Apologetics Smorgasbord (EPIC Q&A)

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala.

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And today, or tonight rather, this is a very special episode. I'm super excited.

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Revealed Apologetics has reached, when I first advertised this particular episode, we've reached 5 ,000 subscribers.

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But since then, a couple of weeks ago, within the past two weeks, we've got, I think, 100 or 200 more.

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So we're somewhere around 5 ,200 or something like that. So the channel's growing.

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I really, really appreciate all of the support and the love that folks have just given and showered on what we're doing here.

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And so I just hope that this particular Q &A session and theology and apologetic conversation is a blessing to folks who listen in.

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And so this is a Q &A. So we're not waiting till the end necessarily. Depending on how the questions come in, we'll take them one by one and see how the evening goes, all right?

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So I have an interesting bunch of folks here. My goal in doing this was to get folks that you don't normally think of if you're in the world of apologetics and YouTube and things like that.

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My goal was to get as many apologists as I can that you would never think about seeing together on the screen.

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I thought that'd be fun. And as you guys know from the thumbnail, if you follow all of our content, we come from different theological and apologetic backgrounds.

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Now, some on the more extreme side might think, hey, Eli, what's going on here?

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Are you compromising on your principles? No, I am not. I stand where I stand. My guests stand where they stand.

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And we're just gonna have an awesome time of fellowship and answer questions from our particular perspectives.

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And hopefully you guys can benefit from the wide variety and diversity of backgrounds that each of my guests have.

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So I'm really excited to have my guests on here. So let me introduce my guests. I'll just kind of invite them all on here.

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Let's see here. Boom, boom, boom. Let's fill up this screen. Gentlemen, how are you guys doing?

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Hey, all. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and helping me celebrate 5 ,000 subs.

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And it's, yeah, yeah. We have the home alone. You got the Macaulay Culkin. Oh my goodness, you know.

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And I appreciate you guys willing to come on with me and to engage my audience. But before we do that, let's kind of share with folks.

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If people who follow my channel might not know who you are and what you do, maybe you guys can take a few moments to kind of introduce yourself and tell folks a little bit about what you do and where they can find you.

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So I'm just gonna go in order of my screen here. My first guest here is Michael Jones from Inspiring Philosophy.

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Why don't you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do? Yeah, I'm Michael Jones. I run Inspiring Philosophy, a

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YouTube channel. Now I'm on TikTok as well. I make a lot of apologetic videos, graphic animated type -driven style videos.

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So you can check me out on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, all same links, same name,

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I mean. Okay, excellent. And Dr. Tony Costa, why don't you introduce yourself? I know folks might be familiar.

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I've had you on a few times before, but why don't you just take a moment and tell folks about you? Yeah, it's easy to identify me.

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I'm the only Canadian here. So I'm the only alien here, the foreigner in your midst, and you're supposed to love the alien just like yourselves.

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So my name is again, Tony Costa. I'm from Toronto, Canada. And I'm also a

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Christian apologist. I've been involved in apologetics for 30 plus years. And I teach at the

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Toronto Baptist Seminary. I also teach as an instructor at the University of Toronto. And my area of specialty is apologetics, general apologetics.

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And I'm also a pastor. I do pastoral work. So I wear two hats, basically the academic and also the pastoral dimension of ministry.

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So congratulations, Eli, on your 5 ,000 subscribers plus, and may the

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Lord continue to increase your tribe. Thank you. Thank you for that. All right, Matt from karm .org.

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Why don't you introduce yourself? Your mic is off, Matt. I can't hear you.

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Well. Okay. There we go. There we go.

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Yeah. What happened? It was on Oculus. That's all right. No, no worries. All right. Yeah, I'm Matt Slick.

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My real name is Slick. That's why I can say I'm slicker than all of you put together. So I've been doing apologetics since 1980.

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Run karm .org, a huge website. Read over 5 ,000 articles. Been doing radio for 17 years.

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Written a bunch of books. Do impromptu debates. Just teach and things like that, generally annoying.

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And love to do apologetics. So God's granted me that privilege of doing it full -time and that's what

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I do. All right. And awesome about Matt is that his site was up when like the internet was invented.

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So he was kind of the, he was ahead of the curve when we were still running around in the 90s doing whatever we were doing in the 90s.

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Back in 95, I started it. Yep. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. And my next guest is not

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Wes Mantooth. I don't even know where that came from. Oops, I left that on there. So sorry. Well, my next guest, maybe you might recognize his face from his super popular debate teacher react videos, which by the way, and I love everyone on the screen here.

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I watch all of your content, but I have to admit that when Nate comes out with a debate teacher reacts video, that's the first one

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I go to. Cause I love how you really pick apart and make awesome observations in these debates.

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And I learned so much. So I learned a lot from all of you guys, but I love your little thing you got going on there with those debate teacher.

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They're so informative and they're exciting. So I just wanted to say that, but why don't you share with folks a little bit about who you are and what you do?

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Thank you. Yeah, my name's Nate and I think you all made a mistake cause I don't know if I'm supposed to be on this roster.

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It's quite a pleasure to be with you all. So I have an organization, it's been around for shoot nine years and it's called

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Wise Disciple. And we have a YouTube channel that we only really started paying attention to in the last two years, trying to make videos, good videos.

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And yeah, there's a debate teacher react. So I used to be a debate teacher. And so I look at theology and apologetics debates.

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And I think I've looked at inspiring philosophy.

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Michael Jones slayed Aaron Ra. Like he was dead and not recovered.

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And he's like, I think he's still in the hospital from that. So, but it was. He said in there,

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I win. He said, I win. Yeah. So it's been quite a pleasure though.

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And it's funny cause I actually don't really consider myself to be among you all.

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So it's quite a pleasure to be here. I'm gonna be geeking out with everybody else. All right. Well, just a heads up,

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Matt Slick also had an interaction with Aaron Ra and I thought he also did an excellent job slaying.

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So he got slayed twice. Look at that. It says that he's appointed for every man to die once. Apparently you can die more than once.

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So there we go. We found a loophole in the scripture. There you go, atheist. All right. My next guest is Braxton Hunter from Trinity Radio.

