Theology and Apologetics Seminar Part 2

I want to tie up some loose ends before plowing on through the subject for today, looking at some of the subjects relevant to salvation.

One thing I didn't mention as fully as I wanted to mention it last time around,

I talked about Christian theism over and against other forms of theism.

Now, I wasn't basically attempting to say that there are not other forms of theism. You've got Judaism, which is not

Christian theism at all, and you've got Islam and things like that.

But I am specifically referring to Christian theism, and I also don't think that the things that we've said about God being the ultimate ground of being,

God being the source of personality, God being completely self -sufficient and things like that, can really be maintained outside of Christian theism because of the importance of the doctrine of the ontological trinity.

That sounds like a nice big word. Ontological trinity, what does that mean?

Well, maybe it would be best to describe that by saying that it's different than, but not completely different than, the economic trinity.

Let me explain what those are. The economic trinity is basically how we see that God is tripersonal in how he relates to the world.

If you only hold to an economic trinity, you are in danger of being called a

Sabellianist or a Modalist because ontological, anta is the

Greek word for being. So if like when you're reading your books, you run across a word that talks about ontology or ontological issues, you're talking about issues of being.

And so the ontological trinity is basically the idea that God in his being exists as three persons,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The economic trinity is how that relates to the world, how we see

God existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, that's why I mean in Modalism, the economic trinity, we can understand that.

That's what they say. And there are a lot of modern theologians, quote unquote, and I use the term extremely loosely, who hold only to an economic trinity and not to the ontological trinity, the idea that God actually does in his being exist as triune.

The reason I bring this up is I think it is important, and I'm not going to really go into it right now because we've got another topic to cover today, but I'd like to suggest, if that's interesting to you, to do some reading on the importance of the belief in the triune nature of God to Christian apologetics and to this whole subject that we are discussing.

Because when we say that God is personal, and that he is the ground of our personality, and we are not in actuality, if we do not believe in a triune

God, we talk about a God who is monistic, only one person, you start running into some real difficulties in explaining the ground of personality and things like that.

Schaefer will talk about it some, as will Van Til, so I just wanted to bring those up because I realized after I got done,

I hadn't talked about those things. One other thing before we go on with the topic today, if you've thought much about what

I said Tuesday, you may have followed the line of reasoning down to the point of what might be called authoritarianism, or the idea that we accept what we believe on the basis of God's word and on absolutely no other authority, which in and of itself is correct.

But that could possibly be construed into saying that we do not utilize reason, for example, to substantiate the validity of God's revelation.

I said that we should not try to sit in judgment of God's revelation. You might take that to mean that, well, that means that can be taken by a

Mormon to mean that you should not attempt to substantiate the validity of the Book of Mormon, or by a Jehovah's Witness for the revelations from the

Watchtower, something like that, that they are to be accepted on authority. You're to accept them because you're to accept them and that's it.

You're never to examine them, so on and so forth. I want to try to differentiate between the cultic idea of authoritarianism, the idea that you accept what you're told by someone as being it, and you never examine it for logical consistency or anything else.

I want to try to differentiate between that and saying that we do not judge the

Word of God, we are judged by the Word of God, and that we base our entire system upon the

Word of God, and we do not attempt to place the Word of God into the creaturely realm and then stand over it as the autonomous man would do, and to judge it in that way.

I think the main difference has to do with our attitudes.

The autonomous man wishes not only to examine the Scripture for consistency historically and things like that, which

I'm all for, I think that's great, I think that's wonderful, and everyone who has done that with a semi -open mind has discovered the

Scriptures are indeed exceptionally accurate, and so on and so forth. But what the autonomous man wishes to do is to then look at the pronouncements of Scripture and attempt to judge what the

Scripture says about himself by himself. In other words, the autonomous man will look at the clear

Scriptural teaching that Jesus Christ is Lord and say, well, I'd like to think about that.

I'd like to put that in my system, and I'd like to judge that on my own basis. That is completely different than what

I'm talking about when I'm saying we examine the Book of Mormon and we find out it's historically a fraud. I mean, if we were to examine the

Bible and discover that it was historically a fraud and Jesus never existed and things like that, then we would have no basis upon which to make our pronouncements.

So I think there's a difference between looking at the text of the Scripture and looking at the historical things and all that and realizing that, okay, that's fine.

When the Scripture says this historically happened, we can examine whether it historically happened or not. There's a big difference between that and the attitude of the autonomous man that looks at Scripture and says,

I am going to judge the teachings of Scripture as they relate to me on my basis rather than the basis laid down by Scripture itself.

I see a vast difference between those two things. So since I know most of you, or at least many of you, are involved in countercult ministry, that thought may have occurred to you, and so I wanted to sort of touch on that and to do that.

Well, like I said, Schaeffer addresses it in The God Who Is There, Beyond Reason, other things like that.

Just simply for some stuff on the Trinity, you all are going to think that I'm just have gone overboard, but Calvin's Institutes has an excellent section on the

Trinity and the deity of Christ. There's some stuff in there I haven't seen in any modern work relevant to the deity of Christ.

Excellent stuff. He strongly identifies Christ as Jehovah and brings up a number of instances of that in the

Institutes. Of course, the Institutes are not exactly the biggest sellers these days, which is maybe why there's not as much knowledge of them, but that's actually excellent as well.

And I have on order a book that I think will really delve into it, because I see a reference to it in Defense of the

Faith. I have Van Til's A Christian Theory of Knowledge on order, and I'm sure that he will go into a good deal of depth on the subject of the ontological trinity, the fact that God exists.

His being is triune. Now, one thing that came up last time that I think we need to start with is talking about man's will, the definition of the will.

Now, I freely admit that I take my understanding of this from basically from Jonathan Edwards via people like Dr.

Gerstner, Dr. Sproul, and others, even though actually

I think Jonathan Edwards got it from Calvin, and I think it goes all the way back to Paul. But anyways, wherever it came from,

I freely admit that what I'm going to say you could pick up by reading Chosen by God or by reading a

Predestination Primer by Gerstner or whoever. But the will is obviously a big topic that comes up in the discussions concerning these issues, especially predestination and election, which, may

I submit to you, predestination and election is simply the application of what we have already said concerning the sovereignty of God in the universe, simply the application of that to man.

That's all it is. It's not something different and separate and new and stuff like that.

It's just simply, okay, the Bible says God is sovereign. He's sovereign over nations. He's sovereign over all the rest of this stuff.

How is that applied by scripture to the individual person?

How does that happen? And that's really all predestination and election is. I mean, people tend to make it into this different thing that, as someone who was here

Tuesday night mentioned, causes all sorts of emotional responses from individuals, and you bring it up, and you try doing it to someone who's never heard of it before, and you'll find out exactly what

I mean. And I was like, go away. So anyways, when we talk about the will, what is free will?

Well, that's a good question. Free will. Well, what is the will?

Well, without going into a whole lot of complicated discussion on all sorts of technical areas, the will is the medium by which we make choices.

It is our ability as men to make choices, and ladies, of course. I was speaking very generically there.

Now, when we say free will, normally what most people think is that we are able to make choices without any outside influence upon what our choices are.

And normally what that is meant to do is to say, God cannot influence my choice. He better not, anyway.

