February 20, 2018 Show with Elias Ayala on “The Need for Biblical Apologetics for the Young in the Age of School Massacres”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 20th day of February 2017, and I'm delighted to have at the urging of my dear friend,

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Pastor Bill Shishko, whose ad you hear daily on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. He is the host of a program called

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A Visit to the Pastor's Study, and I might as well plug how you can listen to that.

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on the dial. A Visit to the Pastor's Study. But Pastor Bill Shishko, who has been a dear friend since the 1980s, strongly recommended that I interview a young man named

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Elias Ayala, and he is a Christian apologist, a graduate of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned his

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Master of Arts in Theological Studies and Master of Divinity. He is a middle and high school teacher at Valley Stream Christian Academy on Long Island, New York.

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He's a youth director at Massapequa Reformed Church on Long Island, New York, a church that I passed by many, many, many, many times over the years while I lived on Long Island.

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He is a team member at the Historical Bible Society, founded by my friend

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Dan Buttafuoco, attorney at law, and he's also a traveling speaker, and today he's going to be addressing a very timely theme, the need for biblical apologetics for the young in the age of school massacres.

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Yesterday we had my friend Pastor Vinnie Sawyer on the program. You may recall that,

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Pastor Vinnie Sawyer, who I have also known since the early 1990s.

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I used to pastor at the Faith Baptist Church in Corona, Queens, New York, but is now pastoring

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Victory Baptist Church in Florida, and we spoke about the need for biblical parenting in the age of school massacres yesterday.

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In fact, last week we even had a brother on the program who addressed his own

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Christian outreach that he is a part of to the

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Broward County area in Florida, and the Christian clubs that he operates for 88 schools, 88 high schools in Florida, includes the high school where the tragic massacre occurred on Valentine's Day.

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So today we are continuing in that theme, and this time speaking about the need for biblical apologetics, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Elias Ayala.

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Thank you for having me on, I'm really excited, I enjoy your show, and I'm looking forward to talking about our topic.

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And before we get into your own personal testimony of salvation, which is something that I try to do every time

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I have a first -time guest on the program, I want you to tell your listeners how you discovered

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, because I really got a kick out of it. Well, back in the day when

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I was, I don't remember the exact year, but my wife and I went to Wisconsin, where my brother -in -law needed our help.

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This is not the reason why we went, but the emcee at a wedding backed off, and my brother -in -law was asked to be the emcee at the wedding, and so he needed to borrow my iPod.

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And so I lent him my iPod, and he put all of his content on my iPod so that he used the music for the wedding.

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And by the time the wedding was over, he gave me my iPod and never took his stuff off. So on my way back,

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I'm listening to Iron Sharpens Iron, hearing names like James White, Greg Bonson, and a bunch of other

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Reformed apologists and theologians, and that really opened things up for me, not just to your show, but just to Reformed theology in general and apologetics.

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So it's kind of a weird indirect way that I came to know about your show. So it's kind of interesting that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio was shuffled in the mix with all these disco songs.

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Well, now tell our listeners about your personal testimony. What kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and how the

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Lord providentially drew you to Himself, saved you, and also led you into the ministry and to teaching and so forth.

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Sure. I don't remember the specific time I received the

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Lord. As far back as I remember, I have believed the Bible to be true, and I've had a relationship with the

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Lord as far back as I can remember. I'm sure there's a specific point where God caused me to be born again and then adopted into His family, but I've been a

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Christian for such a long time, so it's very hard for me to identify that moment. But I did grow up in a

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Spanish Pentecostal church, which was part of the Assemblies of God. It was a very interesting story in and of itself, in that I am terrible at Spanish.

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Even now, I understand a lot of it now, but I don't speak it. And our services used to be super long.

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I remember our average service would be two and a half hours, sometimes three hours long. That's mostly the sermon would be, you know, like an hour and a half, two hours long.

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And while the sermons were spoken in Spanish, and I didn't understand a lick of Spanish, I would just pick up my

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Bible and start reading. And we had church Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays. We had an early morning

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Sunday service, and we would come back in the evening, Sunday evening, for another service. So since I didn't understand anything,

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I just read my Bible. And I did that for years and years and years, all the way up until I graduated high school and went into my first years of college.

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And it was when I took, during my associate's degree,

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I took a class called The Literature of the Bible. And I figured, you know what? That's an easy class.

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It's an elective. I can choose it. I know a lot about the Bible. You know, why not? And so I enrolled in this class,

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Literature of the Bible, which the class was supposed to look at the Bible in regards to its literary contribution.

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But instead of going through that, the professor would take a good 15 to 20 minutes to just bash the

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Bible and go over why he didn't believe it was the Word of God. And so of course, while he did that in the class, it challenged a lot of the

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Christians in the class. And because I had background in the Bible, I often raised my hand and challenged him at various points.

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But then he began to bring up apparent contradictions in the Bible. And that really challenged me, because in the context in which

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I was raised, I read the Bible and understood the stories, but I never saw the verses that he brought up.

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I never saw them as brought up as a apparent contradiction. And so he really challenged my own faith in that he presented things that I really never thought about before.

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So I did a little experiment. I pretended for a short time to be an atheist. I was not an atheist, but I pretended.

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And I tried to look up some of the arguments that are usually posed against the

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Bible and against the Christian worldview, and as I did that to my own satisfaction, I then assumed the role of a

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Christian and said, Christianity is over 2 ,000 years old. There has to be something in which

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Christians have responded to all of this stuff. And when I was going through this kind of line of thinking, it was around that time where I was also introduced to your podcast and Christian apologetics through that kind of iPod incident.

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So when I began to explore these things, the whole realm of apologetics was introduced to me, and I not only saw that Christians had answers to many of these issues, but they were awesome answers, answers that refuted these objections.

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And a lot of the objections that were brought up, I learned, were not just objections that people use today. They were old, rehashed objections that have already been refuted in the literature.

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And so this really reinvigorated my confidence in my faith, my confidence in the Word of God, and it really consumed me, and I wanted to let other people know that there were resources out there.

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Within my own particular context in the Spanish Pentecostal Church, not many people were aware of apologetics, and unfortunately, not many people are encouraged to even think intellectually about their faith.

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And so I became really engulfed in the topic of apologetics, and that made me want to kind of shoot off into a different context and where that intellectual life of the faith could be developed.

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And so I've been doing that ever since, and while I was in college going for education,

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I wanted to be a social studies teacher. My desires and goals shifted a bit, and I ended up doing seminary.

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And with that, I got a job at the Valley Stream Christian Academy, and eventually

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I began teaching not just the social studies classes there, which is the reason why they hired me primarily, but I began to also take over the

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Bible classes there. And so now I teach from 7th grade through 12th grade Bible, theology,

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Bible doctrine, comparative religions, and for my seniors, I do apologetics. And so I've been there for the past seven years, and whenever I get a chance,

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I also go around and speak at different churches and places and train people to do apologetics.

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And so here I am. Well, praise God. And I know that my friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries will be thrilled when

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I inform him that yet another young person has come to the

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Reformed faith as a result of his ministry. And I can't even count the number of times that people have told me that when

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I speak with them. And I'm so blessed that a large portion of those times, when

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I hear people say that, it is as a result of them attending or viewing either on the old style

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VHS or on DVD or on YouTube, the debates that I orchestrated with Dr.

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White, probably over 20 debates, 10 of which were with Roman Catholic apologists on Long Island.

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And by the way, you can see most of those debates on YouTube. And if you can't see them there, you can see them at AOMIN .org.

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That's the Alpha and Omega Ministries website, AOMIN .org. For a decade on Long Island, I had

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Dr. White coming out every year to debate a prominent Roman Catholic apologist until we ran out of Catholic apologists that wanted to debate him, other than young up -and -coming novices that wanted to make a name for themselves and debate

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James. But we drew that Catholic debate series to a close.

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I hope I can revive it here in Pennsylvania. I've already started one not long ago with Dr.

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Tony Costa, who if you don't know him, you should get to know him. But last year, Dr. Tony Costa, who is the professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, he's also a

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Reformed Baptist, and I had him come out to the Carlisle Theater last January to debate my friend

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Robert St. Genes, who's a Roman Catholic apologist, on the immaculate conception and perpetual sinlessness of Mary.

