Apologetics Without Apology

James with us. He's been here in London for a number of various events, debates, preaching, teaching opportunities, some of which he's been able to talk about, others of which he hasn't. But it's been very good.

And this morning we enjoyed having together a time around breakfast tables with the men from our church, and an opportunity now for us to look at a subject. So James is going to open up the scriptures and we're going to study together.

If you need a Bible, there's some around. There's a few extra up here. If you're still in need of one, please let me know. We can get some other few Bibles and you can have a Bible in your hands. The format this morning is going to be rather straightforward.

James is going to talk till 1045, 1050, 11 o 'clock, somewhere in there, wherever he feels like it's a natural cutoff point. We'll break for a cup of tea and then we'll just grab our teas and come back together.

And then we'll open it up for the time afterwards probably to some questions and answers, something like that. And then hopefully we'll break by noon, shortly before noon, and then you guys can be off for the rest of your day.

So James, thanks for being with us. We're glad to have you here.

Thank you very much. It is good to be with you this morning. I enjoy the opportunity of speaking here in London and it's good to meet those of you, some of you who have traveled and I very much appreciate that.

Just for my own information, how many of you have been to either of the debates we've done so far? Okay, so a majority. Okay, good. So you already have sort of an idea of where I'm coming from. This morning, Doug has titled our talk Apologetics Without Apology, which is a bit of a pun, I do think, which is fine.

The Classical Text for Apologetics

And so I thought it would be appropriate to go to the classical text on apologetics and use that as our foundation. So if you have your Bible, please turn with me to 1 Peter, Peter's First Epistle, Chapter 3.

I have, I would not, I'm sure Doug can tell me if I would or wouldn't, I don't know that I would do well in the preaching classes at Masters. The reason being, over the years, especially over the past five years, I've developed my own sort of personal comfort zone.

I guess as you get older, you get a little more cranky and start doing things your own way, and once you've got enough gray in the beer, you can sort of get away with it. And for me, some of you who are involved in ministering, I am by far the most comfortable in ministering from the Word of God, preaching from the Word of God, when I am preaching directly from the original language text.

Basically what I try to do now, because I have to wear these things, I had LASIK a few years ago, which is great for distance, but doesn't help much up here, so what I do is I actually take the Greek text and I put it into a word processor so that I can print the font at a much larger size, and I give myself a large printout of my text, and then I use color to code each of the clauses that I want to comment on.

I generally do not have any English notes, I might have some cross-references at the margin, but generally a very colorful Greek text is what I use to preach from. I didn't borrow that from anybody, that's just what I have found to be the most useful.

And I just find the greatest liberty in preaching when I simply have the text in front of me, and I'm working with it in that way. My Greek professor long ago said that the greatest commentary on the New Testament is the New Testament in Greek.

And if any of you young gentlemen, or more older gentlemen, have the opportunity to learn the language, I would very highly recommend it to you. We learn so many other things, I'm sorry most of us spend so much time learning computer languages and computer commands and everything else just to do our secular jobs, that I don't think there's anything untoward or unusual in exhorting people to consider possibly learning the New Testament's original language.

If you went to university and you were to study for example the German author Goethe, you would not be able to get even a master's degree in Goethe's literature without doing what first? Learning German.

If you can't read Goethe and the language he wrote, you're not going to be considered to be properly educated in that. And yet there is such a strong anti-intellectualism, a bunch of evangelicalism today, that was not a part of our fathers and our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but it's a part today that considers that almost an unspiritual thing to do, is that well the Holy Spirit just zaps it on you.

Well, yes, the Holy Spirit has caused many a person who never read a single word of Greek to have tremendous insights into the Word of God. But let's face it, we live in a society that is so deeply opposed to the things of God, so deeply committed to its own religion of humanism and secularism, that there is such a bias, and the internet makes it so easy for falsehoods about the text of the Bible to be promulgated as fact, that we as individuals need to know the Word of God as best we can.

And so, I just, in passing, especially since there are some younger folks who are making decisions about their future plans, including ministry, and not because I've taught Greek and love to teach Greek, but just simply on a pastoral level, I would highly recommend it to you.

And so in looking at this text, just for those of you who are interested, again the text I have in front of me is one that I'm hoping you will be able to actually get from Alpha Omega Ministries in the near future.

This is one of the most useful resources I've ever obtained, and so some of you, I know, have an interest in these things. This is a dialogue, this is the Nestialum 27th edition of the Greek New Testament and the New English Translation, with all of the textual and translator notes on facing pages.

