Discussing the Legacy of Greg Bahnsen with Gary DeMar

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. If you were following the previous show, which literally ended just 15 minutes ago, we had

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Chris Bolt on from Choosing Hats to talk about presuppositional apologetics applied to competing religious perspectives.

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And so that was a very, very good discussion, a lot to mull over. I know you guys, a lot of people say on the internet, you want to keep it short, but a lot of people have been enjoying these longer discussions because we'd have time to go into some of these details of the methodology and the wide range with which it can be applied.

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So I hope that you guys were enjoying that and that you return back to that for some useful content.

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If you have not already, please subscribe to the Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel. And of course, we have a podcast on iTunes.

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And so every video, every interview that I do, I rip the audio and make it into a podcast. So be sure to be getting your hands, so to speak, on that content whenever you're able to.

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Today, I have a very special guest. I've had him on before, but it is Dr. Damar.

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Gary, how would you like to be called? I know you don't call it. People call me doctor. I think I have a doctorate.

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Some people think I'm a lawyer. You just call me Gary. I don't have an earned...

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I always evaluate a doctorate in terms of how Greg Bonsi got his doctorate.

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If you don't get a doctorate that way, you really don't have a doctorate. Some people were very kind to me because of all the material

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I have written and kind of applied to Whitfield Theological Seminary to get me a doctorate.

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I was very appreciative of that, but I just really don't see that as a real life doctorate.

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So just Gary. I know I entitled this episode as discussing the apologetic legacy of Greg Bonson, but I do want people to know that the only reason why

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I know about Greg Bonson was through you. I actually... A lot of people don't know this about me, but I...

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People know me for apologetics, but I came to apologetics through the study of eschatology.

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Here's a book that I'm going to put in the view of the camera now that literally changed my life.

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And the reason for is when I read it, it shifted my thinking and then exposed me to other thinkers, which led me to Bonson, to reform theology.

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And so I always tell people, this is one of the most influential books in my life because of where it led to.

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And that is your book, Who Strays Madness. Who is this Gary DeMar guy?

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And then I visited American Vision. I was like, who's this Greg Bonson guy? And then all of a sudden, this really did challenge my paradigms and then exposed me to the people who are associated with your ministry and the books that you were selling.

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And so this definitely changed my theology and led me on a path that I have not really returned from ever since.

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So this is the whole thing about eschatology. I didn't get into eschatology just because, oh,

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I thought I'd like to get into eschatology, but it came through the back door of apologetics from two different perspectives.

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One was, of course, the atheist who looked at the Bible and said, hey, Jesus was mistaken about when he was going to return.

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And here's evidence for it, Matthew chapter 24. And when I became a new Christian, I became a

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Christian in 1973 and 1970s, most of your audience is probably much too young for this, but the hot selling book of the 1970s was the late great planet

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Earth by Hal Lindsey, who made a pretty much of a prophetic pronouncement when he said that Israel becoming a nation again in 1948 was fundamentally eschatologically significant.

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And then he went to Matthew 24, verse 34, this generation will not pass away and all these things take place, the generation four years and you can do the math, 1988.

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So sometime in the 1980s, Chuck Smith did the same type of thing. So that was necessary to deal with that from an apologetic point of view.

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And I certainly wasn't the first one to do that. But the other one was when I started working at American Vision in the early 1980s,

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I wrote a series of books called God and Government. And to try to demonstrate that government is not synonymous with politics, politics is not really the conservative movement with Ronald Reagan becoming president, the moral majority and so forth.

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And I would often go out and speak on that topic. And inevitably, someone would stand up and say, why are we bothering with all of this?

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I mean, this is coming back soon. We're living in the last days. We should just go out there and preach the gospel.

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And so I wrote the God and Government series to deal with that, as well as another book called

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Myths, Lies and Half -Truths, which dealt with a lot of apologetic issues regarding Christian involvement.

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So the two go together. It's not something you can separate. You're always going to come across people who are going to try to attack the

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Bible based upon its prophetic significance. Sure. Well, I just mentioned that before, just to say that your work has impacted a lot of people and myself included.

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And so I hope that American Vision continues to influence people and to challenge people to get back to the scriptures.

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And so I very much appreciate that about yourself and American Vision as a whole. Now, I do want to address this new book.

