Apologetics Without Apology

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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We have James with us.

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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.

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But it's been very good. And this morning we enjoyed having together a time around breakfast tables with Ahmed from our church, and an opportunity now for us to look at a subject.

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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.

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There's a few extra up here. If you're still in need of one, please let me know.

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We can get some other few Bibles, and we can have a Bible in your hands. The format this morning is going to be rather straightforward.

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James is going to talk until 10 .45, 10 .50, 11 o 'clock, somewhere in there, wherever he feels like it's a natural cutoff point.

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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 up for the time afterwards probably to some questions and answers, something like that.

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And then hopefully we'll break by noon, shortly before noon, and then you guys can be off for the rest of your day.

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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.

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I enjoyed 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.

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Just for my own information, how many of you have been to either of the debates we've done so far?

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Okay, so a majority. Okay, good. So you already have sort of an idea of where I'm coming from.

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This morning, Doug has titled our talk, Apologetics Without Apology, which is a bit of a pun,

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I do believe, which is fine. And so I thought it would be appropriate to go to the classical text on apologetics and use that as our foundation.

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So if you have your Bible, please turn with me to 1 Peter, Peter's first epistle, chapter 3.

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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.

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The reason being, over the years, especially over the past five years, I've developed my own sort of personal comfort zone.

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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 your beard, you can sort of get away with it.

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And for me, some of you who are involved in ministry, I am by far the most comfortable in ministering from the

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Word of God, preaching from the Word of God. When I'm preaching directly from the original language text, basically what

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I generally do not have any English notes. I might have some cross -references in the margin, but generally a very colorful

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Greek text is what I use to preach from. I didn't borrow that from anybody.

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That's just what I have found to be the most useful. And I just find the greatest liberty in preaching when

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I simply have the text in front of me and I'm working with it in that way. My Greek professor long ago said the greatest commentary on the

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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,

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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

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New Testament's original language. If you went to university and you were to study, for example, the

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German author Goethe, you would not be able to get even a master's degree in Goethe's literature without doing what first?

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Learning German. If you can't read Goethe in the language he wrote, you're not going to be considered to be properly educated in that.

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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, as if, well, the

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Holy Spirit just zaps it on you. Well, yes, the Holy Spirit has caused many a person who has never read a single word in Greek to have tremendous insights into the

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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

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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

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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

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Greek and love to teach Greek, but just simply on a pastoral level, I would highly recommend it to you.

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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.

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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.

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This is a diglot. This is the Nessiolam 27th edition of the Greek New Testament and the

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New English Translation, with all of the textual and translator notes on facing pages.

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And so it's a tremendous resource. For someone like myself in the midst of a debate, someone makes some type of wild claim about the text and the scriptures,

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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.

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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

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I started teaching for Golden Gate Seminary in their Phoenix, their Arizona campus, I was teaching the

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Greek. And I was also teaching systematic theology, and the leadership came to me one day and they said, can you teach

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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

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Hebrew scholar, but I certainly know the language. What was happening was they were having trouble getting anyone through first -year

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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.

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He couldn't communicate to the students beyond what the grammar itself said, even though his

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PhD is in that study and in that area of study. And so I went ahead and I taught it.

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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

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I would tell them was 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.

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And the majority of the people calling from that area were Mormon, obviously. And in the last half hour, this guy calls.

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Bill from Provo calls. And as I had been leaving my very fancy hotel room in Motel 6, and my son was with me,

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I looked at the bed, and lying on the bed was my very nicely -bound Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia, the current edition of the

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Hebrew Old Testament. My book bag was already full, and I almost left it there. I said, eh,

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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,

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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,

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I would see that the Israelites were actually polytheists, they believed in different gods, et cetera, et cetera.

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So I was able to pull out that Biblia Hebraica, 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.

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Why are you taking these manuscripts over these manuscripts? Do you not see this, that, and the other thing in the context? It turned out later that Bill from Provo is

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Dr. William Hamblin of Brigham Young University, one of the leading apologists of 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

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Christian who was on the radio. And it's just an illustration of how useful the language can be.

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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.

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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 all of that said,

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I'm not sure why I felt it necessary, but hopefully it's useful to one of you. Don't come into Jesus.

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1 Peter 3 is indeed the classicus locus, the classical text for apologetics because it's from this very text that we take the name apologetics.

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Let's look at the two verses, 15 and 16. Here we are told, instead set

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Christ apart. Now, some of your translations might say God. Do they have God at that point?

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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.

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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.

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Now, these words, first of all, are not addressed simply to the leaders of the church. They would be valid for leaders of the church.

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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.

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He must be able to exhort in 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.

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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.

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Now, there's a strong temptation to camp on that and to preach concerning how this could be.

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I mean, if the current rage in evangelicalism to make the church look as much like the society around us as is humanly possible is actually a biblical concept,

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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.

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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.

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They all come together, and that is always a very convicting thing for me, and it needs to be a convicting thing,

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I think, for all of us on that level. So these words are addressed to all believers.

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We are all to be ready to give an answer, pros apologion. That is the term from which we get apologetics.

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You may be familiar with the apology of Socrates and Plato. Apology was a word that long preexisted

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Peter's writing, and anyone who presented a position of philosophy would be asked to give an apology.

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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.

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I wish I hadn't done that. That clearly is not what apologetics is, though sadly there are evangelicals who make it look that way.

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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.

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That's not exactly a biblical approach to that particular subject. Always be ready to give an answer, a defense, a reasoned defense.

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Obviously, if we're going to give a reasoned defense to others, that means we have to reason through it ourselves.

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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.

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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.

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And so the concept of being happy with the least common denominator, the concept of a simplistic faith that never grows.

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What is the commandment? Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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,

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I just did this myself. And I realized, yes, 25 years ago I did this. And so, you know,

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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 it results in mature wisdom.

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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.

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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 defense.

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Now, this isn't directly relevant to my subject, but I think it's important that we deal with the text.

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I hope you see something in this text. I'm not sure if your Bible has references in it. Thankfully, this one does.

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But this first phrase, set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts.

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What does that mean? Literally, the Greek term is to sanctify.

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Sanctify Christ, set him apart as holy. If you're familiar with the utilization of this term in the

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Old Testament, there would be certain items in the tabernacle that were set apart.

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They were devoted to the service of God. And so here, we are to sanctify

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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.

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But that would not be an accurate understanding of the original context of this language itself.

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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?

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Well, I think Peter is saying the same thing here that Paul communicates to us in the book of Colossians.

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There, we have described for us Jesus as the one who sums up, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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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.

