The Laborers' Podcast- Theology Proper

Church Signs, Welcome Language, and the Meaning of Membership

Thank you for watching. Tonight, we're going to be talking about theology proper, the doctrine of God. We hope you will stick around and join us.

Welcome to the Laborer's Podcast, which is a part of the Truth in Love Network. Join us as together we strive to grow up together in all things into Christ. Subscribe and follow the Truth in Love Network on Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, and iTunes.

Now, let's join our laborers for tonight's broadcast.

Welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. Again, we thank you for watching. We can pray for you. Let us know if we can answer any questions. We'd love to try to do that. If you have any critique, we'll take that as well.

But the comment section is open and we would love to hear from you. At least tell us hello. We'd love to hear from you. I'm with Big John who does Real Talk with Big John podcast, Andy Cain by his Grace podcast, and Tyler Bread of the Word podcast.

How are you guys doing tonight?

Doing well. Happy to be here. Good. And was that the first time we've had that intro? Second time. Second. I think it was really cool. Thank you, Tyler. And big shout out to my buddy with a golden radio voice in Emporia, Virginia, Andy Lucy for providing the voiceover.

Absolutely.

Thank you to all those guys. I think it looked great too. And tonight's going to be the first night for the outro video, Tyler's new outro video. So we'll be the first night for that. So please let us know that you're watching.

Say hello. We'd love to hear from you. Glad you guys are doing well. Thank you for joining us tonight. Let's start out with this. Before we get into theology proper and talk about the doctrine of God, I sent you guys the question that I wanted to ask initially, start off with, and I'll tell you where the question comes from.

So it comes from two places. Not too long ago here locally, there was a church who had a church sign and it took a pretty firm stance, a stance that I agreed with on this gender issue. Now, pictures were taken.

It blew up the internet. There were strong supporters and then they took flack for it. So it wasn't long after the, and I'm not, I'm not making any guesses on motivation, timing or whatnot. I'm just kind of reporting on what happened.

So there was the sign. And then not long after the post on Facebook took place, they changed their sign. And the sign currently says, you are welcome here. That's example number one. Example number two, there was, which is interesting.

There's another Facebook group that I'm a part of. And people will sometimes ask, I'm new to the area. I'm looking for a church. Can you recommend a church? And people will start, you know, commenting about their church.

And they said, we were looking for a church that is welcoming. And somebody made the comment, well, shouldn't every church be welcoming? So my question that I want to post to you guys is when you're driving down the road and you see a church sign and it says you are welcome, or it says all are welcome here.

How do you as ministers, as guys who've studied theology, study scripture, how do you respond in your mind to a sign like that? And I can give you my response kind of at the end. Whoever wants to start.

Take it away, brother Andy.

Well, I think Rob likes to get me in trouble. I'm just, the older I get, and a lot of this has to do with the way I was raised, the way I spent a lot of my early adult life. So the older I get now, I'm, it's not that I'm special or more soloscriptor than everybody else, but I find myself becoming increasingly adamant about it.

So in my understanding, or in my view, a church sign should probably have something to focus on something that's biblical. So I would put something to the effect on a church sign of we worship Christ.

We want to see Christ build his kingdom. Something that's 100 biblical accurate, because to say all are welcome, you're opening yourself up to a man-centered political understanding of that statement.

And as much as people don't want to hear it, the church isn't for unbelievers. It's not. It doesn't mean that, obviously it goes without saying we're commanded to demonstrate the love of Christ first and foremost among the brethren.

And that's how the world, John 13, 35, and 37 knows that we are his disciples is by how they see how we love each other. But within that, we also demonstrate love of Christ first and foremost by calling all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

But we can demonstrate love by, you know, helping people so on and so forth. But what really, what it really comes down to is, are you going to bow to wokeness or are you going to bow to scripture? And people that want to slide and see, if we were to say, anyone that is a Christian that professes the name of Christ wants to come to our church.

In general, they're always welcome. But there's always investigation. There's, if a church is doing things properly, they're going to investigate that person's doctrine before they would add them to the rolls of membership.

You would not have a Trinity denier that is welcome at your church unless they went through a repentance of that denial. So this idea that just in a blanket way, all are welcome is not true in and of itself.

Now, would I say that an unsaved sinning person is welcome to attend a church service? Unless they're causing disruption or of some kind or something beyond that, I see no reason to deny them entry to the building.