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I mean, there's no secret. Greg Bonson is my favorite Christian apologist.

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You know, I'm a fan, you know, I'm a fan boy. Right. But I'm amazed at how well he was able to defend the

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Christian faith, yet not compromise his convictions about the authority of scripture and how he was able to really show the strength of the

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Christian worldview when brought in comparison to these non -Christian perspectives. And so I'm amazed right now.

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Greg Bonson, I just called him my previous episode. I called Bonson the Tupac Shakur of Christian apologetics.

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Now, the reason being is not because he's gangster. I mean, Tupac was gangster, right?

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It is because when Tupac died, he kept coming out with albums like, how did this happen? You know, and so Bonson passed away in 1995.

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And yet here he is writing books. What's going on here? Let's talk. This is the reason why

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I have Gary here. OK, so talk about against all opposition. And Gary was nice enough to give me an early copy.

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I don't know if you remember. You gave me a digital copy in which I read the entire digital copy before I received my physical copy.

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And I've listened to the lectures that this is based upon. And the question that I kept receiving, and I'll give you an opportunity to answer this because people don't mind dishing out money to read some

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Bonson. OK, but the fear is what's the difference? I already have Always Ready.

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I mean, is this just the same old rehash? Why don't you tell folks the difference between a book like Always Ready and Against All Opposition?

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Well, let's say in the 1990s, we put on a a week long conference called the

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Life Preparation Conference. And Greg Bonson was the anchor speaker for that week.

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OK, we brought him in in 1991, 92 and 93. And as you mentioned, he died in 1995 and Greg was teaching there and we became good friends, not through the conference, but through the classroom.

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But I was on the student council. OK, great controversy at the seminary based upon not on his apologetics or even on eschatology, but it was over God's law and the theonomy deal.

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And as a result, there was a lot of tension between Greg and the faculty.

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Much of it was dealt with fundraising because it's hard to go out and raise money for the seminary when you had a controversial figure like like Greg Bonson.

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And so to make a long story short, I got to meet Greg that way and we became good friends.

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I was a assistant manager in the bookstore and we just kind of kept in contact because of that friendship.

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And then when I became president of American Vision, had Greg do some writing for us.

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In fact, a lot of the chapters that you see in the Always Ready book, the second part of the book were actually articles he wrote for American Vision when we had a magazine called

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Biblical Worldview. And then we put on this conference and of course,

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Greg came and he spoke the first time at the University of Alabama and then two times here in the Atlanta area at Oglethorpe University.

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Now, the reason why this book is different and anybody who's familiar with Greg's work will say, look, this is this is common stuff.

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Look, let me just tell you, presuppositional apologetics is really easy.

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You don't need a big book for it. As you know, you get to the heart of the matter with somebody on a debate.

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If you're a presuppositionalist, you don't need evidence. You don't need three volumes of evidence demands a verdict. You only need fundamental questions.

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How do you know where did you get that? What's the standard? How is this related to that?

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It's really simple. But the reason this book is is delivered these lectures to high school and college students.

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And for those who are already steeped in presuppositional apologetics, there's not a whole lot that's new in these books.

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What's new about it is the way that they're presented. And so you want to say, hey, how I want to learn more about presuppositional apologetics.

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And most people said, well, go to use the book Always Ready. Right. Always Ready isn't the easiest book.

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Now, for somebody who's kind of steeped in apologetics and some philosophy and logic and so forth, they appreciate the book and the book that we also published called

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Presuppositional Apologetics, which was a book that Greg was going to do, but never completed when he got it up there.

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Where's the dust jacket? It got lost somehow, man. I'm surprised I still have this with all the moving around and stuff.

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But this is a really excellent book. But that's again, Greg could go toe to toe with the greatest philosophers of the day.

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Sure. And at the same time, as Against All Opposition shows, he can present this to high school and college students.

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Right. So if you're homeschooling and you're looking for, I think, the best book to start your children off on apologetics, this is the book to begin with.

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In fact, you and I are doing this today. I'm going through volume two of this series.

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Pushing the antithesis was the first year Greg spoke. And then Against All Opposition is the second year

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Greg spoke. And then the third volume is going to be the third year that Greg spoke.

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I don't have a title for it right now, but it'll be about 10 chapters, be about the same size of this book. And it's there is new material in there for somebody who, hey,

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I want I want to get my feet wet with this. You go through these two books and then add always ready.

