issues. So now 27 years into Stand to Reason, 30 years into live radio, and still doing that.

Now it's kind of morphed into a podcast kind of thing. We still have a live presence on radio, but most people are podcast listeners because it's so much easier. You can get it anytime. You don't have to thread the needle, sit in the car, and be there right at the right time when this comes on.

But now we have 18 staffers. We have four speakers. We've rotated speakers out over time because they've gone out and started other organizations, like Scott Klusendorf started Life Training Institute.

He was with us for about eight years. Brett Kunkel started his organization, and he was with us like 15 years or something, and he's just doing great working with young people, and he's left a tremendous legacy at our organization.

Maven is his group, and J. Warner Wallace was with us a couple of years. He's with Cold Case Christianity, and he's really having a powerful impact. And so we've had others, so we're just really happy to hear that we're kind of seeding the field, so to speak, even though we're losing good people, but more people are coming in.

So right now we've got four full-time speakers, and we've got a great website that's just pumping out a lot of stuff. I'm writing. Others are writing. We're doing blogs and all kinds of stuff. So we're just trying to be faithful to make a difference in a gracious way for the kingdom of God in the midst of an increasingly hostile circumstance that we're facing in this country.

So that's kind of your little thumbnail sketch.

You spoke about doing radio. I must say, from the first time I ever heard you, I was like, this guy has a really good radio voice. You got a nice, a good cadence to your voice. It was very pleasant to listen to.

I remember the first thing I ever listened to of yours, and I think it had something to do with decision-making and the will of God or something.

Controversially. People either love me or hate me on that one.

But I thought it was awesome when I first listened to it. I was a fan from early on, but then it was later on when I saw some of your books, I started reading those and became a greater fan of your work.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. I actually started out talking way too fast with a real high-pitched voice, and I thought, this is not going to be helpful to the audience. So I just tried to slow down, lower my register a little bit, and just slow down.

That was more than anything else, just slowing down. So thank you for that comment. Yeah, no problem.

I mean it. Now, one of the things I really appreciate about you, those who are connected to your ministry, is your ability to speak with clarity and simplicity in a way that can be multiplied, reproduced, and sent out to the masses in a way that the average person can just grasp.

And I think a very difficult thing is to take these complex topics, because when we're dealing with apologetics, we're very much dealing with philosophy and related topics that are very, very difficult to wrap your head around.

So I would imagine that when you are doing the videos and you're speaking, there is a strategy that you use to simplify these very complex concepts. What is your process when you're trying to simplify?

Translating Complex Ideas and the Role of the Holy Spirit

You know, that's a really fair question. It's a very nice compliment, and especially gratifying because I view our work at Stand to Reason as kind of like translation work. And so we get to rub shoulders with the really smart people and do our best to understand what they're saying, and then translating that.

And I don't call it putting the cookies on the bottom shelf, because though that's a kind of a favorite metaphor for this kind of thing, frankly, all the cookies can't go on the bottom shelf. But what we can do is some of those cookies, so to speak, that you've got to reach for, we can put them within reach if people are willing to reach.

And so that's, I think, what one of our big virtues of our organization is that we've done that. We really work hard at translating. And, you know, to be honest, Eli, nobody's ever asked this question of me before, and it's a perceptive question because it goes to the workings of a person's mind and trying to make information accessible.

And I'm glad you care about that because you're in the same kind of position. And I wish I could tell you, well, here's the secret. Here's the strategy. And it isn't like I'm following a particular strategy to accomplish things.

I can tell you a couple of things that will help and will help your listeners, too, when they're in the same position. But I don't—it isn't—things, you know, people talk about the muse, people who are creative people, they talk about the muse, M-U-S-E.

Well, muse is like a mythic woman who gives them their inspiration. So, you know, Shakespeare had his muse, you know, and Bach has a muse. And all they're really referring to in a metaphoric way is a native and unusual and unique capability to have things come to mind that reflect their talent.

And then they put those things down and make it visible for people, whether it's words or whether it's music or art or something like that. So there is—part of it, I think, is just an uncanny, like, odd and hard-to-explain process of things just coming into one's head.

So I think—and this is a spiritual—there's certainly a spiritual element, the Holy Spirit working. There's also a spiritual element in the sense that it's not the immediate working of the Holy Spirit, but it's the fact that God made each individual certain capabilities and natural abilities that are native to them.