But you would never cater, change, or alter a worship service to meet their needs because they're coming from an unregenerate state. And so that's just kind of where I would start it. The other guys may take it a little further or deeper, but that's just kind of my initial thought there.

I'll build off of that a little bit if I could pull that thread a little bit. Just that phrase, all are welcome. We're not in opposition to that phrase, all are welcome. That's not something that we, the four of us are saying, no, that's wrong.

Some people aren't welcome. But we are saying that there are nuances to that phrase. There are some context points that we have to identify. What does it mean to be welcome? What are we welcoming them into?

Because how I'm driving by that sign, I might look at that and think, welcoming in one way, say, they will accept me for who I am and just not say anything about it. And that's maybe not what's being intended by the sign.

That's maybe not an accurate representation, but that might be something that comes to mind when I see that word welcome. And so sometimes we have to take a step back and think about what the sentence truly means.

What is the authorial intent there? Because in a sense, yes, cannibals are welcome to attend at your church. However, when we say welcome, we don't mean partaking in that and being promoted in that sense in the church, that this is good behavior.

Because if you're going to be, quote, welcomed into the body, as opposed to welcomed into the building, that looks very different.

I think that to some degree, I see exactly what you fellows are saying. And I don't want to come off as just being an odd dude out. But to some degree, I think you have to take more than just the context of the statement.

So much you have to take the context in what you're living in. Ultimately, you're right. The church is the called out bride of Christ. And the called out bride of Christ is not chosen by men, right? This is a divinely orchestrated salvation that we have in such a manner that I can't just say, you're welcome to become part of the bride of Christ.

This is, you have to take this up with the Lord. This is something I can't do for anybody. And nobody can do that for anybody save Christ alone. The thing is that we have built the way we do church in America around the idea that Sunday morning is also evangelism moment.

So now, while I think that it is biblically incorrect for Sunday morning to be a time set aside for evangelism, that's the world we find ourselves in. We can't change the times that we live in where everybody that's in the country is going to know, well, you can't be a part of the church unless you're part of the bride of Christ.

We've confused what church is so bad that people who are members of church still think it's a building at times, not an organism, you know, divine organism. So I don't have a problem with a sign that says that given the context that we're in right now in America, that if you're going to have a ministry that has a Sunday morning that is equal parts dedicated to evangelism to the lost as much as it is to try to disciple the saved, you might as well, you might as well.

I'd have one quick follow-up. I think what you take what Tyler and John said and combine it, and that's what I was trying to say. It's pretty much what, because John's right. Whether we agree or not, we live in the times we do.

Church is the way it is. So in some cases, some people may only hear a gospel presentation at a worship service on a Sunday morning. So we need to make sure we're always balanced and understand that, yes, if someone's coming and they're clearly not saved, if they start asking about church membership, then you go to Tyler's side and what I was saying, you have to explain what that looks like.

But we all, I don't see, now I am opposed to make it because of my independent fundamental background. You should not be making every single Sunday morning. I'm not saying John's saying this, but you should not make every Sunday morning an evangelistic service.

It's not there to have a Billy Graham style evangelistic service. The Sunday morning worship service, if your church has one, should have more than just that. But I don't see anything wrong with, I mean, you should be calling people to repent and believe, even if you're 100 sure that everybody in front of you is saved.

There's nothing wrong with that. So I think there's a great balance in there.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like you, Andy. I think everything that you guys said is, are points that I would make from my perspective. I don't think that I could put up that sign just because there's too many qualifications involved that you would have to make.

And you guys hit on just about all of them. There's just not big enough. Exactly. You don't know the context of the church and why they're writing it or their motivation behind it, what they mean behind all are welcome here.

Because you can have a liberal woke church that means that all are not just welcome into the building, but welcome into the body of Christ. But you could have a more conservative church that means you are welcome to visit, but then you would have to, like you said, Andy, make those qualifications later.

But then you would have confusion it seems like with that. Well, I thought I was welcome here. You know, once you start making those qualifications, well, you are welcome to visit, but you're not welcome to join.

Well, that's not what your sign said. So there's just so many qualifications.

You just took me back to a dark place that worked at a food line. How many times have I heard, that's not what your sign said.