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And you're ready. I mean, you you are really ready for this. And there's a lot of just mopping up that you have to do and dealing with with particulars like Greg has in this next volume is coming out.

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He has a chapter on evolution in there and how to deal with the evolutionary model. And so these books, hey, you can give to a friend and say, hey, look, in fact, if you want to listen to it, you can listen to it.

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Here's a book you want to read through. It has a glossary in it. We did the same thing with pushing the antithesis or study questions in it.

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Subheads, pull quotes. We think the font is nice.

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It's not always ready. It's a little too jam packed for me. I agree.

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Yeah. This one is is very easy to read. The chapters aren't very long. Yeah. So that's a very

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I'm big on, you know, making things as easy as possible for for people.

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And the table of contents, you see, like there are eleven eleven chapters in this one,

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I think the next one is going to have just ten chapters, but it'd be about the same size, you know, and I think to a lot of people who access

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Bonson through his writings and he's a very clear writer. I mean, he's philosophically rigorous, very cogent in the way that he presented the points he was making.

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When I listen to apologists, for example, I've listened to almost everything William Lane Craig has put out.

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I'm not a classicalist, but I've appreciated a lot of what he's done. And although there are moments of charm, he's got the kind of intelligent cheesiness to him, right?

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It's kind of boring, you know. But when I listen to Greg, there is this unique union of intellectual strength and a a a very personable personality.

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I find myself laughing at some of that. He throws in some jokes or a way that he says something that makes what he's saying more memorable, more memorable.

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And at the same time, you get to know Greg from a different perspective than just the dry, rigorous stuff in his more professional work.

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I think a book like Against All Opposition. I mean, I've listened to the I've listened to so much audio and I just I'm just reminded of how excellent of a teacher he was, the way he told something.

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Keep in mind that what you're reading there is pretty much just the way he said it. That's right. It's a transcription.

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I have to do a lot of editing now because this this stuff was done in the 90s. I had to update a few things and go forth.

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But Greg wrote and spoke in the same way. But to tell you a little bit of personal things about Greg.

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Sure. This was high school and college kids, and oftentimes he'd come in with his sandals and white socks.

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Really? Oh, yeah. White kind of Hawaiian like shirt on picture because all the pictures he's got.

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And he kept what you I don't know if you recall in the in the audio of these, but he would do this bogus, bogus thing.

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And what he did is he got a tray from the the lunchroom and he would he brought it up here and he says, every time

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I hold this tray up, you say bogus, you hold the tray up. And of course, everybody would say bogus.

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And then it was another time we're there and kids were, you know, they would they would spread out all over the place.

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And Greg, like the mathematical formula on the spot that ended up moving all of the kids to the center of the auditorium.

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OK, but one of the funniest things was is that Greg and Gary North are both both from California.

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OK. And Greg was a real rock and roll historian. I mean, you sat down and you talk about the early days of rock and all that.

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I mean, Greg knew all this stuff. And Gary made Gary North made the comment about, you know, the

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Beach Boys really didn't really didn't live near the beach and so forth and so on.

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And Greg and Jess, we came back from lunch. He had gotten back then. It was I think they were

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Walkmans. I forget what it was, some sort of recorder. He had all these songs on from that era.

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And then he would put them on, put it on the podium and then took the microphone and bent it down so it would go through the whole

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PA system. So as the kids were coming in, they're hearing all this stuff from the from the 60s and the early early 70s.

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But he he was he was very attuned to cultural issues.

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He could talk about all kinds of all kinds of things. He Gary North was the same way that I would talk about films.

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And so Greg was the same way. He was very he was very in touch with what was going on in entertainment, media, film and so forth.

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So very relatable to the to the young people because he saw a lot of the same films they did.

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He read some of the same books and knew knew what they were talking about. And that's unusual for a guy who's got a

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PhD in epistemology. I mean, come on. He was very, very approachable as well.

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But you see, that's what I'm saying with the way this book is. I mean, it's you see his his personality come out because he was such a good teacher.

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You know, and even as you said before, this is a good introduction is because he's speaking to a younger crowd.