And so it's a tremendous resource for someone like myself in the midst of a debate, someone who wants to make some type of wild claim about the text and the scriptures, I have the data right here in front of me.

And anyone, you don't have to have taught Greek, can learn to utilize the textual notes to be able to see for yourself exactly what the facts are. I'll get to 1 Peter 3 in just a moment, I just want to tell you one story to illustrate why this is important.

Years ago, when I started teaching for Golden Gate Seminary in their Phoenix, their Arizona campus, I was teaching the Greek. And I was also teaching systematic theology, and the leadership came to me one day and they said, can you teach Hebrew?

I said, well, I took all the Hebrew I could in seminary, plus I actually had to petition the seminary to take more, but I don't consider myself a Hebrew scholar, but I certainly know the language. What was happening was, they were having trouble getting anyone through first year Hebrew in the seminary.

The person teaching it was fully qualified, but when they would ask a question about the language, you just repeat the grammar. He couldn't communicate to the students beyond what the grammar itself said, even though his PhD is in that study, and in that area of study.

And so I went ahead and I taught it, I got all my students through. And the way I did it was, I would excite them about the language, and one of the main stories I would tell them is a true story. I went up to Salt Lake City during one of the general conferences of the Mormon Church, and I appeared on a radio station for four solid hours, two different hosts, four hours, debating the issue of Mormonism live in Salt Lake City, with, of course, taking phone calls.

And the majority of the people calling from that area were Mormon, obviously. And in the last half hour, this guy calls. Bill from Provo calls. And as I had been leaving my very fancy hotel room at Motel 6, and my son was with me, I looked at the bed, and lying on the bed was my very nicely bound, Bibli Hebraicus Quotentia, the current edition of the Hebrew Old Testament.

My book bag was already full, and I almost left it there. I said, eh, I'll go ahead and stick it in here, and I managed to cram it in. And so, the last half hour of the program, Bill from Provo calls, and he starts throwing out this argument from the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy, that if I would just look at the earlier texts, I would see that the Israelites were actually polytheists, they believed in different gods, et cetera, et cetera.

So I was able to pull out that Bibli Hebraicus, and of course, it's a critical edition, and while he's still talking, open to the text, read the textual data, and respond to him instantly as to why, you know, to challenge him, why are you taking these manuscripts over these manuscripts?

Do you not see this as an alternative context? It turned out later that Bill from Provo is Dr. William Hamblin of Brigham Young University, one of the leading apologists for the LDS Church, calling in the last half hour of a four-hour stint to try to throw out a textual variant in Hebrew to trip up the Christian who's on the radio.

And it's just an illustration of how useful the language can be. So often when we teach in the seminary, unfortunately we have to teach at such a fast rate of speed that we're teaching students to hate the language, not to love the language.

That was always very frustrating for me. I wanted to teach them to love it as I did, and I tried to do so. So with that, all of that said, I'm not sure why I felt it necessary, but hopefully it's useful to one of you.

Don't come into Jesus. 1 Peter chapter 3 is indeed the classicus locus, the classical text for apologetics, because it's from this very text that we take the name apologetics. Let's look at the two verses, 15 and 16.

Here we are told, instead, set Christ apart. Now, some of your translations might say God. Do they have God at that point? Do they all say Christ? Okay. Set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts, and always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you about the hope that is within you, the hope that you possess.

Yet do this with courtesy and respect, keeping a good conscience, so that those who slander your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame when they accuse you. Now, these words, first of all, are not addressed simply to the leaders of the church.

They would be valid for leaders of church. We know that when Paul, for example, lists the requirements of the eldership, he specifically mentions that the elder must be able to refute those who contradict.

He must be able to absorb words and sound doctrine and refute those who contradict. And so we know that the elders would be required to be able to do this, but this is not simply directed to the elders.

This is directed to all believers, because the behavior that is to be ours as believers should be such that it causes those in society to recognize the difference between us and those around us, so that they will see that we possess a hope that those around us do not possess.

Now, there's a strong temptation to camp on that and to preach concerning how this could be. I mean, if the current rage and evangelicalism to make the church look as much like society around us as is humanly possible is actually a biblical concept, I don't know how this text could have a whole lot of meaning.

Instead, there is to be a difference between how believers think and speak, dress and act, and the world around us. How we respond to tragedy. The mechanisms by which we think and process information and all of this is supposed to somehow in some way reveal a hope that we possess that separates us from those in the world.