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Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself? Hi, I'm Braxton. I've never debated Aaron Ra. But I have debated some people and I have to say, before I say anything about me, which is only moderately important,

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I guess. Matt Slick, I wanted to say, said it's an honor to be here with all of you guys.

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But Matt, like has been said, you've been doing apologetics online for almost as long as there's been an internet.

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And I just want to tell you what an honor it is to be on the stream with you because I've been listening to you for years and years and years.

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And so it feels kind of like being on here with a celebrity. Although I kind of feel that way about all you guys, but I just wanted to say that from the jump.

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Ken, I give you my wife's cell number and you need to call her and tell her how great I am.

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Because I need, seriously, I need the help. But praise God, praise God, praise

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God for all that. So in any case, I run Trinity Radio, which is a podcast and a

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YouTube channel. If you just go on YouTube and search Trinity Radio, you'll find it. And I'm also the president of Trinity College of the

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Bible and Theological Seminary in Evansville, Indiana, which is a distance learning online school, but it has existed since 1969.

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And we're non -denominational, but theologically conservative. And we have,

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I know that we have Calvinist and non -Calvinist represented here tonight. We have Calvinist and non -Calvinist professors at Trinity.

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And, but I'm honored to represent the school on this platform tonight with you. Excellent.

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Well, I'm just going to continue to wait. There's some questions coming in, but I just want to kind of give a little bit more time for some more to flow in.

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So my first question for you guys is in terms of doing apologetics, who has influenced you the most in your journey to learning how to defend the faith?

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Michael, why don't you go first? You can list maybe two or three if you have, or maybe one, or -

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I'll go in order. I think the first person that really got me interested in apologetics was someone who actually helped lead me to Christ, which would be

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J .P. Holding. Many, many years ago, I'm talking like, you know, over, almost 20 years ago or so, but it was probably the first person who really got me interested in apologetics, as well as people like Richard Swinburne.

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I feel like it's been very helpful in that sort of regard in terms of getting me interested in the evidence for God's existence and philosophical philosophy.

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And then from there, I really just sort of branched out and I've been just interested in a lot of different philosophers and theologians, historians like John Walton, Mike Lacona, more lately than that, as well as Richard Hess as well.

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I've been reading a lot of his stuff. So, I mean, it's hard to really pin it down to one person. It's just been, I've been influenced by a lot of different people.

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Sure. All right. Thank you for that. How about you, Dr. Acosta? Yeah, well, when I became a, I came from a

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Roman Catholic background and found Christ when I was 15 years old. And at a young age, I almost fell prey to a cult at the time, the

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Worldwide Church of God, led by Herb W. Armstrong. And it was really the work of Walter Martin and the

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Kingdom of the Cults that really the Lord used that to open my eyes. And that's when

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I felt a call to apologetics at a young age of 15, 16. And I went on to higher education and yeah, great.

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You got the book. I got all the editions, including the old 1961 with all the wavy lines. That's right, that's right.

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And then after that, I actually got to meet Dr. William Lane Craig back in early, this would have been 1990.

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He came up to the University of Toronto to debate a famous atheist, the abortion doctor, Dr. Henry Morgenthaler.

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And this, when we're talking William Lane Craig here, he just finished his second doctorate, his THD in Germany.

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And we're talking William Craig with the full beard. I think he's got the best beard in the world when he did have it.

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And - I have to say, I agree. Yeah. If there were apologist trading cards,

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I would trade my William Lane Craig beard list for the beard of William Lane Craig. Yeah, he had the best beard.

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Anyway, so he debated Morgenthaler. I was absolutely blown away by the knowledge that Craig had amassed.

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And it showed for the first time as a young 20 year old at that time, that the

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Christian faith was reasonable and that it could be articulated in an academic setting where he was questioned, not just by students, but professors of philosophy, professors of rhetoric and logic and so forth and so on.

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So I was really, really impacted by Dr. Craig's debate. And so that led me forward, as Mike said,

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I branched out into various other authors, R .C. Sproul, among others. And so the

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Lord has been good. I've been in this ministry, as I said, for 30 plus years.

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I've seen the Lord do wondrous things, seeing Mormons saved, Jehovah's Witnesses saved, atheists,

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Roman Catholics coming to Christ. And so a lot of that information, I mean, if people are interested, my

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YouTube is Toronto Apologetics. And a lot of that, a lot of information in that area is provided there.

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So yeah, apologetics is fun. It's, you know, jump in the water, the water feels great.

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Awesome. What about you Braxton? Yeah, so I was already pastoring a church in my early 20s when

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I became really aware of apology. I mean, I knew what apologetics was generally speaking, but before I got my hands in it and really the reason for it was because I found that it was helpful in evangelism.

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I had a friend who had been struggling with same sex attraction and he came to decide that he could either live a biblical lifestyle or a same sex lifestyle.

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And that's what he chose to do, the same sex lifestyle. And he gave up the Bible and now he says he's an atheist. And so I wanted to give him, it rattled me not in a sense that I didn't have an answer, not in the sense that it caused me doubt, but it rattled me in the sense that I wanted to give him the answer that I didn't have.

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I wanted to say something I didn't know how to say. So I got into apologetics at that point. That would have been when I discovered the great

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Matt Slick who's here with us tonight. And, but initially I would say Norman Geisler. You surprised him, he goes.

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Who, me? Matt, I'll tell you, the first time I ever saw Matt Dillahunty's face, you were a caller or something to the atheist experience.

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That was years and years and years ago. Little did I know that I would ever debate Matt Dillahunty and all that, but Norman Geisler probably did a lot initially to spark my interest.

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I bought his four volume systematic theology and I read it and I told him I read it. And he said, well, that's you, me, and my wife are the only ones he's ever read that.

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After that - It's a monster. I think I, is it this one here? Yeah, well, it was originally in four volumes. Now they put it down into one.

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But in any case, that from there, it became William Lane Craig and Habermas and J .P.

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Moreland. A lot of the ones that were really popular and still are popular, but at that time. And really

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Mike Lycona is the last thing I'll say. Mike Lycona, I know that that's a contra, he can be, people have controversial opinions about Mike Lycona, but I was at a

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Southern Baptist convention event in Atlanta and met Mike Lycona and he didn't know who I was.

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And I wasn't, I'm not anybody now. My most important credential is I'm a servant of the King, but at that time I was really nobody.