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When you read this book, you learn how to phrase what you know in the complicated vocabulary, how you would phrase it in kind of a down to earth sort of way, for example, when he goes over describing the difference between the rationalist, the empiricist and the pragmatist with the elephant on the barge, you know, the

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American who's the pragmatist. I was like, how much will you pay me to get the elephant? And I'm just like, that's that's such a great, you know, a way to encapsulate a pragmatic approach or an empirical approach.

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How much does the elephant weigh? You know, or when he defines rationalism, it's a it's a stop and think approach.

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I mean, that's that's simple. But it's like you don't see that a lot in philosophical literature, kind of crystallizes those main points in such an easy to understand and remember a memorable way.

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You know, a lot of that comes, I think, from Van Til. Van Til had all these, you know, there's a man in water and he's got a ladder of water and he's trying to just you can't get out of it or you you borrow from someone else's garden, you know, stolen moral principles.

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And Van Til had a whole slew of those. And most and the thing is, if you think about this, these are the memorable thing, the visual memorable depictions of a philosophical point that you can use.

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And, you know, philosophy is not easy for everyone. It's very seemingly very abstract. But Greg did, in fact, make it concrete.

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And another thing is in a lot of discussions with people who are of the of the same intellectual level as Greg or people who know the terms that are familiar with everything, you assume certain things.

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But having to deal with high school and college students, it was very important that you ended up defining terms and using illustrations and getting the point across from from a variety of perspectives and different avenues of a great a great teacher.

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Now, are you planning to you having another volume? Is that it in terms of transcribing some of this?

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I mean, I know this would be a Herculean feat, but imagine a multi volume set of Bonson's history of philosophy.

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Of course, a man could dream. I know it'd be an error there. I got it was funny.

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I got a couple of weeks ago. I got a phone call from I've never met the fellow.

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He's he's a he's a trucker and he's he's into all of this. You know, he and the thing is, he knows everybody.

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OK, he goes to a particular city. He'll call someone up and says, hey, I'm coming through a certain time to get together for lunch and so forth.

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So he knows everybody. And there is some discussion right now to do that very thing.

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And I don't have any more information of it than that, because I proposed it when

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I was on this conference call with him and a couple of other people. I said, what needs to be done is we need to do something like the works of John Owen.

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Right. Which I think are, I don't know, 15, 15 volumes, 700 page, 15 volumes.

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And I would love to do this. The it's everything comes down to cost and the costs aren't in the technology.

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The cost is in the labor of getting them getting this to the point where you can use the existing technology.

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Although, you know, when I first did a book, what you had to do to get a book out was you send it to a typesetter, you got to proof it in the galley's back.

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It was a torturous and very expensive process, literally in a day and send it off to a printer in a

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PDF format and you're ready to go. But it's it's the labor getting it to that point that's most expensive.

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And but the the goal is, is to is to get Greg's material since he was such a great speaker that relates to his writing.

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None of his work needs you know, it needs a great deal of of editing. Right. So this is something that I've been in communication with other people on to try to do.

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Now, how did you go about transcribing this? I mean, did you have to listen to each lecture and type it out and pause it?

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I mean, or use like a software or something like that. How does it work to transcribe something like this?

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There's a company in England that we sent the the files, the audio files to them and we got them back in Word.

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And that that was it. And it took I don't know, it took maybe a week. And then

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I sent it to a friend of a friend of mine who went through and did all the editing on it.

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Then I went through it, you know, three or three or four times. OK, and so and then

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I sent it to a guy in Alabama. I can do the typesetting myself, but my time really needs to be used elsewhere.

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And I sent it to him. He typeset the whole thing. And when I get it back, it's an InDesign that I can go through, go through it and tinker with it.

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OK. So it's it's not a big deal anymore. We could we could take we could take all of Greg's stuff on history and philosophy and his critical thinking course to all of this.

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I'd love I'd love to be able to do it.

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And so I had the right I had the rights to this. And but it looks like we're going to be seeing the freeing up of more of Greg's stuff so we can get it into print form.

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Well, that that's really exciting. And even just for a lot of people, Kindle, I mean, you got always readies on the Kindle presuppositional apologetics on the

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Kindle. I don't believe pushing the antithesis is available on Kindle, although it's available on Logos.

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I'm I'm still I don't know. But I don't know if you have any pull of this. I'm still waiting for the Kindle version of the apologetic readings and analysis.