So just Here's your sign. Yeah, just for clarity and confusion purposes. You know, I'm totally on board with what Tyler was saying. You know, people, all people are welcome to visit and join. And I think it was you, Andy, that said as long as they're not being disruptive.

But to avoid that confusion and all that other stuff and all the other qualifications, I personally would avoid it. It just seems like we could put more biblical things on a side. If someone's attending your church and they're unregenerate,.

It certainly could not hurt them because they're already ungenerate. So to be there and see saints singing and worshiping God and be under the preaching of the word of God,.

It might just convict them further. Right. So I'll ask this question for those who are watching. If I'm going to minimize my screen so I can see any comments that may come across. If you're watching and you were born again in a church service comment, I wasn't.

You know, I went to church for the first time as a Christian. When I went to church as a Christian was the first time I'd been to church as a Christian. I was saved in my living room. So the times that I went to church prior to salvation, obviously I wasn't.

I was welcome to come and sit every Sunday, although that was completely unregenerate. But almost everyone I know was born again in a church service, which begs the question, would it make us not wildly hypocritical to say that while I was saved during a church service, you can only come to this building if you're a Christian?

I mean, to some degree.

Well, let me add to that, that I was saved in a church camp. I've been going to church for the better part of the year. And so I went to camp with the youth group and that's when I was saved. So again, I was welcomed into the building.

I was welcomed into the activities, just not the role, so to speak, into the bride of Christ as John so eloquently put.

So now I went through and this was, I guess, a big Southern Baptist thing way back when. But I went through a salvation class, signed the back of the book, indicating that I prayed the prayer, but I don't believe that God saved me until later.

And it was in my bedroom by my bedside. I'll tell you this.

I was raised in a Methodist church. Went to something called catechism at 13 years old or something like that was when we joined the church. They sprinkled my head with water the following Sunday after alcoholic training.

Never one time was I asked if I was a believer. Never one time did anybody pray with me. Anybody set me aside and explained to me I was lost or who Jesus was. I was brought in, sit down, fill out this paperwork, do what the lady says, don't cause no trouble.

Next week I got sprinkled by a preacher and ain't got a clue why I'm sprinkled. Now I've given a job with a funky looking candle thing and I'm supposed to light a candle every Sunday and then put that sucker out before we go home.

Don't burn the church down. These are your jobs. They give me a lighter. I was to keep up with it. And I was supposed to change the tape deck underneath the pastor's pulpit whenever he put his microphone on.

That's how he recorded the sermons and give out to the shut-ins who couldn't make it to church on Sunday. Not one time was the things of God ever expressed to me in such a manner as I might know that I was lost, but I was most certainly welcome to be there.

And whenever the preacher would preach things that would cause me discomfort, I would get up like I'm gonna go to the altar. My mom'd be like, what are you doing? I was like, I think I need to be up there where he's talking about.

He hit me between the eyes with that. Just sit down, don't make no stink. Okay. Yes, ma 'am. Yes, ma 'am. So I mean, you gotta understand that the culture we find ourself in is radically depraved in such a manner that if you take a billboard sign that looks like a drive-in movie theater screen and you put your qualifications for entering in in such a way that you have to be a theologian to understand them, you're not gonna be serving anyone except for a handful of folks who are already saved, which is fine, I suppose.

That's fine. But if the impact is to do as much as you can with the time that you have here, I think you need to not be seeker sensitive and not be out there trying to get souls to the polls or nothing like that.

Don't make your church about elections. Don't make your church about barbecue fundraisers and all this other stuff. Make your church about worshiping Christ and teaching who Christ is, but also making sure that you don't forget that you're supposed to love and preach the gospel in love in such a way that those that are lost might be convicted and drawn.

It's a delicate thing to feed sheep and to protect sheep at the same time to be a minister to those who are not yet sheep in the fold or at least not sheep in your fold. Right.

Another thing that I thought about as I was thinking through the church sign question was unpacking those qualifications. You know, if you do have the sign, all are welcome. Somebody comes in and you have to start unpacking all those qualifications.

And, you know, a lot of times you get pushback. You're talking about you use the word hypocrite. A lot of times where people don't go to church because there's too many hypocrites in the church. You know, you always get a lot of pushback.

And I was thinking about, you know, one of those qualifications that we have to unpack and explain to folks is when it comes to membership and joining joining the body because you are a believer in Christ.