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We are not to be taken captive by empty deception of the philosophy, these vain philosophies of men.

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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.

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That which makes God, God, Colossians 2 .9. I think it's the very same thing that's being said here.

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We as individuals must recognize the world is constantly seeking to enthrone itself within our heart.

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It is constantly seeking to overthrow the Lordship of Christ in all of life, including epistemology.

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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.

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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.

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Jesus is just something over there, an oddity out there. We can discuss it, but it's out there.

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It's not here in the center. Man now is firmly ensconced in the center of Western epistemology.

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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.

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That was once a part of the highest expressions, especially here in your own country, but it is not anymore.

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Instead, man has blasphemously, the creature has crawled up upon the throne and said, see, it's empty.

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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.

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And so we as believers must recognize that each and every day, we must consciously seek to sanctify

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Christ, to set Christ apart as Lord in our hearts, to voluntarily submit ourselves to His Lordship, to say,

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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, that even as a teacher,

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I seek to communicate the facts of science or history, I must need to do so under the

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And so as we think about this, please note the cross -reference. This is a reference to Isaiah chapter 8.

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This text from which we get our very charter of apologetics is one of the many texts where a

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New Testament writer takes a text that was originally about Jehovah God, about Yahweh, and applies it to Jesus.

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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

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Old Testament numbers these things. Here we have a reference to the command to the people of God in the

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Old Covenant to set Yahweh apart, to sanctify Him within their hearts.

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And here the New Testament writer has no problem in making application of this to the Christ, to the

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Messiah. Once again demonstrating the inevitably high view of Christ that is just part and parcel of the language.

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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

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New Testament writers were experiential Trinitarians. Peter has walked with his son.

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He's been on the Mount of Transfiguration, has heard the Father speak from heaven, and he is now indwelled by the

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Holy Spirit. He is an experiential Trinitarian. And so it is not surprising whatsoever that that language naturally flows from him.

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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.

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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

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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society section that goes through a whole list. There's an outline on the deity of Christ that I have that provides you an entire list of these types of texts where the

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New Testament writers apply to Jesus those attributes and things that could only be applied to Yahweh in the

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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

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Creator, when I seek as a creature to live, speak, and think under the

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Lordship of He who came down from Heaven, took on flesh, and has now been exalted in the right hand of the

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Father. He is the standard of all things. He is the one by which all things must be measured.

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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

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God has ordained. I should think like Him. I should act like Him.

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He is my all. My all in all is the words of Paul.

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When I do that, it's going to have a particular impact upon my life. It cannot help but do so.

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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,

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I must be ready. Always be ready. Well, that's a difficult thing. There are some times

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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.

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That is, because of the consistency of my behavior, these opportunities are going to be given to me.

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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.

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When someone looks at you and they say, you just responded to that great, devastating loss in your life in a way different from the world.

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How? Because when I suffered a similar loss, it knocked me off my feet.

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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.

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Sometimes God just absolutely tosses you out of your comfort zone to make you grow.

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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.

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60 % of the funding of my ministry disappeared in one day, and I had to find a job.

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Not that the $450 a month I was earning at the time was much anyways, but I needed to find a job.

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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.

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He said, well you know, 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.

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And he says, they pay real well. You ought to think about it. Oh my, that's not comfortable for me.

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I'm not this gregarious type of guy who can just come bounding into hospital rooms, beaming with joy.

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I'm a Scotsman for crying out loud. It's more like, I ain't done.

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And you know, I had my master's degree. I was a seminary graduate and all, but I had avoided those classes like the plague.

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Counseling, fifth year Greek. Fifth year Greek sounds good. Let's avoid that. So I took the job.

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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

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I ever did. Because I honestly had never seen anyone die. I had not been around death.

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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,

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I was to do a lost support group. Now this was a secular hospital.

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So how do you do a lost support group for people who have no hope of the forgiveness of their own sins?

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I learned a lot about grief counseling. In fact, most people don't know this, but my second most popular book is called

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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.

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Her mother had an epileptic seizure, she rolled over on her and suffocated her. And there was just something completely unnatural about a casket that is this big.

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That's just not right. And after the funeral,

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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

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I knew about grief counseling to this acquaintance of mine. And when I got done, I realized it was actually a book.

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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,

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I love the book, but I'm taking your name off of it. What books have I already published at Bethany House?

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The King James only controversy, the Roman Catholic controversy. Eh, this ain't gonna work, so I'm gonna bring it in -house anonymously.

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And once they love it, then I'll tell them who wrote it. And so that's what happened.

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And on September 12th, 2001, there were workers at Ground Zero passing my book out to the people who were working on Ground Zero.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So obviously it was my intent to attempt to encourage them, especially, interestingly enough, through service to others, to develop that hope.

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That's Christian's grief. 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

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Western mindset that we don't deal with death well at all. We don't understand it. We don't have Biblical views of it.

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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

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Scriptures, some people misunderstand what the Scriptures say. And so Christians aren't supposed to grieve. Paul said we're not supposed to grieve as those who have no hope.

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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, or old enough to grieve the loss of the object of your love, that's just all there is to it.

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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.

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No one ever goes through grief. No one ever goes through the disorientation that comes about because of such a loss like that.

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And it's not a good thing. But that's not my subject of this morning. I just mentioned this to emphasize this idea of hope.

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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.

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Some of the most popular things

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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.

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And what has caused them to stand out is that I seek to examine these things under the lordship of Christ.

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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.

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Where does this hope you have come from? Now, my time is fleeting, so let me especially emphasize this.

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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.

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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.

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The vast majority of bad witnessing explosions where yelling is taking place and there's anger and emotion come.

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Yes, you can expect that from the lost. That's their nature. It shouldn't be surprising to you.

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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.

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And so, I yesterday morning, for example, with Doug and some of the gentlemen

34:25

I was talking about Mormonism. And I gave a very fast I was speaking,

34:32

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.

34:43

When you hear Mormonism in a naked sense, it sounds so silly.

34:49

Space gods from Kolob? I mean, who could ever believe this? You need to recognize there are intelligent

34:56

Mormons. They have an apologetic. It may not be consistent. It may not be compelling, but it's there.

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You need to be careful that you don't just jump on your white horse and ride off to save all the

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Mormons. Because they will knock you right off of your white horse if you are not firmly grounded in what you believe.

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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.

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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.

35:45

Salman Rushdie probably will not be in attendance, but I would like to be. And I was emphasizing to these primarily younger

35:57

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.

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That I seek to show them respect by studying their own literature, by obtaining the best of their own literature.

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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 the library.

36:39

You've got a little bit better here. London, Phoenix. As far as library resources and culture goes, not much of a comparison there.

36:50

I have, I seek to respond to the best that Islam has to offer.

36:56

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.

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I get the feeling they're not really sure what to do with me on that level. They're not accustomed to that.

37:13

We should be known as the people who absorb a tremendous amount of abuse.

37:19

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.

37:38

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, especially when it's merely verbal jabs.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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, as I see happening in my country right now.

38:34

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.

38:43

Especially in Doug's former state of California, the fact that the citizens of California amended their constitution.

38:52

They didn't need to. There's 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

39:06

California Supreme Court determined that gay marriage, and by the way, that's an oxymoron.

39:12

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.

39:24

The California Supreme Court allowed for homosexuals to pretend that they're married, and so the citizens of California approved

39:35

Proposition 8, which amended the California Constitution to specifically define marriage as between one man and one woman.

39:43

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.

39:51

There have been a tremendous amount of marching in the streets, rioting.

39:57

I was reading a horrible article about gays and homosexuals who came down on this little

40:03

Mexican restaurant because the owner is a Mormon, and she gave $100 to the

40:09

Proposition 8 campaign, and she literally was driven from her own restaurant in tears by these people.

40:17

They will not, they will not allow for difference on this matter.

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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

40:30

Bible on these issues. This is the society that we live in, and it can be extremely difficult because when it says those who slander your good conduct, that's going to happen more and more.

40:46

And even when it becomes the norm in a society, when it says they will be put to shame, you might say, those people don't seem to be experiencing any shame.

40:54

Well, they are, but they're suppressing it. Their conscience is still there.

40:59

That's one of the main reasons these folks hate the proclamation of the Gospel so much, is because it reminds them of how much effort they have to put out to suppress the knowledge of God within them every single day.

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But this shame may not even be seen in this life, but we must remember there is a judgment to come.

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The psalmist reminds us that the very foundation of God's throne is justice. Justice will be done.

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And we may not see it in this life, but brothers and sisters, we must realize that many generations of believers have gone to their graves not having seen justice in their life, and yet confident that justice will be done.

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And of course, the entire Christian message is that justice will be done. Every sin and evil will be addressed.

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It will either be addressed in the one who committed it, and they will be punished. Or it will be addressed in the one who died in their place, who bears the wrath of God perfectly.

41:56

There's no injustice in Christianity. There's mercy. There's grace. There's no injustice. No one receives injustice.

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Every sin will be punished. It will either be punished in the perfect substitute, or it will be punished in the one who will, in his rebellion, stand before God and insist that God does not have the right to judge.

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Every sin will be punished in its time. And so, the being put to shame may be in God's sight, in the sight of an irrational human being, but it may not be in the sight of our particular culture at any one particular time, because it truly does seem that in Western culture right now, secularism, and do not mistake something, my friends.

42:42

Secular humanism, Darwinian humanism, however you want to call it, is as religious a belief as anything else.

42:49

And its zealous proponents sometimes put the most zealous Christians to shame by their single -minded devotion to the promulgation of their religious belief.

43:03

And today, it's very difficult for me to see a whole lot of difference between some who promote humanism and the lengths to which they will go, and their desire to suppress the freedom of speech of others, even.

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And the worst inquisitor in the Spanish Inquisition of old. Both can become absolutely consuming things.

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And in those situations, no room is left for rational dialogue in this place. That's why we must take the opportunities we have right now to engage in these types of situations.

43:38

And so, here you have the apologetics without apology. It is a part of the very command of Scripture.

43:45

It flows from our theology. I was explaining to the men yesterday we first must determine what our theology is and defend it.

43:54

Many an apologist makes a gross error by coming up with an apologetic methodology and then developing a theology to match it.

44:03

That is absolutely backwards. And it is the formula for disaster. First and foremost, we must know what we believe, and only then can we develop a meaningful mechanism that is consistent with our belief to defend that.

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When we go the other direction, I do not believe that we're honoring God's truth in any way, shape, or form. Instead, we are exalting our arguments as if our arguments themselves are somehow a part of divine revelation.

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And of course, they are not. So, there are some thoughts from the text.

44:35

We'll take a brief break, and then if you have some comments you'd like to present to me, and we can have some dialogue, we'll do that.

44:45

Alright? If you have any feedback, any questions about what

44:50

I said, or we can wander off onto other subjects, but especially if there was something lacking clarity in what

44:58

I said, if you want some clarifications on that first, that would be good, and then we can sort of expand out into other areas if you'd like.

45:08

The manner in which we do apologetics,

45:15

I have a question about that in regards to debating with Muslims.

45:21

Someone said to me that one of his Muslim friends just appreciates the way people debate more than their content, so that if they heard an

45:31

Islamic apologist who was very vocal and very loud, they would say, this guy's great.

45:36

And we were wondering what implications does that have for us, in terms of when we think gentle, does that communicate gentleness to a lot of Muslims, or weakness?

45:50

Yeah, well, obviously different cultures. The question, if you did not hear it, was it is true that there are many

45:59

Muslims who interpret loudness and the force of one's assertions as evidence of one's truthfulness.

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And therefore, if you remain calm and seek rational thought, there are many

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Muslims who interpret that as a sign of weakness. And I think this raises the whole issue of in apologetics, what is the relationship between apologetics and evangelism?

46:33

Very often, especially in our society, they walk hand -in -hand and must, because we are engaging people who have a preconceived worldview that stands in the way of the gospel, and this fact, from a biblical perspective, is ungodly, and in fact, is sinful.

46:50

Islam would be that, because it denies the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection, the centrality of Christ, secular humanism, likewise, is a man standing in rebellion against his creator.

47:00

We once stood outside the American Atheist Convention with signs that said

47:05

Atheists, creatures denying their creator. We had a guy swerve off the road to try to hit us.

47:11

He was so in love with our message. But the question really becomes who are you debating for?

47:23

When I stand, when I stood here Thursday evening, I recognize as I look out over that crowd that there's a whole range of people sitting in front of me.

47:34

There is a certain part of that crowd that is not going to hear anything my opponent has to say.

47:40

They aren't even interested in hearing what my opponent has to say. There's a certain part of the crowd on this side that's not going to hear a word

47:46

I have to say. If you actually ask them, I once did a debate with Tim Staples in Fulton, California.

47:55

There was a man in the back, I knew who he was, he was a convert to Roman Catholicism from one of the local

48:01

Christian ministries. I had known who he was when he was a part of it. Whenever Tim Staples would speak, he would come in and listen.

48:08

Whenever I'd stand up, he left. And then had to gall up the end to say, Staples obviously won.

48:15

Nothing you can do when someone is not going to hear a word that you have to say.

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I recognize that and there's going to be that portion on each side. Personally, I believe a portion on my side like that is much smaller than the portion on the other.

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But there's nothing I can do about that. In the middle, you're going to have your

48:34

Christians who are going to hear and analyze and think and I want to encourage them,

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I want to model for them, I want to edify them. We need to realize that much of what we do in apologetics is in edifying believers.

48:48

I think I have thankfully had far more Christians kept out of false religions and teachings than people have come out of false religions and teachings because of what

48:57

I've done over the years and do not in any way, shape, or form consider that to be an invalid use of apologetics.

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I think it's extremely important. At the same time, over on this side, I am most focused upon the

49:10

Muslim who is going to hear what I have to say and what is the only way he can hear what I have to say?

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Through the work of the Holy Spirit of God. I have to trust that the Spirit of God is going to honor the proclamation of His word.

49:23

Now let me attach to that the fact that when we would go to Salt Lake City and pass out tracts when we were in Mesa, many

49:33

Mormons would love to take those tracts and just walk up front and go rip it up in my face.

49:40

See? And then stomp on the ground. I'll never forget the first day my son was with me, passing out tracts.

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Little guy, he's not as big as I am, but little guy. He has this rush limbaugh tie on and a white shirt.

49:56

I watched this guy go by me and I knew he was going to be going by Josh, so I turn around and I watch. Josh does the thing.

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The guy takes it, he looks at it, and he tears it in half and he reaches for my son.

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Now I'm moving about this time. Opens the shirt pocket on his shirt and stuffs it in his shirt and walks in.

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And about that time I got to him and Josh was just standing. Laughter You know,

50:24

I'm like, is it always going to be like this? It's been a long day.

50:31

Laughter I said, don't worry about it son. After the first time it happens, it's not so tough after that.

50:36

And he certainly did I get that idea. But we have always said as we've been walking along the sidewalk, and I reach over and pick up one of our tracks, it's got a big old footprint on it.

50:47

A fallen warrior. A fallen warrior. Was this wasted? From the world's perspective of course it was.

50:53

If your only purpose is, well the only thing that's successful is when someone reads this and becomes a Christian, everything else is a waste?

50:59

I don't believe so. Read the prophets. If that was the standard, then pretty much every prophet

51:05

I know was a complete failure. Look at Isaiah's call to prophethood.

51:11

What's the message he's given in Isaiah chapter 6? It's a message of judgment. And God even says, I'm going to close their ears and close their eyes and make sure they do not understand what you're saying unless they repent.

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So that they don't repent. And you just go, that's why I think Isaiah was going, how long my lord?

51:29

Laughter I can't find that behavior, I've been looking for the variant you know, how long?

51:36

But I think that's what he was saying, you know, because that was a tough message. I mean look at how often he has to encourage

51:42

Jeremiah because that's a tough message. And many times God's people are meant to bring a message of judgment.

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Those people, the person who had that tract and tore it up and threw it down there, was that a waste of that effort?

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No. God is glorified even in judgment. When his truth is proclaimed, it's proclaimed to his glory he's glorified in that.

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The reaction response to it is up to him, it's not up to me. And so it has been, you know we were the only group that was up there in Salt Lake City for all those years.

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There'd be people who'd come and go, but they'd burn out because they didn't have the right idea as to why they were there in the first place.

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And so in response specifically to that question, yeah there's clearly a temptation to go, well if the

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Muslims are impressed by loud blustery communication then I'll become loud and blustery.

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But the problem is, is that what the Spirit of God uses to bring someone to a knowledge of himself?

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Or does the Spirit of God not cause us to think Christ's thoughts after him? Are we not to have a mind that is marked by discipline?

52:51

That's not a mind that's marked by discipline. That kind of you know, Adnan Rashid is well known as a great debater not because he actually can interact with what you're saying, but because he can talk loud.

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And he can talk fast and he can in a blustery way say, no, no, no, you're wrong.

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Excuse me, but why? You're wrong! But why again? Because we know you're wrong!

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I mean, you know we have to know who we're attempting to reach and what the

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Spirit of God does in someone's life to bring them to Christ in the first place. And I don't think that that loud bluster is the way to do so.

53:29

Now, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with speaking loudly so people can hear you. But there is clearly a difference between pandering to what they think marks truth and compromising the truth itself.

53:47

There was another one, yes? Yes, I was wondering you mentioned the riots out in California and places such as that.

53:56

I was wondering to what extent you think the what do you think the new president -elect thinks of this?

54:02

Do you think he sees that and supports it? Or do you think that he sees it, but he tends to bend to his base, which is more left -wing?

54:10

Would you say he supports it, or would he cave under pressure? Well, the big question that we're all asking ourselves in the states right now is given how much had to be promised to the ultra -left wing to bring about this electoral victory.

54:31

How far will he be willing to go? I think that he is a very intelligent man.

54:40

He realizes that to pander to the ultra -left is going to really cause a backlash.

54:48

You need to realize historically, Bill Clinton lost the House of Representatives to the

54:53

Republicans within two years. He did so because there was this major backlash against his fly left.

55:01

Obama's enough of a person to know history to realize that basically what was being said the day after the election was there's no way that he can fulfill all the promises that he made.

55:15

The numbers don't add up, first of all, but the people on the far left, we have a lot of anarchists running around Western culture these days.

55:23

Here, in Europe, and they're all over the United States now too, especially in California, Seattle, places like that.

55:29

Look at all the G7 and G20 meetings, stuff like that. They all show up in stone

55:35

Starbucks. I'm not really sure what the point of that one is. So they're out there and it's interesting to me this idea of anarchists just rebelling against all authority.

55:47

I've read that. I've read about that somewhere. It appears a lot in the scriptures that mankind wants to rebel against God -ordained authority.

55:57

This past Sunday, these people showed up at a church in Lansing, Michigan. Right after the prayers, they got up and they began shouting obscenities and trying to hang banners in the sanctuary.

56:12

Two lesbians got up in the pulpit and started fondling each other and they were throwing condoms around. I mean, it was just incredible.

56:18

They were trying to start fights in this church. And when you read their website, their fundamental belief is just resist all authority, no matter what it is.

56:28

And I just go, wow. Paul knew about people like that in Romans 1. That's exactly what they're like.

56:40

They don't do that in the mosques. Yeah, isn't that interesting?

56:47

Yeah, isn't that interesting? Well, those folks, the anarchists, would dislike

56:55

Islam just as they dislike Christianity. But they recognize the difference between the two. They ain't going in there.

57:02

Because they know what they're going to get if they do. It seems in the

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West that there is a culture guilt in essence.

57:16

If you decide you detest what the British Empire did, then you need to detest

57:21

Christianity. If you detest what the United States has done, then you need to detest Christianity.

57:27

One of the biggest problems I have is in talking with Muslims and trying to explain to them that neither of our nations are

57:32

Christian nations in the first place. That if 5 % of the people in the United States are passing us on the freeway, actually make any decision during the course of the week under the

57:44

Lordship of Christ, I'd be shocked. I'd be amazed. Yes, there are still many

57:49

Christians. And I know that many folks over here look at America at least over the past number of decades as almost the

57:56

Holy Land. You go to some places in the United States, there's a church on every corner and stuff like that. Yeah, those churches are not in good shape.

58:04

Let's put it that way. Very few of them are preaching the gospel anymore. But still, I think there's more yet there than you have in European culture by any stretch of the imagination here in the

58:15

UK as well. I realize there are many in the UK. We're not in Europe. They're not there. We're not a part of Europe.

58:22

But I was talking with a Muslim apologist while we were driving down to San Diego to do a debate.

58:29

We were in the same vehicle, which may not have been overly wise, but he was blaming the rise of homosexuality on Christianity.

58:37

He said, the Christian nations are doing this. It's naming a Christian nation. It actually took me about 30 seconds of just repeating myself before he finally said, well, here,

58:45

US. And I said, have you looked at this society? Do you see what

58:51

Hollywood cranks out? How can you call this

58:56

Christian when it is completely opposed to anything godly at all?

59:03

He just wouldn't accept that from me. Now, it's not that there are not still positive signs once in a while.

59:10

I know, unfortunately, it's probably not going to show here, but when you get an opportunity, I hardly ever recommend a movie or a film to anybody.

59:20

But I saw a movie a few weeks ago, about a month and a half ago now, called

59:26

Fireproof. If you get a chance to see Fireproof, if you can order it in, this is a little film, it's a full film, was done on half a million dollars budget, which, for a film, is ridiculous.

59:41

That's what most films spend on shoes. Seriously. Yes.

59:51

Not British shoes, but shoes. And my friend

59:56

Kirk Cameron was the star of it. If you know who Kirk Cameron is, the way of the master Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron.

01:00:04

And Kirk did not get a paycheck for this. He, at the end of the film, was sort of giving something away, but there's a scene where he kisses his wife.

01:00:14

He insisted they fly his wife in. And they did it with a bright background in silhouette, so you couldn't see that it was not the actress that had played his wife during the whole film.

01:00:24

He would not kiss the actress in the way that he needed to at the end. So he had his own wife do that.

01:00:31

And I just suggest that you make sure you have lots of tissue nearby.

01:00:38

It is a touching, touching, well done film. And it's all about marriage, and Kirk plays a fire captain, and he's getting ready to go through a divorce, and he is converted in this process.

01:00:56

A very clear gospel message, a very good gospel message. And how it changes his approach to his wife, and he's allowed to love her now because he knows what it is to be loved and forgiven.

01:01:08

And just a tremendous film. And what was so wonderful was it came out at the same time as Bill Maher's Religulous.

01:01:17

This attack upon all religions, which cost, I don't know how much more.

01:01:24

Religulous is already out of the theaters. Nobody cared a bit about it. Fireproof is still in the theaters.

01:01:29

It's made over $30 million now. And so it's there are some still signs of a heartbeat, shall we say.

01:01:38

There's still the faithful that are there, but if you get a chance to see it, it's well -perceived.

01:01:46

You just mentioned, sorry about the state of the church. What in your mind,

01:01:52

I mean you travel around quite a bit, defines evangelicalism today? One question is, what defines evangelicalism?

01:02:04

Obviously there's a historical definition, and unfortunately, it really seems that especially the current upcoming generation has completely overthrown any need for any historical study whatsoever.

01:02:19

We don't care about history anymore. We don't see ourselves as standing in a stream of history. We have no connections with preceding generations.

01:02:27

And I think some of us in the church have helped with this. In many churches, the young people are isolated away from the elderly saints all the time.

01:02:34

They never have any interaction with them at all. In our church this is not a possibility.

01:02:41

From the time you're 18 months old or so, you're in the service of the adults.

01:02:46

That's just the way it is. And you're around those godly men and women. And I think in some ways the church has sort of helped with this, but we live in a society that does not care about this.

01:02:56

The majority of the young people at least in the United States have no idea what the generation of some of the older folks here went through in World War II, the sacrifices.

01:03:10

And as a result, within quote -unquote Christianity, what evangelicalism was doesn't matter.

01:03:18

It's what is that matters. And so terms that may have been defined for generations before us, we arrogantly think,

01:03:27

I speak of the current generation, I'm sort of in between them, but we arrogantly think we can just redefine them as we see fit.

01:03:34

And so there's very little concern as to whether we are consistent with those who even built the buildings in which we worship, who gave us the rights and freedoms that we have.

01:03:45

We don't care about any of them. We only care about ourselves. It's a very selfish generation. And I think that also has to do with the destruction of the family, especially even the value of having children.

01:03:56

That's why European culture is disappearing. Let's just face it, the average French woman has 1 .5

01:04:02

children. You have to have 2 .1 just to maintain your population. The average Afghani immigrant woman has 4 .56

01:04:10

children. Do the math. Your own culture is on the decline because you have less than 2 .1

01:04:19

children per woman. And the United States just dropped to 2 .0. And the immigrants are having 4, 5, 6, 7 kids each.

01:04:28

And in a matter of just a couple generations, everything that once belonged to the natives now belongs to somebody else.

01:04:36

And why do we have so few children? Because we don't value family. We don't value the continuation of our culture. It's just me, my iPod, me.

01:04:46

I want to gather stuff up for me, and if I have a bunch of kids, then I don't have as much money to spend on me, me, me, me, me.

01:04:54

And it will be the end of European culture. I mean, you know that Russia and places like that are trying to reverse this.

01:05:00

They're trying to give tax breaks if you have more kids and stuff like that because they've read the numbers and they realize it.

01:05:06

But once it's become a cultural norm, the only thing that matters is my happiness, my comfort, what

01:05:12

I possess. And who cares about continuation of my culture, history, anything else.

01:05:18

So in regards to the answer of that particular question, that small sermon that was free. I do not need to leave an intonation on the way after that one.

01:05:27

But obviously for me, the very term itself has to be defined by the evangel.

01:05:36

And that's why I find it difficult anymore even to almost use the term when in my country people like T .D.

01:05:43

Jakes are identified as evangelical leaders. T .D. Jakes is not a Trinitarian for crying out loud.

01:05:49

And if you don't believe in the doctrine of the Trinity you're not an evangelical. And so what has become definitional of evangelical in the

01:05:57

United States is basically the size and look of your church not the substance of your message.

01:06:06

And so the definitional norms have simply been done away with in a lot of western culture.

01:06:14

And that's why I find the term somewhat problematic any longer because at least on my side of the pond it is used of anything that calls itself

01:06:24

Christianity that is not Roman Catholic. And even then, now thanks to Frank Beckwith and his conversion, well his reversion back to Roman Catholicism, Frank Beckwith was the head of the

01:06:35

Evangelical Theological Society. And he went back to Roman Catholicism. His book just came out.

01:06:41

It'll be sitting on my desk when I get back. It's really something to look forward to. Small amount of sarcasm.

01:06:49

Because of that you even have Roman Catholics being identified as evangelicals. And that just leads to a tremendous amount of confusion.

01:06:57

But since our society is moving away from what is even rational to where words no longer have meaning.

01:07:05

They certainly don't have any transcendent meaning. Which makes sense. If we are just the random result of the toss of the cosmic dice we're just humans who exist for a little while.

01:07:16

We have really no connection to the past or the future. Why not make words mean whatever? Who cares about any of these things?

01:07:23

That's what's taking place. And so we obviously try to differentiate ourselves as best we can.

01:07:31

But the onus is upon us to do the explaining as to why we make these differentiations.

01:07:37

And of course in our society as soon as you do so, you're exclusivistic. You're not inclusive. And so we have to be able to explain well, when you say inclusive if you're grabbing up a bunch of error and trying to combine it with truth that would be like saying that there's something wrong with making sure that your cola doesn't have any cyanide in it.

01:07:58

Don't we need to be inclusive? Let's just let all the liquids in. Excuse me? I don't think you want to do that, but you do want to do that and get this to wander around.

01:08:07

Does that make any sense? Yes? Staying within the evangelical church

01:08:13

Which we can't define it in. Well, if we define it as being the true church would we would you say that there's, have you picked up an animosity or even a negative attitude towards the realm of apologetics or apologetics as a whole?

01:08:33

Obviously there needs to be that right balance between the gospel and apologetics, but have you picked up that some people say the gospel is the most important thing and that there's a negative attitude towards apologetics and can we turn that around if it is the case?

01:08:48

Yeah, so the question is do I sense an anti -apologetic attitude amongst many evangelicals?

01:08:53

And let me first challenge part of the question, and that is it's not a matter of it's the gospel versus apologetics.

01:09:05

Apologetics is simply a part of the proclamation of the gospel. When you encounter a situation where there is resistance to the claims of Christ, apologetics is dealing with that resistance.

01:09:16

So, I think one of the problems is that apologetics has been defined as a entity unto itself that can be defined outside of the gospel, and that's one of the problems, first of all.

01:09:27

But I think that the resistance to apologetics that does exist in many evangelical churches is a manifestation of a very deep and abiding anti -intellectualism that does continue to exist.

01:09:41

Probably it exists in the UK as a long -term reaction against Puritanism and high churchism, in essence.

01:09:51

In the United States, it's more of a reaction that comes from a charismatic

01:09:57

Pentecostal concept of spirituality as being a primarily emotional and non - intellectual thing.

01:10:05

So, the spirit comes upon you and zap you. You're a immediate, mature

01:10:11

Christian, and all this stuff about studying scripture is very non -spiritual.

01:10:18

I remember many, many years ago, one of my first apologetic tasks while I was at that lower Southern Baptist church was there was a movement for a while that was causing problems in churches.

01:10:29

This carpet cleaner from Memphis basically claimed to have an inside track to God as so often as it is.

01:10:37

And I was asked to go attend one of his conferences and to report on it to the church. I remember him standing in front of a very large group of people in Dallas, and he holds up this systematic theology.

01:10:47

It was too far away for me to see what it was. He holds up this systematic theology and he says, don't give me theology, give me

01:10:55

Jesus. And that's the kind of American anti -intellectualism.

01:11:01

It's irrational, because as soon as you say, could you tell me something about Jesus? As soon as he opens his mouth, what's he doing?

01:11:09

He's doing theology. So, the whole idea is absurd on its face, but they rarely put themselves in a position of being challenged by anyone on that level.

01:11:20

And so, there is a distrust. Part of the distrust is well deserved. The fact of the matter is

01:11:27

I am one of the biggest critics of apologists as an apologist. And one of the biggest errors of apologists in the

01:11:36

United States is that they are not churchmen. Very few of the apologists in the

01:11:42

United States are actively involved in any particular local church. Very few of them have teaching positions.

01:11:47

I know of almost none that are elders and hence have to teach and preach the Word of God in a balanced way.

01:11:55

Have to take their turn in the nursery or teach young people or do any of those things. I think that's all extremely damaging to them.

01:12:02

But many of them just live on the road going from place to place to place, have no accountability to any particular local fellowship.

01:12:08

And all of that, I think, is completely unbiblical. There is no office of apologist in the

01:12:14

New Testament. Every elder is to have at least a rudimentary ability to defend the faith.

01:12:19

That's just one of the requirements of the eldership. Now, I personally, because I am a professor and I have training in Greek and Hebrew and textual criticism and church history and things like that, then have the privilege of being able to defend the faith in various contexts and my church has been extremely supportive of that.

01:12:39

Though you'll notice, I even scheduled this trip. I'm only gone from my church on two Sundays. I'll still be back the

01:12:46

Sunday after I land and then the Sunday after that I'm preaching. I think that is one of the greatest problems is that apologists have been well known for causing issues in churches because they themselves are not church and they don't have any particular passion for the church and that's completely unbiblical.

01:13:10

In our ministry, we learned very early on we do not allow anyone to pass out tracts with us that they have or outreaches or something like that that are not a part of a local

01:13:19

Bible belief church. And when they come up to us and say you are just so unloving and so narrow and so on and so forth, my response is

01:13:26

Hebrews 13 and 17 says that you're to be in subjection to those who have the leadership over you. If you don't know who they are, that means you're rebelling against the

01:13:34

Word of God. So what in the world are you doing out here telling other people about the Word of God that says you don't believe it yourself? A little straightforward,

01:13:41

I know, but my forebears are from Scotland, so they just sort of let it fly.