He's a real step on my toes. That, of course, is the autonomous man's view, and unfortunately, many other people's view as well, at least from my perspective.

But the question is, is the will something that is never influenced by outside forces or even inside forces?

I don't believe it is. We make choices based upon this, or should

I say these, desires. The will will never, ever choose something that is against the strongest desire of the individual at the time.

Now, think with me on that. The will is faced with, sometimes two, sometimes many, different desires that frequently conflict with one another.

The choice of the will will be that desire which is strongest at the time of the choice, and this never changes.

You say, you mean you never make a choice for a desire that is not the strongest? Yeah, of course not. You don't. Let me give you an example.

R .C. Sproul gives a humorous example that I've used before, which I think does a good job because it's not quite as threatening as using some spiritual topic.

But he talks about his love of ice cream, and he can't pass a

Baskin -Robbins without salivating. He just loves these certain kinds of ice cream. So he has a desire for ice cream.

He also has a desire for a slim trim body. And what his choice will be when he encounters a

Baskin -Robbins or an ice cream store in a shopping mall will be dependent upon which of the two desires is the strongest at the time of the encounter.

If he had great difficulty getting into his suit that morning, and his desire is very strong to have a slim trim body, then that will be his strongest desire and he will pass up the ice cream store.

If, however, his desire for a slim trim body isn't all that strong that day and he manages to catch sight of a nice big double scooper in the window, guess what, he's going to have the ice cream.

So his choices depend upon desires. Now, Gerstner brings up an example that I think takes it to its extremes and allows us to see this is true.

What about the individual who walks up to you with a gun and says, give me your money?

Now you are faced with two desires. You are faced with a desire not to give this creep your money.

If all things were equal, you would probably not donate to this man's cause at all. But your other desire is to not have your brain scattered about the surrounding landscape and so you're faced with two desires.

What you will do will depend upon which desire is greater. If your desire to not give this creep money is greater than not having your brain splattered out all over the landscape, you won't give him your money and you'll probably die.

But it was the greater desire at the time. Most of us, however, have the greater desire to live and therefore the choice of our will is to follow the strongest desire at the time.

I think this is somewhat important to Christians as well. I think part of the reason that we are told to meditate upon God's law, that we are told to be conformed to the image of his son, that we are to read the word and begin it on a daily basis, because the fact that doing so strengthens our desires for Christ and for living the

Christian life. And therefore our choice will more often be, in fact if it's always the strongest desire, will always be to do that which is pleasing and honoring to Christ.

But in reality, many times our desires are against Christ and they are more stronger than our desires for Christ and therefore we follow those.

Now, having said all that, free will then, I have no problem maintaining the idea of free will.

I have no problem with that. Simply do the fact that what we're really discussing are desires.

And there's no one who will, well I won't say that, there's no one who being biblically aware could possibly say that it would be wrong or it would be out of character for God to place desires in our heart.

We looked at the scriptures of the pastures last time and it clearly said God has placed this desire in the king's heart.

In fact, since the Bible tells us that the desires of man's heart are evil continually, for us to do any good at all requires

God to provide for us the desires to do so. Now, let me also point out the importance of this relevant to sin.

The scriptures tell us that man's will has been placed in bondage to evil because of the presence of sin.

I mean, for example, in 2 Timothy 2 .26 where it talks about those who are in contradiction to God, who are going against his word, the scripture says, refute them so that God may grant them the gift of repentance and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil having been held captive by him to do his will.

So the sinful man is held captive to the evil desires until being freed by Christ.

Now, the result of this can be seen, for example, in Jesus' words in John chapter 6.

Look at John 6 .44. In John 6 .44, Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day. Now, the

Greek phrase says, udonatai, is unable. Man is morally unable in the fallen state to choose by his will to accept

Christ because he does not have the desire. The sinful flesh's desire to be an enemy of God is the strongest desire that he has.

And therefore, his will will always choose against God. This is why Jesus says in John 6 .65,

this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him or made him able to do so.

I heard another interesting translation Tuesday night that says something about unless the Father gives the gift to him.

By the gift of the Father. Something along those lines, yes. So this ability to come to him is a gift of God, and the reason is the presence of sin in man's life.

Now, we can see some of the other results of this, and this will sort of lead us into the main topic of discussion this morning.

And that is the total depravity of man. We talked last time about the fact there is none that seeks after God.

We talked about the meaning of being dead in sin. And this puts us in a situation where we can now begin talking about what my soteriological viewpoint is anyways.

It may not be yours, and that's fine. I don't mind. You need to understand where I'm coming from, and I hope you'll be able to see, or if not, you'll be able to point out to me, why my soteriological viewpoint, my viewpoint on salvation, is drawn from, based upon, and is demanded by my viewpoint on the nature of God, the sovereignty of God.

That is a discussion, briefly, hopefully, but probably won't be, of the infamous, terrible five points of Calvinism.

Actually, I call myself a six -point Calvinist. That's just simply to make me better than all the five -point

Calvinists, but not really. I have over here the tulip, and you know all about that, but I'm going to change it.

I hope you all don't mind. It's not scripture, so. Srucep.

I hope you don't mind that. Srucep. What does Srucep mean?

Well, we'll find out here. I say six points because this absolutely is the foundation of this whole thing, sovereignty of God.

Must be. It's not in that over there, but it is the foundation of it, and we've already talked about it, so I'm not going to take a lot of time on it.

The R is a different way of saying total depravity, and that's radical depravity. Radical depravity,

I use that terminology, borrowing it from Sproul again, because the fact that many people, when they hear total depravity here, think that means that man is as bad as man can possibly be, and he's not.

He's not. No man is as bad as he could be, and I think

I mentioned last time around that exact point. So radical depravity,

I think, points out a little bit better the idea that depravity is radical.

It has affected all of man's being. We've already discussed that, so I don't need to spend a whole lot of time on that.

The U is the same as over there, unconditional election. Now this, you will notice something.

If you agree with this and this, you're stuck. I honestly think you're stuck.

You may not like the other four, but I think I can logically demonstrate that the other four are absolutely necessary if you believe in the first two.

Now I know there are a lot of people, oh yes, I believe in the sovereignty of God. Oh yes, I believe in the total depravity of man.

Oh no, I don't believe in unconditional election. I go, wait a minute, wait a minute, whoa, time out. Aside from the scripture passages that teach this, and I suppose we should look at them first, this is simply the logical conclusion, the only possible conclusion in my mind from those.

But before I look at them, I think it might be good to look at some of the passages. Agreed? Okay, let's look at some of the passages.

Let's just look at the most obvious, Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter one,

General Electric Power Company, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Galatians. You hadn't heard of that before?

Girls eat pie constantly. Girls eat pie constantly, okay. No, I think it's George eats pie constantly, right?

Okay, Ephesians chapter one, verses three through twelve. Praised be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

For he chose us in him, in Christ Jesus, before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves, in the beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times will reach their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and earth together under one head, even

Christ. In him we were also chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will in order that we who were the first to open

Christ might be for the praise of his glory. Now, I've actually heard people tell me that there's no such thing as predestination in the

Bible and I have to wonder if they've lost the book of Ephesians in their canon of scripture because I noticed the word a couple times there as we went by.

Words such as chosen and predestined are rather predominant in Ephesians chapter 1.