You know, it doesn't mean that we are without sin. We are just people who admit that we're sinners, but we're repenters. Sure. You know, we don't we don't come in and ask people to accept our sin. Like Tyler was saying, you know, accept us as we are, that we may continue in sin.

What we mean is we are believers and Jesus has made us repenters. We see that we see that our sin is wrong and against God. And we we continue to repent and move away from it.

Well, I mean, it's Proverbs 11, one that says a false balance is an abomination to the Lord and just wait is his delight. I always preach against the extreme. So if your church is one that would focus extremely hard on, we don't want you in the building unless you're already saved an active Christian.

Well, then you have a church full of pharisaical fundamentalist morons. If you take it so far to where every Sunday morning you wish Billy Graham was there to have an altar call and it's an evangelistic service.

Well, then you have a church full of lazy Christians who think that evangelism only happens inside the building. So the balance is in the middle. It's a combination of all of it. It's recognizing that church services can be a tool to reach the loss.

But ultimately, it's us going in the world, imaging Christ, calling men to repent everywhere in Walmart, especially Walmart.

Yeah, well, I mean, you're 100 right. The ministry is to be carried out by the church. Church singular made of many members. Our job is that we're to be a living epistle of who Jesus is everywhere we go.

So that when we're asked why we're this way, we have a reason that we can give them. And whenever they are regenerate, whenever they're born again, we bring them in to our own congregations or encourage them to go to someone else's, whatever the case may be, to where they can be discipled, which is what the church is made to do, is to make disciples that they go out and they make more converts and then they bring them back.

That's the way this goes, Ephesians 4 .11. The concept, however, has been lost for so long that we find ourselves doing this, my sermons that I teach, and I teach more than I preach, not because, well, it's because it's more comfortable to me for some degree, if I'm being honest, but the other end of it is, is because there's a lot of people at our church that are Christian, are soundly saved, but there's so much that they've missed out on over the years because folks have been content with them praying, understanding who Jesus is enough for salvation and being faithful members to show up to all the events.

They give money every week and they don't get in any trouble. And a lot of pastors have been okay with that, and I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with that. That is not being biblically a good steward of the time Christ has given us on this earth.

Our job is to spend all of our days telling everybody we can about Jesus. That's our job.

Right. If I could just, before we jump into the meat of the program here tonight, if I could just restate some of what you just said, we don't need a sign that says, you are welcome here if we're going out and behaving as they are welcome.

True enough. And so I think that should be our behavior, and we won't need that sign. So let's jump into the meat of the program, talking about theology proper and the doctrine of God, and hopefully we can get through a good portion of this.

The Doctrine of God and the Meaning of Theology Proper

John, you were explaining to me this earlier, so I'll give you the first question. What is theology proper? What did you find out?

So according to Google, theology proper is the study. Oh, don't make me laugh. I'm just now getting over my cough. The study of God and his attributes. Now, I was ignorant and thought it just meant a formal study of who God is.

So as I said, before I just take that to the guys, let me run that through the old Google machine here. And whenever I saw that pop up, I said, oh, oh, okay. Well, I see what you did there, Google. The fact is that undoubtedly theology proper is a study of the attributes of God and dives into the Trinitarian attributes or the Trinitarian aspect of what we refer to as the Godhead.

Absolutely. I had to look it up too. I ain't gonna lie.

Next. Let's get into the good stuff then. So Andy, how can we prove God exists?

Why the Bible Assumes God Exists and Why Neutrality Is a Myth

Oh man, based on whose terms. So that's the question you have to ask. If you, if the atheist asked, it's gonna be a different answer. See, cause this all, when I was looking at these questions, I was like, for the vast majority of them, I could probably get the same answer for each one and it's gonna probably bore people.

But it really is simple, my friends. There, and this is, I'm sure plenty of other people have said this. I've just personally heard Dr. James White say it the most often. So I usually refer to him when I quote this, but I've heard him say it.

Durbin said it. Anybody online, you've probably heard him say it. A lot of people say this. There are no neutral worldviews. There's not. This whole, especially in politics, it just drives me up three walls.

When you hear these people talking about, well, I'm non-partist. Like, no, you're not. Come on. It's not possible. There's no neutrality. It's a myth. So once you get past that, it's very easy to deal with this.