01:13:49

But I think it would be simple to do otherwise. We would be compromising our own message and we would be exposing that person's spiritual danger.

01:13:57

Lately, I have met people who, I remember one of the early encounters

01:14:02

I had in my Christian life was with a man who was an expert on Jehovah's Witnesses. This man could quote chapter and verse of Watchtower and Awaken and the bound volumes and he knew the

01:14:12

Watchtower inside and out, but he was never a churchman and that was Jehovah's Witness. And that was

01:14:18

Jehovah's Witness. Apologetics exposes you to error, exposes you to untruth, and if you're not a part of the church, you're already rebelling against God anyways.

01:14:27

And so it's very easy then to become disillusioned with somebody or something, have a situation that enforces you into off the beaten track path, into one of these occultisms.

01:14:39

So that's important to report out. You mentioned when you were talking earlier about how attitudes should be in apologetics, and you said also that you seek to say the best that someone else has got.

01:14:54

Could you speak to the fact that when you're, particularly with Muslims, but not exclusively, that there's a sense of double standards.

01:15:02

I talked this morning about the story of a Muslim who came to our church, and after being reputed, he took the same information from another church.

01:15:09

He didn't seem to learn double standards. And also, I'm sure you've come across it, the Muslim practice of unwitting, they don't have to necessarily be truthful.

01:15:19

Takiyah. Yeah. It's called Takiyah. Right. Can you speak to that matter? Yeah, well, one of the things you will hear, if any of you attend the debate on Monday evening,

01:15:31

I will be debating Shabir Ali. Now, Shabir is a very, very intelligent man.

01:15:38

When he does his opening statement, if he does the same thing he has done in his previous debates with me, there will be nothing on the podium in front of him.

01:15:47

He will quote all of it. He will quote all of his sources by memory. If you've attended the first two debates,

01:15:54

Shabir Ali is a completely different level than either Adnan Rashid or Sami Zadeh.

01:16:01

Very, very intelligent man. And yet, in every debate, I've had to bring up the same point, and I can guarantee you,

01:16:08

I've been bringing it up much more forcefully than I ever have in the past in our debates on Monday evening.

01:16:15

And that is that Shabir uses one standard, one source of scholarship, one set of rules in examining the

01:16:23

Bible and the New Testament, and then a completely different set of rules when examining the

01:16:29

Quran and Islam. And he knows this. I will even quote him saying it, where in a debate against a

01:16:36

Christian, he said, you need to make up your mind. Are you going to wear the hat of a Western scholar or the hat of a

01:16:42

Christian? Well, for Shabir, are you going to wear the hat of a Western scholar or the hat of a Muslim? You need to make up your mind.

01:16:49

The double standards are very, very clear in the way that they approach this.

01:16:56

And they don't seem to be concerned about it. They don't seem to realize that for many of us that is the end of the debate, when you cannot use the same standard for the other side of yourself.

01:17:05

Is that not the very indication that your argument has failed? So, yes, that is it can be a little bit more subtle with the

01:17:15

Shabir Ali or it can be just right out there with an Adnan Rashid or a

01:17:21

Sami Zaatari or a Salman Abdullah or these other individuals that I've debated as well.

01:17:27

They have to use this. Now, I think that's a part of Islam itself because let me explain what

01:17:33

I mean by that. The modern Muslim apologist is in a very difficult position. It seems very clear to me that if you just want to say

01:17:43

Muhammad as the author of the Quran, obviously there are questions, scholars have questions about the compilation of the

01:17:49

Quran and all sorts of things like that. But I normally leave those things aside unless you can really develop them. That Muhammad believed that the

01:17:58

Bible taught what he was teaching. If you just read the Quran you don't read modern commentaries.

01:18:05

He clearly believed that if the Christians would just read their scriptures correctly that those scriptures would teach what

01:18:12

Muhammad teaches. Muhammad never attacked the text of the Bible. Modern Islamic apologists try to make it look like he did not.

01:18:20

The early Christian, early Islamic apologists did not. But once the

01:18:26

Islamic expansion from 632 to 732 was over and the borders began to be fixed and there started to be written contact between Christian scholarship and Islamic scholarship, that generation of Muslims discovered that they had a problem.

01:18:41

While the Quran said go to the Torah, go to the Injil, they will tell you of these things,

01:18:48

Muhammad didn't have a Bible. The Bible was not translated into Arabic completely until around 890 and he died in 632.

01:18:57

If there had been any even little portions that had been translated there would be portions of it and he did not have access to it either in the original languages or even in Arabic.

01:19:05

So, he was wrong. He was ignorant of the Bible. But now they're faced with this reality now that they themselves are studying the text of the

01:19:15

Bible, they discover the text of the Bible does not teach what they thought it taught on the basis of the

01:19:21

Quran. So what do you do? Well, instead of going, hmm, I guess we were wrong to follow Muhammad, instead what they go is, well the

01:19:27

Christians must have corrupted their scriptures. And so that's when the accusations of corruption around 1000

01:19:34

AD begin to appear in Islamic sources. And, of course, now they just love liberal

01:19:40

Christians. They love to attack Paul and all the rest of this stuff and they just borrow stuff right and left from Western scholarship to fit it into their own paradigm.

01:19:50

Which is completely inconsistent because that same Western scholarship would never accept the Quran as a divine revelation either if they applied the same standards they'd have to reject the

01:19:57

Quran to. And so, yeah, that is a, that's actually an apologetic argument, obviously, to say if I can't find a

01:20:05

Muslim that can remain a Muslim while disagreeing with me being a Christian, maybe you shouldn't be a Muslim. You'll hear me say that on Monday night, very clearly.

01:20:13

But in regards to taqiyya, taqiyya is the concept that to save your life you can lie, in essence, about your religious orientation or items regarding your religion.

01:20:28

Now some Muslims will say, well, and what that means is it only has to be a situation where your life is at stake.

01:20:35

But Christian missionaries and others in other lands know that on a functional basis in Islamic society the understanding is that you simply do not have to be honest with Christians.

01:20:52

Especially in matters of religion. That you can't deceive them as long as it results in the promotion of Islam.

01:20:58

Now obviously in our society the people who are here Thursday evening would say, no, no, no, no, no. It's only in regards to when your life is at danger.

01:21:06

Because when you're living as a religious minority as they still are, won't be for long, but as a religious minority, then it's better to present your religion in a very positive light.

01:21:19

But the reality is in Islamic nations that taqiyya is understood as allowing you to use dissimulation in religious debate or in dealing with Christians.