They have them when they're born. We don't usually call them spiritual gifts. They're natural gifts, but they're still used for spiritual ends. And a lot of times the spiritual gifts and the natural gifts kind of blend together.

And so I've always been, as a young adult, I was a little on the talkative side kind of thing. And so I think I had some of that native capability. But then becoming a Christian and having the Holy Spirit, well, this just brings in a whole bunch more, in a certain sense, resources.

But when somebody asks me a question about something, a lot of times a little outline just appears in my head. Now, it's because I have done the work, you know, I have the studies and stuff. It isn't like I'm getting new information from God.

But you know how Jesus told the apostles, he said, you know, the Holy Spirit—this in Matthew 10—he said the Holy Spirit will give you the words kind of at the time you're in a stressful circumstance. But you know, he didn't say that like when he first met them.

He said that after he'd been training them for about a year and a half, you know. And in Neperom discourse, he says something similar. He said, the Spirit will bring to remembrance all that I have taught you.

So there's two parts to the Spirit's involved, but he's not working with nothing. He's not working with new stuff. Like you just open the channels and you get what the Spirit's saying. Rather, he's working with the things that you have worked yourself to store up.

We call this knowledge, an accurately informed mind. You understand the reason. And so this is a tip for your listeners and for you, Eli, that God constructs things with stuff that's there. Okay, so if we're not somehow a student of our interest or our craft, as the case may be, there's not much raw material to work with.

I'm not saying God can't use somebody who's totally uneducated, but that's not the point. We pursue knowledge, okay? It says that in Proverbs, it says that through the Scripture, whatever. We pursue knowledge, okay?

Once we have accurate knowledge, now we've got resources to assemble like Legos in different ways. And for some people, they got to work harder than others to assemble those things. Me, sometimes it comes kind of naturally, you know, certain things come into my head.

Oh, that goes bang, bang, bang, bang. Even you asking this question of me, you know, I thought, okay, here's a rhythm. Here's a series. I can talk about this. So to some degree, there's a native capability of that.

And I can't take any credit for it. It just happens in me.

But basically your strategy is just to be naturally gifted.

Yeah, there's more to that. And this is something I can pass on, but part of it is native gifting. That's all I could say, you know, and each person has their own particulars, you know. My wife has a certain sensitivity with people that I don't have, you know.

And so sometimes I got to ask her how to handle something because she gets it and I don't, you know, but to her, it comes kind of natural. So that's kind of her native capability. So people know what I'm talking about.

But I always tell people to be a student of your craft. So if you want to be more effective in engaging people, apologetics, however, whatever, learn stuff related to that. So you build up your reservoir of information that you can draw from as you have the opportunity.

So that's one thing, build up your reservoir. That's something you could do. Be a student of your craft. Another thing I just mentioned a little while ago is, and this is really important, I think this helps the process, talk slower.

All right, talk slower. I was so fast when I first started doing public speaking and stuff. I would warn people. I say, I talk 180 miles an hour with gusts up to 200. So sorry about that. Here we go, you know.

But it was such a flurry of stuff. It's like, you know, when the wind's blowing really hard, nothing sticks on the ground. It all blows away. So in the same way, you know, things don't stick if you're moving too fast.

So the more you can speak more slowly, not only is it easier for people to pick things up. Notice how I'm pausing here even saying this. It's easier for people to pick things up, but it's actually easier for you to articulate without stumbling, which I used to do a lot.

I'd stammer because I'd try to talk too fast. And it's easier to organize your thoughts. You have a little bit more time for these thoughts to come to mind so that you can kind of put them in order.

I noticed that William Lane Craig does that in the way that he answers. You know, someone will ask him a question. He'll be like, well, I think if we think of it, he's just very ponderous of each of his points.

And he speaks with a good, I mean, he's not a quick speaker, but he speaks in such a way that you can follow his line of thinking. I mean, the purpose of speaking is communication.

If you understand his vocabulary, I listen to Bill because he keeps me sharp. That very thing that you're talking about, he has a certain kind of elegance of thinking that is a tutorial for listeners.

Sometimes clear thinking or capable thinking is not taught but caught. And so when we listen to somebody like Bill, you know, and I hope when people listen to me, they start to get the rhythm of how this works.