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But he sat with me for three hours and poured into me and has been a friend ever since. And that's meant a lot to me.

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So those are some of the names, but there's obviously there are many, many others. And really my parents are the biggest influence because they always had an answer.

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And if they didn't have an answer, I don't remember a time they didn't have an answer, but they would have found one for me. And it was always thoughtful. That's awesome.

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Awesome, dude. What about you, Nate? Yeah, I had a similar experience.

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I initially got saved, you know, immersing myself into everything that is to do with Christianity and my best man at my wedding, he was my best friend, also was on this kind of journey to a faith.

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In the beginning, I thought it was, we were traveling along similar paths and I found out that is not the case.

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And so we got into a lot of disputation back then and same. I just, I felt like I should know some things like when he was throwing challenges at me that I didn't know.

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And so it just caused me to go back and do a lot of reading. And so in my formative years, the names that come to mind, cause

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I feel like it was like an information dump in those first couple of years, if you guys can relate to that.

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But JP Moreland, I think I just accidentally stumbled across a lecture of his, it was audio only.

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And I was just captured, he got me. Like it was just, I was really friendly to his style.

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And then from what I learned was JP Moreland was taught by Dallas Willard and Howard Hendricks.

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And those are all heroes to me as well as a former teacher. So it was

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JP Moreland and then Greg Koukl. I think Greg Koukl has some kind of a radio show still.

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And so in the early years as a Christian, cause I got saved in 09, I'm calling the Greg Koukl radio show, asking about my friend, what do

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I say about this? And my friend said that, and what do I say about that? And so if you go back in the archive, don't. But if you go back in the archives long enough, you can find my phone calls into Greg Koukl.

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And so Greg Koukl was very helpful to me. And then Francis Schaeffer. Francis Schaeffer, I think

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I found his trilogy, the Francis Schaeffer trilogy. So what is that? It's like the God who was there escaped from reason and he's there and he's not silent or something like that.

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I found it in a bargain bin and for like almost nothing. And I picked it up and I was working in a hospital at the time.

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And I read all three, the whole trilogy in a weekend. And I was just so like enraptured.

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It was amazing. So those three, I think are pretty big. Those are the ones too,

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Francis Schaeffer particularly on my particular style of communication, I think is pretty big.

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Yeah, excellent. Thank you for that. What about you, Matt? Who've been the greatest influences on you in your development in apologetics and theology?

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Well, you're a Microsoft. You're muted Matt. You're muted. Not very slow. He's the guy who's been doing this since the internet was invented.

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He's been learning the internet. I'm working on stuff. I got the windows open.

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I'm working while you guys are talking. He's writing articles while he's a guest on a show. Yeah, well,

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I'm working on my Eastern Orthodox stuff and going through a thing there and stuff. And then I'm writing a piece of positionalism.

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I got another window over there, chat thing when we're done here, I'm supposed to go. All right, so that's why

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I didn't let you guys hear me typing. The guys who've influenced me the most, Walter Martin and Chuck Missler.

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I used to attend their classes back in SoCal. Went to seminary and it was John Frame. And then after seminary, got introduced to Greg Bonson and learned a lot from him.

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And then there's this lesser known apologist that people don't often refer to, Paul the Apostle.

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And so I learned a great deal from him. I actually, for real. When I first read

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Paul the Apostle, my faith was shaken because I didn't understand what he was saying.

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Once I understood what he was saying, it was grounded. So I think that he's the quintessence of good apologetics.

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I really do believe that and logic and things like that. But anyway, there you go. Yeah, and just to piggyback off what you're saying there,

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Matt, I know that we all have our influences but what I've seen in Matt's ministry that has really struck me is that in your responses to people, your responses, especially even your advice to people who are asking like life questions, your responses are so filled with scripture that you've done an excellent job,

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I think, in really hiding God's word in your heart. And that really comes out in the way that you engage a lot of the questions.

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I appreciate that. For myself, William Lane Craig has been a great influence on me.

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Of course, everyone who follows my channel knows that Greg Bonson, Cornelius Van Til, James White had just watching his debates and things like that.

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And of course, Matt Slick. Actually, it was Matt Slick who listening to Karm, the old show when you used to do all your impressions.

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You used to have these little characters. What was the one character that you would rip, that they would rip scriptures out of context?

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What was it? Yeah, Reverend E .R. Tickler. Okay, that's right, okay. E .R. Tickler, E .R.

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Tickler. That's right, that's right. So, listening to you and answering, how you answered questions, actually helped me gain confidence in my conversations.

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And I love the way you kind of analyzed and questioned the assumptions in the question that was being asked.

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And I learned, just by listening, driving and listening, I learned a lot from you in how you answer questions.

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Go ahead, Braxton. That's one person. Well, here's another. I was gonna say that years ago, it wasn't too many years ago, probably in 2000, well,

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I guess that's relative, 2010, something like that, you were talking with somebody called the

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Rational Response Squad. Ha ha! And, uh... Ha ha ha! Sorry, sorry, that was a squeak that kind of came out because I love it when they say

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Rational Response Squad because I think it's funny. It's just funny. Sorry. But you did, you gave me some confidence in terms of that sort of thing because I remember her saying, she was nervous to be talking to you.

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And you said, I used to be nervous when I had these kinds of conversations. You don't have to be nervous. Just, let's just get in there and find out what's going on.

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And I thought, I love that, that attitude, you know? And that was, that was empowering. But what

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I get scared is when I'm listening to Matt's show and a guy is being somewhat evasive and Matt just goes out and says, are you a

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Jehovah's Witness? Well, as soon as they don't answer the question right away, I'm like, oh man, it's about to go down.

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No, no, no, wait. Are you, if you don't answer the question, I'm going to let you go. It's my show, my rules. I'm like, oh man, yes,

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I'm a Jehovah's Witness. And then you go in and you do your thing. I enjoy that. But I'm nice.

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I'm nice to them. If they're not going to answer the question, just so I know where they're coming from, why talk to them? That's all. But we know that once they admit where they're coming from, it's over.

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So, all right. The buzz saw's turned on. Okay, well, now that we kind of got, that's cool. I like hearing kind of the background of where everyone's coming from and your influences and things like that.

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So, let's kind of take some questions. So, there's some questions here. Feel free to answer however you'd like.