01:21:34

I've got a little scriptural thing. Sometimes when I go out witnessing last night, specifically, there's a gentleman that started asking me questions about why is it okay for Israel to go and kill people like when

01:21:49

God's in Deuteronomy 7 you're allowed to go and remove all the

01:21:55

Israelites from out the land. What should you say and can you do it in 25 words or less?

01:22:02

The question is a standard apologetic issue and that is if you know your

01:22:08

Bible you know that in the Old Testament the people of Israel were used by God as a means of judgment upon the people of Canaan even when

01:22:23

Joseph and Israel and the brothers were going down into Egypt there is a reference to the fact that the

01:22:31

Canaanites were in the land and that the Canaanites were extremely evil in God's sight.

01:22:38

Interestingly enough historical inquiry and archaeological inquiry has clearly demonstrated that that was the case.

01:22:46

Moloch, the offering of children and sacrifice to Moloch hey, at least the pagans back then did it openly, we just do it in doctors offices but I don't think there's going to be any less guilt before God for either one to be perfectly honest with you but that God was in essence allowing those lands it doesn't say time to repent

01:23:09

He was allowing their iniquity to be filled up and that's a

01:23:15

I don't know about you but I look at what's going on around me and I go that's sobering terminology so that when the people of Israel come they come in such a fashion as God using them as His instrument of driving them out of the land and then

01:23:35

He warns the Israelites if you do the same things as the people you're driving out of the land the land will spit you out as well and of course you see that very thing, a cycle of that happening with the people of Israel but I think you always have to go back to a challenging question you might want to search on YouTube for a man by the name of Valdi Baucom good question

01:24:06

I'm honestly Valdi Baucom, I'm not sure how to spell Valdi's first name, I apologize for that, but Valdi spoke at one of John Piper's conferences in Minneapolis recently and he gave an answer to the question about evil if God is all good, how can there be evil and he said

01:24:27

I never answer that question, I say to them I will not answer that question unless you ask it of me correctly

01:24:34

I have seen everything and I will now I've mentioned it, you and I, okay let's go on how do you say everything else now how do you say it correctly he and I saw it so what do the rest of you think anyway he says

01:24:49

I will not answer that question unless you ask it correctly the question you must ask is how is it that a holy

01:24:57

God allowed me to open my eyes this morning when I know how many times

01:25:03

I stood against him in the previous day that makes it very personal and brings you back to the real issue and that is when people talk about the

01:25:15

Israelites wiping out the Canaanites, they normally do so in the context of oh it's just so terrible that all those innocent and there's a problem because there wasn't one innocent person there most

01:25:31

Christians today no longer believe what the Bible teaches about what's called original sin let's face it most

01:25:37

Christians if you really put them to the fire would say

01:25:42

I'm really uncomfortable with that I don't like this idea of being held accountable for Adam's sin when this innocent little child is born that it's actually a sinner

01:25:53

I just don't believe that and the sad thing is if you reject that kind of way of God's acting this thing called federalism where Adam represents

01:26:04

God's then exactly how do you end up with the righteousness of Christ because that's the very means by which the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you how can you claim his righteousness if you're not willing to also accept the way

01:26:18

God deals in regards to the subject of sin again demonstrating that theology matters it determines the apologetic that we have but I think a lot of people just have never been really convicted on this issue and that's why

01:26:34

I highly recommend for apologists for all of us I highly recommend a book it's one of the few books

01:26:41

I ever read where I read it in one sitting I could not put it down I had to finish it in the one time

01:26:46

I started reading and it was written by a man who

01:26:52

I think now would consider me his friend though I'm much younger than he is I had the opportunity of preaching to him a few weeks ago he sat right in the front row right there as I preached in a similar size room as this his name is

01:27:04

Dr. R .C. Sproul and he wrote a book called The Holiness of God and I would highly recommend it to you it is convicting but we, if we can get hold of who

01:27:17

God really is his holiness and then we see our sin as what it really is those issues when you're talking to an atheist who doesn't believe there's anything called sin and thinks he's just fine anyways he doesn't have even the beginning of a foundation to be able to deal with that, it doesn't mean we don't provide the answer you can expect what kind of response you're going to get unless the spirit brings conviction are we about to have our meeting again?

01:27:44

I think so James it's a privilege to have you with us and I hope that's been an encouragement and help to you

01:27:53

I'm sure you probably have other thoughts and other questions James will be with us tomorrow in our services at 11 and 630 you might have an opportunity to speak with him then, we're looking forward to that that time together let's go before the

01:28:08

Lord in prayer shall we? Father we are most grateful that you have given to us a revelation of yourself that we are not left to ponder life ponder our own existence, ponder reality out of the confines of our own intelligence that you have revealed to us your person existence and its purposes in our life and our accountability before you in addition to the wonderful thread of redemption that you promised and fulfilled in your son

01:28:54

Jesus Christ we thank you Father that that truth of Christ that is in Christ is for us a security in time and eternity we thank you

01:29:10

Father that whatever vicissitudes of life there are whatever circumstances that may seem to overwhelm us whatever difficulties there are as James said that knock us down that we have a hope we have a security in Christ that is eternal

01:29:29

Father as we think of the comforts that that is we also remember that that is not the possession that others have

01:29:40

Lord we're moved with compassion toward them that they too might know the hope that is in us

01:29:49

Father we pray that you would assist us to not only know that hope more deeply for our own assurance that we might know that hope more capably that they might possess it we ask

01:30:07

Father that you might bless us with the ability with manner of life and with the clarity of our message to be able to speak that hope that is in Jesus Christ So Father we pray that you grant to us the voluntary submission of ourself to the

01:30:28

Lordship of Jesus Christ that at the center of who we are we decide the things in life the pleasures of life, the thoughts of our own minds, the setting of our eyes, the framing of our words so that Jesus is glorified we pray that you might give our mind to the attention of God so that we might worship you with all our heart, with all our mind that we might be ready to give an answer and we pray that the character of our lives might be such that we are people who are filled with respect and reverence not only to you but to those who are antagonistic to us we thank you for James we thank you for the spiritual authority that you've given we thank you for framing him as he is, his ability to think as he does and to communicate as he does and we pray especially

01:31:31

Father for this upcoming debate on Monday and the preparation for that debate on Monday and Father you would use him as your instrument to declare your truth in all these ways we've just prayed for ourselves and we ask

01:31:46

Father that those that come Lord that you might out of the antagonism of their hearts do as you did many many years ago in taking a soul and turning it into a pole we pray by your mercy and grace that you might reach into the

01:32:03

Islamic world of London and bring out individuals who will bow beneath the