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I mean, it seems the common sense thing to get on digital. I don't know what's going on. I mean, have you contacted a

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PR over that? I don't even know. I mean, is that who I would contact? I mean, if they have his other works and I mean, a lot of people purchase them.

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I mean, great reviews. I would I was wondering why they wouldn't have his main work in digital, especially for the highlighting features and being able to, you know, all of this, of course, when he wrote that in the 90s.

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Right. And a lot of it depends on, you know, what form it was in.

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You have to remember in the 90s, I guess I guess PageMaker was the big deal.

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I don't know what Presbyterian Presbyterian reform used. Right. InDesign InDesign is so easy.

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It would depend on what format it's in and then to be able to convert it into something that's more modern.

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Now, this this book against all opposition, we will have the electronic versions of it very soon.

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OK, so PDF is easy. Put it in InDesign, push a couple of buttons, click this, click that.

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You got a PDF. OK, no big deal. Yeah, so I mean, so maybe

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I need to look into it and find a person probably to talk to about doing that would be

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John Frame. OK, yeah, I had I had spoken to him not that long ago, done all of his work.

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Yeah. And it would be it would be maybe I'll see if I can get a hold of John and see if he's he has any pull in that area to find out what what format is so many footnotes in it.

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You see, that's that's that's a problem. That is a problem with a lot of these electronic versions.

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OK. All right. Well, I hope that can be done. That'd be excellent. It's that's the book I always you know,

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I always point people to if they want to get the whole the details, the whole kit and caboodle. But I mean,

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I'm not trying to be a commercial, but I I've read this. And people who trust me, I highly recommend this.

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Even if you have some of some of the other books, if anything, for the ability to learn how to communicate these things in a simple way without being simplistic,

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I think this book really does. Now, I'm going to share with you. And one of my favorite aspects of this book is something that a lot of people struggle with, with regards to the presuppositional argument that we posit that the

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Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge, for logic and all these other things.

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And then people say, but but don't you have to refute every single worldview out there? And what

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I enjoy about this book is that he actually surveys briefly, but he surveys it enough, the broad worldview categories every specific worldview would fit in.

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So that if you refute the category, you refute the individual manifestations of that category.

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And I think that's very useful in strengthening the positive case of demonstrating that not only does

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Christianity provide those necessary preconditions, but here's why I don't have to refute every worldview.

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Here's why these other worldviews don't work. And I think the way he is set up in this book, I think, was a great way where he talked about monism, dualism, idealism.

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That was a very helpful part of the book. Yeah, he covers almost all of them. And I call this elevator evangelism or elevator apologetics.

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By the time you get in the elevator with someone and you get down to the floor you're getting off on in the lobby, you should have gotten to the basic operating assumptions of a worldview.

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And this was my I was in Texas with my brother. He was going through a divorce and he was in court and all that.

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And I went down there to kind of give him some moral support and his lawyer was with me. And my brother said, hey, this is my brother.

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This is what he does, da, da, da, da. And then we get stepped into the elevator and he said, do you believe in hell?

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And now an evidentialist, who knows how they would do it? My question was, well, on what basis are you determined whether there's hell or not?

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So by the time we got to the very bottom, that was the question to debate. It wasn't the particulars of the doctrine of hell or anything else.

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It was what standard are you using to determine whether something's right or wrong? And, you know, he was stymied.

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Here's a lawyer who's, in fact, stymied by this. And in the second, the second one, just finished one of the chapters today.

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Greg was called in as an expert witness on evolution in Louisiana.

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And he said, well, look, I this is my this is how I debate this. He was telling him this is how he was doing this.

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And the guy said, you can't go in there and do that. He said, well, that's the fundamental principle here. And Greg said, look,

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I didn't agree with how they were doing this, but I wanted to do it. So he goes in there and he says he did it.

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So Greg, he's there with an ACLU attorney. And Greg is being

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Greg and dealing with this guy on the fundamental level.

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And this is what the ACLU attorney said. He said, I have never heard anyone argue it that way.

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So this is, you know, and the reason the the reason this is so fundamental to everything is, is because they can't argue.

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Right. Right. And this is this is the chapter on evolution. He just goes through and cuts evolution to pieces, not on the on the evidentiary side of things, but on the operating assumptions that evolutionists use in order to prop up their system and to then evaluate the evidence based upon those operating assumptions.