And note that it says in verse 5, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will.

Now, I realize there are some people who attempt to avoid the whole passage by saying that what he predestined was

Jesus Christ but who would be in Jesus Christ is unknown.

It's up to man's will. That's one of the more popular ways of seeing and getting around this passage. I see numerous problems with that all in all the rest of scripture relevant to the nature of God and nature of man, but I just wanted to throw it out for you so you can know how that is sometimes handled.

Notice verse 11. According to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

Now, that sounds very much to me like it was taken straight out of the Old Testament because that wouldn't sound very unusual there at all.

It would sound very unusual in a lot of preaching today but it would not sound very unusual at all in the Old Testament. So this being chosen, verse 11, this predestination is according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

Very, very important. Second Thessalonians chapter 2. I'm just going to throw a couple of them in here real quick and so that we don't have philosophy rather than scripture.

Second Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 13. But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the

Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the

Spirit and through belief in the truth. Therefore salvation takes place by or through the sanctifying work of the

Spirit and through belief in the truth. That sanctifying work of the Spirit is not the result of our belief, it is the grounds or cause of our belief.

See there's a big difference there. See a lot of people say, well because you believe then the Holy Spirit will sanctify you.

No, we are saved, we believe, we are chosen through the sanctifying work of the

Spirit. It is the Spirit's work that comes first. Second Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 13.

Now you say, oh wait a minute, that's just Pauline theology and Jesus never taught things like that.

Look at Matthew 11 .27, rather important Christological passage obviously, but one that has numerous implications in its teaching.

In Matthew 11 .27, Jesus says, all things have been committed to me by my

Father, no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the

Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. That's very important, that's very important.

No one knows the Son except the Father. Now obviously that has great importance concerning the deity of Christ, the simple reason how could any creature say,

I am such a great being, I am such a massive being that only the Father knows me.

And then how could possibly a creature say, no one knows the Father except the Son.

What blasphemy that would be for someone to say, I am the only one who knows completely the being of the

Father. Indeed, since the Father's being is infinite, it takes an infinite person to fully know the

Father in the way that the Son knew the Father. And the only way that we can have knowledge of the

Father is through the Son, and notice it is not simply, well we look at Jesus and so we see

God. This knowledge, he says, is to those to whom the

Son chooses to reveal him. So the question we must ask is, has the Son chosen to reveal the

Father to all people? Keep that question in mind as we look at some of the other Jesus' statements.

Has God chosen to reveal himself in this way, in this knowledge, this intimate way, to all people?

And I think we will find that he has not. Matthew chapter 6, John chapter 6.

Why did I say Matthew? Because I was looking at the page, I guess. Matthew 6 .37.

Thank you. John 6 .37. We'll get there eventually. I'll read it. It'll be the right passage in it. Look at verse 36.

Let's start with verse 36. This is interesting because this ties right into what I just said. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.

So simply seeing Jesus. I mean the Jews saw Jesus, but obviously that's not what he's talking about.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

All that the Father gives me will come to me. That's a rather broad statement. Sounds to me a great deal like that is dependent upon God and Jesus can make that statement because salvation is

God's work, not man's work, and when God saves somebody he does it right. He's sovereign in this situation. All the

Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. Which of course has a good deal to do with the last point on the discussion and that is preservation of the saints.

All the Father gives me will come to me, Jesus said. Look at verse 44 and verse 46. We've already looked at those passages, but just remember them again.

He talks about this idea of God's complete role in the bringing of saving faith and regeneration and things like this.

2 Timothy chapter 1. Let's look at just a couple more passages. 2

Timothy chapter 1 verses 8 and 9. 2 Timothy 1, 8 and 9 says, 1

So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me as a prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace.

Sounds like purpose. Sounds like Ephesians chapter 1 again. 2 This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.

This grace was granted to us. This gift was given to whom? To us. Before the beginning of time.

And how was it given to us? In Christ Jesus. In Christ Jesus.

Now, think with me a second, but if Jesus is described as the

Lamb slain from all eternity and if scripture says with Paul in Galatians 2 .20

that I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. If we believe in our participation in the death of Jesus Christ as taught by scripture, then we are going to be forced into the next section of our outline here in understanding the atonement of Christ, which is the part that most people do not like.

So, I'm just warning you ahead of time. These things are intimately connected with one another. At first glance, they might seem like a bunch of different concepts all strung together.

They are not. They flow from each other. But I still want to mention that. The last passage to look at is, of course, where else?

Romans chapters 8 and 9. Romans, of course,

I like to refer to Romans as the gospel according to Paul. I think it's the fifth gospel.

I just put it in the wrong part of the New Testament. That's all there is. It is the thought out, systematically presented presentation of the gospel by the leading expositor of Jesus' teachings in the early church, the apostle

Paul. And so he says, beginning in verse 28 of chapter 8, and we know that in all things

God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. You cannot believe that passage if you do not believe in the full sovereignty of God.

God cannot promise that all things will work to your good if you don't believe that God is sovereign over the actions of this world.

That's illogical. You can't do it. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those he predestined, he also called. Those he called, he also justified. Those he justified, he also glorified.

Now, immediate way around predestination. Foreknowledge.

This is what I would call the cheap way of getting around dealing with the difficulties presented by the doctrine of scripture of election and predestination.

Foreknowledge. This is how it was explained to me for years. And it's probably how the way you've heard it explained numerous times too.

God, because he has foreknowledge, looked into the future, saw that I would accept him, and on that basis elected me.

See any problems with that? I sure do. And yet that is undoubtedly amongst our own group.

And with the exception of one individual in the room, two individuals in the room, we're all

Baptists. That is by far the most common explanation for Baptists, is foreknowledge.

By far. And yet that makes no sense. First of all, it makes the grounds my believing in God, not

God's election. God's election then becomes based upon my choosing of him. Which makes absolutely no sense when you start thinking about it.

My righteous act of repenting for my sins and accepting Christ becomes the basis of my salvation.

Whoa, wait a minute. Got a lot of problems with that. Completely undoes this.

Because that makes this to exist before God decides what he's going to do. So like, you know,

God makes man, whoops, made a boo -boo here, well what do I do about this now? I'm not sure. Well a lot of people have that idea of God because they don't have the idea of God as being eternal.

Not only that, it completely ignores the meaning of foreknowledge in the New Testament. Because you see, what

I've just been talking about is the idea of God's knowledge of future events. Well, God has knowledge of all events simultaneously, as we've already seen.

So that really becomes inane. But the point is, this specific word, foreknowledge as used in the

New Testament, is not used in that way. Foreknowledge in the New Testament borrows from its

Hebrew underpinnings of to know someone, and it is not just simply an intellectual endeavor of knowing factual data that's yet to occur.

Knowledge is intimate, it is personal, it involves choice in the Hebrew mind. For example, how is it described when it says,

Adam knew Eve? What does that mean? In the most intimate way. And foreknowledge when used in the

New Testament is used in exactly the same way. For example, in Acts 2 .23, Jesus is described as being foreknown by God.

In Romans 8 .29 -30, it is the elect that are described as being foreknown by God. In Romans 11 .2,

guess who it is? Israel is described as being foreknown by God.