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If you want to chime in or piggyback on what someone else says, feel free to do so. Okay, so Alyssa Scott.

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Thank you so much for your question. Alyssa asks to everybody, do you continue studying other apologetic methods?

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I think that's what she wanted to say. Besides the one that you hold to. So, are you guys still, do you guys every now and then,

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I mean, most of us are already fully entrenched in the methods we use, but do you occasionally kind of like trickle over into other methodologies and making sure you understand that?

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Or maybe you can draw some positives from other perspectives. And if so, what does that look like for you guys?

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How about Braxton? Why don't you go first? Yeah, so, I realize that there are a lot of people on the evidential side, which is the side that I'm on, who think that presuppositionalism needs to go away.

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It's not helpful, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, on our show, we both, though we've taken shots before, we actually find presuppositionalism to be helpful.

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Now, I realize that there are some who think that the theological positions, the Calvinist theological positions are necessary or at least very important to presuppositionalism.

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And we don't share those positions, but we still find it very important to function in some way, often in ways that a presuppositionalist would in terms of challenging worldview, establishing the foundation of intelligibility and things like that.

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So, I still study it. I think the book that opened my eyes to it, aside from the five views on apologetics book, was

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Avery Dulles' history of apologetics. I just thought it emerged there in history. I saw that there was value in it.

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And so, I still study that. And I think we think bifurcated presuppositionalism and an evidentialism.

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But if you go by the categories that are set out in those kinds of books, there's classical, evidential, cumulative case, presuppositional, reformed epistemology.

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And I think all of those have something of value. And I tried to say so in my book,

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Evangelistic Apologetics, for that very reason. Yeah. Now, Braxton looks all dignified there and he's very calm and cool.

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But a lot of people don't know this. Braxton and I, we talk a lot throughout the week. And we've had our debates over the phone where it was a lot of fun.

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I apologize to Eli and gave him $20 one time. That's right. That was awesome.

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So, next time I'll make sure I'll get under your skin so you can be mean to me and give me more money in Super Chat.

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All right. What about you, Michael? Do you study other apologetic methods or are you kind of locked in on your own method or do you kind of try to see what other people are saying to draw from that?

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Where do you stand on that? Well, I think it's natural to check the other methods and see what other people are doing.

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I will say I'm definitely more of a classical apologist. I'm not convinced by the presuppositional approach.

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It's fine if someone else is, go for it. But my motto basically is I'd rather be doing apologetics than talking about how to do apologetics.

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And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm getting like a minimal now, one testimony a month from the apologetic work

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I'm doing online. So, it's affecting the culture, it's helping people. So, I'm just gonna keep doing it. It's working great and that's how

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I've been doing things, I guess. Okay, very good. Thank you. What about you, Nate? So, somebody on this, can

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I call this a dais? What is this? What am I looking at here? The roster? Somebody challenged me to take a look at presuppositionalism a little bit closer recently and his name rhymes with Eli.

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So, I have that on my to -do list. I have not as of yet.

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But I find my, so I have a kind of a signature method of communicating the

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Christian faith and it's very friendly to presuppositional apologetics because I think it's probably the easiest tool that anybody could pick up with minimal training, just put it that way.

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And so, that's kind of where I'm at. I don't,

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I feel like, I think J .Wanna Wallace called it a mixed martial art apologist kind of a style where there's multiple methods, multiple tools that I use when dealing with particular kinds of people.

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And I think my first question is, who am I dealing with? And sort of float out the diagnostic questions to determine that first.

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And then, I will utilize whatever it is I've picked up along the way. So, I think the last book that I read was a while back.

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The five views on apologetics or something, just stay fresh. Yeah, yeah, cool, very good.

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What about you, Matt? Well, your mic's off again. I'm writing,

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I'm typing. Typing a list of heresies that are being spoken tonight. It's really getting long, it's just, man.

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You got some talking to do. I'm an entrenched presuppositionalist.

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I used to use evidence as a primary and classical rationalism. But I learned that none of them can, in my opinion, can be justified without assuming the

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Trinitarian God. Because all evidence is due to the causal chain of God's initial existence.

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And all rationality and classical stuff is due to the transcendent necessity of the laws of logic, which are reflections of God's character and mind.

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So, ultimately, neither of these can be justified unless we presuppose the Trinitarian God. And so,

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I do that. And when I switched, so to speak, though I do use the others, apologetics just became that much easier.

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Particularly with atheists and others, just ask them the right questions. And so,

28:24

I like it. And when people say they don't approve of presuppositionalism, I say, why would you presuppose that? I love how

28:31

Matt took the question, do you look at other methods and just started advocating presuppositionalism?

28:38

I forgot. Well, thank you. I forgot. I am old. Probably the oldest one in here.

28:43

I am 65. But I study other stuff. Nate's like, whoa, okay.

28:51

That just hurts someone's feelings, that buzzer bubble. So, no, I will study other stuff, but as I've debated a lot with atheists and Eastern Orthodox and Catholics, Mormons, whoever,

29:04

Muslims, I've learned more and more. You've always got to get down to their basic assumptions. Always get down to where they are and what justifies those basic assumptions.

29:13

And one of the things I say is, what must be true in order for, whatever they say, to be the case?

29:20

And if they can't justify that assumption, then they don't have any case. And even with the

29:25

Christians, we've got to justify everything by appealing to the necessity of the Trinitarian God.

29:31

And incidentally, I just finished a while back, a 500 -word paragraph on the Trinity and taught for five weeks on the

29:38

Doctrine of the Trinity and stuff like that. I love it. I think it makes sense. And so I'll use other methods, but they're all in subordination, in my opinion, to the ultimate necessity of God's existence and the emanation and causal chain of all things related to Him.

29:52

So there you go. That makes sense. Was that slick and quick? So basically, you're a presuppositionalist, but you do talk about evidences, but you try to make sure that the conversation gets to those foundations.

30:04

Yeah, evidence is only that which exists in a broader context, what justifies the context.