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So it's classic, classic presuppositionalism and classic Greg L. Bonzi. Yeah, very good.

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Well, we're coming up on 30 minutes. I have two more questions for you and then we'll let you go. And I do appreciate your time, as I know you're very busy.

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Why don't you share with us a funny and unique memory that most people probably wouldn't know about,

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Greg, because they didn't know in person. I mean, you knew you knew him personally. You were friends with him. Is there anything that stands out to you that's kind of like, you know, people you were cut off?

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I didn't hear your whole question. Sure. The question was, could you share with us a unique and perhaps funny memory that the average person who reads up on presuppositionalism wouldn't know about Dr.

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Bonson? You knew him as your friend. Is there anything, something you could share that might give us a look into the kind of person he was?

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Well, I think that the you know, the story about the, you know, the rock music, you would think that somebody as intellectually gifted as Greg and then writing on theonomy and Christian ethics and so forth wouldn't have an appreciation of, you know, the music industry.

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I think Greg, one of Greg's, I don't know if it's his older son. I know

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David and Jonathan, I think. No, I think it was David. David, I think, was involved in dealing with some

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Christian rock groups and some others as well.

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So that's probably the one. Most of my relationships with Greg have been, you know, kind of business wise, conference side of things, publishing.

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But you really had to see him in action and just dealing with young people, because at the end of the conference, the whole crowd just stood up and gave

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Greg a standing ovation. Because, look, he knew that they were not going to retain.

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They couldn't, when they left there, they knew, and I always tell students this, when I taught apologetics at a

31:51

Christian school, I always tell them, I said, look, I don't know what you're going to encounter, but I guarantee you there is an answer to it.

31:59

Sure. And if you ever need my help to do this, you know, give me a call. So when they left there, they knew somebody who at the highest level of intellectual integrity and real life experience in debating, the classic here is the

32:19

Stein debate. Sure. Oh, the great debate. They always knew, look, I may not know how to answer this guy, but I know somebody who can.

32:29

And he didn't have to kind of finagle his way to an answer.

32:37

If you read the book, Greg is not finagling at all. He goes right to the heart of the issue and hammers it over and over and over and over and over again.

32:46

And I make the point, I think I make the point in this particular book I've read and done so much editing lately that I believe it's one of the reasons why a lot of these guys later on did not want to debate.

33:03

Right. In fact, one particular debate, I think it was with Michael Martin, where Martin backed out of the debate and he used this excuse, oh,

33:13

I didn't want it to be recorded because I didn't want and sold so people wouldn't hear this falsehood.

33:21

Yeah, right. Give me a break. That's why you debate so that it gets out to the public.

33:27

That was Greg's point. The reason you debate is to get your message out to other people.

33:33

And if you don't think you've won the debate or you can win the debate, I can see why you wouldn't want to broadcast.

33:39

Right. But it was fine. Finding people to debate Greg was was difficult.

33:45

I think the first debate with Gordon Stein, I think one of the reasons that Gordon Stein did it is that he's a pastor of some church and some

33:52

Orthodox Presbyterian church. I mean, come on, just automatic preacher.

33:58

This is going to be a piece of cake. And I mean, he I mean, Stein didn't know what hit him.

34:03

It was a buzzsaw that especially the the instance where Gordon Stein brings up the issue of materiality.

34:14

And, you know, Greg answers with definition of what's material, something extended through space.

34:21

And you've heard you've heard all that. Everyone has heard it's famous in the crowd, you know, burst out laughing as a result of this, where Greg said, well,

34:30

I can I can tell you something else that isn't isn't material. And that's the laws of logic. And well,

34:37

Gordon Stein didn't know what to deal with that, you know, do with that. And that's true of I think anybody who ever great debates and presuppositions.

34:44

Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, my last question is before I let you go is first,

34:50

I just want to remind people, guys, you can pick this up at American Vision dot org again. I highly recommend it even if you have other books by Bonson.

34:57

Please visit American Vision dot org. And there are a lot of other resources there that you will find helpful as well.

35:03

And my last question is, what can you say to the people listening? And how are what is the best way we can help keep the legacy of Bonson alive?

35:12

You know, if you can speak to the younger generation who is just coming into presuppositional apologetics, what can we do to keep this legacy alive and continue that vision of grounding apologetics and a biblical theological foundation?