Behavior is not some separate area. You can't take ethics and morality and stick it over in the corner and keep it alone over there while we sit over and have our good time talking about theology. They all come together, and that is always a very convicting thing for me, and it needs to be a convicting thing I think for all of us on that level.

So, these words are addressed to all believers. We are all to be ready to give an answer, pros apologion. That is the term from which we get apologetics. You may be familiar with the apology of Socrates and Plato.

Apology was a word that long pre-existed Peter's writing, and anyone who presented a position of philosophy would be asked to give an apology that is a defense of their position. Obviously within our language, apology has primarily come to be a negative thing in the sense of saying that you're sorry.

I wish I hadn't done that. That clearly is not what apologetics is, though sadly there are evangelicals that make it look that way. We're very, very sorry for believing this stuff about Jesus. We know it's very offensive to you, but we'll try to water it down as much as possible.

That's not exactly a biblical approach, that particular subject. Always be ready to give an answer, a defense, a reasoned defense. Now obviously if we were going to give a reasoned defense to others, that means we have to have reasoned through it ourselves.

Christianity is not a religion merely for the intellectual, but Christianity is a religion that calls us above, especially where our society would allow our minds to dwell. We are created in the image of God, and the greatest commandment is that we are to love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And so the concept of being happy with the least common denominator, the concept of a simplistic faith that never grows. What is the commandment? Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We should never be satisfied with the level that we have attained. I pray that I will never become satisfied with the level of knowledge that I have. You've heard it said many times before, but it's true.

I think it is a mark of maturity to be able to say with sincerity that the more I come to know, the more I realize, the less I actually know in the first place. And I'm now to that stage in life. My children, my oldest son just got married.

That always makes you feel old. I sat there sitting there watching him going, this is impossible, I just did this myself. And then I realized, yes, 25 years ago I did this. And so, you know, I've come to that point where I look at young, I see these young people and they're bright and they're intelligent, but I also realize that there is a time in your life where wisdom and experience becomes joined with all that knowledge and results in mature wisdom.

And I'm just so thankful the Lord kept me from doing a lot of stupid things when I was young enough to think that I actually knew everything already, and in fact I did not. So these words are addressed to all believers, that we are to live in such a way as to be able to give a reasoned answer, a reasoned answer.

Now, this isn't directly relevant to my subject, but I think it's important that we deal with the text. I hope you see something in this text. I'm not sure if your Bible has references in it, thankfully this one does.

But this first phrase, set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts. What does that mean? Literally, the Greek term is to sanctify. Sanctify Christ, set him apart as holy. If you're familiar with the utilization of this term in the Old Testament, there would be certain items in the tabernacle that were set apart.

They were devoted to the service of God. And so here we are to sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts. What does that mean? In English context, unfortunately heart has come to mean merely the seat of emotion, of passion.

But that would not be an accurate understanding of the original context of this language itself. If we are to set Christ apart as kurios, as Lord, in the very seat of the will and volition and mind of man, what does that mean?

Well, I think Peter is saying the same thing here, that Paul communicates to us in the book of Colossians. There we have described for us Jesus as the one who sums up in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

And that he is to be the standard by which we judge all things. Yes, a carpenter from Galilee is the standard by which we are to judge all things. We are not to be taken captive by empty deception of the philosophy, these vain philosophies of men.

But instead we are to measure everything by Christ. Why? Because it is in him that all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. That which makes God, God, Colossians 2 .9. I think it's the very same things being said here.

We as individuals must recognize the world is constantly seeking to enthrone itself within our heart. It is constantly seeking to overthrow the Lordship of Christ in all of life, including epistemology.

Yes, I just used a big word and it's one that we all need to know well. Epistemology, how we know what we know. The study of knowledge. There is no place where the Lordship of Christ has become more utterly blasphemed and denied in our culture than in epistemology.

Jesus is just something over there, an oddity out there. We can discuss it, but it's out there. It's not here in the center. Man now is firmly ensconced in the center of Western epistemology. The idea that we must see ourselves as creatures, the idea that we must interpret all of reality only as we relate to God and then see how reality is related to God, that's gone.

That was once a part of the highest expressions, especially here in your own country, but it is not anymore. Instead, man has blasphemously, the creature, has crawled up upon the throne and said, see, it's empty.