30:10

Facts only exist in a broader context, what justifies the context, et cetera. Sure. All right, thank you for that. What about you,

30:16

Tony? Yeah, I believe that we should definitely examine other sides. I'm a presuppositionalist as well, at first, and Reformed, but I do have evidentialist arguments

30:27

I use sometimes. I mean, we see the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 appealing to the witnesses who saw the risen

30:34

Christ, the 500 brethren who saw Him at one time, the appearance to Cephas, the appearance to James and the apostles and so forth, and then saying, look, some of those 500, some of them have fallen asleep, but some witnesses are still alive, as if to say, you can check with them as well.

30:52

They're available for their testimony. So I'm not saying that we have no place for evidentialistic arguments.

31:00

I believe it has its place, but I would agree with Matt that in my opinion, it would be a secondary form of argumentation.

31:08

So I would always encourage people to imitate George Whitefield and John Wesley, even though they had some very strong differences,

31:16

Wesley being very strongly Arminian and George Whitefield being, of course, Calvinist.

31:22

They love each other. They did have their strong disagreements, but it is possible for Calvinists and Arminians to get together.

31:29

And it's possible to have fellowship with one another. And so I think it's important that we realize that we don't have to forfeit our convictions, but at the end of the day, we are brothers in Christ.

31:44

We're trusting Christ alone for our salvation. And we should always watch out that we don't major in the minors and minor in the majors.

31:52

So that seems to be a continuous problem that Christians seem to experience. Sure, sure.

31:58

Did everyone get an opportunity to take a swing at that one? Okay. Yeah, so myself, here's the thing.

32:05

As a presuppositionalist, I often find myself disappointed, not in presuppositionalism, but in the lack of many presuppositional sources in dealing with specific data points, like specific evidences.

32:16

So I think presuppositionalists do an awesome job in kind of the broader worldview, creating that context in which the evidence makes sense.

32:23

But when you establish that and people have specific questions on specific points,

32:29

I think, at least in my experience, there's not a lot of presuppositional material out there that really goes into the nitty gritty of those specific points as do like my classicalist and evidentialist friends do.

32:41

So in that sense, I like to read classical and evidential literature so that I can get some of that deep nitty gritty details that I can actually put within a presuppositional framework.

32:54

And I often emphasize on my channel when we talk about this, that I do make a very important distinction between the use of evidences and the utilization of evidentialism as a methodology.

33:05

I don't use evidentialism, but I do think that evidentialists do a great job in the evidences specifically, and then

33:13

I use that in my own studies. I draw from that and I try my best to contextualize that so as to be consistent with the methodology that I hold to.

33:20

So I have very much benefited from the works of William Lane Craig, J .P. Moreland, listening to debates,

33:27

Braxton Hunter. We've had great discussions, even in our disagreements, but I've learned so much from him and Michael Jones as well.

33:36

He does an excellent job in his debates. I mean, I've actually had him on a while back to talk about debates, debating, and we disagree on important theological and apologetical issues, but I think he does an excellent job debating and I've learned so much watching many of his debates.

33:50

So - If you're gonna keep complimenting, you should buy me a drink first. I'll send you a nice lemon water.

34:00

Okay, let me see here. So, okay, so next question. Thank you for the super chat, Verum. This is specifically for Inspiring Philosophy.

34:07

They're trying to - Here we go. We'll see how we can navigate some of these questions. It's getting ready to rumble.

34:14

Okay, so the first apologetics, I'm just reading it as it happens here.

34:19

So the church fathers and the reformers were all young earth creationists. Were they all wrong? All right, and you feel free to answer that in the way, don't feel like you're limited in any way and no one's gonna jump on you, but go for it.

34:32

Short answer, no. Long answer is it's complicated. Okay, Isaac Newton was a young earth creationist and he was going on the best data at the time.

34:40

This was before the advent of geology, advanced astronomy, paleontology.

34:46

They were going on the best data they had. And so, no, they were not wrong, because they were working with the best data.

34:52

The thing is that now, shortly after Calvin, the rise of geology, people were taking very old earth views quite quickly.

35:01

And by about the 1800s, the spiritual geologists died out and just about every expert in the field that was basically an old earther at that point.

35:10

So we go on the best data. It goes back to that great quote by St. Augustine, who said, in matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith that we have received.

35:24

Such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side of that.

35:30

If further progress in the search of truth justly undermines the position, we too fall with it.

35:36

So he's saying, look, sometimes progress is gonna advance. Go back to the Galileo affair. And there's a lot of misconceptions about that.

35:42

I don't have time to get into, but the critics of Galileo said, look, if he's right, we're just gonna have to, we just, our interpretation of scripture is wrong and we will adjust accordingly.

35:50

That's the way it works with science. So I think that needs to be kept in mind. And so that's what

35:55

I would say with regards to that. I mean, we're not gonna agree with everything the church fathers said. Most scholars don't agree with Justin Martyr thinking that demons were reading the

36:02

Old Testament and then making the pagan religions to try to mimic it. Most scholars don't think that's really a good argument.

36:09

A lot of people don't agree with some of the stuff Tertullian said or some of the stuff that Origen said, that's okay. We don't have to agree with all the church fathers on every little detail.

36:17

I don't think everyone here will have to say all the church fathers are scripture or perfect and fallible authorities.

36:23

No, I don't think anyone would say that. So just keep that in mind when going forward. I don't think we need to say that. And of course the church fathers disagreed on how to interpret

36:31

Genesis. I mean, Clement of Alexandria said that everything happened instantly and the days were metaphorical, same with Augustine.

36:36

Whereas Basil said the days were literal. It really depended based on church fathers. They didn't all even agree on how to properly interpret

36:42

Genesis. Sure. All right, thank you for that. All right, now this next question, and thank you, Verum, for the $10 super chat.

36:48

Very much appreciate that. Next question, I suppose people may differ here, but feel free to answer it as honest and openly as you feel necessary.

36:58

Nathan asked the question, are Catholics Christians? Let's start with Dr. Costa. What's your view on that?

37:05

Yeah, well, Catholics are Christians because the word Catholic means universal and global. And so I believe that all true

37:11

Christians are Catholic. And I think the question is, are Roman Catholics Christians?

37:16

Right. So I'm a former Roman Catholic. That doesn't mean I'm a specialist, but I hold to the view that if you don't subscribe to the gospel of grace as taught by the apostles and by the

37:30

Lord Jesus Christ, I believe the words of Galatians 1, 6 -9 is very pressing, that if anyone brings another gospel, any other gospel, other than the gospel that the apostles preached, let them be anathema, accursed.