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And it was quite a fascinating debate, which you can also see on YouTube. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to define apologetics.

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Sure, just real quick, did you moderate the debate with Dr. White at Medford Elementary on Long Island?

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I organized that debate. That was the debate with Robert Sabin, the one that's

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Pentecostal. Okay, okay, because that's my elementary school. Oh, wow.

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Well, I organized that, and a friend of mine, the late Larry Carino, who's now with the

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Lord, he passed away about a year ago, I think, but he moderated it.

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That was an interesting debate because it really devolved into not being a debate.

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Robert Sabin, who we selected because he's considered one of the foremost knowledgeable representatives of Oneness Pentecostalism, and unfortunately, rather than giving an exegetical defense of his view, he gave a oh man, what's the phrase when you're...

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eulogy! He gave a eulogy for Michael Servetus, who was the anti -Trinitarian that was executed by the

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Genevan government when John Calvin was reigning as a noted theologian there in Geneva, and he tried to blame that on Calvin and basically on Calvin's descendants, theological descendants, and he basically was just trying to work up emotion in the audience so that they would feel sorry for Oneness Pentecostal, so it was a big letdown that he chose to take that path because we were all prepared to hear a rigorous, robust, theological, and exegetical exchange between the two of them.

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Yeah. Now, were you in school when that was held there? Well, I don't know what year it was.

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I went to Method Elementary for kindergarten. When did you graduate? I graduated from elementary school or high school.

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2001, I graduated from Patrick Bedford High School. It might have been that year or close to it.

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I can't remember. I'll have to look that up. It depends. Dr. White had hair. We could know more or less where I was, so that's a good reference point.

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All right, well, you did ask me what apologetics was.

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Again, when we introduce the topic of apologetics, we kind of go to the famous verse, 1

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Peter 3 .15, "...but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet doing so with gentleness and reverence."

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That's really where we get the idea of giving a defense or giving an answer, which you have the

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Greek word there is apologia, which in English is apologetic. In a very simple way, apologetic can be defined as the defense of the faith, but I like how

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Reformed apologist Cornelius Mantill defined it. He said that apologetics is the vindication of the

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Christian worldview over and against non -Christian worldviews. So I like that wording, because we are vindicating our position.

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We're not merely defending it. In our defending of the faith, we are also trying to demonstrate its truthfulness as well.

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And this is, I think, a very important distinction to recognize when we're talking about apologetics. It's not mere defense, it also involves, you know, attacking non -Christian positions.

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Intellectually, of course, not physically, as you would imagine. And of course it's not saying,

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I'm sorry for being a Christian. Right, right. And it's not making the other person sorry that you're a

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Christian as well. Well, tell us about your role as an apologist when you deal with young people.

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What are the crucial things that you want them to know? Obviously, the gospel is first and foremost, but we are talking, obviously, about the need for biblical apologetics for the young in an age of school massacres.

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And there are many Christian ministries that are focused on ministering to young people that only focus on the gospel or their version of it, because sometimes they're not really all that reflective of what the

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Bible has to say about the gospel. But there are some very good ministries for the youth out there as well.

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But they very often think, well, we can't really get these kids to be thinking about the deeper things.

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Let's just have them know what the gospel is. And of course, sometimes they will phrase it unbiblically, you know, we just got to invite

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Jesus into your heart. And one thing that disturbs me is that I have been present at some events that I was invited to that were ran by Christian youth ministries.

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And it seemed that the youth ministries, a couple of them that I have been had the misfortune of being in their presence during a special public event, their main emphasis to the public was, you can still be cool and love

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Jesus. It was almost like they were trying to, the main concept was getting

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Christians to reach out to their lost friends by telling them, hey, you know, you're not going to become a nerd when you become a

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Christian, it's cool to be a Christian. And that was a very big letdown, and obviously that is not your approach to the subject that we are talking about.

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Right, well, I think it's very important that you've entitled this particular interview here the need for biblical apologetics, not just merely apologetics.

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I've spoken with people who don't actually think that the Bible lays out an apologetic method, a way that we're to do it.

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So I think emphasizing the biblical nature of apologetics is super important.

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When I teach young people, before I get into the ins and outs on how to give an answer,

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I try to focus very much on the role of the authority of Scripture. A lot of young people who are either, they either grew up in the

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Church, or they become Christians along the way, their souls are saved, but their minds are not, if that makes sense.

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They're saved, but they don't think like Christians. And this is prevalent even with seasoned adult

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Christians. You know, they love the Lord, they go to church, they read their Bible, but they have not allowed the biblical worldview to shape the way that they think.

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And I think this is something that is super important when we're teaching apologetics to young people. You don't want to just teach young people what to think.

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I think what the Bible emphasizes in regards to a biblical apologetic is that it teaches us how to think, how to think biblically.

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Yeah, and that seems to be the credo of classical

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Christian education. I know the Grace Christian Academy over there in Merrick, that is,

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I believe, their motto, or at least one element of their mission statement, is to teach children not what to think, but how to think.

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Right, right. And it's important because we can do apologetics, which is honoring to God, in a dishonoring fashion, right?

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And so a lot of people, especially young people, teenagers, who, you know,

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Mr. Ayala, how do I learn to crush an atheist in an argument? I mean, people are very drawn to the intellectual power of applying logic and argumentation to support a position.

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But if you're not having your mind submitting to Christ, I mean, look at 1 Peter 3 .15. A lot of people, when they teach about apologetics, the emphasis is on making a defense, all the while ignoring the first part of the verse, which says, it says, sanctify

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Christ as Lord in your heart. When the Bible refers to heart, it's not necessarily speaking about the organ in your chest.

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It very much is related to the idea of the aspect of our intellect, which is called the seat of the will, that aspect of our mind that goes into decision making.

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The very core of our being, the core of our thinking, needs to have the Lordship of Christ.

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Christ needs to be sitting on the throne of our hearts and minds. And when that happens, we begin to submit our thinking, right?

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Bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We intentionally do that, so that our unbiblical thoughts, our unbiblical worldview, slowly becomes conformed to a more consistently biblical worldview.

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And when we begin to think in those categories, we then apply biblical truth to different facets of our life.

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Scott Oliven, who is the professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, he,

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I like how he defined apologetics, where he said, it's Christian theology applied to unbelief.

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Christian theology applied to unbelief. We take Christian theology, which is derived from the authoritative

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Word of God, and we apply it to that aspect of our interactions with unbelievers, just as we would apply it to, say, our marriages, or how a young person would apply it to their friendships and their relationships.

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We need to take the biblical way of thinking and apply it to those different aspects of life.

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And when we get the authority of Scripture down, I think at that moment, that's a good place to start in learning how to give an answer.

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By the way, some of our listeners may be interested to know that the individual that Eli just mentioned,

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Scott Oliven, he is going to be speaking at the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, April 27th and 28th at the

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Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. I plan to attend this, and there are a number of other speakers at the conference that I will be listening to and hearing and seeing on the roster there.

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And if you want more information about that, you can go to Alliancenet .org, Alliancenet .org, click on Events at the top, and then click on The Spirit of the

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Age, The Age of the Spirit, Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology 2018, and you'll be able to register there.

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And I'll be giving you more details later on after the midway break. What are some of the specific areas, especially when we are considering an age of school massacres, that you would approach young people with in the realm of apologetics?

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I think addressing apologetics from the worldview perspective is very important.

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Apologetics can have a very specified focus, I mean, an emphasis on science, or history, or philosophy, or any specific kind of subdiscipline.

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But I think teaching kids at the worldview level allows them to really bypass some of the endless debates we could have over some of the specifics.

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Does that make sense? Oh yeah, and obviously there are a lot of things that Christians may believe that aren't even biblical because they have had their minds, their brains washed, really, by the secular society, and they are unconsciously looking at the world in different areas through the lenses of secular humanism.

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Right, right. So I think teaching young people at the worldview level, this is how we think biblically, and then teaching them how to apply that in certain areas.