I'm the only one here. And we see as a result the collapse of morality, the view of human life within our society that inevitably comes from that fundamental epistemological shift. And so we as believers must recognize that each and every day we must consciously seek to sanctify Christ, set Christ apart as Lord in our hearts, to voluntarily submit ourselves to His Lordship, to say, Father, make my mind to be the mind of Christ so that as I encounter the world around me, whether it be in the realm of science, whether it be in the realm of economics or philosophy or whatever area you labor in, the realm of education, whatever it might be, even as a teacher I seek to communicate the facts of science or history, I must need to do so under the Lordship of Christ.

That doesn't mean that you add the name Jesus to every other sentence, but it does change the way in which you think. It does change the way in which you relate facts to one another. And it will set you apart from the world because the world is not doing that.

The reprobate mind cannot do this. It cannot subject itself to the law of God. It has no desire to do so. But we as believers must pray that God would help us to His honor and glory to think and to act and to live in that way and that will set us apart and that will demonstrate that hope that abides within us.

And so as we think about this, please note the cross-reference. This is a reference to Isaiah chapter 8. This text from which we get our very charter of apologetics is one of the many texts where a New Testament writer takes a text that was originally about Jehovah God, about Yahweh, and applies it to Jesus.

We are to set Yahweh apart. We are to sanctify Him in our hearts as the command of the people of God from Isaiah chapter 8, verse 12 or 13 depending on how your Old Testament numbers these things. It's 12 in the 7th and probably 13 in the vice versa.

Here we have a reference to the command to the people of God in the Old Covenant to set Yahweh apart, to sanctify Him within their hearts. And here the New Testament writer has no problem in making application of this to the Christ, to the Messiah.

Once again demonstrating the inevitably high view of Christ that is just part and parcel of the language. He doesn't have to expand on it. He doesn't have to quote the Nicene Creed or something like that here.

Just in passing remember as some of you heard me say on Thursday evening, these New Testament writers were experiential Trinitarians. Peter has walked with his son, he's gone to the Mount of Transfiguration, has heard the Father speak from heaven, and he is now indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

He is an experiential Trinitarian. And so it is not surprising whatsoever that that language naturally flows from him. He doesn't have to stop and say, oh did you see what I just said? No, it's just a natural outworking of his experience of God's truth in his life.

So you might want to note that one. There's actually a large number of them. There's an article on my website in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society section that goes through a whole list. There's an outline on the Deity of Christ that I have there that provides you an entire list of these types of texts where the New Testament writers apply to Jesus of those attributes and things that could only be applied to Yahweh in the Old Testament.

And so when we set Christ apart as Lord in our hearts, when we purposely, openly, without shame, say that I glorify my Creator, when I seek as a creature to live, speak, and think under the Lordship of He who came down from Heaven, took on flesh, and has now been exalted in the right hand of the Father.

He is the standard of all things. He is the one by which all things must be measured. He is the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I voluntarily submit myself to Him and it is my desire to live as a creature in light of what God has ordained.

I should think like Him. I should act like Him. He is my all. My all in all is the words of Paul. When I do that, it's going to have a particular impact upon my life. It cannot help but do so. The way that I speak will be different.

The way that I act. The way that I think will be different. And as a result, I must be ready. I should always be ready. Well, that's a difficult thing. There are some times I don't feel always ready. But I always must be ready.

When the opportunity arises to give an answer, notice it's an answer. That is, because of the consistency of my behavior, these opportunities are going to be given to me. Because of the consistency of my behavior, these opportunities are going to come.

And the question first comes, anyone asks about the hope that you possess, the hope that is within you. When someone looks at you and they say, you just responded to that great devastating loss in your life in a way different than the world.

How? Because when I suffered a similar loss, it knocked me off my feet. I've lost hope for the future. You haven't lost hope for the future. Why? On just a pastoral level, that is a lesson that was really driven home to me.

You know, sometimes God just absolutely tosses you out of your comfort zone to make you grow. And on one day, back in the early 1990s, 60 of the funding of my ministry, and my ministry is pretty unfunded anyways, so when 60 of almost nothing disappears, that doesn't leave you with anything at all.

60 of the funding of my ministry disappeared in one day, and I had to find a job. Not that the $450 a month I was earning at the time was much anyways, but I needed to find a job. And so, it just so happened, in the providence of God, that a man that I had met with to talk to Mormon missionaries just a few weeks earlier contacted me.