37:42

And it's very clear from studying Roman Catholicism, and we can include the Orthodox Church as well, that their definition of the gospel is not the same definition that the reformers came to.

37:55

Their understanding of the gospel justification was by faith alone in Christ. Salvation is by grace alone without works.

38:05

And so I believe the dividing line is the gospel. A lot of folks will say, but look, they believe in the

38:11

Apostles' Creed. They believe in the Nicene Creed. That's true. But the gospel is the dividing line.

38:17

The gospel is the power of God into salvation. And if you have another gospel, the scriptures bring down the anathema of God upon you.

38:24

And the word anathema in Greek simply means to be under the divine curse of God. And so when

38:29

I look at the Council of Trent, and I look at Vatican I, when I look at Vatican II, the gospel that Rome is preaching is not the gospel of grace alone.

38:39

In other words, it's not that they deny the efficiency of grace.

38:45

Of course, they'll say we need grace to be saved. The question is the sufficiency of grace.

38:50

Is grace sufficient in and of itself to bring about the justification of a sinner before a holy

38:57

God? And so I believe the Roman Catholic Church, I mean, there's those two views that says, well, is it an apostate church with some right doctrines?

39:06

Or is it a false church with some true doctrines? I believe the Church of Rome has gone into apostasy. I don't believe they're preaching the biblical gospel.

39:14

And therefore, I believe that it is incumbent on us to share the gospel with Roman Catholics and bring them into that grace.

39:22

Sure, all right, thank you for that. How about you, Braxton? Where do you stand on this question? My official position is a bit dodgy, which is to say that there are saved

39:32

Catholics. He begins with that. There are saved Catholics, there are saved Baptists, there are saved

39:38

Methodists, and there are unsaved in all those categories as well. But that is kind of the dodgy answer, honestly.

39:44

I have to tell you that when I was pastoring, I probably would have said, no, they're not. And then later on,

39:51

I would have said, yeah, they are. And at this point, here's where I'm at. I agree with Tony about Galatians, and there is very strong language from Paul there.

40:01

And obviously, we don't want to ever affirm the preaching of another gospel.

40:10

And so that's where the conversation would have to go is, to what extent is this another gospel, and how do we define that?

40:17

And I'm honestly thinking through that right now. I'm well aware of where the furniture is in this discussion.

40:25

It's just that it's a very important issue, and there's a lot at stake.

40:32

And so I'd rather cautiously just say, listen, let me tell you what I understand the gospel to be, and let me tell you what

40:39

I think a Christian is, and let's do evangelism or whatever, have a conversation.

40:46

And if it seems clear to me or to them, that this person hasn't ever trusted, repented, and placed their faith in Christ in the way that the

40:57

Bible describes, then we should take it that way. So can I piggyback on the question then just, so would you try to evangelize a

41:07

Roman Catholic? Not spontaneously,

41:14

I would talk to them just like I talk to anybody else, and pay attention. Because for me, because here's an important thing for me,

41:21

I didn't say this at the beginning, but for me, apologetics, well, I did say this. For me, the point is evangelism, to reach people with the gospel message.

41:29

I'm not interested in it for entertainment value, although I do find it very entertaining, or as a hobby, although I do have it as a hobby.

41:35

I'm interested in it first and foremost. I'm an Ephesians 411 evangelist, first and foremost. Apologetics is secondary, and the only importance of it, and it's not always important, the only importance of it is in helping people overcome roadblocks to evangelism.

41:49

And so for that reason, when I'm talking to anyone, anyone,

41:55

I'm listening to what they're saying, and listening for subtle indications of where this conversation might need to go, for me, as a servant of the

42:02

King, in trying to reach people with the gospel. So even if it's a Southern Baptist, and I was a

42:08

Southern Baptist nine months before I was born, I'm listening, I'm evaluating what they're saying, and I'm asking questions. I was gonna cut that there.

42:15

What about you, Michael? How would you address this question? So I once wrote a great book called

42:20

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, many, many years ago, and it convinced me that I think Catholics and Protestants are just talking a different language.

42:28

When Catholics mean, or when Protestants mean salvation, they mean the initial regeneration stage, or, and this is coming from their book, and they said that when

42:36

Catholics are talking about salvation they're including sanctification in that process. So their argument was, is that we're all on the same page, we're just talking, we're just using the wrong terms, or we're defining terms differently.

42:47

So when I say, are Catholics saved? I'm like, yes, there are Catholics that are saved, there are Protestants that are saved, there are

42:52

Catholics that are not saved, there are Protestants that are not saved. I don't think we can judge based on labels, we judge based on the heart, we'll know them by their fruits, and ultimately

43:00

Christ is going to be the one who knows who's everyone is saved. Not just because we sit in a certain pew does that mean we're saved.

43:06

It's much deeper than that. So I think there are people sitting in Catholic pews that are saved, and some that are not. Some are sitting in Protestant, or Evangelical, or Orthodox pews are saved and not saved, same kind of thing.

43:16

Thank you for that. What about you, Nate? Where do you stand on this question? I mean, it's hard to add to, and Braxton's gone.

43:24

I scared him away. He got raptured and we all got left behind. Oh no, is that the next question?

43:33

It's hard to add to what has been said, because I would echo everything. I think the only thing that I could probably offer in contribution is just to reiterate the point that I think

43:45

Tony was making about Galatians. If you go back and just look at Galatians, the whole letter, it speaks to this problem that I actually think is a human problem.

43:56

It's everyone's problem. Catholics make this problem. Protestants have this problem as well. And it's this idea,

44:03

Galatians three, the biggest indictment, right? You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Having begun in the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

44:10

That's all of our problem. We always want to try to help God out somehow with our own frailty and human offerings.

44:21

And it's a recipe for disaster. We have to come back to, I like what

44:26

Tony said, the gospel of grace. If you understand that, you're saved. I think you do. If you fully affirm the gospel, you're saved.

44:33

Okay, all right. And Matt, are Roman Catholics Christians?

44:40

Not if they believe official Roman Catholic theology. Official Roman Catholic theology is Antichrist, flat out.

44:47

Paragraph 20, 68 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says you obtain salvation by faith, baptism, and the observance of the commandments.