The atheist comes to this with presuppositions. I believe in presuppositional theology. That means you can't even begin to understand your world, morality, creation, any of that existence without understanding that in the beginning, God, the Bible doesn't seek to prove his existence.

The Bible assumes it. Why? Because God wrote it. He isn't seeking to prove existence. God has no requirement to prove his existence to anyone. And even if you get into scripture where Jesus was telling, I can't remember who was in front of him at the time, but I remember he said, you won't even believe Moses and the prophets.

I could do this, do that. You're not going to believe. Why? Because you're unregenerate. The unregenerate heart will not because it doesn't want to. I think it's John chapter five, isn't it? Oh yeah. Yeah.

There you go. Yep. And I want to look at Psalm chapter two. Well, not chapter. Psalm two here. I was thinking about this Wednesday night at church when our pastor's name is Andy too. He let me preach this past summer.

I got there and said, you know, the best thing about this is if I completely mess this up, we can just blame Andy and nobody will think it was me. And he chuckled at first when he was like, wait a minute.

But this Psalm popped in my head where it says, you know, why do the nations rage and the peoples meditate on the vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against Yahweh and his anointed.

And without, we're going through reading the whole Psalm for time purposes. The bulk of the theme of the Psalm is there's no neutral worldviews. These people rage. The anger you see, the hatred you see, the rebellion you see is because they know there's a God.

Ecclesiastes talks about how God put eternity in man's heart. He has general revelation. He's without excuse. Man knows they're there. So when you get past that, when we talk about proving that God exists, I don't believe we should do that through the standpoint of we're actually trying to prove he exists or not because what goes along with that is I'm going to prove to you God exists and then you'll believe.

Like, no, you won't believe even if I make good arguments. But when you're having the conversation, you could point to things like, you know, revealed scripture, general revelation, you know, and the sheer complexity of the human cell.

I mean, I don't understand. And I know it's because God's put his spirit in my heart and I know these things, but it's like my finite mind can't even begin to understand the human cell. And that's just one piece of this creation.

So I would kind of gut start and answer it that way. You know, we need to be careful what we say when we say proving,.

You know, something like that. Gotcha. Well, I think me personally, my favorite proof, if I could be very tongue-in-cheek, one of my favorite extra biblical proofs for the existence of God is jazz music.

Because it's such a tangible application of the beauty and complexity of what God's made. There is so much packed in there and so much theory. I've been digging into music theory a little bit lately, but at the end of the day, we didn't invent music.

We didn't invent these frequencies. These are rules that we've observed. These are patterns we've observed about the world around us because everything has a frequency. So we may have given names to these notes, but ultimately God is the author of the notes.

Colossians 1 says that by him and for him, all things were made. In him, all things hold together. And so I would apply that very much to things like music, that there is a complexity there that is beautiful, that it brings glory to God.

And something like the Big Bang Theory cannot explain jazz chords. That's right.

So I'm going to build off of both what y 'all said. And in Romans, we see that what Brother Andy was talking about, general revelation. These are things that exist that anybody with senses can see, right?

For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. This is Romans 1 and 18 going to 19. Since what can be known about God is evident among them because God has shown it to them from the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, that is his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what he has made.

As a result, people are without excuse. And that's what Brother Andy was talking about a while ago when he said people are without excuse because of divine revelation. And I watched a video the other day that said the Big Bang Theory was actually on the ropes because of this new James Webb telescope satellite thing that they've put out in space.

It's observed things in space so far off that they're not behaving the way that it should behave if the theory surrounding the Big Bang was correct. So my caveat in that is not to be scared of scientific advancements because the more of them we have, the more they highlight who God is.

The better the microscope, the more the complexity we see in the cell, the more God's handiwork is revealed. The further we see in the space, the more we see the majesty and his creative hand at work in everything, you know.

Whenever we understand 440 megahertz above middle C is the perfect pitch for the key of A. That's for Brother Tyler.

Yeah, my comment was definitely in the realm of if you're in a confrontation and someone's saying, well, I won't believe in God unless you can prove he exists. You don't go down that rabbit hole. They have no true motive to actually change their mind.