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And I think when you're talking about school massacres and things like that, there's a lot of discussion about gun control and all that, you know, the political aspect that's usually thrown in there.

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But as you know, the real issue is the issue of sin. There's sin in the world. You know, young people, teenagers, they're sinners.

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And with a system that rejects the authority of God's Word, you're not going to have an adequate, you know, a fix for this situation.

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What we can do as Christians is really live out the gospel, both in our relationships, but also as we express why we believe the

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Bible to be true and why there are good grounds for holding it. Talking to our fellow classmates from the

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Christian perspective, this is why I'm a Christian, and being a resource for unbelievers in school.

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That opens pathways to bring people to Christ. And when we do that, you have a slow transformation of the heart, right?

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This is a quote from a movie, but it always stood out to me. I think it was Jesus of Nazareth, a movie made in the 70s back in the day.

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It said, before kingdoms can change, men must change. Before kingdoms can change, men must change.

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Before schools can be changed, students' hearts have to be changed. And how did that happen? Through the preaching of the gospel.

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And the preaching of the gospel needs to be done by faithful, biblically grounded students who are also equipped to defend the truth claims of the gospel.

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And so, coming at it from that worldview perspective and seeing that as we proclaim the gospel in the schools, we are thinking in kingdom expansion categories.

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Young people need to be thinking in those categories. We're not waiting for the government to pass certain laws so that they fix everything.

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We want to have internal transformation, and we want to be used as the means whereby God does that by sharing the gospel.

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But we need to know what the gospel is, and so we need to be biblically grounded, and we need to know the reasons why it's true and be able to share that.

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We're going to our first break right now, and I just emailed you, or I forwarded to you,

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Eli, a listener's question from Slovenia, and so I wanted you to have that so you could look it over during the station break because it's a little bit lengthy.

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It's not too long, but it's a little lengthy, so I thought it'd be good for you to have it in front of you. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Elias and more of our discussion of the need for biblical apologetics for the young in the age of school massacres.

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The website is cvbbs .com, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. We are now back with our guest today,

35:14

Elias Ayala, also known as Eli. We are discussing the need for biblical apologetics for the young in the age of school massacres.

35:23

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

35:30

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

35:35

USA. We have Joe from Slovenia who has sent us a question that Eli has in front of him now.

35:44

Wow, what a daunting topic. Maybe I'm missing something, and I hope I am, but I personally haven't seen a church youth group that was based on much more than pizza parties, silly games, and social gatherings with a light, seeker -sensitive devotional thrown on top.

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Where are these Christian youth who are up for learning and engaging in apologetics, if my perception of the current state of youth ministry is generally accurate, though stated here overly simplistically?

36:14

What needs to change in youth ministry, generally in order that Christian youth could and would seriously engage in apologetics?

36:23

Very good question. Well, first, being in youth ministry myself, there is nothing wrong with pizza parties, silly games, and social outings.

36:33

What is wrong is when the youth group is based upon those things. Or as Todd Friel said, these frighteningly disgusting activities that go on where youth leaders are smearing peanut butter on children's feet and licking it off.

36:50

I mean, this is like bordering on perverse and, I think, crime.

36:57

Yeah, I guess it depends what we mean by silly games. Gross games might be incorporated in that as well.

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But again, it's really important to be balanced in this area. When you're working with youth, the relational aspect is super important.

37:12

I mean, you need to get to a point where the kids trust you, that they place value on the words that you're saying, and sometimes that requires relationships.

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So those aspects, once we...and parties and things like that, from a youth leader perspective, those things need to be strategic.

37:37

We do not do those things for the sake of doing those things. We do those things because we have a goal in mind, and those goals are to be biblically grounded.

37:47

Okay? That's one area. So those things aren't in and of themselves wrong. We just need to be strategic about it.

37:54

Okay? The person who sent in the question is correct. It's often the case that most youth groups are comprised of a lot of games and a seeker -sensitive devotional thrown on top.

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We sprinkle Jesus at the end of our youth group experience. This, again, if we're going to change this, where does this change begin?

38:16

It most definitely does not change with the young people, for it is the youth leader that actually directs the direction of where the youth group is going.

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Why is the youth group there? Is the purpose based upon the biblically grounded idea that we are raising up disciples, or is it based upon the idea that we are going to measure success based upon how many young people we can get in church?

38:41

Again, this whole idea of numbers being the measuring rod of a successful youth group, we need to avoid that kind of thinking like the plague, and unfortunately this is prevalent throughout youth groups all over the place.

38:55

Also, we need to avoid this idea that the sole purpose of having a youth group is becoming friends with young people, right?

39:02

I don't want them to not like me. You have to see Jesus in the gospel. He says stuff that turns people away, and we shouldn't seek to turn people away, but we want to be able to seek the truth and love regardless of the fear of people walking away.

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If we're so concerned with having numbers be a certain way, we're going to allow our desire for numbers to sacrifice our true desire, which should be our true desire, of honoring

39:30

Christ by preaching the truth of his word. And you'll be surprised, the big fear in a lot of youth groups is that kids are not interested in Bible doctrine or apologetics and things like that.

39:42

Working with young people, in my own experience, that is not true at all. When I talk about theology and apologetics, a lot of the kids come up to me and say, why haven't

39:52

I learned this in church? We've watered down the content in church and in youth groups so much that kids who are being more intellectually challenged in other contexts feel as though they are perceived as stupid and unable to understand things.

40:07

People will be very surprised how willing young people are to going into deeper discussions about issues of faith.

40:14

Kids have questions, and some of the reasons why youth leaders don't go into the details is

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A, they want to appeal to the kids, and B, they're not themselves equipped to actually answer the questions that young people are asking.

40:30

So how is this going to change? It's the leadership. We need to train youth leaders in good, solid

40:36

Bible doctrine and apologetics, and then as they engage their youth, strategically implement their lessons and their goals, implement those throughout their youth groups, along with those relational activities and things like that.

40:50

So it really is going to be an issue of the youth leader or the church kind of equipping youth leaders that are solid in teaching but also have that skill, that gift to relate to young people and move them in the direction towards learning, because the kids aren't going to do it themselves.

41:08

Yeah, don't you think that adult Christians, and it's actually not even necessarily isolated to young people, that they have this view, but very often those in ministry underestimate the mental capacities of those that they are preaching to or teaching.

41:32

And that might be especially true with young people, but it even goes as far as anybody of any age in a congregation, because that's why so often sermons around the

41:44

United States and probably the globe, the sermons are dumbed down, because there is an anti -intellectualism that basically says that if you teach the deeper things, you're going to drive people away from Jesus, and they'll die in a lost state because they're not going to understand what you're saying.

42:12

And obviously there are vain, proud intellects that do teach in such a way where they are purposely teaching far above the heads of those in the audience, but there is a difference between that and people like James White and the late

42:30

Dr. R .C. Sproul and others who would not dumb down a message, but they will explain in clearer language what they may begin with, with, you know, 16 -syllable words and so forth.

42:43

They will define their terms. They will bring the content down after first teaching it, or while teaching it, they will also make sure that everybody within reason is understanding what is being said.

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Am I making sense here about the dumbing down? That's right. Right. We need to be able to simplify without dumbing down, and it can be done, and it should be done.

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Jesus did this. We follow the model of Jesus. Jesus took very complex concepts, and he used everyday language in a way that people could understand it.

43:20

I mean, it's simple in one sense. You know, we're taking biblical truth, and we're conveying it to an audience, and we're catering, you know, the manner in which we express these truths, we're catering to our audience.

43:32

You know, if I'm talking to an intellectually astute audience, I don't want to dumb things down, I want to challenge them and kind of challenge them to go deeper.

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If I'm talking to a younger group of people who may not have a background in these concepts, I want to cater my message to those people as well.

43:47

But in that, we do not want to, you know, dumb down the content. And also to say that, you know, if we teach these truths to the people, oh, they're going to get lost, and then kind of like,

43:59

I don't want to listen to this. How much faith are we putting in the Holy Spirit? Right.

44:05

We forget the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this, and that we...this is in apologetics as well, you know.