44:55

Paragraph 20, 36, it says that the natural law and observing the precepts of the natural law is necessary for salvation.

45:02

Paragraph 20, 36. Paragraph 20, 70 says the 10 commandments are a good reflection of the natural law.

45:10

So the Roman Catholic Church denies and anathematizes out of the Council of Trent, Canon 9, 23, 24,

45:16

I believe it is. It anathematizes justification by faith alone in Christ alone. It requires works as a form of salvation.

45:24

If you don't get it, you can't do it. You cannot be saved. It deals with what's called condign merit, congruent merit, strict merit.

45:30

We can talk about that. On my radio show, I regularly say that the Roman Catholic Church is the greatest gate of damnation of any religion on the planet because it's greater than Islam.

45:41

It teaches a false gospel and it promotes idolatry. And I automatically assume that any

45:47

Roman Catholic I'm talking to is not a Christian. And I will defend that to the death about Roman Catholicism.

45:56

I'm not joking. It is antichrist. So Matt, so you would say, so you would agree that there are people in the

46:04

Catholic Church that are saved, but you would say official Roman Catholic teaching. So you would agree in a sense what some of the, maybe what

46:13

Michael said, and I think Braxton mentioned that there are people within the Roman Catholic Church that are saved, but you would highlight the fact that it's the teaching itself, the official teaching that if you knowingly affirm the official teaching, you think that that outright rejects what you understand to be the gospel.

46:31

Okay. Absolutely. That's why I say official Roman Catholic theology. That's why I say that. Certainly there are

46:37

Catholics who are Christians, but there's lots of ways to show the problems of Catholicism and I have open,

46:46

I have four 27 inch 4K monitors and I have my - He ruled the world from that special, it looks simple, but he showed me, he's got like a master, like a mother board thing going on there.

46:58

That's right. It's big stuff. And I have my outlines on Catholicism, including the index on table of contents is 189 pages.

47:06

And I've written well over a hundred articles on Catholicism. I've read their material, I've debated many of them. I've talked to hundreds of them over the years and I am absolutely convinced.

47:16

Official Roman Catholic theology is antichrist. It has works righteousness and it promotes idolatry in the form of Mary.

47:25

And sometimes what I'll do on the net is read what some of the official stuff is that Mary officially said.

47:32

And when you read it, you go, those are demons talking. And people don't realize how bad the

47:37

Roman Catholic church is in a lot of other ways too, but we won't get into that now, but no, it's not Christian. Okay. Well, thank you,

47:43

Nathan, for that question. And thank you guys for sharing your perspectives there. Next question here. How could

47:49

I, or someone, philosophically break down or debunk panantheism? Thank you.

47:54

That's an interesting question. Anyone want to take a stab at that one? You can throw it out. Who wants to define panantheism and refute panantheism?

48:03

So there are different types of panantheism. I would say weak panantheism or Palamite panantheism is entirely, it's within orthodoxy.

48:10

It's not something that would be heretical. In fact, there have been church fathers in the past that have advocated for that.

48:16

I would say strong panantheism, like Hegel, for example, would be a strong panantheist, is a heresy because it tries to put like all of the created order within the divine essence of God.

48:27

And that itself is going too far. I think we need to keep in mind, you would simply have to point to things like, within the created order, things like evil, or is evil part of God's essence?

48:40

And we would say, no, that is heresy, these kinds of things. You would also, this would be a better argument against pantheism, but you can, you know,

48:48

Kalam or any cosmological argument requires a transcendent cause, something beyond the universe to cause it. Again, weak panatheism is consistent with that based on how it's defined and defended, but strong panatheism,

48:58

I think it's a harder time getting away with that, the idea there's a transcendent cause because it sort of like makes the created order part of God.

49:06

And so you can't, so cosmological arguments sort of refute that as well. That's how I would go about it. Okay, anyone else have something to say about that?

49:13

Yeah, I mean, that's what I was gonna say. He's the creator, not the created thing. And Mike drew some important distinctions or lines of distinction there.

49:21

I just think that when you're talking about the created order and these sorts of things, if you run something like, let's say the

49:27

Kalam, like he just said, it's where my mind went. We're talking about something as you do the conceptual analysis, it's baseless, timeless, non -material.

49:37

Well, that's not the universe. I think the argument gets you that, gets you those things, gets you those values.

49:43

And so that, to me, that rules out what he's calling strong panatheism.

49:51

I think we need to distinguish panatheism from panentheism, right? Panatheism, yeah.

49:56

Panatheism means all is God or all is divine. So you see that in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, for example,

50:03

Eastern religions. Panatheism means all is in God. That's simply the

50:09

Greek rendering of that term. And there's two indisputable facts in the Bible, isn't there?

50:14

Number one, there is a God. Number two, you're not him. And so Genesis 1 .1 is very clear. In the beginning,

50:20

God created the heaven, the earth. There's a sharp distinction between two categories, the category of creator and the category of the created.

50:28

And the idea of panatheism, like Michael was mentioning, Hegel's philosophy argued that God was wrapped up into history and that God is evolving.

50:41

And that has entered into theology through what's called process theology that teaches the same type of thing.

50:48

That in panatheism, basically the universe is the body of God. So the universe is

50:53

His body. And of course, the scriptures are very clear that again, God is not

50:59

His creation. God is trans. We talk about transcendence, trans -temporality. God is trans -temporal, transcendent.

51:05

God is infinite. Now the incarnation doesn't say that God entered into parts of nature, but that God took on a human nature so that in the incarnation,

51:17

God the Son takes on human flesh, becomes united in His person, the divine nature and the human nature.

51:25

But of course, that does not entail panatheism, right? So these types of words are words that resonate from Eastern traditions and some

51:37

Greek thought among certain schools of philosophy. Okay, thank you for that.

51:43

Anyone else have anything to chime in before we move on to the next question? Okay, it sounds kind of a weird and abstract question, but you'd be surprised.

51:51

I know people who say, hey, I was speaking with this person. I really, from an apologetics perspective, I don't have any idea how to respond to this person.

51:58

He said he was a panatheist. There are still panatheists running around. And yeah, you gotta be ready to be able to interact with that.

52:06

So thank you for that. All right, we have a question from Kevin Harris. Kevin Harris, do you all believe in the immortality of the soul?