In terms of how we approach the world, in terms of how I approach everything, I am to approach it the same way scripture does. And that is that God exists. He's the creator of everything. And we are to call all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

There are categories and contexts where we can have discussions about talking about the evidence of evidences for God and so on and so forth. But this is an area that I'm still very much lacking. So I know there's probably a lot of Christians out there that are woefully ignorant when it comes to knowing what conversation you're having with someone and how to approach it.

I still find myself getting drawn in sometimes. And before I know it, I'm D .D. I'm like, man, I didn't see it coming. It's because, I mean, it's that's why we have people that engage in apologetics as a life's calling, because they can provide to us the way to handle these things, because it's not something you really teach or train specifically in the church to the degree that your whole body would be to a level of someone that is doing apologetics as their life's work.

I'm with all you guys. And I would consider myself a presuppositionalist too. But then you have the verses like John just read us, where there are evidences of God's existence. So evidence is not unvaluable.

But the reason I would be a presuppositionalist is because God's going to exist whether he has shown us the evidences or not. Yeah. So I think both are valuable.

I'm kind of on the fence myself. I see good points for both sides, that I'm not necessarily committed to one way or the other. Definitely not dogmatic on it. Yeah.

I think that, you know, so I love the way Brother Ray Comfort shares the gospel. I love it. We approach every conversation the exact same way, using the law to lead men to the gospel. The Bible says the law of the Lord is perfect and can convert the soul.

So we'll not use the law of the Lord when you're trying to see folks converted, right? And I absolutely love the way that he approaches people and his heart behind it. He's very humble. But I think that if you'll watch some of his clips, the thing that he's not able to teach is the wisdom of the Holy Spirit that just comes from being called for this kind of work and being prepared and set apart by God for this work.

If you listen to him, he'll converse with people very matter of factly, but in a way that they're not offended to the point where they run off, but rather they're offended because they've heard the gospel.

And at the end of his conversations, he's flexible enough in his presupposition that if he sees things need to be addressed in a different way, you'll notice he does that. So I think there's nothing wrong with having a framework for presenting your argument.

But I think that you do need to be flexible and use the wisdom that can only come from God to approach every individual encounter so that you do it with respect. People are valuable if for no other reason than because they're image bearers of the King of Glory.

So take the time and be careful with them because they're valuable. Yeah. One of the things about presuppositional apologetics I'm learning as I'm diving into it is the main reason for starting there and starting with God is because we've got to get Christians to understand the world's not starting from a neutral place.

People that don't believe in God, they're not neutral. So if you come at it strictly from an evidentialist position of, well, I've got to be able to prove based no amount of evidence you present to the unregenerate is going to convince them unless God's working in their heart.

So some of my friends online don't like the fact that I'm not 100 dogmatic presupp but I see it a lot like Tyler and a lot of you are saying. I think there's the balance to be had. Presuppositional understands there's no neutrality that this is a person in rebellion against their creator.

But as John said, in that context of that conversation, you may recognize that this person may be more willing to listen to an evidentialist based argument.

So you got to kind of just feel it out. I think apologetics is a lot like how John described the gospel because you're not going to reason and logic somebody into responding to the gospel. It's going to be the conviction and the word of the Holy Spirit, the truth of the gospel that's going to stop them out.

And I think the same way with apologetics, we're not going to reason, like you said, Andy, we're not going to reason and logic people into believing our way. But that's right. The truth will stop them out.

If we can navigate to where we are expressing the undeniable truth, then it stops them out. Like the sky is blue. You can't deny that. And so truth, when you get to the point where you're just expressing and making truth visible, you can't deny it and it stops them out.

Um, what about the Tyler? Are you ready for this one? A little bit, a little bit deeper in the existence of God comes the question. Can you prove the self existence of God? How is God self existing?

And for that, I'm going to take a page from the classical theism side of things. And I'm going to basically say, um, logically, he would have to be self existent to do what the Bible says that he does.

When you look at the world, we occupy the way it operates. You see a lot of cause and effect that these seem to be very much ingrained in the way things happen. Ping pong gets hit by the paddle. It hits the table.

It bounces up in the air, it flies over the net, gets hit by another paddle, and it goes back and does the same thing again. There's a series of causes there, and you can trace all those causes back to an initial cause.

And it's the same way with creation, with basically reality with itself, where the earth came from, where people came from. There's all these strings of causes. And eventually, if we follow that trend, that track back far enough, there's going to be a point where we're going to have to have a first cause.