44:11

What if I say an argument that doesn't convince the unbeliever? You see, this is a common mistake in apologetics.

44:17

We know what apologetics is, because we can define the term, but very little do we understand what the purpose of apologetics is.

44:26

Greg Bonson, the late Greg Bonson, one of my favorite Christian apologists, he pumped it up very easy for me.

44:32

I love the way he summed it up, because in this quick summary is incorporated his theology of the

44:38

Holy Spirit's role in apologetics. He says, the role of apologetics is to shut the mouth of the unbeliever.

44:45

You see, notice that's the role of apologetics. That's perfect, that's perfect, so they listen.

44:52

Yeah, well when you shut the mouth, the purpose of shutting the mouth of the unbeliever is giving such good answers that the unbeliever cannot be with excuse.

45:02

Right. Without excuse, because there are answers to these issues. However, the goal, what's not the goal of apologetics, is to convert.

45:10

Because when we take the burden of conversion, number one, it's impossible, because especially from the

45:17

Reformed perspective, the conversion of the soul is the work of God, right? It is God who causes the sinner to be born again, right?

45:24

Yeah, we can only plant seeds and water them. That's right, but it's God who produces, right?

45:30

He gives the increase, right? That's right. And so when we understand that our goal in apologetics is not to convert, then our method will not be a method that incorporates that.

45:42

We will be able to share the gospel without fear, we could include all aspects of the gospel, not only the good news aspect, but the bad news, that folks are sinners, and that we are wretched people before a holy

45:55

God, and we need to repent of our sin. We can preach that strong message that is offensive to so many people without fear, because whether that person walks away or not, that's not up to me.

46:07

My job is to give an answer, the rest I leave up to God. Yes, and don't you think that we should not make our proclamation of the word, especially when we're talking about people from teen years through the senior citizen twilight years, we should not make the

46:31

Bible any simpler than the Bible is written, and we shouldn't make it any more complicated either.

46:38

We shouldn't be discussing the scriptures as if we are savant mathematicians who are giving very complicated and difficult things to comprehend that go far above the manner through which the scriptures themselves are written, and of course there are times for intellects and scholars to banter amongst themselves in such fashions, but when we are communicating with the average person, we shouldn't make it any simpler or any more difficult, and we should also, shouldn't we be giving people a reason to be stretching themselves, that they shouldn't be satisfied with some simplistic understanding that they have, overly simplistic.

47:30

I mean, there are things that are simple, the gospel is simple, and so on, but that we shouldn't keep them frozen in time as an infant would understand the scriptures, or as a young child.

47:45

You give them something to strive for. When I talk theology with young people, and they come up to me and say, hey, that was great, usually it produces a desire to learn more, and then you could present the truth of scripture in a very simple way, but I've always looked at it as an iceberg, you know, where the tip is popping out of the water, and the tip looks small, and we, you know, we can see the iceberg there, but as you go underwater, you see this larger foundation, and the gospel and biblical truth is kind of like that.

48:15

It can be presented at that kind of that tip point, that very easy to kind of comprehend, but when we dig deeper, there's that broader, that wider foundation that is available to us to kind of plunge the depth up.

48:27

And I think our job as teachers is to point people to those deeper truths, to give them the basic truths, but also point beyond those things as they seek to grow and grow in the knowledge of God, and how to apply those truths to their lives.

48:43

So we need to be pushing people beyond just the simplistic nature of just the basic presentation of the gospel.

48:52

We have someone, I usually don't mention the full names of listeners, but because this listener has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, is a financial supporter of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and he's a close personal friend of mine,

49:08

I will give his full name so I can promote his ministry. We have Anthony Eugenio from Smithtown, Long Island, New York, who's written a question.

49:17

He is the founder of New York Apologetics, and their website is newyorkapologetics .com,

49:24

and the words New York are spelled out, they are not abbreviated, newyorkapologetics .com.

49:30

And Anthony says, Hi Chris, is Eli speaking anywhere soon that we can come see him?

49:37

Would there be perhaps any other short, chubby, handsome, reformed speakers from New York Apologetics there?

49:48

Are you familiar with Anthony? Oh yes, yes, we've spoken at a conference together, and we talk a lot on the phone about different things that we're studying and thinking about.

49:59

Are you speaking anywhere that you care to mention in the near future? Well, I know

50:05

Anthony knows the pastor of Centerpoint Church, the Bayshore campus, and I think the plan is to do another conference like we did in the past.

50:14

I don't remember the specific date, because he just told it to me a couple of days ago.

50:20

So I can fill him in on the details there, and we can touch base with the pastor there and see if we can do something together.

50:28

That'd be great. I was also invited to speak at a university in Texas, I believe that's in April.

50:37

So I don't have too much details on that, but that's associated with Bridge Ministries, it's a reformed

50:44

Christian bookstore out in Texas, so they're having me fly out there with a couple of other speakers as well.

50:50

Wow, yeah, I'd like to hear more about that. Well, thank you so much Anthony, I thank you so much for your friendship,

50:57

I thank you so much for your financial support for Iron Sherpins Iron Radio. You have become a dear friend and a godsend to me in this program, and I just can't thank you enough, and I can't express articulately enough how grateful

51:16

I am to God for you, brother. And by the way, I know that there is a term when people look a lot better than they actually are called beer goggles, and I'm assuming that your stunning, attractive wife must have been wearing spiritual or soul goggles when she met you, because it seemed to cut through the exterior and go right to your beautiful Christian heart, brother, and I'm of course partially kidding there, you're a strikingly handsome man, so I won't go any further than that.

51:52

But anyway, go ahead. Real quick, I'm sorry, the date for that apologetic conference is

51:58

April 7th, so I'll be speaking at Centerpoint Church in Massapequa, New York, that's on Long Island, on April 7th.

52:07

More details will be sent out there, but that's the date. Oh great, okay, and is there any contact information where people can find out more specific details?

52:16

They might want to get in touch with one of the pastors at Centerpoint Church in Bayshore, his name is

52:22

Ryan Galen, and he will be orchestrating all of that.

52:28

So yeah, there's nothing official, he didn't send out any flyers yet, but that's the date. And my particular topic,

52:35

I will be addressing the topic of three very important foundations, theology, apologetics, and evangelism, and how all those three work together.

52:45

Great, and we are going to our midway break right now. It is a longer break than normal because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a 12 -minute break in between our two hours, so we accommodate them and take this time to write a question for our guest,

53:06

Eli Ayala, and send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

53:15

and please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, your country of residence, and only remain anonymous if you are asking about a personal and private matter.

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And I also have to make mention of the fact that the

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Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit is the theme for the next Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

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April 13th through the 15th at the First Christian Reform Church of Byron Center, Michigan.

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He is one of the most powerful preachers alive on the planet Earth, in my humble opinion. Richard Phillips, who's also an excellent preacher, who

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I know personally from Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. And workshop speakers are

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Jonathan Master, David Murray, and Scott Oliphant, who we were speaking about earlier, who our guest mentioned earlier.

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The website where you can register is alliancenet .org,

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alliancenet .org, and click on events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, Spirit of the

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01:10:08

Elias Ayala on our theme, The Need for Biblical Apologetics for the Young in the

01:10:13

Age of School Massacres, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:10:21

One thing that occurred to me in the realm of biblical worldview versus a secular worldview is that it seems to be the drumbeat of our leftist society and our totalitarian society that people are to basically cry out foul to those surrounding them for not agreeing with them on how they want to live and behave, especially in the realm of sexual ethics.

01:11:03

And there is a victimization that is rampant in this country, and I'm sure in other parts of the world, where people are constantly crying out that they are victims and that we who have a biblical morality, or at least one that we believe to be true and biblical, we are the oppressors, we are bigots, we are haters, we are homophobes and misogynists and racists and on and on and on.

01:11:36

Now that doesn't mean that a Christian can't be guilty of any of those sins, but it is obvious that people are being slandered and churches and denominations are being slandered for those sins, for being guilty of those sins when they are innocent of those sins.

01:11:58

How do you address this whole issue to young people about this victimization, this victim complex that seems to be the highlight of what you hear in the news every day and so on?