And they can't even really put their finger on it, but they realize as they expose themselves more frequently to careful thinking, thinkers like Bill or like J .P. Moreland or even like Dennis Prager.

Many of your listeners might know Dennis. I think Dennis has magnificent clarity. He's not a Christian. He's a Jewish conservative talk show host. But he has a magnificent clarity, and I learn from him by listening to him.

That's one reason I listen to him. Plus, I think he's got a lot of good ideas too. So those are the things that I would recommend. Listen to smart people who communicate clearly, and you'll catch some of it, okay?

Study, as Paul says, to show yourself to prove, to workmen who does not need to be shamed, handling accurately. And here he's talking about the Word of God to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2. But it's a broad principle that's really good.

Know your stuff. Make that a lifelong process. And slow down when you're talking to people.

I think what you said before is being a student of your craft is very, very important. I mean, even in the Bible says, may I hide your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you. God helps us to avoid falling into sinful action, but he brings to remembrance what is already deposited within us.

So it's not just this ex nihilo, God just produces these thoughts in our mind, but ah, this is the right thing to do.

I'm glad you put it that way, because this is a tremendous misunderstanding that I think that comes out of pietistic movements of the late 19th century, that it's all of God, none of me, that I'm an empty vessel, that God's just pouring his Spirit through me, and I'm just kind of standing aside and not doing anything.

And there were very godly people who believed that and taught that, but I just don't think that's the biblical model. And something that I noticed, Eli, by reading, I've made a commitment now, I've read through the Bible a number of times, but I've made a commitment to always be reading through the Bible.

So I have a check off boxes, you know, I have a chart, and actually two weeks ago, I finished, after two and a half years, I finished my Bible in a year chart, and I just started again. But when you're doing this and getting the full counsel of God over time, instead of just focusing on your favorite passages, some things jump out that you didn't notice before.

And for me, as I'm reading through the historical parts of the Old Testament, I'm reading through 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, David's struggles, etc., and Solomon and 1 Kings and Chronicles, I realized that every time God promised something to a people or a person or a group, they had to fight to actually get it.

Now, this was a huge revelation to me. It wasn't a surprise, because I see, this was a conviction I've developed over time, that we are partners with God in these things. And God may have an end that He has guaranteed is going to happen, but He has ordained the means as well as the end.

And so we've got to engage the means in a faithful fashion. And so, you know, things just don't, it's not like pixie dust. God just sprinkles His promises and boom, there we are. It's just the magical world in that sense.

No, it's a world of work and hardship and difficulty and training and discipline. And these concepts are thick in the New Testament, by the way. It's amazing how many people miss them. So I'm glad you put it that way.

You know, it is just like, come to you, you know, you work for it. And then God's working with us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Intentionality, Targets, and the Difference Between Gardening and Harvesting

Very good. Now, again, when I think of your ministry and what your ministry puts out, there's one word that comes to mind. And perhaps, I mean, I'm sure you would agree with this, but it just pops out at me.

And it's the word intentionality. It seems like everything you do, whether it's a small video, an article, there is specific intentionality in what you're trying to get across. OK, and I think that's a very important thing.

Now, what should be a good word intention? I would say, yeah, we're intentional about what we do. We have a target we're shooting for. We're not just kind of rambling on.

Right. Yes. And that intentionality produces the necessity for doing things that you do with strategy. And so that gets me into my point with regards to navigating conversations, OK? Why is it important, as Christian apologists, not just broadly speaking in general, why is it important to do what I'm about to ask you, but as apologists, why is it important to have intentional strategies in place when we are engaging in apologetic discourse?

Well, the reason is that, and there's actually two aspects of being intentional. You mentioned both of them, actually. And the first one is we are intentional about a particular end. We are trying to accomplish something particular, whether that particular thing is in the conversation we're having with an individual or as an organization, what we're trying to do.

We want to build ambassadors. That's our goal. We train Christians, the first three words of our mission statement. And so we know that we're not an evangelistic organization. We do evangelism. We're Christians.

But our focus, our work, our effort is to train Christians to be more effective in the ways that I described earlier, OK? So we have, in every case, we have an intentional target, all right? Now, if you don't have an intentional target, you're not going to hit it.

That's a good point. All right? I mean, it's this common sense notion. But, you know, if you don't know what you're aiming for, then you're not going to hit anything. You know, you might get lucky. Even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while, as the saying goes.

But, and I think sometimes this goes to a pietistic view. Well, God will take care of everything. No, God has put that responsibility on our shoulders. I just read 1 Peter 4 this morning, you know, that anybody, given that you have a gift, use it as a good steward of the glory of God and the power that God gives you, but use it.

And he gives some examples there. So it's our job to kind of use those things. So now that I have a target in mind, how do I hit that target? That's the next step. I mean, see, this is this little outline coming together in my head, you know, but it's an obvious one.

Okay. How do we hit the target? Well, you've got to have an idea of how you're going to hit a target. If you're just thinking literally about targets, well, you might shoot a gun at the target. You might shoot an arrow at the target.

You might throw a ball at a target. So there are different ways to hit the target. And then once you realize what, in a certain sense, means that you're going to, then you've got to think about the technique, how you use the means.

Okay. So our target may be different in different circumstances. In a debate, let me back up for a second. In conversations with people, at least at Stand to Reason, we want that person to think about Christ.

We're not trying to win them to Christ. We're trying to put a stone in their shoe. This is in the tactics book, and it's a modified goal. We're going to do what I call gardening. Okay. And then we have a technique to do that.

When I'm having a debate, I'm not trying to change the debater's mind, a formal debate. I'm trying to change the audience's mind. Oh, the debater's in print, man. He's not going to change his mind. He's debating against me.

I mean, characteristically, that's the way it works. And they're going to find everything they can say to try to reinforce their own view, which I'm going to do too. I mean, I don't fault them for that.

But I don't have much of an expectation I'm going to change that person's mind. Who am I going to speak to? I'm speaking to the people listening, who are listening in. And so I'm going to comport myself in such a way and give the information in such a way that it gets them thinking about the truth.

And so notice now, so I've got a certain strategy in mind about those are the targets. And if I'm verbally, okay, now how do I go about doing that? And this is where the tactical game plan comes in. And we've been talking a little bit around the concept of tactics here, and I wrote the book and flashed it a few moments ago, excuse me.

The subtitle of tactics is a game plan for discussing your Christian convictions. A game plan. It's actually a plan. It's precisely what you're asking about. It's the step-by-step way. There are three steps to it.

Easy. And they're pretty common, sensible notions, but what I do is, but what it provides for a Christian is something most of them do not have. Many will have like a tract, like Steps to Peace with God, or the Four Spiritual Laws, and those things have value.

But I want to point out something about those pieces. And I've used them in the past, especially during the Jesus movement. Those are harvest tools. The goal of using a tract is to get to the last page of the tract and pray the prayer with the person.

It's a harvest tool. Okay. Most people aren't ready to be harvested. Okay. They're maybe in your garden. They can be gardened, but they're not ready for harvesting. And so what people don't have is gardening tools.

And that's what the tactical game plan is. In fact, my encouragement is, given the truism that you cannot have a productive season of harvest unless you have a long season of gardening. You can't have a harvest without gardening.

I mean, duh, right? Okay. So that's true in agriculture. It's true in spiritual engagements with people. So who's doing the gardening? Well, if people are trained mostly to do harvesting with tracts like that, that's the perceived accepted approach to evangelism.

A lot of people aren't comfortable with that. They're going to sit on the bench. You're out of play. And my point that I try to make to people is that they ought to be gardeners. Because I'm a gardener.

I mean, I'm not saying they should be gardeners because I'm a gardener. My point is a lot of people think of me in a different way, I think. When really I'm a gardener. Here, I'm going to tell you something, Eli, that I now say regularly to audiences, but will shock a lot of people.

I have not prayed with anyone to receive Christ in at least 30 years. What a loser. Wow. What's the matter with you, Koko? Don't you know that evangelism? Yes. He wants staff to do that. Because there's two parts to the whole process.

And Jesus identifies it in John chapter four. He says, some sow and some reap. Sure. There it is. It's right after his conversation with the woman at the well, and he's talking to the disciples. Some sow and some reap.

You are about to reap what you didn't sow. So he's identifying one field, which is sychar at that point. He's identifying two seasons, which is a sowing season and a reaping season. I call it gardening and harvesting.

And two kinds of workers, sowers and reapers, gardeners and harvesters. And without the first, you can't have the second. Period. That's just the way it works. Okay. Now what Jesus is telling the disciples is somebody else has done the heavy lifting, you're going to get the easy pickings.

Okay. Who's doing the heavy lifting, so to speak? Who's doing the gardening? That's the question I'm asking. If we have people sitting on the bench who are gardeners and not harvesters, but are sitting on the bench because they think harvesting mode is the only thing that's available, then we're going to have a lean harvest.

So what I've tried to do is encourage people to get out and garden. Because for my life, radio shows speak in university campuses. I don't have altar calls. Spoken on over 80 university campuses. So I don't have altar calls there.

What I do is garden on the radio show. What am I doing? I'm gardening in the books. What am I doing?

Story of reality. I'm gardening. One second, Greg. That's a good kind of point to move into my next question, which we'll get into some of the details of all this. When we, first, a preliminary question.

When you speak of harvesting, or I'm sorry, gardening, are you equating that to something akin to say Schaefer's idea of pre-evangelism? Harvesting. Yeah. In fact, I do mention that.

I was going to say the word. He uses that word, pre-evangelism. So I can choose the kind of the religious word, or I can do the more down to earth word, and this is a little point on accessibility. So a lot of people now are talking about gardening because it's a more down to earth term, so to speak.

And so I think that aids recollection, memory, and communication and education. So that's another little tip regarding our earlier conversation. So yeah, it's the same thing with pre-evangelism, if you will.

That's what he called it, but I just consider it all part of the process of evangelism. Because as I understand gardening, as the way I'm using it, is we are talking about spiritual things, and we are trying to commend some aspect of the Christian worldview to a person, or we are trying to disabuse them of false ideas that get in the way of them considering the Christian worldview.

One other thing is we might be just providing them with the kinds of tools of thinking that allow them to assess things more accurately, okay? And I can't right off the top of my head think of an example of that, but I mentioned in the book on tactics, sometimes we're just kind of working with how people think about things.

And we realize because, for example, I just thought of an example, people think emotively now, okay? That is their feelings. Well, I feel this, or I feel like this is the case. And for them, because subjectivism, relativism, is so big in our culture in many ways, they think that their feeling that way defines what is true.

The whole gender dysphoria is an example of that, okay? Okay, well, why does feeling a certain way define what is true? And on the issue of this gender stuff, you might have seen the video of the guy who starts asking college students about gender, and the average person believes he's female, though his male genitals, and okay, well, then he must be female.

And then he starts asking, what if I believe that I'm six foot ten, and my height is five foot four? Or if I believe that I'm black and I'm white, you know, or something like that. With these series of questions, he's showing how bizarre this way of assessing truth is.

So what's he doing? He is helping teach people how to think about questions of truth. To me, that's really important, because those are predicates, those are preconditions that people need now. Fifty years ago, they didn't need these, but they sure need them now, before they will give the gospel a hearing.

Sure. It won't make sense. To me, all of that is gardening. Call it pre-evangelism if you want, call it whatever you want, but it's necessary. And we ought to be doing more of it.

Yeah, very good. Just real quick, as a side, again, if you guys are listening in, Greg is going to be taking some questions, if you have them. So if you want to send them in towards the back end of this episode, I will be sharing the questions with him, and he will address them.

So I just want to let you guys know to be doing that, if you have not already. All right, well, let me move into the next question here now.

Before we get to the question, can I add one more thought? Very quickly. Yeah, of course. Okay, I mentioned something that was pretty dramatic earlier, and people are going, huh, you know, 30 years hasn't prayed with anyone to receive Christ.

But I just mentioned a guy's name a little earlier, J. Warner Wallace. A lot of people have heard of him. I don't know, you might have even had him on the show. Famous cold case detective, Torrance P .D. in the L .A. area, never lost a case that went to trial.

And this is a guy who solves murder mysteries that are stone cold dead after 20 years, and he still gets the bad guy. Okay, he had four different of his shows, his cases were featured as TV programs. Okay, he's that famous.

Okay, well, what he did, he was an atheist, a hardcore atheist. And what he did is he took his detective skills, with eyewitness testimony in particular, and he applied them to the Gospels. And he became convinced that the Gospels were reliable records of things that actually happened in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and he became a Christian.