He said, well you know, he says, I'm leaving a position that I've had for a couple years at a large hospital here in the valley, where I'm a chaplain. And he says, they pay real well. You ought to think about it.

Oh my, that's not comfortable for me. I'm not this gregarious type of guy who can just come bounding into hospital rooms, beaming with joy. I'm a Scotsman, for crying out loud. So, it's more like, I don't know how you do it.

But, and you know, I had my master's degree, I was a seminary graduate and all, but it's just, I had avoided those classes, like the plague, you know. Counseling, fifth year Greek. Fifth year Greek sounds good.

You know, let's avoid that. So, I took the job. I got the job. That was the amazing part, first of all. And in God's providence, that was one of the most difficult things I ever did. Because I, honestly, had never seen anyone die.

I had not been around death. And on Lord's Day afternoons, part of my job, it was supposed to be every other one, it ended up being 48 on the first 52. I was to do a loss support group. Now, this was a secular hospital.

So, how do you do a loss support group for people who have no hope of the forgiveness of their own sins? I learned a lot about grief counseling. In fact, most people don't know this, but my second most popular book is called Grieving Our Path Back to Peace.

I wrote it years after I left the hospital. An acquaintance of mine, his 29-day-old granddaughter died. Her mother had an epileptic seizure, rolled over on her and suffocated. And there was just something completely unnatural about a casket that was this big.

That's just not right. And after the funeral, I just went back to my office, cleaned everything off my desk, and I wrote everything I knew about grief counseling, which wasn't much. It was a short book, but everything I knew about grief counseling to this acquaintance of mine.

And when I got done, I realized it was actually a book. And I gave it to him, but then I also sent it to my editor at Bethany House. And he took it and he said, I love the book, but I'm taking your name off of it.

What books have I already published about the Bethany House? The King James Only Controversy. The Roman Catholic Controversy. Eh, this ain't going to work. So I'm going to bring it in house anonymously.

And once they love it, then I'll tell them who wrote it. And so that's what happened. And on September 12, 2001, there were workers at Ground Zero passing my book out to the people who were working on Ground Zero.

Like I said, it's my second most popular book. Only the King James Only Controversy has been more popular than that one. I learned in that grief counseling process that the key word that was going to make the difference between, especially, we live near a retirement area.

These elderly women would come in who had just lost a husband who had defined their lives for 50 years or more. And I learned in that context that the key word that determined whether they were going to be alive six months later, or as so often happens, to shrivel up and die, was the word hope.

If they could not look into the future and see a reason for continuing life, see a possibility, a hope for happiness, a hope for some kind of fulfillment, there is almost nothing that I or anyone else could do for them.

So obviously it was my intent to attempt to encourage them, especially, interestingly enough, through service to others, to develop that hope. Christians grieve. And I really do not enjoy talking about this, but I have a whole talk on the fact that even we as Christians have bought into the Western minds that we don't deal with death well at all.

We don't understand it. We don't have biblical views of it. We think people should be over it in two weeks. It's baloney. You haven't even gotten over the shock in two weeks. And the scriptures, some people misunderstand what the scriptures say.

And so Christians aren't supposed to grieve. Also, we're not supposed to grieve as those who have no hope. Yeah, we are not to grieve as those who have no hope. We are to grieve as those who have hope.

If you are old enough to love, you are old enough to grieve the loss of the object of your love. That's just all there is to it. And unfortunately, because of our media, television programs, you can have massive deaths in the first five minutes of a television program.

At the end of half an hour, all is well again. No one ever goes through grief. No one ever goes through the disorientation that comes about because of such a loss like that. And it's not a good thing.

But that's not my subject this morning. I just mention this to emphasize this idea of hope. We should respond to the tragedies in our lives and the difficulties in our lives and the tragedies within our culture in a way that sets us apart.

Some of the most popular things I've ever done, either in the form of articles or in the form of videos and things like that, have been right after major cultural events. And what has caused them to stand out is that I seek to examine these things under the Lordship of Christ.

And that resonates with people. And when we respond in the same way, that's what's going to cause people to ask us this question. Where does this hope you have come from? Now, my time is fleeting, so let me especially emphasize this.

Yet do it with gentleness and respect. One of the greatest things that causes people to not give an answer with gentleness and respect is ignorance. In other words, in my experience, Christians who recognize in their own heart of hearts that they have not taken the time to truly come to understand their faith are much quicker to become emotional and offensive in giving an answer than those who have, in a disciplined way, memorized the Word of God, studied their faith, thought through these issues in a purposeful and disciplined fashion.