And the other usage, 1 Peter 1 .2, again, the elect. Now let me just finish the discussion of the idea of election based upon foreknowledge, the idea that God simply looks at the future and sees if we're going to accept him, by pointing out that this very same word is used of Israel in Romans 11 .2.

Think with me for a second. Think with me what we would have to say. God chose

Israel because God saw that Israel would accept him? Think about your

Old Testament history for just a few seconds, and the inanity of such a statement will strike you very hard.

Israel never accepted him. They were a stiff -necked people their entire history and remain that way today. God's choice of Israel is based upon his acceptance.

When he's sitting up there with his finger writing the laws on the tablets, they're down there worshiping the golden calf. God looked in the future and saw that Israel would accept him?

No way. God chose Israel for his own purpose, for his own reason, and it was not based in any way, shape, or form upon the goodness or lack thereof of the nation of Israel.

It had nothing to do with it at all. When Paul says foreknowledge, those

God foreknew, I believe he's simply referring to the eternal choice, the personal choice,

God's intimate knowledge of us, as the psalmist said before I was even formed, you knew me.

We read Jeremiah 1 when he talked about that, and in Psalms where he talked about that as well. You knew me.

For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Then listen to the chain. Those whom he predestined, he also called.

Those he called, he justified. Those he justified, he glorified.

There is a whole chain here. Now, I mentioned earlier something that ties in with this.

Does God call all people in the sense utilized in Romans chapter 8 equally?

Well, if you're going to say he does, then you must say that he must also justify all people equally, and he must also glorify all people equally, and you've just fallen straight into the trap of universalism.

There's no way out of it. There's no way out of it. No one, almost no one I know has any problem with the idea, those, okay,

I won't say no one. No one who believes in what Jesus said, for example, in Matthew 25, 46, about some going away into everlasting life, others into everlasting punishment.

No one that I know who doesn't have any problem with that has any problem with saying yes, only a certain part of the human race will be glorified with Christ.

Okay, most people I know that you run into in church, no problem with that, right?

Okay, let's follow that backwards. That means only a certain portion of humanity is going to be justified.

Yeah, most people have no problem with that, unless they're universalists, they don't have a problem with that. What's the next one?

Only a certain part of humanity is going to be called. Whoops, that's where we lose it.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Can't handle that. But wait a minute, wait a minute, gotta be consistent here, because if only a certain part are called, and only a certain part are predestined, and only a certain part are foreknown, and guess what?

You've got Paul's doctrine of predestination and election from Ephesians chapter one, all over the place. But we normally don't think about it that way.

So, he said that. What shall we say then, in response to this? And what shall we say? Because obviously this calling, this unconditional election, is not based upon anything we've done.

Can you think of a greater reason to praise God for his grace? Why in the world did he choose you?

Why did he choose me? I don't know. I don't know, that's one of those blank walls you run up against, because all scripture says is, it was part of his will.

It was part of his will. Wow. He says, what shall we say of this?

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for whom?

What does it say? Us all. Look at the scriptures. Us all. How will he not also along with him graciously give us all things?

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? I don't like the NIV at that point. God's elect.

God's elect. That is the us all for whom his son was given up in the verse before. It is

God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died. More than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God, is also interceding for whom?

For us. The great crowd. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger, as it's written, go on and on and on.

Very clear. Very clear. Look at Romans 9. If you want to get the thing just nailed down, let's just look at 14 verses here.

Starting in verse 10. Not only that, but Rebecca's children had one the same father, our father

Isaac. Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, what?

In order that God's purpose in election might stand not by works, but by him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger.

Just as it is written, Jacob I love, but he saw aid. Well, that shoots the popular idea of foreknowledge right out of the saddle.

What do you mean it's based upon you're going to choose him? No, it says before they did anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose in election might stand, this happened.

What shall we say then in verse 14? Is God unjust? Not at all. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom

I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. It does not therefore depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.

For the scripture says to Pharaoh, I raised you up for this very purpose that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me, then why does

God still blame us? For who resists his will? But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, why did you make me like this?

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath prepared for destruction?

What if he did this to make the riches of his glory, known the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory, even us whom he also called?

Whoa, even most of us good six -point

Calvinists have a little bit of problem living up to exactly what is said here, but notice one thing.

Many of us just don't like verse 20 because we like verse 19 so much.

One of you will say to me, then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will? And notice that is normally the question that is brought up, the objection is brought up in this teaching.

So think with me for a second, if that's the objection Paul had to answer, who's teaching what? If you got the same objections that people brought up to Paul, then you ain't agreeing with Paul, okay?

Verse 20 says, but who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Now we don't like that. Paul, wait a minute, Paul, that's not enough.

That's not enough. That's not enough. Why isn't it enough? Let me submit to you that it is not enough if you are thinking upon that basis.

If you are thinking on the basis of I will put God upon my microscope slide and I will examine him and I will judge him and I am going to set up a standard that I think is good outside of God and attempt to correlate

God to some outside standard that's outside of himself, you are denying the Christian concept of God.

That's why I emphasize it so much. Remember I said to you that God does not have a standard of goodness that exists outside of himself to which he relates.

He's good because he says he's good. Well, the man in verse 19 who asked that question is basically saying, wait a minute, wait a minute,

I have a standard to which I am going to measure God. I'm not going to measure myself by God's standard.

No, no, no, no. I'm not going to see myself as a creature. I'm going to see God as a creature on the same plane as I, in fact,

I'm going to put him below me so I can judge him. And Paul says, wait a minute, you're on the wrong basis. You're on the wrong basis.

And you know why I think he's talking about the exact same thing here? You know why I'm saying, you know, I keep talking about Calvin and stuff like that.

Hey, that just ain't Calvin, that's Paul. Because notice what he says, shall what is formed say to him who formed it.

In other words, think about who you are, man. You are creature. You are finite.

God is creator. God is infinite. You're thinking on the wrong basis. So this whole idea that we'll get into Thursday of what

I call and what is technically called presuppositional apologetics is right here in Romans chapter 9.

It's right here, that's where it comes from. One of many places, obviously. Remember who you are.

If this is what God has said, then we must allow God to say it and not to answer back to him.

See, this is what I'm talking about here. When I mentioned earlier about the idea of not judging the word of God, can you see now the vast difference between examining the

Book of Mormon and seeing its faults and coming to this passage and reading what the passage says and hearing what the passage says and saying,

I bow to God's word rather than attempting to say, I don't like this, so forget it.

There's a big difference there. Now some of you look at me and say, boy, I'm glad you have such an easy time.

You give this and this, put them together and you've got that. There's no way around that. Why did I put an S instead of an

L? Because I like this. Specific atonement.

See, limited atonement causes people to think that what we're saying is that the power or sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ is somehow less than all powerful.

It's somehow limited. It's somehow not really all there. It's not what it's talking about at all.

It's speaking of the extent of the application of the atonement. In other words,

Jesus died for a specific group of people, that is, those people that come from there.

Now, I didn't like this for a long time, and I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it, because what I've done is for those of you that have real questions on this,

I have a handout. It's not printed yet, because I just didn't want to run off a bunch of them and nobody would want them.

But if you want them afterwards, talk to me and I'll run off as many as we need.

Three chapters from different authors, not including

Pink, because Pink has a discussion of this in the Sovereignty of God. So you'd have four chapters after you read Pink, on this subject, including the chapter that converted me.