01:12:12

Well again, getting back to the biblical foundation, teaching young people to think biblically. The biblical worldview includes the objectivity of truth, and so one thing

01:12:23

I will teach my students is the objective nature of truth and the absurd results that come from denying that.

01:12:32

You know, you could also go into pointing out really the hypocritical nature of those who cry foul when we disagree with them, because if we were going to apply the same standard to them, you know, people often say, you know, you shouldn't shove your views down people's throats, to which our response would be, good, then why are you shoving your views down my throat?

01:12:55

The view that I shouldn't shove my views down your throat. Yeah, you know, it's interesting that the left has for a long time, for decades if not centuries, said you cannot legislate morality, and yet the left attempts to legislate morality all the time, in fact even more so now in the 21st century than conservatives ever had.

01:13:22

Right, right, and I think this is very important because when we're dealing with this issue, it is an apologetical issue, and so the method that we would employ would be one that comes from a biblical base.

01:13:36

For example, when we read in Proverbs where it says, answer not the fool according to his folly, lest you become a fool like unto him, and then the next verse it says that we should answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

01:13:48

What we do is we can grant, hypothetically, the truth of the person's position to show the absurdity of it, and when you're talking about, you know, the left bringing forth this kind of subjective, feelings -based argumentation, all we need to do is show the contradictory nature of it and be able to demonstrate that, and hopefully within the context of a conversation, we can draw people away from that kind of contradictory thinking.

01:14:16

Because of course, once you get to these foundational issues, you'll find that a lot of people just in general reject the existence of objective truth.

01:14:25

Oh, that's your opinion, this, that, or the other thing. You can't convince everyone of your position, but we can definitely go a long way in showing the absurdity of another person's position, which it is absurd to deny the objectivity of truth.

01:14:39

As you know, this is kind of an apologetics 101, but when you reduce a position to absurdity, all you need to do is grant the truth of it to show what results, you know?

01:14:48

A person who says, you know, I'll tell you a quick story. I was talking to a friend of mine years back. He was an agnostic

01:14:55

Jew, okay? And we met at a Borders book. Remember Borders books before it was?

01:15:03

We went to Borders books, and we were talking about God, Christianity, and so forth. And so, we're in the

01:15:10

Christian book section, and we're talking, we're going back and forth, and the gentleman who worked there, he says,

01:15:16

I'm sorry guys, you guys got to move to the next aisle actually to get through here. So, we moved to the next aisle. We continued to go back and forth, back and forth, and then the guy who worked there came around the corner and said,

01:15:25

I actually have to get through there as well. I was like, this guy's really annoying, just let us have a conversation. So, eventually, he interrupted us and said,

01:15:34

I'm going on break in like five minutes. Do you mind if I join you because I disagree with everything you're saying?

01:15:40

And so, you have a Puerto Rican Christian, myself, an agnostic Jew, and the employee at Borders books who actually expressed that he was a philosophy major and wanted to talk about these issues with us.

01:15:56

And so, we were talking about the nature of truth, and we were going back and forth, and here's what he said after we got done with our back and forth.

01:16:02

He says, well, it doesn't matter anyway. I was like, well, why is that? He's like, well, because, you know, that's just your opinion what truth is.

01:16:10

There is no truth. Now, of course, from an apologetic perspective, he falls right into our clutches, right?

01:16:15

I mean, if there is no truth, what's my response? You see, I said, is that true? And he stops and he goes, oh,

01:16:23

I see what you did there. I was like, that's right. You see, if you deny the objectivity of truth, you need to assume the objectivity of truth.

01:16:30

Because if it's true that there's no truth, you've contradicted yourself. Now, within the context of a respectful conversation, we weren't yelling at each other.

01:16:37

I was able to point the logical fallacy out in his own thinking, and because I did it with, as 1

01:16:43

Peter 3, verse 15 tells us, gentleness and respect, I can go a long way in hopefully being the means whereby

01:16:50

God changes that person's heart and gives them something to think about. And so, when we're talking to, you know, people coming from that leftist position where a lot of this argumentation is feelings -based and very illogical, if we can learn to carry ourselves with gentleness and respect but with a sharp logic that is grounded in biblical truth,

01:17:12

God can use that. And I think that's one way we can kind of come at this issue, teaching our young people to think logically, you see.

01:17:20

And to think logically is not a separate discipline that's kind of completely separated from biblical theology.

01:17:27

Biblical theology necessitates logical thinking, because when we think logically, we're thinking God's thoughts after him.

01:17:34

And I think young people need to know that thinking clearly is another way we honor God. And so that's how

01:17:39

I would come at it when I'm teaching young people how to respond to these kinds of things. Yes, I think that subjective truth might have been more dominant years ago, where you can't say there is such a thing as objective truth.

01:18:01

But it seems that the leftists today are saying that we must swallow, and not only swallow, and not only tolerate, but celebrate with great exuberant joy what they view as objective truth, which is homosexuality is just as valid as heterosexuality, that homosexual or same -sex marriage is just as valid as heterosexual marriage of two people of opposite genders, that there is no question about this.

01:18:45

And if you dare question it, you could lose your livelihood. And it depends upon where this comes up, like the bakers that we have heard of on the news, you may be fined heavily for disagreeing with this objective truth, which of course,

01:19:04

I use that phrase, we would consider it the lie from hell, they would consider it objective truth, unquestionable truth.

01:19:13

And it even came up very recently, when parents lost the right to parent their teenage child who claimed to be a transgendered individual, because the parents disagreed with that, and the local government took that young person out of their household.

01:19:37

I mean, this is really getting frightening here. So, and going back to when I said that the left imposes its morality, of course, we would think that very often what they would consider morality is immoral.

01:19:54

I want to make sure that people are understanding what I'm saying. But how do you respond to what I just said? Yeah, well, first, when someone says a particular lifestyle is just as valid as another, there's nothing wrong with, and I think

01:20:09

I would encourage people to ask the question, how do you know? You see, if you make a statement, the person needs to validate the statement.

01:20:16

And of course, what I want to do when I ask the how do you know question, when someone's saying, for example, the homosexual lifestyle is just as valid as any other lifestyle, when

01:20:25

I ask, how do you know, I am purposefully and intentionally moving the discussion to a worldview foundation issue.

01:20:34

I want that person to justify that claim and justify the grounds of that claim and the moral aspect of that claim.

01:20:42

They would say that it's immoral for me not to acknowledge that lifestyle as valid. Who says?

01:20:48

How do you know it's immoral? You see, from a non -biblical perspective, and more specifically from an atheistic perspective, they will find it very difficult to have moral ground as to why

01:21:00

I should accept that, since given the fact that the non -Christian perspective, the atheistic perspective, or whichever perspective they're coming from, if it's not coming from a non -revelatory base, like the

01:21:11

Christian perspective, we have the Word of God where the Bible reveals to us God's moral laws and things like that, a worldview that doesn't have that will be relegated to defining these moral issues based upon individual opinions.

01:21:25

And I want to bring that out in the discussion with someone. Do you think that I should acknowledge this as a valid lifestyle?

01:21:31

Why? How do you know it's a valid lifestyle? What's your standard? And I think by asking those questions forces the unbeliever to be aware of their own worldview.

01:21:42

They're going to be pushed back to thinking, well, wait a minute, why do I think that this is morally wrong? What's my foundation?

01:21:49

And without the firm foundation of the Word of God that is based upon a God who is the standard of right and wrong, they're going to be going back and forth.

01:21:57

Well, the standard is society, the standard is individual, the standard is... and it's going to be rooted in a subjective foundation that is made of sand.

01:22:07

It is like what Jesus says, the foolish man built his house on sand. And without that strong foundation, they don't have an answer.

01:22:15

And so my task is to move the discussion such that that person is forced to consider their own foundations and hopefully we can show the inadequacy of their own foundation.

01:22:26

Yes, it's amazing how some of these things have just developed within the last decade, such as the legalization of same -sex marriage and so on.

01:22:39

And you had extremely liberal political figures who opposed that at one time, including the

01:22:47

Clintons, both Hillary and Bill, and Barack Obama. During the earlier years of his presidency, he opposed same -sex marriage.

01:22:57

Now, once it has become legal, it's as if everyone is supposed to automatically jump in lockstep with the leftists imposing this upon society.

01:23:12

And we are not to question it. In fact, we are to celebrate it. It's not enough just to tolerate it. We are being forced to celebrate it, or people are trying to force us to celebrate it.

01:23:24

And they cannot deny, if they were being honest, which of course they very rarely ever are, they cannot deny that we are basically guinea pigs in their experiment.

01:23:35

And especially children are guinea pigs in this grotesque experiment where they make it as if these leftists have become very quickly experts on these issues that are very new.

01:23:52

I'm not saying homosexuality is new, but there are certain things that are new in regard to our country, in regard to relatively new, the legality of adopting children, homosexuals adopting children, and people of the same gender marrying each other.

01:24:12

This is really just a grotesque experiment, isn't it? Yeah, and I just want to get back to something also, and I agree,

01:24:20

I agree. You know, our children are being subjected to this kind of stuff, and they are, especially at the very young age, they're not equipped to even know how to think about these things.

01:24:30

But getting back to something else, I mean, it's very easy to talk about these things and kind of get bogged down in just quickly responding to a question or explaining something.

01:24:40

But I want to talk a little bit about how young people can address these things. I mean, when we talk about apologetics and defending the faith, whether it's against atheism or leftist ideology,

01:24:51

I want to get back to this question of how do you know? You see, when we speak of apologetics, that we need to be equipped and be able to give an answer, kids can do this.

01:25:01

I mean, perhaps I use big words when I explain something, but if we wanted to break it down, we can teach kids to ask the how -do -you -know question, equipping them with what the

01:25:14

Christian worldview is, having them know what that is and what their foundation is, and just simply just say, hey, you know, how do you know that?

01:25:21

You know, how do you justify that? Young people could ask those questions, and so we need to teach our young people to be very intentional in their conversations, and every word that they speak needs to be moving towards a specific goal, and I think we need to teach young people to think in those categories.

01:25:37

I talk about when young people go to youth group and they're with their friends or when they're hanging out with their friends in different contexts.

01:25:46

Don't waste your time when you hang out with your friends, whether they're Christians or non -Christians. Have intentional discussions.

01:25:53

If they're Christians, challenge one another to train each other to think sharply. I have friends that I do that with, and I've greatly benefited, both intellectually and just spiritually, being challenged to move, you know, deeper into my faith.

01:26:07

When I'm speaking with unbelievers, I'm challenged to be more intentional, to recognize openings that God grants me to present the gospel.

01:26:15

I think we should think in these categories, because young people can do this. We can get bogged down in the whole, you know, transgender, homosexuality, what if someone says this, that, or the other thing?

01:26:25

Sometimes it's good to simplify things and just learn how to challenge someone at their foundation instead of getting bogged down in a lot of the details.

01:26:34

Do you think it is appropriate, because to me it seems like a very logical thing, is if you're sitting down with young people, and you're telling them about some things that they may want to bring up to lost children with a secular worldview, if evolution is true, if we are merely evolved bags of protoplasm, if God does not exist, then who's to say that a massacre in a school is wrong?

01:27:14

How can you even develop the understanding of stating emphatically what is right, what is wrong, what is good, and what is evil?

01:27:24

If we are just animals, animals in the wild kill each other all the time. Would this be an appropriate approach to get people to really reconsider their whole concept of good and evil?

01:27:39

To give you an example, I brought this up recently, but Jeffrey Dahmer, after he made a profession of faith in Christianity and was baptized and gave his testimony during an interview, he said that one of the reasons that he had alleviated a troubled conscience when he was murdering young men and cannibalizing their body parts was that he viewed them as just animals.

01:28:15

He believed in evolution, and of course there's no doubt some satanic influence going on there that really heightened that kind of a mindset and worldview, because an average person who's an evolutionist would never do that, but it gave greater freedom to him in his mind to act accordingly.

01:28:36

If you could just comment what I said. Yeah, I think what you've just done is applied that passage that I mentioned in Proverbs, where it says, you know, answer not the fool, but then answer the fool, you know, so that he can see the foolishness of his ways.

01:28:49

What you're doing is you are granting the truth of the unbeliever's worldview and showing where it leads.

01:28:56

Jason Lyle, who's a Christian apologist and actually a PhD astrophysicist— Yeah, I'm trying to get him on this show, by the way, so keep praying about that.

01:29:04

Oh, good, good, good. Well, he was doing a talk—he always recalls this story where he presents the evidence for biblical creation and critiques the evolutionary perspective, and he'll say, well, you know, based on the evolutionary worldview, you're related to broccoli.

01:29:21

And some of the evolutionists in the audience were kind of getting uptight about that, and so after his talk, you know, they approached him and said, hey, you know, why were you poking fun at our perspective?

01:29:32

And so Dr. Lyle says, well, don't you believe we're all related, you know, to a common ancestor, that we are, you know, cousins to broccoli?

01:29:39

And they're like, well, yeah. He's like, well, then what's the problem? I'm just—if you're only being pessimistic, then you should really reevaluate what you believe.

01:29:47

And I think that's precisely what you just did in bringing up the example. If evolution is true, an atheistic evolutionary perspective is true, then there is no rhyme or reason for anything that we do.

01:29:57

There are moral evolutionists out there, moral atheists out there, but they are moral if they are in spite of their evolutionary perspective.

01:30:06

Because if evolution is true, we're nothing but, you know, advanced pond scum, as they say.

01:30:12

So what we want to do is hypothetically grant the truth of the perspective and show the absurdity of that.

01:30:19

Clearly we have a, you know, this sense that other persons are of greater value than just this, you know, a complex organism.

01:30:28

And I think that is where we can appeal to the image of God in every man. And this is one of the things that these are one of the important elements of the

01:30:37

Christian worldview, and it's one of the important elements of the method of apologetics.

01:30:42

What am I doing when I'm sharing my faith with someone, when I'm defending the faith? I'm not adding new content to someone who is ignorant.

01:30:51

What does Romans chapter 1 say? All men know that God exists such that they're without excuse, because what can be known about God has been made known to them, because God has shown it to them.

01:31:00

What we're doing in apologetics is removing the mask and showing that they know the

01:31:06

God that we're speaking of. And one of the ways we do that is to show that in a worldview that doesn't have

01:31:13

God, how do you account for that moral inclination that you have, that moral feeling that when something is being done that...

01:31:22

Are you there brother? I think our guest got cut off. Well, hopefully he will call back as we are actually providentially right at the point we are supposed to get our final station break.

01:31:37

So I hope that our guest Eli Ayala calls back, and I'm sure he will, or at least

01:31:43

I'm confident he will. For those of you who want to join us on the air during this last 25 minutes or so, send us an email with a question for Eli at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:31:56

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages with more of Eli Ayala right after this final break with messages from our sponsors.

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01:36:03

A Visit to the Pastor's Study program. And he, as I said earlier, strongly recommended

01:36:09

Elias Ayala to be our guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are discussing the need for biblical apologetics for the young in the age of school massacres.

01:36:20

And I don't know what happened earlier, Eli, but we got cut off there, and I'm assuming you're back on.

01:36:26

Yep, yep, I got you. Okay, we have RJ in White Plains, New York, who has a question for you.

01:36:36

I find it so amazing that there seems to be great ignorance amongst many, if not most, liberals in regard to the racist connection with evolution.

01:36:49

The fact that the Nazis used this as a tool to indoctrinate people, that those who are not of the white

01:37:00

Aryan race were closest to our ancestors, so -called, in the ape family, and that that kind of thinking has been an indoctrinating tool for races for many, many years.

01:37:15

It's amazing how many people that I speak with who are liberal either deny that this is true or they are totally ignorant of this.

01:37:25

And we have Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, who is clearly, from the documented historical account, a racist who believed that the black race should disappear from the face of the earth through the sterilization of black women, and we could go on and on and on.

01:37:50

Should this be a primary thing that we let our youth know about? Well, in regards to apologetics and argumentation, we want to be very careful not to suggest that because evolutionists were racist and used evolution as a basis to justify their position, that therefore evolution is false.

01:38:14

To the implications of a view, it's not necessarily connected to the truth of the view.

01:38:19

Oh right, of course, of course. Same thing, you know, look at all of the violence that religion has produced, therefore religion is false.

01:38:26

Or, you know, during the crusade, you know, Christians committed many atrocities, therefore

01:38:31

Christianity is false. We want to avoid that line of reasoning. So it can be useful in discussion in bringing these up, like, hey, look, evolution has produced some of these other concepts that seem to be consistent with the perspective, as long as we don't try to take it too far by suggesting that therefore evolution is false.

01:38:50

If we want to disprove evolution, you need to do it on a different basis than that, but I suppose that can be a helpful thing to bring up in discussion.

01:38:57

Yes, obviously that would not be a way you disprove it, but the way that very often in this day and age, of course, that those on the left promote evolution,

01:39:13

Darwinian evolution, as if it is a fact, and they view, we who are

01:39:22

Christians who believe in intelligent design, we believe in a creator, and we specifically believe that God and Jesus Christ, in fact, has created all things, we are the ones that are in some fashion viewed as the bigots trying to impose our view on everyone else, when they are the loving, tolerant, and caring people who just view evolution as a mere fact of science, even though scientists still call it the theory of evolution, that people behave as if this is still, or is, a fact.

01:40:05

Yeah, well, we've got to be very careful when we debate evolution. I mean, one of the key things that I like to teach my students is the importance of defining one's terms.

01:40:14

You know, evolution is an umbrella term, it could have different applications. There is a way in which evolution is a fact, and a way in which it is not, and we need to make a distinction between those different kinds of evolution.

01:40:27

For example, I think Jason Lyle, again, the gentleman that I mentioned before, makes a very important distinction between what he calls operational science and historical science.

01:40:39

Operational science is the kind of science that goes into building spaceships and technology, based off things we could observe.

01:40:47

Historical science is more theoretical, based off certain assumptions, and based on those assumptions we build theories and interpret the evidence that are consistent with those underlying assumptions.

01:40:57

When we're dealing with evolution, that's precisely what we're dealing with. Not an observational science, but a historical science that's based off of assumptions.

01:41:07

And so, from our perspective, we want to, A, define our terms, and B, challenge the assumptions that go into the particular point of discussion.

01:41:17

So, for example, we want to be very careful when we say evolution is just a theory. We need to define what we mean by evolution, and we need to also challenge the very notion of what makes something a, quote, fact.

01:41:32

You see, a lot of people ask the question, who has more evidence? The creationists or the evolutionists?

01:41:38

And the answer is neither. Both the creationists and the evolutionists have the same evidence.

01:41:44

What's the differing factor? It's really the interpretation of that evidence. And the interpretation of the evidence that we do observe is going to be based upon our undergirding worldview perspective.

01:41:55

And that's why I emphasized the importance before, when we're trying to teach young people, the importance of our worldview.

01:42:02

You see, the worldview that we have is that intellectual lens that we use to interpret reality.

01:42:08

And coming from a biblical worldview perspective, we look at the same evidence as the evolutionists, and we come to different conclusions.

01:42:15

Why? Not because one view is stronger than the other just by observation, but because we have different starting points.

01:42:21

And so, we want to be very careful. When we say something's a fact, we want to challenge the assumptions that go into the very method of investigation that leads that person to come to the conclusion that it's a fact.

01:42:32

And I think from the biblical perspective, the biblical worldview perspective, we can make sense out of the very notion of fact, whereas if the evolutionary perspective is true, you have problems with the method of science itself, the idea that human beings are rational beings.

01:42:51

On the evolutionary perspective, that's very problematic. And so, when we talk about evolution versus creation, we don't want to go back and forth discussing, quote, the evidence.

01:43:01

We really need to get to the foundation, which is the interpretation of the evidence, that worldview clash that we have between them.

01:43:08

And I think when we approach the topic from that perspective, I think it's much easier to talk with the evolutionists and to put forth that very strong challenge at that worldview level.

01:43:18

Would that be a tenet of presuppositionalism that you're explaining? It would be a tenet, yes.

01:43:26

In other words, I acknowledge that my worldview is in diametric opposition to the unbelieving worldview.

01:43:35

And so in that sense, yes, it's a presuppositional element that I want to examine those issues at a worldview level.

01:43:41

But if someone who took a more classical approach to apologetics can also bring that into the discussion.

01:43:48

I don't think they can do it in a biblically consistent way, obviously because I'm coming from a different theological backdrop than the classicalist would.

01:43:57

But yes, it is a very important feature of presuppositional apologetics to examine the worldview.

01:44:03

And this is super important because when you discuss specific evidences, you're not getting to the core.

01:44:09

What happens when we discuss evidence? You're going to come into a clash. What is that clash? It's the disagreement over the interpretation.

01:44:16

And if you're just disagreeing over the interpretation without addressing that fundamental worldview issue that affects our interpretation, you're really going to be talking past the person.

01:44:26

And we need to be able to bring that out in discussion. I think it cuts right to the core of the difference between the believer and unbeliever.

01:44:34

It's not an issue of evidence, it's the issue of intellectual framework with which we interpret the evidence. Yeah, because if you're focusing on evidence, very often it is going to be a contest between who is more educated in the arguments of science.

01:44:53

And the average Christian does not necessarily need to be trained as a scientist to be able to explain in detail the scientific evidence.

01:45:06

And I think that that even goes in alignment with presuppositionalism. And by the way,

01:45:14

I agree with you that we have to be clear in our terminology when we use terms such as evolution, it would probably be better if we would specifically use the term

01:45:24

Darwinian evolution if we're going to be discussing that. But at the same time, people do use an abbreviated type of language, even when we talk as reformed

01:45:37

Christians. Some might say, man does not have free will. That's a simplification or an oversimplification, because even our confessions say that man does have a free will in a complementarian sense, where they are free to act upon their desires.

01:45:58

They are not forced by either God or the devil to act upon what they want to do.

01:46:07

But the issue is, who wants to obey God? And who has been enabled to obey

01:46:14

God? And that's where the deeper concepts of soteriology come in with the reformed

01:46:20

Christians. Right. And I think that can be a problem and a stumbling block when we talk in overgeneralization.

01:46:28

I think we need to be very intentional about defining our terms. And this is the reason, coming from the

01:46:36

Reformed perspective, why is Reformed theology so misunderstood? Not because the theology is confusing, but the language that we use when we're arguing online or whatever the case may be, we use unclear language.

01:46:51

And so when it said, well, we deny free will, the person who doesn't know your theology is going to take that a certain way, and he's going to misrepresent your perspective.

01:46:59

And whose fault is that? For the most part, it's the person who is putting forth the idea. And so we need to be able to clarify and be able to have patience to unpack what we're saying, instead of just using slogans and phrases that are just kind of, you know, they simplify what we're really trying to say.

01:47:17

Right. And, of course, multitudes of people who are enemies of Reformed theology never even bothered to read even half or a third or a quarter of a book by a

01:47:30

Reformed apologist. Many of them are just parroting anti -Calvinists and adopting what these anti -Calvinists say is truth in their descriptions of what we believe.

01:47:41

They're caricatures and slanders of what we believe. Right. Which makes our view, which makes our position much more challenging, in that we now have to, in a sense, help them along.

01:47:55

Since they're not coming from that background of being aware of what we believe when we get in discussion, we need to be very intentional about defining our terms.

01:48:03

Because we know that they're not off studying, you know, our material in detail and trying to honestly understand us in some respects.

01:48:13

Let's see, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, do you have suggestions of books specifically written to bring the apologetics world to youth?

01:48:31

I don't know a specific book that's geared towards youth, but I do know some books that a young person can pick up and read and understand.

01:48:41

And it really goes into, you know, teaching people how to think biblically.

01:48:48

For example, since I follow the apologetic methodology known as presuppositional apologetics,

01:48:55

I believe it's the consistent Reformed method. So I guessed correctly then. Yeah, you guessed correctly.

01:49:03

The first book that I would suggest to people is the book Always Ready by Greg Thompson.

01:49:10

Always Ready. Yeah, that's his classic work that you don't even need to be a theonomist or a

01:49:17

Calvinist necessarily to appreciate and glean much truth from that.

01:49:24

Right, and the chapters are super short but packed with scriptural defenses of this particular method, a very powerful method.

01:49:33

Just in short, if I were to summarize the presuppositional method is that the proof of the truth of the

01:49:39

Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all. Now that's a bold claim, but the book unpacks what that means, the biblical grounds for apologetics, how we are to actually use it in real conversation.

01:49:55

And so that's a really good introductory kind of level, you know, book that you can walk a young person through.

01:50:04

Well, before I take any more listener questions, I want you to make sure that you have about five minutes of uninterrupted time to really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners, especially in regard to the need for biblical apologetics for the young in an age of school massacres.

01:50:23

Yeah. Well, if I could summarize my desire, it's really, and it's not just an application to apologetics, it's really that the young people who profess faith in Christ, that they seek to have their minds transformed.

01:50:40

Right? It's learning to grow in the knowledge of God and how to apply biblical truth to all areas of our lives, not just apologetics.

01:50:49

And if you think about it, one of the most powerful apologetics that we can have is the way that we live.

01:50:57

You see, when you're sharing your faith with unbelievers, it's not all the time that you're talking about these intellectual arguments and evidence for this and worldview this, that, or the other thing.

01:51:07

A lot of the time, people look at the way we live, how we speak, how we act, and that can be a very powerful witness, sometimes even greater than an intellectual argument.

01:51:17

And so if we grow towards having our minds transformed into the image of Christ, and that is our heart's desire as we live our life, right?

01:51:27

If that's our goal, I think that is going to have a transformative power, not just in presenting a life that is honoring to God in front of a sinful generation, but it will also trickle into that area of apologetics, that we'll be able to apply scriptural truth to unbelief as we share with unbelievers, and we're able to do it with grace, with understanding and patience, and with an eloquence and sharpness that even as we speak the truth in love, we're not compromising biblical truth.

01:51:58

And this is really important for young people to wrap their heads around, because a lot of times, even from the

01:52:06

Christian perspective, a lot of young Christian, you know, young men and women, we falter too easily because we're afraid to offend.

01:52:15

We need to grab hold to the biblical truth that the gospel by nature is offensive, but that doesn't mean we, you know, are to offend people.

01:52:24

If someone's going to be offended, let them be offended by the message, but let us conduct ourselves in a way that reflects

01:52:31

Christ in us. And so my goal for young people in regards to apologetics and living in an age that we're living in, live a life that is consistent with your profession and have thinking that is consistent with your profession.

01:52:48

If Jesus Christ is Lord of your life, then he's Lord over your mind. And so as we learn in school or when we're in church, take the learning process as a form of worship to God, so that when we learn things, we take very seriously that the objects of our knowledge as we submit it to the glory of God, and we pray that God helps us to use the things that we're learning for his glory.

01:53:10

And that will include areas of apologetics, that will include areas of our relationship, that will include areas of how we are to conduct ourselves to our parents, right?

01:53:20

A lot of young people struggle with their relationship with their parents. It honors God when we think of our relationship with our parents in a way that reflects

01:53:28

Scripture, that we honor God by honoring our parents. We show the truth of our faith to friends when we honor our parents, even when there's disagreement, when people look at you and say, you know what, wow, he doesn't agree with his parents, but look, he's such an obedient kid, my goodness, why are you like that?

01:53:46

And of course, opportunities to share our faith arise out of that. That's happened in my own life. And so it's a change of our thinking, which will then trickle off in how we live our lives.

01:53:57

And so that's kind of my goal in encouraging young people to get into apologetics is really to have a transformed mind and allow that to trickle into all areas of life.

01:54:08

Okay, we have time for a couple of our listener questions. We have a

01:54:13

Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:54:20

I heard Chris, the host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, express his disgust with a quote that is often attributed to Francis of Assisi, preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.

01:54:36

I think that many people are using that as an excuse to not threaten their relationships with other people by merely trying to be good without offending them with the gospel itself.

01:54:52

And I agree with you that we are not to add our own offenses to a gospel proclamation, but don't you think that this lifestyle or friendship evangelism can be dangerous or, at the very least, disobedient to God, even though it may contain elements that are true and useful?

01:55:12

Yes, it can be dangerous, right? We have to have a balanced view on this. It's often said, for example, that actions speak louder than words.

01:55:21

You ever hear that expression? Yes. In reality, actions don't speak at all. Actions need to be interpreted, you see.

01:55:30

And so when we perform good acts or we're nice to people or we're, quote, serving people, without a proper worldview context to make sense out of that, we're really not saying anything.

01:55:42

And so our actions need to be joined together with a message that points to the foundation as to why we are acting the way we're acting.

01:55:52

You see, if necessary, use words. I think it's always necessary to use words to explain why we are performing certain actions.

01:56:00

Why are you so nice to the people who are unpopular in school? Why are you so nice to people who are viewed as outcasts?

01:56:08

Words are necessary to explain that. And those words need to have the content of the gospel. And so the gospel is not mere actions.

01:56:17

The gospel is also words that describe those actions. And so I think there needs to be a very balanced view of the importance of words coupled with our actions.

01:56:26

Just like the Epistle of James would teach us. Yeah, that's right.

01:56:34

You know, faith without works is dead. That's true. Our faith actually demonstrates the—I'm sorry, our works demonstrate the genuineness of our faith.

01:56:44

And so, yeah. But again, what is our faith? That needs to be expressed in words, and it's balanced with actions consistent with those words.

01:56:52

Right. In fact, there would have been no Christian martyrs, and Jesus Christ would never have been murdered, other than the foreordained plan of God, if people were only behaving nice to show their faith.

01:57:07

It was their words that got them executed. Right. And Jesus himself is described as the

01:57:13

Word become flesh. I mean, what—you know, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was God. What does

01:57:18

Jesus do? He does what words do. It points to the meaning of things. Jesus reveals to us what the

01:57:25

Father's like, and he doesn't do it merely through actions. By the way, we have an anonymous listener that I want to get his question in real quick before we run out of time.

01:57:33

An anonymous listener from Michigan says, I'm 61 years old and always get frustrated and angry when forced to explain what's wrong with an opposing worldview.

01:57:43

In other words, my frustration disconnects my ability to argue intelligently. How do you keep your cool?

01:57:50

What advice can you give? Well, keeping your cool really comes to the confidence you have in your own perspective.

01:57:58

If you're confident of the truth of your own worldview, then you shouldn't lose your cool.

01:58:04

You should have patience and understanding as you're expressing why you think another perspective is true.

01:58:09

I don't feel threatened by other positions, because I'm very confident of my own. But when people are not confident of their own positions, they get upset very quickly, they don't want to have to express their view, they think that by their inadequate expressions of their own perspective, they're kind of hurting their own position.

01:58:25

So being confident of the truth of your own perspective, which includes, by the way, the conduct that we should be showing when sharing our faith, it includes responding to people with gentleness and respect.

01:58:37

So we need to know the truth of our perspective, and we want to seek to live consistently with that perspective, which includes addressing unbelievers with love, patience, gentleness, but also with a firm, uncompromising spirit for the truth of our own perspective.

01:58:53

Well, I know that your website, or at least the website for the Historical Bible Society, where you are a team member, that website is historicalbiblesociety .org,

01:59:06

historicalbiblesociety .org. Any other contact information you care to give? Oh, well, when you go to the historicalbiblesociety .org,

01:59:13

on the top right, there's a drop -down menu that says, Take 10. And that is our 10 -minute apologetics blog, where I write the articles there.

01:59:21

And so if anyone has any questions that they want to see written out as an article, they could email me at diggingdeeper143 at gmail .com.

01:59:31

I'm always looking for article content, so if anyone has any questions, I can write up an article in response to their question.

01:59:37

I want to thank you so much for being my guest, Eli. I look forward to your return as a guest to Iron Trepans Iron Radio. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions today.

01:59:47

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.