The vast majority of bad witnessing explosions where yelling is taking place and there's anger and emotion come, yes, you can expect that from the lost. That's their nature. It shouldn't be surprising to you.

But when the Christian is engaging in it, the vast majority of instances, it's because they themselves feel threatened because they are not ready to give that answer with gentleness and respect. And so I, yesterday morning, for example, with Doug and some of the gentlemen, I was talking about Mormonism.

And I gave a very fast, I was speaking, I don't know how many hundreds of words per minute, I was moving quick through the subject of Mormonism, but I had to stop at one point and I had to say, now, there's a danger here.

When you hear Mormonism in a naked sense, it sounds so silly. Space gods from Kolob? I mean, who could ever believe this? You need to recognize there are intelligent Mormons. They have an apologetic. It may not be consistent.

It may not be compelling, but it's there. You need to be careful that you don't just jump on your white horse and ride off to save all the Mormons, because they will knock you right off of your white horse if you are not firmly grounded in what you believe.

And we need to be reminded of that over and over again, that our apologetic must be done with gentleness, respect, and a good conscience. And I have been emphasizing to my Muslim friends, I was speaking with some of the apologists just Thursday evening, because there was a whole group of them there, one of which is debating right now, in fact.

The debate just started between Yahya and David Wood on the subject of the Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie probably will not be in attendance, but I would like to be. And I was emphasizing to these primarily younger Islamic men the fact that though I may be imperfect and I do not always live up to my own standard, that I seek to follow the commands of Scripture in showing gentleness and respect, that I seek to show them respect by studying their own literature, by obtaining the best of their own literature.

My ministry, though it is very small, has spent thousands of dollars obtaining quite a library of Islamic sources for me to be able to utilize, because there's not much in my area that I can just go use a library.

You've got a little bit better here. London, Phoenix. London, Phoenix. Nah, okay, all right. As far as library resources and culture goes, yeah, much of a comparison there. I seek to respond to the best that Islam has to offer.

Yes, sometimes I have to respond to the worst that Islam has to offer, but I don't try to expand that out and use that as an argument against all of Islam and so on and so forth. And I get the feeling they're not really sure what to do with me on that level.

They're not accustomed to that. We should be known as the people who absorb a tremendous amount of abuse. I didn't say we should be doormats. I don't think I'm a doormat in any of these debates. I can be very firm in giving a response, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to be responding to the personal aspects that are so often a part of the apologetic encounter.

We should, for the purpose of glorifying Christ and presenting him to others, be willing to suffer, whatever that might be and whatever form that might take. And especially when it's merely verbal jabs, that's hardly anything in comparison to what our brothers and sisters suffer each day around the world.

And so we are to adorn our doctrine. We are to adorn our message by the way that we live our lives, by the way that we, with good conduct, as it says here, we do not slander our good conduct in Christ.

Instead, those who slander us may be put to shame when they accuse you. Notice it doesn't say they will stop accusing you, but that they will be put to shame. Now, what if you live in a society that is literally under the wrath of God to where he's withdrawing his hand of restraint?

And as I see happening in my country right now, I don't know how many of you are following it, but there seems to have been an explosion in hatred of Christianity since the election, just over the past few weeks, especially in Doug's former state of California.

The fact that the citizens of California amended their constitution, they didn't need to, there was a Supreme Court, a bunch of men and women who are clearly unqualified to be doing what they're doing because they violated their own oath to interpret that document in light of its original intentions, but the California Supreme Court had determined that gay marriage, and by the way, that's an oxymoron, marriage is a divine institution, it was established, it's the first institution established by God, and Jesus established that as well in his teaching on the subject.

The California Supreme Court had allowed for homosexuals to pretend that they're married, and so the citizens of California approved Proposition 8, which amended the California Constitution to specifically define marriage as between one man and one woman.

My own state of Arizona, which neighbors California, did the exact same thing with Proposition 102, but we're just not quite as far down the road as California. There have been a tremendous amount of marching in the streets, riots, I was reading a horrible article about gays and homosexuals who came down on this little Mexican restaurant because the owner is a and she gave $100 to the Proposition 8 campaign, and she literally was driven from her own restaurant in tears by these people.

They will not allow for difference on this matter. You cannot believe what they believe is wrong, or you are a hate-filled bigot, and they want to make it illegal for you to even quote the Bible on these issues.