Having been a twip for a long time, a four -point Calvinist, the chapter that got me was from a book called

The Five Points of Calvinism by Palmer, who was the editor of the NIV Study Bible before his death. And you know what eventually got me?

He said, look, you believe in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ died in our place.

Okay, let me ask you, did he really die in your place, or did he only make it possible?

Is the atonement real, or is it contingent? And I went, he said, look, if Jesus Christ died in the place of all mankind, and if the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is what makes salvation happen, then if you're going to be consistent at all, if Jesus died for everybody, then everybody's saved, if it's a real substitutionary atonement.

But if he died specifically for those who are the objects of God's unconditional election, then yes indeed, from all time, they have been the benefits of that grace, as Paul said to Timothy.

And I started going, hmm, well if this is specific, why would this be universal?

Then another author, who I will provide to you if you want to read him, said it might be better to ask a different question other than, for whom did

Christ die? Because the New Testament doesn't leave us just with, for whom did Christ die? That's only half of the equation.

Because in the New Testament it says that we died with Christ, so a better question might be, who died with Christ? You see, you take anyone who takes universal atonement who believes in non -universalism, anyone who is a four -point

Calvinist like I was, take them to the end of time, and they'll be a five -point Calvinist. Why?

Because when you get to the end of time, the thing's all over with, they'll then be willing to say, yes, Jesus' atonement is applied only to this group.

Now I have a problem with saying, yes, but it was made for everybody because then I don't see it being a substitutionary atonement in reality any longer, and I also would say that if Jesus Christ died for someone who's going to spend eternity in hell, he didn't do a very good job.

Think about that. If we say Jesus Christ died for someone, in reality, not just simply contingently, not just simply, well, he died and he didn't really die for them unless they wanted him to die for them, which is really what we're saying.

I mean, I knew all the excuses. I was able to say, well, he died for all people but doesn't really apply to us until we choose Christ, and then

I realized that doesn't work. So I eventually got rid of that, but the point is, all the way down there at the end, there'll be a five -point

Calvinist, but right now, uh -uh, because I don't know who the elect are. Well, I don't either. That's why I go and tell all people because I don't know who the elect are.

They do not wear signs that say, I am elect. I make evangelism a lot easier, but I don't. I remember the science fiction movie where there were these two aliens, and they looked like human beings,

I don't know if you ever saw this one, and the only way they could recognize each other, they had these glasses on, and all through the movie, the last alien zapped the other alien, and as he was walking away, the alien had died, and then their bodies would, you know, that's all that happens in science fiction movies.

But the camera comes down, the glasses are sitting on the ground, and the camera comes down so you can see the other alien, and he was just, whoo, weird thing.

Anyways, you know, if we had glasses like that, we could see who the elect were, and that would be nice, but it doesn't work that way. Okay? So the question there is, who died with Christ?

Well, I would say that who died with Christ was the elect. That's what Paul said in Romans chapter 8, when he specifically says,

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. What did Jesus say about his sheep?

I lay my life down for the sheep. What did he say to the Pharisees? You are not sheep.

He said to them in John 8, verse 47, he says, He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.

Wow. Really? Yeah. Exactly. So really, what

I'm saying is, is the atonement of Jesus Christ is real, it's all powerful, and it affects that which he decided it would do.

That is, it brings about real salvation. Fully and completely. So in reality,

I'm saying that his atonement is all powerful, while those who are saying it's universal can't say that.

Because it's powerfulness is dependent upon the decision of man's will. So when

I say specific atonement, I'm saying the atonement was made for the specific individuals that God had chosen from all eternity to save.

How many are there? I don't know. More than 144 ,000, I guarantee you that. I don't know.

I don't know. Millions already, obviously. I would expect. But anyways, let's finish them up here.

E is for effectual grace. Even though in reality, if I get away with it,

I might go through SIP, because I like irresistible grace a little bit better than effectual grace. But the point is that God's grace, given to those who are elect, given to those who have been atoned for by Jesus Christ, God's grace comes to them, and it is irresistible, it is effectual, it does that which

God sends it to do. Now this flows naturally from here, for the simple reason that the first thing that effectual, irresistible grace does is to bring regeneration.

Now, can you imagine a dead person resisting regeneration? I promised you

I'd tell you my story about this. Those of you who know what it is are going, oh no. But when

I was in college, I was a department fellow in anatomy and physiology for Dr.

James Witherspoon. And he would do demonstrations for local high school groups that would come through.

And we had cadavers. Those are the real dead bodies. And while Dr.

Witherspoon was demonstrating a physiograph machine, I demonstrated the cadavers to all the high school students.

I was the Quincy of Grand Canyon College. It was great. And you'd get to sit there and pull the thing back.

And I could do anything to these cadavers. Willie and Clara, those were their real names in fact. Those were the names they bore in life,

Willie and Clara. And I could pull Willie's chest off and pull his kidneys out and his heart out, and I could stick my fingers through.

It was great. I could do anything I wanted. And you know what? They never resisted me once.

Never. Fortunately, yeah, if they had, you know, I would have joined all the little kids and fell over too.

Yeah. They never resisted me once. You know why? Because they're dead. They don't care what I'm doing though.

Now if you believe this, if you believe that man is dead in sin, until God regenerates, man don't do nothing.

Man's dead in sin. This took me a long time too.

Because you see, the popular quote -unquote evangelical way of looking at it is, well, you spread the gospel and then people have faith and they repent and then they're regenerated.

And I went, I accepted that for a long time. Even after I accepted this, I still had that idea. Because this is what everybody thinks.

Uh -uh. That is the sovereign act of God's spirit. That precedes faith and repentance.

It must. It must. Look at repentance for example. Metanoia is a Greek term.

It means a changing of the mind. The church today tells dead people to change their mind about God.

I could have stood over Willie and Clara forever and told them to change their mind about God. And guess what? They never would have. Until they were regenerated.

And they haven't been, by the way. They're still dead. The point is, in Romans chapter 8, the very chapter we were just in, listen to what

Paul says. Those who live according to the flesh, or the sinful nature is what the NIV says, but that's a terrible translation.

Have their minds set on that natural desire. Have their minds set on the flesh.

But those who live according to the spirit have their minds set on what the spirit desires. The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace.

The fleshly mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.

Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God. So you've got two minds.

You've got the fleshly, natural mind, and you've got the spiritual mind. Now repentance is obviously something which pleases

God. It is a change of the mind. Metanoia. Now obviously the only individual of the natural and the spiritual that can truly repent is the spiritual, which means regeneration must occur before repentance does.

Now if that's the case, if repentance and faith are the result of regeneration, not the cause thereof, you just came right back up to here.

Because that means God is the one who regenerates. He is the one who sovereignly moves first, and there is no power on heaven or earth that can stop that when

God has elected to regenerate an individual. In fact, that's why I still do what I do. That's why

I still do what I do in this ministry. See, I have seen the power that cultic groups can exercise over their people.

Haven't you? Haven't you seen the power that the Watchtower Society can hold over a person?

Unbelievable. Mike and I talked to a young lady one night that had seen spirit beings in the

Mormon temple. The power was unbelievable. And if I really thought that it was up to that individual to choose, forget it.