35:26

Well, I think the probably the best ways to support ministries out there that are promoting it.

35:31

I mean, when Greg came along, he was kind of a translator for Vantill. And and he was he was public.

35:39

He was I mean, Vantill didn't debate anyone. I don't know if John John Fray may have debated a few people.

35:46

OK, R .C. Sproul. I don't think he's he's debated in the area. Well, I shouldn't say that because he did debate

35:51

Greg Bonson at Reform Theological Seminary. That's right. With the I was there and I was there in the audience standing room only audience with that.

36:00

And one of the things I remember about that was Greg drawing on the board, these buckets, one bucket after another and talking about the leaky bucket syndrome of classical apologetics and evidential apologetics.

36:16

But, you know, Greg, Greg was out there and and publicly and never really got to do the kinds of things that Sproul did.

36:25

And I think a lot of that had to do with more of the theonomy side of things. But the support ministries out there, you know, what you're doing, people like, you know,

36:34

Jeff Durbin out in Phoenix, not Phoenix. So Phoenix, I guess it is

36:42

Phoenix area, these ministries that are promoting the presuppositional apologetics.

36:49

So and American Vision, of course, where we've been in the kind of the thick of this thing, you know, since the 80s, when

36:55

I first came to American Vision and and they always write a book.

37:01

We have articles in there that came from Greg. And then if this new thing comes out and again, if it becomes a reality, we will, you know, we will make it available and people may be able to some sort of fund,

37:18

I think right now they're trying to raise some money for this deal that's that's possibly in the works.

37:26

And if this happens, there'll be some financial requirements in order to get this done.

37:31

None of this is free. So, yeah. Yeah, well, if you guys are interested in listening to presuppositional debates to to see what this looks like, obviously you can check out

37:42

Apologia Church has some stuff. James White, of course, argues from a presuppositional perspective.

37:48

I have some debates on my YouTube channel. I have a debate with the gate.

37:54

A man that goes by the name of Negation of P on Modern Day Debates. I'm happy to say on Modern Day Debates, the

37:59

YouTube channel. I was the first presuppositionalist to ever be invited. So and it went very well. So hopefully you guys you can check out these guys like you to do this.

38:10

I I at my age on debates and so forth, they're too distracting for me because of most of what

38:17

I do is in the publishing section. My wife will tell you when I prepare for a debate, it's like everything else is shut out and I have to make sure that I've covered every little detail of it.

38:28

I'm not like Greg Bonson who could just walk in and do it for Doug Wilson. He mentioned when he debated

38:35

Christopher Hitchens, that it's copiousness. It's the ability to see it all at once.

38:43

If you're either you're prepared for it or you're not prepared for it. And the fact that James White, I don't know how many debates has he done, close to 200 now.

38:51

I don't I don't understand how anybody does that. Well, I asked him, how do you prepare?

38:57

It's like he's like, well, I'm riding my bike. And he remembers when he turned like, you don't stop and like highlight.

39:02

Like, I feel like I have to do things. And, you know, maybe that's where it fell off. Just to send me a text message.

39:08

He says, Gary, do you have the against all opposition and electronic version of it?

39:15

And I said, well, yeah, I can send you the PDF and I want to be able to listen to this.

39:24

And I guess he's got some program that'll read a PDF. Right. So, I mean,

39:29

I mean, the tech look, I know things are kind of falling, seemingly falling apart out there, but every tool necessary to bring about change in our country is available to us.

39:43

That's right. Christians need to have the optimism and the wherewithal to take the bull by the horns and say, we need to be at the forefront of defending and promoting the

39:56

Christian worldview, and this is the best way to do it. I'm not saying evidences aren't wrong and you can't use reason.

40:02

As you read this book, you'll find out that both of those things are myths that are typically brought up against presupposition.

40:08

Sure, sure. Well, thank you so much, Gary, for coming on a second time just to briefly promote the book and American vision in general.

40:17

There's some great resources out there, guys. Please visit American vision dot org and get yourself a copy of Against All Opposition, and we'll keep our ears open for volume two.

40:27

Very much excited about that. Appreciate you having me. Well, thank you so much and thank you for your ministry.

40:33

Guys, that's all for today. Be sure to subscribe to the Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel.