From Evangelism to Apologetics: Andrew Rappaport's Guide to Defending the Faith

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving Fraternity and the

Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to provide you with biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life, and I was privileged to be on to the podcast of Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex, one of the podcasts at the

Christian podcast community. We discussed evangelism, apologetics, and a whole host of different topics.

I hope that this episode will encourage you and equip you to go out and share your faith.

Coming your way on The Rap Report, by way of Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex, I hope you check both of us out.

Follow us online. Check this out. This is so simple to get started, but when you have a challenge you don't know, a friend of mine,

Mark Spence, he works at Living Waters, and he always tells people, if you get challenged with a whole bunch of questions, just study up on the last one that you got challenged with and don't have an answer to.

Whatever that last one was, study it. Look at what the Bible says about that.

You may have to dive into some science or philosophy to understand it a bit, but that's fine.

Just compare what the Bible says about that topic, because the best answer is scripture.

Guess what? If we're studying scripture all the time to get better at sharing the gospel, we're also getting better at living the

Christian life, because the Bible should be coming through us. We're not studying just to argue with people. We're studying the scripture to know our

Lord and Savior better, because if we're Christians, we love Him, we want to know

Him, we want to learn more about Him, and that helps us in answering or giving a defense for Him.

Welcome to Thoroughly Equipped, restoring women's ministry to the authority and sufficiency of scripture while glorifying

Christ through discernment and biblical womanhood. Andrew, thank you for coming on Thoroughly Equipped again.

I think, what is this? Is this the fourth time? Third. Third time.

I'm not sure. I've had you on more than anybody else I've had on.

I can say that. I've had you on here more than anybody else. Yeah. I mean, your audience is like, do you have guest pay to be on here?

She is that well -known. No. No, no. You come on out of the kindness of your heart, and I ask you because I feel like you're very good to speak on the topics that I like having you on about.

Today's topic is apologetics. I just recently had

Angela Mitchell from Raising Apologists. That's her ministry. Had her on to talk about how homeschoolers should raise their children up in apologetics, but I really thought what's missing is the foundation for diving deeper into why apologetics is so important, why every

Christian should do it. I was picking my brain on who to invite on to discuss this topic.

Of course, I thought of you because you have a show, but you do this weekly. You do

Apologetics Weekly. Can you talk about your show a little bit? Sure. The show that you're referring to, because I do a couple of podcasts, as you know, but the podcast you're referring to is called

Apologetics Live. Apologetics Live is a podcast where anyone can come in and challenge me on anything.

We will have a topic, and I try to go through the topic for the first hour if I have a guest on, but if someone comes in and I'm just going through a topic,

I might cut that short, but it's something where I've had Orthodox rabbis come in.

I've had Church of Christ folks come in. I've had a charismatic that came in.

I've had Catholics that come in, all wanting to debate me. I even had a guy who came in wanting to debate affirmative

Christianity. He believes that Christianity and homosexuality are not an issue.

That guy is really interesting because he did so poorly in his prepared comments and all that he actually challenged me to a debate, and you are going to love this,

Mel, but he challenged me to a debate, a formal debate, but only if his boyfriend is the moderator, which he admitted was unreasonable to ask, but his boyfriend told him that he can't debate me unless he's the moderator, and so he's got to go with that.

He's actually now told me he invited me to a debate. He's going to debate someone else on my view of homosexuality because he said, me talking about the idea of lust.

What do we do when we do apologetics? How do you handle when you're going to do apologetics and you don't know you have a debate?

Best thing to do, definition of terms. As he was trying to argue, he thought he could demolish

James White in a debate because he knows James' arguments and he could demolish him.

All I did was I asked him, is lusting a sin? He said yes, and I said, so it really doesn't matter that you lust after men and I lust after women.

We're both committing the same sin, aren't we? Because he never thought of lusting, which is the core issue at the heart of the issue of homosexuality.

It is lusting for someone outside of marriage. He's now going to debate someone else on the issue of lust and whether that's a sin in the

Bible or whether just lusting is a desire. So what's he going to do? He's going to ignore the context of the passages we looked at and he's going to get someone to debate him who doesn't know it.

Okay, so that's the fun of the show because I'm weird, I admit it. I enjoy when someone comes in with a challenge for me that I'm not ready for or familiar with because I learned something new.

This is some of my upbringing. You know my upbringing, but I'm raised Jewish. One of the things

Jewish people do a lot around the dinner table is to debate. You're trained to debate because it helps sharpen your thinking.

That's why if any of you in the audience are wondering why are so many Jewish people lawyers? It's the only career you get paid to debate, okay?

So there you go. And so learning how to argue even a position you don't hold to helps strengthen your own arguments.

And so when I get people come on the show for Apologetics Live, I enjoy that because it's like, okay, I'm going to be challenged sometimes with something that I'm not ready for and what we can get into later in the show of how do

I prepare for a debate I'm not ready for because that is part of what Apologetics is.

There's some things you can and there's some things you can't. But yeah, so that's Apologetics Live.

People can join Thursday nights 8 to 10 Eastern Time and they just go to ApologeticsLive .com

and you scroll down to where the duck icon is and you can join there if people want to watch. If people watch on YouTube, they can join in on the comments.

Facebook, I forget which like Facebook page or my personal page, which one they allow comments.

They only allow them from those. But if you follow me on X, you can comment there.

So yeah, it's a lot of fun. I've actually been on your show, right?

A couple times just calling in because you'll not just have, it's not just you debating somebody else or applying

Apologetics to anybody who calls in. It's sometimes you'll have guests on the show. And so yeah, you have really good discussions.

I like watching it too. Yeah, it can get long, but I like watching it because you're right.

There's some people that come on there. You're just like, whoa. And then it's fun, you know, us little computer typing behind the scenes in the comments below always trying to like boost you up.

I don't know if you've seen those. Not always, but I mean, one of the things is that I will admit when

I look at it and I try to look at the chat as best

I can. I will admit that. But it's hard. Yeah, I would get so distracted.

If I don't have one of my co -hosts on, it's really hard. And the reason it's so hard is because I can't talk to the person challenging me or my guest.

And if my guest is speaking, then it's a little bit easier to do. Because my guest can talk while I'm looking at comments, but then

I have to listen to him. So it does make it hard.

But when my co -hosts are there, they usually will star comments and I just got to look at those. And it's like, oh, okay, this is one to respond to.

Yeah, I like the community because we will chat while you're debating. But then it's fun anyway.

Because, you know, when that show the chat can look, we've had people come in and they're challenging me in chat.

Yeah. And the chat is the one where they're going all, you know, dealing with things and engaging with the person.

I'm like, okay, you know, they're doing it. And sometimes we pull them in.

Because of that, we've actually had someone who had come in and they were just going off on the chat.

And everyone was trying to correct this guy, lead him to Christ. And ended up that I just saw it going.

I said, why don't you just come on in? Why don't you join us? This guy was Catholic. And he wanted to argue that Mary was the

Ark of the Covenant. And so he came in. That's interesting. Yeah.

And we're like, okay. You know, it was a good discussion.

Best part of the discussion, I think. At one point, I'm like listening to this guy and going like,

I literally, I'm like, I said, what do you do with the current Pope? I mean, you know, believe in what you believe.

You probably wouldn't even argue that the Pope is Catholic. And he goes, he's not. Yeah. I went, oh, you're one of those.

And I can't pronounce it well. Cervanticantists that believe that the current

Pope, like since Pope, I think it was John Paul II. They believe

Catholic Church is not Catholic. Oh, okay. And so then we had a very interesting, different conversation.

Yeah, it can go all sorts of ways. That's crazy. But, okay, so knowing now that you have a very good background, how long have you been doing apologetics for?

I mean, and debating, right? Well, how long have I been doing it for? Since I started sharing the gospel, right?

Which was like two years after I was saved. So I would have started doing apologetics in 19,

I'm going to date myself, 1986. Were you even born?

I was six years old. That gives away my age. All right.

But you're only 25. And so, no, that's fine. Yeah. But, yeah, that's the thing where, you know, when you look at it, it's really something that as we examine the apologetics,

I tie it to evangelism because that is when it starts.

Right? That's part of evangelism. That's why I think

I wanted to have you on more than like anybody I could else think of. Because I think some people think that apologetics is just simply about making arguments, like having, you know, arguments for creation versus evolution.

Having to know scientific ideas and philosophies and then counteract that with biblical.

And so here's where my first question is, like, what is apologetics?

I think a lot of people do know, but you could explain to maybe somebody who's kind of new, hasn't really thought about this.

And then what are the types of apologetics, like the certain philosophies of apologetics that we see in Christianity especially?

Yes. So there's several different views we can have when it comes to apologetics. And so when we speak of apologetics, it's simply defending the faith.

Okay. It is not making an apology for it. This is a problem we don't understand between, you know, it's sourced from Latin.

Apologia is Greek, but it is to make a defense for something. It's not an apology the way we often think of it.

So let's address that. But when we do look at this, there are several different ways of doing apologetics.

And you're right. There's a lot of people who get intimidated by it. Do I have to understand, you know, how carbon -14 works and how long can carbon -14 work on something that's organic?

Would it work on something that's not organic? I can't remember all that. Now you got argon in there, and how do we test for that?

And someone's going to throw this out to me. I just don't know what to do. What you need to do to do good apologetics is know your

Bible. Right? That's it. The more you study the Bible, the more you can handle anything in apologetics, because no matter what they throw at you, they're going to be challenging your worldview.

And what they want you to do is throw out your Bible, and then let's talk. And when they do that,

I've had people ask me that. Well, stop, throw out your Bible, and then we can have a conversation.

And my response is, you know, like I had this with a guy that wants to talk evolution. And I said, okay, as long as you promise to throw out anything that's related to biology, and then we can discuss evolution.

Because if you want me to throw out truth when talking about truth, then you have to throw out biology when talking about biology.

And then they get into, well, the Bible's not true. Now I'm in my house, right?

I've just left that whole argument, and we're going to end up talking textual criticism.

Now, if you don't know textual criticism, it's not hard. I get it. But I'll just say, if you get my book, and I'm not doing it for self -promotion, but if you get my book,

What Do We Believe, you can get it at strivingforeturning .org. But if you get the book,

What Do We Believe, that book has a whole chapter that's very easy to understand on the topic of textual criticism.

Can you trust the Bible? Because that's what they're really challenging. If you know that, then you're golden, because they sit there.

And I've done this with people where I go through all the issues of textual criticism, how we can trust the

Bible, whether we look at the way that we look at manuscripts. And then

I just go, okay, so you've done that same research, right? And they go, I've never read the Bible. Oh, I'm sorry.

I thought you wanted to talk science. So you want to make scientific conclusions about a book you've never read.

That's not very scientific of you, right? You do look at the material, and you haven't looked at the material, but yet you claim that it's got errors.

Now, if you run into someone that says, well, I was a Christian, I'll give you a way out of that one.

And I will give you a way out that you can always bring any conversation back to the Bible. Yeah, you should,

I think. You should. Sometimes you can ask questions we don't know. But here's the thing.

If you're being challenged, right? We use the apologetics as a means to an end.

The end is the gospel. We use apologetics to get to the gospel. So when they're challenging and they're asking things, we want to get it to the gospel.

That's the goal. It should always be the goal, right? It's not to show how smart we are with knowledge of science and things like that and how we can show that this guy that's claiming for science, oh, he's wrong.

Yeah. Right? There are some who seem to do that, seem to do that.

And we're going to talk about as your question with different apologetic methods, because one of the methods leans more toward doing that.

Two of the methods, maybe. And so the thing that we see is when we're being challenged with something like, well, the

Bible has been edited and it's been changed. And you start to challenge that.

Because when someone says, oh, the Bible's been changed, I say, can you show me an example? And they usually go, well,

I've never read the Bible. But sometimes you're going to run into someone that claims, well, I'm a Christian. Oh, so you believed when you were a

Christian, and I'm going to dispute that, but let's go with it. You claim you were a

Christian, and that gives you the authority on Christianity. So when you were a Christian, you believed the

Bible was your ultimate authority for faith and practice. And they always say yes. Always.

And I just open up to 1 John 2, verse 19. That is my go -to verse with anyone that claims

I used to be a Christian. Because that verse says they went out from among us because they were never of us.

They went out of us to expose. They were not of us. So you believed what this verse says, that you were never one of us, right?

And they go, oh, no, I was. Then the Bible wasn't your ultimate authority, which you said it was. And they'll say, oh, well, you're using a no -truth

Scotsman fallacy, saying that I wasn't truly a Christian. Because no, the Bible's saying that.

The Bible says the thing you said was your ultimate authority as a Christian. If you went out from among us, you were never of us, and you went out to expose that.

The Bible, your ultimate authority, says you were never of us. You were a hypocrite that stopped pretending.

Yeah. Which, I mean, I think this is where people get mixed up.

I know it was kind of my issue for a long while, just because I think I did fall more.

I was a Christian who thought, oh, I need to know all this scientific stuff.

But I didn't realize, no, I did realize I had this excuse.

The excuse was, well, the Bible is not authoritative for everybody. It's only authoritative for those people who believe it.

And so I can't use that as a tool to bring people into understanding truth and logic and God and then talking theology and philosophy and all that stuff.

So it wasn't a tool until I started to just really study the

Bible. And I had to be confronted myself with, do

I actually believe everything that is said here? If it is enough to equip me, then it's going to be enough to equip me to argue for or have an apology for the hope that I have.

And that's where I think you were getting to, that it's all about bringing the people to the gospel, which is the reason for the hope that we have.

That's the gospel. And I realize I can't bring somebody to the gospel with scientific facts.

It's just and the Bible is plainly clear on why you can't do that, because it's God and it's the

Holy Spirit that has to change lives. So, yeah, but that kind of distracted me from what

I was going to ask you. OK, so so talking about the different types of philosophies or ways you go about presenting apologetics or whatever, so you can talk about that a little bit like what we're getting to,

I think, is more your presuppositional is what I'm. Yes, well, and there's there's actually

I'm leaning more towards a new they'll get to, and it was new to me until I did a roundtable discussion.

And then on Apologetics Live, I had each of those people on to have a longer discussion on the on the four different views.

Yes, I watched some of those. They were very good. So people need to go back. I'll put a link for those episodes in the description because they were good.

It was good because I asked I asked each one, OK, give me a strength and the weaknesses of of your arguments as well.

And so let me let me just capitalize on what you said with Scripture, which is how we do apologetics with Scripture.

Right. So you mentioned that you thought the Bible was only for the believers. Well, Romans chapter one for context, as we're discussing the gospel, let's give the context

Romans one sixteen. I'm going to start there, even though what I want to focus on is further down. It's first 20, but Romans one sixteen, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. For it is for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all, not some, all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

God made it evident to them for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

So this is the thing to someone who says, well, I don't know if I could do apologetics. That verse tells you that every person you speak to knows

God exists. What do they do? They suppress that in unrighteousness. So when they challenge me,

I read that verse and I say, God, who knows everything. I'll ask them. So you're sometimes up front.

I said, do you know everything? I mean, have you ever been wrong? Yeah. And then

I read this and I say, well, the God who cannot be wrong because he knows everything says that you are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

So when you disagree, that's what you're doing. And we know why. If we keep reading because you love your sin and you don't want to be accountable to God, but he's made it so that you know that you're guilty before Holy God.

That's why you feel guilt when you break God's law. This is a thing we have to realize.

Every person we speak to knows God exists. Okay. Now, this is going to be a very different way of handling apologetics than as we're going to talk about now the differences.

So let's start with what's called evidential apologetics. And this is the one that many people think of when they talk about apologetics.

It's knowing all the science and the facts and being able to argue carbon dating and things like this.

And, okay, what do you do with all the different missing links? Well, the reality is they're still missing.

And so most of the missing links are just drawings that people have in textbooks.

Okay. And so the thought that many of us have is we got to learn all these facts and know them.

And someone's going to challenge me with something I don't know. That's what people think of when they think apologetics.

And it's the evidential apologetics. Evidential apologetics is me presenting evidence outside of scripture.

Sometimes. Sometimes it's using scripture. But it can be looking at evidence.

If you think of a William Lane Craig who will argue that he can convince you that God exists without using the

Bible. But what God are you convincing them of? Because what we just read out of Romans 1, it's the gospel that's the power of salvation.

And Peter says that, well, we know the gospel from the scripture. Right? You can't know the gospel outside of scripture.

So if you're going to try to convince someone that God exists without using scripture, all you did is take a professing atheist to a theist.

But that hasn't gotten them to being Christian. Right. That's the difference.

And you can use the evidence in an evidential apologetic. The idea of it is that the evidence is convincing enough to be able to show someone that God exists.

And you may not even need to use a Bible. Not all evidentialists will argue like William Lane Craig.

But William Lane Craig will say that he's more of a different. He actually argues a different type of apologetic, which is we'll look at next.

It's called classical. But the evidential apologetic is to use the evidence of science, of history, of archaeology, whatever it takes to break down the stronghold that someone holds to that's keeping them from believing the

Bible. OK, now, I think this is my some some that holds this may critique it.

My view of that, what ends up happening is I look at that and say, well. The thinking is that everyone wants to believe in Jesus.

They're they're waiting to have enough information and it's an informational issue.

Now, you and I are both more holding to the sovereignty of God in salvation and therefore we don't believe men save themselves just with head knowledge.

And but a lot of people who who believe that people need to just make a belief and then regeneration comes after their belief.

Those people are going to lean more toward something like this where they're they're trying to convince them.

You're convincing people into the kingdom. That's evidential. William Lane Craig actually really argues for his background.

His philosophy is more of a classical apologetics and classical politics is what

R .C. Sproul used to believe. He now believes in in what I hold to.

So I think you'd go there. Those who don't know who R .C. Sproul is.

OK, maybe you should if you've been listening this podcast. But but yeah, he's he was he was he's passed away.

And so now his theology is perfected. He's a Baptist today. He used to be a Presbyterian on Earth.

It's a joke for you Presbyterians. And that's not else with apologetics is the use of humor, by the way.

It really does help. The idea of classical is instead of looking and arguing from the evidences, the science, things like that, you're arguing from a philosophical case.

So you're using maybe things like the cosmological argument and these different things to look at philosophy.

And you're getting into an argument of. Philosophically, well, there's there's got to be someone who created everything.

Philosophically, there had to be something that's eternal. And that's true. Right. These arguments are not bad and they can encourage the

Christian to know that we have a good standing when we stand on on Scripture. But again, it's it leans toward this idea that I can convince someone into the kingdom.

And my issue is I don't think they have an evidence problem. I think they have a spiritual problem.

So, yeah, on those first two, one, you have to memorize lots of evidences. On the second one, you have to know a lot of philosophy or at least understand logic to recognize logical policies.

Like when the person says, well, I used to be a Christian. And so I know the Bible. That is a logical fallacy.

It's a fallacy of authority. They're claiming that because they were a child growing up in a Christian home, learning the

Bible as a child, that they know everything about the Bible, that they walked away in their teenage years.

Now, just think about that, folks. How many things do you really know solidly that you learned in your pre -teenage years that you would know so well of people who've studied it for decades?

Right. I grew up Jewish. I was in Hebrew school for a decade and or more, but for like a decade,

I was in Hebrew school, learning Hebrew, learning things about the Bible, learning things about the

Talmud to prepare for bar mitzvah. And I would not argue that I learned that I really knew the

Jewish religion when I was bar mitzvahed at 13. I wouldn't even argue when

I converted to Christianity that I know it as well as I do now because afterwards I studied the

Talmud and read through things and dialogue with. So I would not argue

I'm an expert on something from my elementary years. Yeah. I would also say here that I think there's a difference between, you know, somebody's taking on that logical position saying that just because they grew up with it and they know it or, you know, have been taught it in their church doesn't mean that they believe or trusted in what they were taught.

But knowledge does not necessarily translate to automatically faith and belief. So there's a there's a difference that I see.

And that's what Romans 1 teaches. And 1 John 2 19 teaches that they're not.

So so when you look at that, it's we can rest on the scripture, which which leads to the third position.

The third position is presuppositionalism. And that's the one that you heard me referring to. And you were saying,

OK, that's what I hold to. I'll get to the fourth one, which you already know because you listen to the to the episodes we did.

But presuppositionalism is the understanding that from Romans 1, they know

God exists. OK, when we talk about presuppositions, a presupposition or an axiom, if you think of an axiom, it's something you can't prove.

It proves itself. It is the thing. So can you prove God? And this is the issue. When I do apologize, am

I trying to prove God exists or is he an axiom? Presuppositionalism is the fact that God is an axiom.

OK, a presupposition, you can't make sense of the world without God first existing.

And so I could now you could look at that. And so what do I rely on? I rely on scripture.

And so I will say, thus says the Lord, you can be wrong, but God can't be. And they'll say, well, where where does it say, you know, you only know that God can't be wrong because of the

Bible. And so that's circular reasoning. Well, yes and no. The Bible tells us

God cannot lie. But the Bible is a self -revelation of God.

You have to start with a God because otherwise you can't explain anything.

You the whole universe is just ridiculous because how did the universe come about?

You there's only three possibilities. The universe always existed. Well, Einstein proved that's not true.

The universe created itself. Well, that philosophically breaks the second law of logic, which is the law of non -contradiction.

You can't have a and not a at the same time in the same way the universe can have, you know, existed and create itself.

It's a logical. Now, what did I just went evidential and I just went philosophical on both those.

Right. But the starting point is you have to have an a universal, absolute.

Source for logic, truth, knowledge, because if what is what is truth, it's not a material thing.

I can't pour you a cup of truth. It's something that's that is immaterial. And so it has to have an immaterial source, but it's also universal.

It applies to everyone everywhere. It's also absolute. So he needs an immaterial, absolute universal source.

And that is God. And we know that. So now when we come to to God, we can't know

God unless he reveals himself to us. We can't understand him. Even now, when

I teach my class on theology, the very I start with the attributes God. And the first attribute is that God is incomprehensible.

We cannot comprehend everything about God. We never will. And so it's only when he reveals himself to us, we can understand.

What does he reveal? Well, that he can't lie. So they're going to argue, well, that's you know, that's a circular argument.

Well, you could try to argue that. Except what's your argument? Nothing. Right? Because I can't explain anything.

Because for your worldview to be true, you need to stop using your ability to reason. Truth, knowledge, laws of logic, morality.

Cut all that out. Have a conversation. Because when you cut all that out, I can argue blue cows, moon cheese.

And that should make sense. Yeah. Because logic doesn't matter. Words shouldn't matter.

It's just it just is. Yeah. It's just chemical reactions. And so where I lean now is

I'm leaning more toward what's called the cumulative apologetic. Because it even though I always said

I'm presuppositional and that's where my focus is, cumulative is basically using the best of all three of those.

You never give up scripture, right? So I have two presuppositions. God exists.

He has spoken. I don't give those up. So I'm not going to give up that God exists to argue for God's existence.

And I'm not going to give up his word as if it's not true. I'm just going to quote scripture. And when someone says, well,

I don't believe that. Too bad. God said. Yeah. God said. God said.

Your argument's with God, not with me. When they want to make. Well, you don't understand science.

God understands science. And he says you're wrong. Right. Because he said he created in seven days.

So he who is there, by the way, that's the scientific method. You have to create a situation, observe the situation, document the situation, you know, in the test.

Well, only one being was there in the beginning of creation. So he observed it and he documented it in the

Bible. So we're arguing for a scientific method. You don't have that. You can't you.

You cannot apply scientific method to the creation of universe because you weren't there.

But God was right. I never thought of it that way. But that's actually very good.

I like your arguments on the. And so. Cumulative, though, allows.

For me to argue, for example, where, how, how did the universe come into being?

Right. I'm using a little bit of evidence, a little bit of. You know, philosophy, but a whole lot of presupposition, because I'm starting with the fact that you already know

God exists. You already know he has spoken. You're suppressing that truth and unrighteousness. And I'm just going to step into your worldview to show how ridiculous it is.

And then we're going to come back to the Bible. Yeah, it's like answering a fool according to his folly. That's basically what you're doing.

Yes. And the very next verse says, don't answer a fool according to his folly. Concile those two, right?

How do we reconcile that? Well, we take the professing atheist worldview, and that's if you're staying with me, you know why

I say a professing atheist? Because Romans one says they all know God exists. They're suppressing unrighteousness.

So they profess to be an atheist. They're not actually an atheist. And if they disagree with that, then just ask them if they have all knowledge of all things.

Because if they don't, then they can't know they're not an atheist because there could be something they don't know about like God.

And so but what we end up doing when we're, you know, I'm going to start with the fact

God exists. He has spoken. We're not going to jump in to ignoring that.

But I can step into their worldview to show how ridiculous it is. Right. It doesn't fit logically.

That's philosophical. It doesn't fit with the science, the second law of thermodynamics, that all matter had a beginning and the universes matter.

Okay, so right there, I can use those two. And that's sort of what we end up seeing when we argue for a cumulative is you're not giving up your presuppositions, but you're still using evidence and philosophy where it fits in.

Without giving up the presuppositions that the Bible is the authority because that's what they want you to give up because they can't argue scripture.

Yeah, right. I told you I'm going to give you a trick. Okay, for those in the audience, you're going, you know,

Andrew, you're giving a lot of things I haven't learned. Well, first off, let me tell you this to help you feel better.

When I started Apologetics, I didn't know these things either. Really, when I started evangelizing, I should say.

And as I was challenged when I was evangelizing, okay, that's something that would be challenged with something

I don't know, I'd go study it. Learn more about it. What they're saying, how does that fit with scripture?

And then what does scripture say about that topic? Okay, so you're arguing that there was evolution.

What does scripture say about evolution? Man was created in six 24 -hour days.

Well, sorry, creation was made in six 24 -hour days. Okay, and if folks want to debate me on that, hey,

Apologeticslive .com, Thursday night, come on in. I'd be happy to discuss it with you.

So what you see, though, is I'm going to go back to scripture and say, well, evolution over millions of years can't be right because God has said, let's see what

I did there. Now, I can talk about the science. I can show how carbon -14 dating doesn't work and these different dating mechanisms.

I could show how the fact that we have too little salt in our oceans for the

Earth to be millions of years old. We have a moon that's far too close to us for the

Earth to be millions of years old. I can argue the fact that Jupiter is as hot as it is, as far as it is.

It doesn't work with billions of years. I can argue all of those things. And if you don't know how to argue those things, that's okay because those are all arguments people make to try to say, oh, it's got to be millions of years.

And I can just go, yeah, but God has said, but God has said. And so you may get into a situation where you just don't know how to answer.

I was in this situation. I have examples that make me look foolish, but it's true.

I do foolish things. So I'm on the boardwalk at the Jersey boardwalk.

You may know that place as a fellow Jersey. Well, you're a Jersey girl. I'm a Jersey guy.

So as a fellow New Jerseyan. And so what happened was

I'm sitting there evangelizing and my bride would come out. She doesn't actually want to evangelize or talk to people.

She just sits there and runs the video camera. And that's what she prefers doing. But what she'll do is just hand out tracks.

And that time I wasn't doing open air yet, but she had the camera ready for when I did open air.

And she gets this guy that's just really loud and boisterous. And my bride,

I'm seeing her and I'm like, I better go save her. And my bride being my bride just goes, this is my husband,

Andrew, and walks away from the conversation. This guy was so loud that we ended up having about 200 people that just stopped to listen to this conversation.

He had a good voice and we weren't amplifying. And he went off for a while where he was trying to argue that the original religion was the pagan

Celtic religions. And they were the origin. And for 20 minutes, he's going off describing this belief that he has.

And the whole time I'm like, what am I going to do? How do I get this back to the gospel?

I had no idea. He's mentioning things I've never heard before. I had no idea what he was saying.

I had shared with him the gospel about the fact that we've broken God's law, that we're sinners and criminals in his sight, that we're accountable to him, and that accountability is an eternity in a lake of fire.

And we can't save ourselves because we're guilty. So we need someone who's innocent to pay it for us.

And that person has to be eternal so that he could pay not only for me, but for you and for everyone else and pay it for eternity.

And so we need Christ. So I explained that. So this guy is going off.

I'm like, I don't know what to do. So I just looked at him. And when he stopped for a breath of air,

I finally said, dude, how is this going to save you on judgment day? He looked at me and said,

I don't know. And then afterwards, I just said, are you just making this up as you go along?

He goes, yeah, yeah, pretty much. The whole crowd cracked up laughing after that.

But that has been my go -to. Whenever they go to anything, I've had people that start arguing about evolution, and they're arguing and arguing and making all these claims

I've never heard before. And I go, great, how's that going to help you on judgment day? You're accountable for an infinitely holy

God who's going to judge you. How is all that going to help you on judgment day when you face God?

And now we're always getting back to arguing what the Bible says. You know God exists.

You're suppressing that in unrighteousness. I'm going to go right back to the Bible there. If any of you are nervous, that's the way out of all arguments is just go right back to scripture, and you can say, how's that going to help you on judgment day?

Because they want to say God doesn't exist, so they're not accountable to him. They just can't explain that guilty feeling.

And the way many people deal with that guilt is drugs, alcohol, work, sex, things they throw themselves into to try to deaden the guilty conscience.

So they already know this, that God exists. I don't need to prove it.

And this is so simple to get started. But when you have a challenge you don't know, a friend of mine,

Mark Spence, he works at Living Waters, and he always tells people if you get challenged with a whole bunch of questions, just study up on the last one that you got challenged with and don't have an answer to.

Whatever that last one was, study it. Look at what the Bible says about that.

You may have to dive into some science or philosophy to understand it a bit, but that's fine.

Just compare what the Bible says about that topic. Because the best answer is scripture.

Guess what? If we're studying scripture all the time to get better at sharing the gospel, we're also getting better at living the

Christian life because the Bible should be coming through us. We're not studying just to argue with people. We're studying the scripture to know our

Lord and Savior better because if we're Christians, we love Him. We want to know

Him. We want to learn more about Him. And that helps us in answering or giving a defense for Him.

Yeah, amen to that. So yeah,

I just think that for me, presuppositional, but I like that idea. What did you call it again?

It's called the cumulative approach to a poet. And I've really been practicing that all my

Christian life without realizing it, but it's saying I'm presuppositional because my base is presuppositional, but I do use some of the others, and I don't think it's wrong.

Yeah, and to me, I start to think about, well, okay, those evidential and philosophical type of arguments are derived from nature, from what we see in the world.

And honestly, that's just the natural and the philosophical are supposed to give glory to God and only heighten and place our trust in His revealed word,

I think. So I think if we use evidential and philosophical arguments, the purpose of using those is to go back to what the

Word of God says, and then ultimately, like you said, to evangelize and share the gospel, bringing it back to Christ.

Because in all of it, the verse is that we are to present a reason for our hope, and the hope is there because we have a problem.

We have Judgment Day. We're going to all be held accountable for our sin against the

Holy God, and we are doomed if we don't have a sacrifice. We don't have Jesus Christ.

So if people just, I think, so here's where maybe since you started out, it sounds to me like you started out in evangelizing.

You learned that in evangelizing, you come across people with objections and arguments for whatever reason not to believe in Christ or argue against Christianity that you had to develop over practice and time.

So talk about, if we haven't already touched upon some things about the important, why apologetics really just needs to go towards evangelism.

And then I want to ask you, like, I think women, like your wife is a good example.

I feel like I too, I'm not one of these people who wants to debate, and I'm not going to be presented to, you know,

I'm not going to be out there in the streets proclaiming evangelizing like other evangelists do.

But women should still make use of apologetics. Go into maybe why.

So my first question was evangelizing and apologetics, how those are intertwined, and then why women should practice those things as well.

Well, we should evangelize because God commands it. It's that simple, right?

I mean, the fact is that we came to Christ because somebody told us the gospel.

Now, it may have been a paper gospel, right? Someone left a tract. It could be someone gave you a

Bible and you read it, right? Because there are people who just, they get saved because they have a

Bible. And so, however it is, it's somebody is preaching.

I mean, this is what Romans chapter 10 says, right? Is that you have the fact that God sends people out to evangelize, and that is what you end up seeing.

So we need to be about that business. Now, when we do that, the point that we have to realize is we're going to be challenged with questions.

We don't have the answers to a problem. But instead of going, oh no, what do

I do about that and freaking out? We don't do that, okay? And there is a thing for women, let me just be clear.

Not everyone has to be out on the street. I don't think I do. That's not required.

But I will say this is we all have to be sharing the gospel with whatever realm we're in.

I would not encourage women to be on the street sharing the gospel with men. I just don't.

I don't think it's wise. Especially these days because,

I mean, the left has lost their minds. And you just don't want to put yourself in the position where you don't know what they're going to do.

But if you're talking to another woman, there's a thing about if you're going to be out on the street, have some numbers.

Don't go alone. I remember there was a woman who used to work for us at the

Ministry of Striving Fraternity, and we'd go out evangelizing as a group. And I remember once we were in California, and I saw her evangelizing to this very large man who got very close to her.

And I walked over to her and just stood next to her. I didn't say a thing. Just stood there, and the guy backed up.

Now, here was the irony. I turned to her afterwards, and she goes, thanks for coming over. And I looked at her,

I said, you do realize if the guy got violent, I was letting you take him, right? Because she's got a third -degree black belt in jiu -jitsu.

Oh, that's okay. Easily, even though I was like twice her weight, okay?

And so I knew she was my bodyguard, right? If I ever had trouble, I was like, hey, Melissa, and she's going to go beat someone up, right?

But what happened there, just having a second person, the guy backed off. There's people who think because if you're a woman, they can be intimidating.

What they'll do is purposely get close to you as a woman and try to intimidate you.

And the purpose of that is so they can avoid their accountability to God.

They want to deaden their conscience. Romans chapter one, they want to suppress that truth and unrighteousness, and they don't want you reminding them that they're doing that.

So they'll use different things to try to shut you up or make you feel like you don't have answers.

And why they do that is so they can walk away going, see, I have answers and they don't.

When the reality is they don't have answers. They've just never really had to think about it. And this is why when

I teach evangelism, one of the things I teach is the use of humor and being polite. It disarms the person you're talking to.

But I also teach to disarm our own defenses by asking good questions. Because when you ask a question, you can flip the conversation to be on that person.

So I had a guy who, I've been doing open air in New York City and Union Square for decades, for two decades.

And as I was doing that, we had a guy that I got to know my regular hecklers. This guy became a regular heckler.

His name is Jason Cross. And he's challenging me. There is no

God because there's evil in the world. There is no God because there's evil in the world. And if I'm going to appeal to an evidential apologetic or a philosophical apologetic,

I'm going to explain what evil is and how it's in the world. And I didn't do any of that. I just said, how can there be evil without God?

Well, see, he never actually had to give us support for his argument. This is an argument

I would see him use with every new open air evangelist that came to Union Square. He would challenge them with this and they'd get into explaining evil and all that.

I just said, how do you have evil without God? He's like, well, what's evil?

I said, I didn't say it existed. You did. How do you have evil without God?

He's like, aha, you got to tell me what evil is. I said, okay, evil is the absence of good.

Good is defined by the nature of God. How can you have evil without God? What did I do?

I rooted it right back to the nature of God. God exists, right? He can't explain evil without God.

He throws his hands up and walked out of the crowd. One of the few times I've ever seen him do that.

He was heckling me for 13 to 15 years. He's got experience heckling.

The thing is, what got him? I put the burden of proof on him to defend what he was claiming.

We can do that. There's a lot of different ways women can evangelize. When you're evangelizing, because that's what we do, yes, you're doing apologetics because people have questions.

They're not all argumentative questions. They're not all wanting to be that angry person in your face.

Some of them have legitimate questions they just want answers to. Yeah. We want to answer those.

We want to do it in a respectful way. What I encourage people to do is just be respectful to the person you're talking to, but you don't have to have all the answers.

I remember a time when, and this is a thing, if you listen to Apologetics Live, I start the show every week,

I can answer absolutely every single question that you have about God and the

Bible. I would stand up in New York City, and I would get up on a box, and I would start by saying,

I can answer any question. I don't care what, how hard you think it is. I can answer any question that you have about God and the

Bible. Sure enough, someone's going to come in and ask a really hard question. I go,

I don't know. They go, you said you can answer any question. Yeah, I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

Usually, their finger's wagging, and their mouth's just open, and go, huh? All right.

That is an answer. I didn't say you'd be satisfied with the answer, because I'm not God. He knows everything.

I don't. I learned in New York where I had this guy that I found out that he would ask ...

I forget his question now, but he would challenge every open -air evangelist with some question. When I said

I didn't know, he went, you know, Andrew, I have seen dozens of you guys come and go from this park.

You're the only one that honestly said I don't know. I said, look, give me your email, and I'll research to get an answer for you.

He goes, no, I'm not doing that. I said, so you're not really interested in an answer, are you? Right, yeah. I exposed what?

They're trying to suppress the truth on unrighteousness, and that's what

I ended up saying to him. And so that's what I'm doing. I'm constantly bringing it back to Scripture. That's the goal.

Yeah. And women can do that. And look, you're going to deal with some apologetics when you're raising your children.

That's, yes. They ask you why all the time. And if you're talking about God, you tend to learn how to answer the why question.

Because God said so is not the answer for everything. I don't know, can be.

A lot of the professing atheists that I know that I've spoken to, the reason they say they left

Christianity is because it doesn't have answers. And I would ask them, when you asked your parents or you asked

Bible teachers the hard questions, what was their answer? And they would say, well, they said because God said so.

Or they didn't know. They never sought to get an answer. They just said, I don't know. That's the key there.

I think that's the key that you show that you are willing to learn and go back to Scripture.

You're doing multiple things here. You're trusting in the Scripture to give you an answer, even if it's an answer you don't like.

But you're also showing your kids that, look, we don't know everything. But let's go find out together.

And God is a good God that he will tell you when you need to know it.

When you need to know it, right. There's things that I mean, I'm still learning. I've been a

Christian over four decades. I'm still learning. I mean, I had this experience at the end of last year.

My pastor is preaching through. Well, actually, he wasn't going through his series, but he was preaching about the 10 lepers.

I don't know how many dozens of times I have read that passage in my lifetime because I read through the

Bible every year. I read it probably three dozen times. And I never picked up that the one

Samaritan that returned came from the one leper that returned was from Samaria. He was bringing out the like, here you got nine guys, only one, the

Samaritan returns. And I went, I never saw that. He was bringing out all this stuff because the guy was a

Samaritan and how that played into it. I'm like that one word. I was reading over it and not seeing the importance of what was really being said there because I skipped over one word and ignored it, thinking that wasn't the major thing.

And yet that plays into what he's saying there. Right? Okay, the

Jewish folks, those nine Jewish lepers didn't return, but the one Samaritan did. Is that a judgment on the

Jewish leaders that he was talking to and that was witnessing his miracles?

So sometimes we can't stop learning and can't stop answering the questions that our children have because when we do that, what ends up happening if we don't answer the questions that our children have, they start to think we don't have answers.

And then they go on to say the Bible doesn't have answers. Right. And the

Bible has answers when we don't have answers. Yeah.

I think too, well, here's what I want to ask you. What are some, besides just the most important, of course, is being in scripture.

I want to also say that there's other things to help us become better, more proficient at having an answer.

So what are some things you would suggest to help people who are just starting out to be, you know, you're encouraging them to be in scripture and to know their scripture, but what else could possibly help them?

So to the question that I said an answer earlier, how do I prepare for debates when

I don't know I'm doing a debate? I use two things when

I'm challenged with something for the first time. It's called hermeneutics and logic. So let me explain.

Hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation. We're doing it right now. As I'm speaking, every one of you in the audience, you're all hearing me and you are doing interpretation.

Words have meanings. Language has grammar. You're taking the words in its context.

You're taking the grammar of my sentences and you are interpreting that and you're getting a meaning out of that.

Okay. So it's the same thing with scripture. When they're going to use scripture,

I'm going to look at what scripture says and I'm going to learn how to interpret it. What are the rules?

So I go, well, you're not looking at the context here. You're saying something and it's not fitting with the context.

When I had the Church of Christ pastor come in, we're debating over baptism, whether it saves.

And I'm looking at the context and he's like, but look over here. I said, no, you can't. You can't jump to some other passage to understand the context that's in front of you.

You start with the immediate context. That's hermeneutics. Then I use logic. Logic is you don't have to really know.

And I do have a striving for turning on the YouTube channel. I have an eight week class. It's not very long and it teaches these two things.

It's basically apologetics and debate how to do them. And I teach through very quickly how to use hermeneutics, how to understand logic.

And so if you take those classes, it's four and four. If you take those, you're going to have a good understanding of those.

So you could start there and then expand on it. Learn more and more on how to do interpretation, how to use logic.

It doesn't mean you have to know all the fallacies. I don't need to know, oh, that's the fallacy of excluded middle.

Oh, that's a straw man fallacy. I don't need to know those. I need to know what makes something good or sound or what doesn't.

And when I can recognize that, then I can argue what I'm sorry, but your argument is not cogent.

Let me explain why. And so there's not a lot that you have to know with logic to be able to spot the problem.

And that's where most of the issues come up. You know, with the Church of Christ pastor,

I just asked him, is Christ sufficient? Does the Bible teach that Christ is sufficient for our salvation?

He said, yes. Is it ultimately sufficient? He said, yes. I said, so it's ultimately efficient.

We don't need anything else, right? He said, no. I said, so we don't need baptism to save.

And he stops and went, it is true that you are a very skilled debater.

In other words, he had no answer, right? Yeah. Because I used logic to show him that his worldview has a problem.

He knows the Bible teaches Christ is sufficient, but he adds baptism. Well, if you're adding baptism, then he's not sufficient because you needed something else.

Which I said to him, well, is Christ sufficient or not? If Christ is sufficient, we don't need baptism.

But if Christ is not sufficient, then we need something like baptism. So is he sufficient or is he not?

And he just wanted to be off that show that quickly. You make a good point here in bringing up that example that apologetics, stuff like that, is also really, really good for discernment, for holding fast to good doctrine and contending for the faith.

Exactly your point about having anything else besides or adding to Christ for your salvation.

And that's really kind of like prevalent through all sorts of false doctrine, just adding to him.

And yet, if we know our scripture and do hermeneutics, know how to do hermeneutics when reading scripture, you find yourself being able to have an apology for an argument for why

Christ and scripture is sufficient. So I just think that was a great example right there. Yeah, because how am

I rooting it? I'm going to root it back to scripture and the nature of God, right? God exists. He has spoken. God is a logical being.

That's why I use logic, because I know God is logical. And so you first start with God from his nature.

You're arguing from the nature of God. I can rely on logic because I know it's immaterial, universal, absolute.

So universal means it always works. It works for everyone, everywhere, all through the centuries. Absolute meaning it is the standard and God's nature is that.

Yeah, good stuff. So I think we're closing up here, but you said, was there any more other practical advice on how to really beef up our apologetics or get better at it or just those two things, and then reading scripture rightly?

Just don't get overwhelmed. I say that because when

I'm out on the streets evangelizing, people are like, oh man, I can't do like you. Yeah, because I've been doing it for 40 years.

Try doing something for 40 years, you get better at it. If you're not getting better, there's a problem. So don't think you have to know everything one thing at a time.

If you're learning one thing, your child asks you a question, study that out, learn it, come back with an answer.

You get asked a question as you're sharing with a co -worker, a fellow student in school, whoever you're talking with, and they challenge you or they ask a question you don't know the answer to, just study that.

You don't have to know it completely to know it well enough to know what the Bible says about it.

Learn the Bible more and you'll get better at it. Women who have children and who have, well, even discussions with your husbands.

I mean, I don't know how many times I've found practical use. Ever wrong. Ever. Maybe.

I'll let you believe that. Because it's only God that can change your heart.

I tell my wife all the time, I'm never wrong. And she says, except for that statement. I never lie.

Except for that one. More than just accept that one.

But yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I just, I find that my homeschooling journey has, was the impetus to starting my apologetic journey.

And, I mean, it's not to say that only homeschoolers will be brushed up on their apologetics.

But I think there's a lot of women who have their kids in school. This, I almost think, you need to be trained as a mother.

If you have kids in the public school, this is something you should definitely be studying.

And not leaving it up to the church, unfortunately. Most popular churches are not doing a good job of it.

Because they probably, well, a lot of churches I have found, in my experience, don't hold to sola scriptura, don't believe that scripture is actually sufficient to be able to equip the children to have a reason.

But, yeah, so I just wanted to encourage women that it is something you can do.

It doesn't mean you have to go out there and be, you know, stand on the side of the street and be a, you know, like, what do they call the evangelists out there that are street evangelists?

You don't have to be a street evangelist. But just in everyday life, experiencing these moments where you're helping whoever you're talking to go to scripture and understand that scripture is

God's word and is authoritative and inerrant and all of it. And that, to me, is

If you're, if there's a woman listening and don't, she doesn't know the words you just used, go study that.

Yeah, there you go. Well, there's other words too, but I can't think of them right now. I got to go eat.

Yeah, so thank you so much, Andrea, for coming on to talk about all that.

Very encouraging. Very, I'm so glad that even somebody as advanced as you would give us such easy practical advice.

I mean, what else can we do here but just trust in God, go to scripture and then trust him for the rest, even to help us give those answers and to open the hearts of those who receive the answers.

So I'm thankful very much for your ministry, all the hard work that you've, you've been doing in apologetics and stuff.

So I'd suggest women go on there. Links will be in the description. Your classes, like you talked about, your hermeneutic class, your logic class, and your book are good resources that women can start learning.

For hermeneutics, we actually have a 20 -week class on the, it's called part of the Striving Fraternity Academy has a syllabus.

So if you want to dig deeper into that, go for it. I still, I do need to work on the, like a class like that 20 weeks or so for logic.

I'm still trying to work on that. Okay. All right. Well, thank you again for coming on and I just,

I hope God blesses and continues to bless your ministry. Well, thanks for having me.

Yeah. And hopefully I'll have you on who knows what the next topic will be. Yeah.

This was a lot easier than like social justice. I liked that topic though.

That was a good one to talk about. Hopefully we don't have to talk about that anymore. Yeah. Let it just go away.

Yeah. Please. All right. Thanks.

Thanks for having me. Ladies, thanks for listening and watching this episode of Thoroughly Equipped.

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