Yeah, I'm a great arguer, I'm a great debater, but I ain't going to get those people out of there. No way. They are held by such powerful spiritual forces that all the data, all the learning

I could bring to bear on them wouldn't even begin to make a dent in the forces that hold them captive.

Couldn't do it. Do you know why I keep doing this? Because I believe that in all of the world you will find

God's elect. You will find them there. And I know, since people have come out of these groups, that there are

God's elect within the Watchtower Society and within the Mormon church. We have someone sitting amongst us today who was once there, who

God has set free and has given a personal relationship to Jesus Christ to. So I go and talk to all of them.

I don't know how many of them are. I don't know, but you know what? I know that when God decides to do this, the power, the massive power of a group like the

Watchtower Society is nothing compared to what God has. And I don't care what powers they bring to bear against God and upon that person, it is absolutely nothing.

When God decides to regenerate, that's it. He's done. And so there is a solid basis for evangelism.

It's not to go out and save people, it's to go out and be involved in God's work of calling the elect to himself.

When he regenerates, boy, look out. God's work. Effectual grace.

Effectual grace. It's going to work. Now, you get down to this last one here, and for some reason people have a lot of problem with this, but really if you follow all this, this is just simply, and I like this myself, anyways.

Preservation, because that puts it in God's hands of the elect,

I'll say. Normally it's the saints, but Benny's not here, so it really wouldn't matter if I said saints anyways.

Isn't that strange? I had just said, I had just said, when you stuck your key in the door,

I had just said, well Benny's not here so I can say saints anyways, and then you stuck your key in, that was, thank you

Lord, providence there, we all just saw it in action. Anyways, preservation elect, the saints, even with Benny here,

I'll say that. Flows naturally. I mean, if your salvation is dependent upon God's sovereign choice, if you rejoin

Jesus Christ from all eternity, if Jesus Christ has truly died for you in the atonement, if God has called you with his effectual grace, he has made you spiritually alive, man, this is just simply the obvious outcome.

And I could go over passage after passage after passage, Colossians 3 .3, John 6 .37, 10 .25 -29,

Philippians 1 .6, Ephesians 1 .13 -14, verse 25, over and over again, this is absurd, over and over again,

I would submit to you that if a position does not hold this, you start coming up the line, you're going to eventually get back to the point where you're basically holding an

Arminian position. I like to say it in very layman's terms, when

God saves somebody, he does it right. What else can you say?

When God saves somebody, he does it right. Now, all of this, all this theology that we've been discussing, determines the apologetic that we're going to utilize.

We cannot, in attempting to explain our faith to the world, compromise the very faith we're attempting to proclaim to make it more palatable to the world.

And yet, I see this all the time. We're so worried about numbers, numbers, numbers, that we compromise the clear teaching of scripture to get people to like it better.

Folks, I have news for you. The natural man does not like the lordship of Christ.

The natural heart will rebel against any idea of bowing its knee before the sovereignty of God.

The natural man makes a laughing stock of this. But folks, simply because the natural man, according to the scriptures, does not seek after God, and according to the scriptures, even hates

God, that does not mean we have to change the truth we're attempting to proclaim to get the natural man involved.

Because folks, unless the Holy Spirit is involved, unless God does this, you are beating your head against a stone wall.

We have nothing to do with soul winning at all. It's God who does the soul winning. In fact,

I'll tell you, you want my opinion? You want to know what one of the major problems of the church is today? It's filled with a bunch of people who think they're responsible for salvation.

That they got them involved in this thing, they got to hold themselves in it, and they're the ones who are in the pastor's office all the time going, I'm trying my best but it just isn't working.

They don't understand this. Because the gospel presented to them wasn't based on that. It was based on them.

Autonomous man. They are attempting to fit this revelation into this system of thought, and guess what folks, it's like putting a round peg in a square hole.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work. You can try it all you want, it won't work.

Now you can stay on a very surface level and never notice the contradiction. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do just that.

Stay on a very surface level, never go beyond that, never see the contradiction. Don't care. That's alright.

But if people get involved in attempting to communicate the faith of the scriptures to our world today and start dealing with people who do have these serious thoughts and do have serious questions about these things, then they're going to find out about it real quick.

Now we see all the theological differences when we're talking to people involved in cults, but you've got all the people involved up in Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses, and you ain't got near the number of people that are simply involved with that and nothing more.

Really. It's true when you think about it. So though we are called specifically, we, when

I say we, Alpha Omega Ministries is specifically dealing with these cultic groups, all those folks out there just involved in what they just call plain old evangelism.

This is just as important for them, if not more so, than for us. Because they're going to be attempting to communicate their faith with individuals that are holding to a completely different thought system.

And in the process, unfortunately in the 20th century, we have seen a massive, and I mean massive, abandonment of this in favor of a message that agrees with this.

Says it's up to you. Think with me for a second. I want to bring this up in effectual grace. One of the reasons that this is so rejected by most

Christians today, and it is, I agree, I understand that. Even the people who call themselves the actual direct descendants of Calvin and others such as the

Presbyterians, you'll find very few Presbyterian churches today except the most conservative who teach this as being reality.

One of the main reasons for this is that it just doesn't sound loving.

You see the world has decided that though we as human beings don't like an unbalanced individual, we've all met unbalanced individuals, they're always just one way.

There are certain emotions they cannot even experience. Normally unbalanced individuals end up down about 24th and Van Buren around in that area.

We don't really look up to unbalanced individuals, but for some reason the world likes an unbalanced

God. God is love, and love is God. The old sloppy agape routine.

The world doesn't like to hear about a holy God, or a just God, or a God with wrath. As I've said many times before, folks, as Christians, if you when you look at the cross do not see both the absolute height of God's love and the absolute height of God's wrath, then you are not seeing the cross fully.

The world today likes to see, oh that's all of God's love. Yes, it's all of God's love, but you'll never understand the fullness of God's love until you understand his wrath.

You can't. I mean, God decided to reveal his wrath before he decided to reveal his love in the scriptures.

Not that he didn't reveal his love, but you see a whole lot more of God's wrath and his holiness before you see the height of God's love, because you have to understand it.

Or your view of God's love will just be placed upon a human level, upon a creature level, and you'll never be able to completely understand the depth of it.

But, the reason I like this is that it's seemingly unloving. Let me ask you a question.

What is more unloving? Given the Bible's teaching concerning the nature of man and God, you basically have four viewpoints, and really maybe a little bit more than that, but let me just give you four possibilities.

God could decide to provide no opportunity for anyone to be saved. We obviously know he hasn't done that, so we can chuck that one.

Number two, God could provide an opportunity for all to be saved. The most common one today. God could intervene directly and ensure the salvation of all people.

Number three, universal living. Number four, God could intervene directly and ensure the salvation of some people.

That's me. Now, we can throw out one and three unless there are any universalists amongst us, and we can talk about that later.

Number two and four, God could provide an opportunity for all to be saved. God could intervene directly and ensure the salvation of some people. Most people go with number two.

That sounds very loving. God provides salvation, tells everybody about it.

You all just come to me and I'll save you. You know what my main problem with that is?

That would be like me having a cure to death. It's a syringe, and if I put it in Willie's arm, he'd be regenerated.

My cadaver would get up off the table and walk away. It'd be like me having that cure to death and walking through the graveyard going, anybody who wants to, just get up and grab it.

I'll give it to you. Anybody want to be regenerated? Yo, hey, yo.

Without ever getting down and digging them out and sticking the needle in their arm. Is that loving?

That's mocking. Can you imagine staying above someone who's dead and saying, yo, hey, just reach up here, grab this.

Yeah, uh -huh, come on, come on, grab it, grab it. I don't mean to be mocking, but that's really what we're talking about.

Is that loving? That is loving. But when God walks through the graveyard of this world and says, you, rise.

Not on the basis of anything they've done, nothing. You have spiritual life, rise. That is loving in grace beyond degree.

So I disagree strongly, shall we say, with those who would say, well, this isn't loving.

It's capricious. Remember what I said? I submitted to your thought the idea that an absolute being can't be capricious.

God works all things after the counsel of his will. All things after the counsel of his will.

And what we have here is just simply the application to man and his salvation of the sovereignty of God.

Now, with that in mind, we then move on to the actual subject of apologetics.

Once we have our theology put down, we move on to apologetics. So before we do that, let's entertain some questions.

Just go ahead and throw it out because I can't see you. No questions.

Yes, sir. How do you deal with the objection that God has elected the church as a group, but individuals

God has not elected in the church? Well, I think that would be a denial of his omniscience and his eternality to say that.

I would also say that though there is a sense in which Christ died for the church, he says that specifically, the idea of the church being made up of individuals is never lost.

Personal relationship with Jesus Christ is always in view. And I don't think you can divorce the two aspects.

And since the New Testament makes the application of the atonement and of the election individual as well as corporate,

I would say you can't just leave that one area therefore contingent upon a dead man's, you know, again, no matter what happens, these two are my answer.

No matter what the objection is, that's where my answer will lie. Does the objection or the question, doesn't even have to be objection,

I don't mean that in a negative sense, does the question compromise the absolute sovereignty of God and the nature of God?

Or does it compromise biblical anthropology? And when we see, for example, that our very belief in the truth,

Second Thessalonians 2 .13, is based upon the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, which is based upon God's choosing from all time, we're again forced to see that all of those things are a sovereign act of God and that we were elected in him from all eternity, not just simply as a group, but as individuals.

We have to be. He has to know who is going to make that group up or he's not omniscient. Now, even the person that attempts to explain predestination on the basis of foreknowledge will have to admit that God from all eternity has known, but he bases it upon those people's actions.

Well, that situation says, well, God doesn't really know, but does he really know? And if he does really know, why does he know?

Well, because all time is instantaneous to him because he created time and therefore determines his outcome. So it all goes back.

That's why I started where I did. You have to. Most of the problems in dealing with this subject, like someone mentioned to me on Tuesday nights, we've tried to bring this up sometimes when it's come up in Bible study.

If you're going to go to Bible study, this is going to come up a lot. In fact, if this is new to you, you start reading your

Bible and you're going to run into a lech all over the place in the New Testament and go, gosh, I didn't see that before. The story went by you.

But if you attempt to bring this up in a situation where you can't start over there, man, you're going to have objections flying fast and furious.

You've got to. Unconditional election, the biggest thing is it's not fair. Yeah. Justice or mercy.

But to say it isn't fair, I don't like this, but I think it's true. I'm forced to that by Romans 9.

I like that. I don't like it personally, but I'm forced to. I thought there was another question.

I mean, you've all got this down pat. You're that you just don't want to talk about it in public, right?

You'll get me later. Okay. Let me just do an introduction to Thursday night real quick.

If you get a chance this week, the best material to read for Thursday night would be

Schaeffer. At least the first couple chapters of Schaeffer. He'll give you a lot of historical stuff and you'll go, oh, gosh, this is boring.

But when you actually get into it, you're going to find out that what he says is vital to what we're talking about when we talk about apologetics.

I am what is known as a presuppositional apologist.

That means I basically follow in the thought patterns made famous only recently, but I believe taught long ago, by Cornelius Van Till.

Basically, you've got two groups. And maybe if I write them up here, you can see that.

Two groups in Christian, that is. Evidential apologetics and presuppositional apologetics.

By far, the vast majority of books you'll see are evidential. Evidence demands a verdict. Classic example.

There is another type of apologetics, the Roman Catholic and Arminian, that build upon a natural theology, as does evidential in a great way.

How can I explain the differences between the two? Did you have a question? What you are here is pretty much dependent upon what you view here.

In fact, that is the difference between the two. Evidential apologetics, in its worst form, for example, in the

Roman Catholic idea, builds upon what is known as natural theology. I mentioned when we started on Tuesday that the

Roman Catholic system believes, based upon basically the apologetic system devised by Thomas Aquinas, that man's reason is capable, outside of revelation, of coming to a true knowledge of God.

In other words, none of this. No radical depravity. The great danger of this was summed up by my apologetics professor,

Dr. Bullock, in the first class we had, when he said very clearly, I'll never forget this, he said,

Thomas proved the wrong God. Thomas Aquinas proved the wrong God.

I may take the time Thursday night to look at some of Thomas' proofs, because they are fascinating. They are very interesting.

I think they do have a place, concerning theism. But he proved the wrong

God, because what Thomas does, he basically says, well you've got some, for example, one of his proofs basically says, we have effects around us all the time.

You know the law of cause and effect. You must have a cause for an effect. Well since we have a number of increasing effects now, if you follow it back, some place back here, you have to encounter the unmoved mover.

The first cause that is itself uncaused. This has been made popular, surprisingly, by a

Protestant by the name of Norman Geisler, who in his book, Christian Apologetics, basically gives this example.

I think it has validity to it up to a point. Let's say I want to borrow $5 from Dave.

Dave says, well I don't have $5, but I need to borrow it from Carol. Carol says, well I don't have to borrow it, but I have to borrow it from Linda.

Linda has to borrow it from Diane. Diane has to borrow it from Mel. If you go back there, if you keep doing that for eternity, you'll never get your $5.

This is called the fallacy of eternal regression. You cannot have cause effect, cause effect all the way back without some place back there running into a cause that was itself not an effect.

It was uncaused. Now once you run into somebody that has the $5, then you get your $5.

But it has to be part of their nature to have the $5. It has to be something they already have. In the same way,

Thomas basically said, somewhere back there has to be a starting point. And that's God. He's right.

Somewhere back there has to be a starting point. But that isn't God. That is an action of God.

That's where he was wrong. What Dr. Bullock was saying was that Aquinas' God is part of the system.

The first part, yes, but he's part of the system. That's not the Christian God. All Aquinas' proofs can show is that you cannot explain the existence of the universe on naturalistic assumptions.

You've got to put God in your system someplace. But that doesn't give you any knowledge of God. But the

Roman Catholic system, building upon Aquinas, thinks that you can, by looking at the system around you, come to an accurate knowledge of God, aside from Revelation.

Obviously then, the primary emphasis of a person who holds to a natural theology, based upon what is known as general revelation, simple revelation of God in creation, will follow an evidential, apologetic stance.

All you've got to do is show evidence to people, and their logic will obviously force them to see that God exists.

And so Rome has maintained that for hundreds of years. Now, aside from the

Roman Catholic, then you go into some other areas, into more of the Arminian viewpoint, and though they're not going to take the exact same position as Aquinas, it's predominantly the same thing.

Predominantly the same idea of showing evidences. And the problem with this is, it never addresses that.

A presuppositional apologist, such as myself, starts with realizing that I can show all the evidence in the world to an individual, and if I ignore two very important things, it's not going to do them any good.

Spiritually, I must realize this. I must realize that this is a natural man.

The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. In other words, I must understand that no matter what

I do, am I apologetic? The ultimate outcome for that individual will be dependent not upon me, but upon the

Holy Spirit of God. That no man can truly accept the truth of God's Word, the truth that the

Bible is God's Word, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or anything else, truly make it personally theirs, without the work of the

Holy Spirit. This doesn't work. It can't. And if we say that you can do that, then why have the

Holy Spirit in the first place? But the thing that is most known or most famous about presuppositional apologetics is that I first must deal with the assumptions, the presuppositions of the man to whom

I am sharing his system and mine. In other words, what I realize is that every system has as its basis assumptions and presuppositions that are taken for granted and are unprovable.

Unprovable. Any system. Any system. Scientific, philosophical, anything else is based upon assumptions that are unprovable.

You can't prove them. Prove I exist. In a philosophical way, you can't without assuming certain things.

Assuming that you exist. The only way you can prove I exist is assume you exist. You say, well, everybody knows that.

That's fine. That's because the assumption we all accept is accurate. That's fine.

I'm just simply attempting to point out that all systems are based upon these assumptions, these presuppositions.

Now, an atheist, a naturalist, can build a building upon this foundation that makes perfect sense.

They can. You can take as your assumption, naturalism, that all things in this universe have natural causes.

And you can build a system on this. You can build your little building on it and that thing will work.

It will all stand there and the whole thing will work. You'll have all your little things put together and it will all stand there. That's fine. And many people do it.

The problem is the evidentialist, in his apologetic work, comes over here and he attempts on the assumptions made by the autonomous man to build a

Christian system on it. And that won't work. Or you'll end up with a paganized

Christian system, such as Romanism. So one of its main problems is that the

Church of Rome builds upon a natural basis that is not the basis given by God's Word. And all the problems you see in Rome come out of that.

Why do you think Rome has tradition? It has to. To fill up the cracks. Because its building won't fit upon the foundation upon which it's built.

You see, man's assumptions and presuppositions down here most frequently exclude the possibility of God.

Isn't that what the autonomous man does? The autonomous man sets himself up as the absolute reference point for all things.

He sets himself up as the absolute reference point of all things and therefore his basic assumption, his assumption that very underlies everything else, leaves no room in his entire thought system for an authority higher than himself.

So therefore if you walk onto his basis and attempt to reason with him on his basis, you'll never get anywhere. You can't.

Because his assumptions have already a priori beforehand proven your conclusions wrong.

You can't win there. Believe me, I've tried. I've tried with atheists before I came to understand this.

It's like beating your head against the wall. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. You can show them all the evidence in the world.

You can buy them 20 copies of evidence of the man's work. It's not going to make any difference. Because you're not dealing with these down here.

Now some presuppositional apologists go so far as to say that there is absolutely no room for evidence at all.

I don't go that far. In fact, looking at the various books I've got, for example a recent book that just came out called

Classical Apologetics by Sproul, Gershner, and one other fellow. Believe it or not, this may surprise you, there's an attack on this.

An attack upon Cornelius Van Til and Presuppositional Apologetics. I can get it out. Difficult to say.

Now the problem I have with all this is that, it seems as in almost every other issue, it's either you're this or you're that and you can't use elements of both.

Well, for me, I have to start here. Because you see, if I present any fact to this person, built upon the autonomous assumptions that he makes, any fact

I present to him, he will be able to work it according to his assumptions and will end up meaning something differently than I present it to be.

Any fact at all. Anthony Flew debated, what was his name,

Habermas, Gary Habermas, in a book that was released last year called The Jesus Rise from the Dead, a debate on the resurrection of Jesus.

Between a Christian, Habermas, and Anthony Flew, a well -known skeptic. Well, Flew lost, according to the debate judges that scored it, but he's still a skeptic.

Okay, he's seen the evidence, but if you read that book, you'll be able to see because of his assumptions down here, the evidence doesn't mean the same thing as if it's built upon assumptions that God exists.

So these down here determine what you're going to think up here. So if you don't deal with this first, this is going to get you nowhere.

But, I would also submit to you that if you only do this, then they'll probably have nothing to believe in. Exactly. I believe, and I have a handout for everybody, it's buried under Linda's Bible over there.

It is a letter that I wrote this week. I received this letter this week. I've received it since Tuesday, so I didn't notice it was coming.

It's a letter to a local atheist that I have talked to once before. He wrote a letter to Dr.

Robert Morey, and then he sent me a copy of that, and back he wrote a letter to me. It's a four -page letter that I wrote to this gentleman.

Of course, I've wiped out his name and stuff like that, so privacy is not an issue. And you will be able to see that by the second page,

I had to say, look, I can't address what you're saying without talking about this first. I launched into a whole discussion of the autonomous man and the presuppositions upon which our systems were based.

Once I got done with that, then I went back to what he was talking about, and then I could say, now, you said such and so, but as you can see, that doesn't hold water because of this.

By dealing with the presuppositions, I finally found a basis upon which I could make my comment.

This point of contact, you see, every apologist is looking for a point of contact between he and the person he is speaking to.

Rome thinks you can find that point of contact upon natural theology. The Bible says you can't. And so the

Christian apologist must first build that basis, or at least say, hey, this is my basis, that's your basis.

When I present evidence to you, would you please take the time to consider the evidence as I am presenting it in my system, and I will attempt to do the same thing for you.

But as long as you think you're operating on the same basis, you're never going to talk to each other. Never going to talk to each other. No communication.

No communication at all. Now, you will run into presuppositional apologetics in Schaeffer.

Schaeffer will talk to you about this very basis that modern man has gotten into a situation where he thinks of reality in two planes.

And he'll go through the whole history of how we got there, and you might go, I don't want to know the history. You need to. You need to.

In fact, I think some of you who have already read the book are going, gosh, I wish you told me this before I read it. I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more than I did.

Well, I knew that would happen, but I just decided to go that direction. So when we take up with this discussion on Thursday evening, we actually get into how you do apologetics, and what apologetics is.

And when we attack the difficult issues of apologetics, we'll start here with the presupposition.

And we'll start with how autonomous man thinks today, and then go from there in our apologetics.

Okay? Any questions about that? Can you see how what I've talked about here flows naturally from what we've talked about before about the sovereignty of God?

It has to. It has to. Your apologetic must be defined by what you believe, not the other way around.

Not the other way around. It is terrible, and it is so common that the church today will compromise its beliefs in order to have its apologetics.

That is scary. That is scary. That's not a proclamation of the gospel anymore. It's like saying don't talk about sin because people don't like to hear about sin.

I mean, that's ridiculous. You can't talk about the gospel without talking about sin. I mean, that's ridiculous.

Well, people don't like to hear about sin. You won't get as many converts. Converts to what? Why would you want to convert somebody to a gospel if it doesn't say anything about sin?