52:17

All right, let's see. How about Matt, if you'd like to go first? Oh, I'd love to.

52:23

I've written 192, 82, 182 articles dealing with annihilationism, conditionalism.

52:33

The soul does continue after death. It is allowed to do so by God's sovereignty.

52:39

Yes, it continues. We don't have a cessation of existence. We can go into that. I've written a lot on that, discuss it a lot, but that's my position right there.

52:47

Okay, all right. What about you, Dr. Costa? Yeah, I believe in the immortality of the soul.

52:53

We need to be careful. A lot of folks think that when we say immortality of the soul, we're saying that we share with God his immortal nature.

53:02

And there's a very important distinction here. Our immortality of the soul is derived from God.

53:09

It's given to us by God. It's not something that we intrinsically have. It's not part of our inherent nature.

53:17

And so there is a continuity to the person, which means that at death, there is a spiritual component of the human being that does continue to exist in a conscious dimension.

53:30

But that is also, we need to keep in mind the resurrection. The resurrection, we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, of the body, and so forth.

53:38

And so we do believe that there will be a conjoining, once again, of that spiritual essence with the body at the coming of Christ.

53:47

Okay, thank you. Nate? Yeah, I'm not an annihilationist. Or what is it?

53:52

Conditional immortality or something? Yeah. Whatever, I'm not that. He's so nonchalant about it.

53:59

I'm not that. Yeah, I'm not that. I've not, be fully transparent, and I'm not extremely versed in the arguments for annihilationism.

54:12

I know they don't like that word, that's why I'll keep using it, but I interacted with some of the arguments from Chris Date, and I just,

54:22

I don't see it. Especially Revelation, you know, the smoke that comes up out of the city, the great city at the end of Revelation.

54:34

Nevermind, I'm not an annihilationist. Okay, all right, Braxton? Yeah, so I teach a class on this at Trinity College and Seminary, and there are passages that need to be taken into consideration for the annihilationist perspective.

54:48

For example, on the question that was asked about immortality, 1

54:53

Timothy 6, 16 says, in the New American Standard, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion.

55:04

Also in Luke 12, four and following, in Matthew 10, it talks about not fearing the one who can destroy the body, but after that has no more that he can do, but fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

55:16

And so, or in Gehenna is actually the word there. So there are,

55:22

I just wanna present the position that there is data that has to be dealt with, and the data that has to be dealt with,

55:29

I think when people first approach the subject of conditional immortality, what they say is, they think is, well, of course, that's crazy.

55:36

I've heard in church all my life, eternal constant torment and all that sort of thing. And then oftentimes what they see is, they think, often the thinking is, well, if you just read the

55:48

Bible, it's pretty clear. The conditionalist wants to say, or the annihilationist, as Nate says, wants to say that, no, actually, the plain reading in many of these cases seems to support the conditionalist perspective.

56:01

Destroyed, decay, dead, these all seem like terms that mean dead or annihilated or something like that.

56:09

But there are passages that are strong, like the one mentioned from Revelation. And so I think those have to be borne out.

56:15

Here's what I've done since about 2009 in my preaching ministry, because I've preached in church, did revival

56:22

Sunday through Wednesday, for 40 weeks out of the year, for most of those years. And what I decided was when

56:27

I came to the subject of hell, if I came to the subject of hell, what I would just say is, look, here's what Jesus says in Mark 9. He says, it's so bad that you want to cut off your arm not to go there.

56:36

It's so bad you want to cut off your leg not to go there. It's so bad that you better gouge out your eye not to go there, where the flame doesn't die or where the worm doesn't die and the fire is not quenched.

56:45

And there's that refrain again and again. Nobody can fault me for saying, here's what Jesus said. And then I say about what

56:50

Jesus said. So what does that mean? Well, for many people, it sounds like it means that this is an eternal conscious existence that goes on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

57:02

And 10 ,000 years from now, if someone opened the door to hell and said, you'll be free in another million years, there might be some hope in hell, but there's no hope.

57:10

It'll never happen forever and ever and ever. On the other hand, someone might say, well, perhaps something else is going on here.

57:17

And this is talking about looking at the whole scope of scripture imagery, or it's talking about something to do with the valley of Hinnom or whatever else.

57:28

But so what I say to churches is I read what Jesus says. I say, here's what Jesus says. Now you might say to me, yeah, but pastor or preacher or evangelist or whatever, you might say, yeah, but what if that doesn't mean what it sounds like it means?

57:41

What if it means something else? Like that you just die or you're judged and you die. If it means something like that, what you can't get around is what

57:48

Jesus is saying here is whatever you think hell is. One thing Jesus is saying here is you don't want to go to hell, that's the bottom line.

57:56

And I always make sure to make both of those things clear because while I'm aware on the one hand, that there are a lot of people who have come to faith and God has used the preaching that involves eternal conscious torment.

58:07

There are other people who have come to faith after becoming aware of annihilationism. And for some reason, things sunk into place in scripture better for them.

58:14

So where am I at on it? Where I'm at is I try to present both options when I'm preaching because I think this is another area where I think what's at stake is so important and I don't have

58:25

Cartesian certainty about this. So I'm gonna say, here's what Jesus says. Yeah, so you would highlight also the importance of like regardless of what perspective you hold, there are various scripture texts that both sides really need to come to grips with and grapple with.

58:41

Just like with the Calvinism debate. Right, sure. And it's not like the annihilationist or those who affirm eternal conscious torment don't have answers to those.

58:48

They do have answers. I'm just saying that that is, I think many people look at that debate and they think, oh, well, that's just because those people can't handle the concept of hell or whatever issue it is.

59:00

When you get into it, there's a better case there than I think people are aware of. Okay. That doesn't mean it's right, but there's a better case that can be made.

59:08

Sure. Can I quickly interject, Eli, just very quickly. I did debate Chris Date on Chris Arntzen's Iron Sharpens Iron program.

59:15

So if anyone's interested, just go to Iron Sharpens Iron, do a search Tony Costa versus Chris Date. I debated

59:21

Chris Date. There was a two -part debate that we did just a week apart. So anyone who's interested, check it out.

59:27

That's exactly what we're debating, that very same question. Awesome. Well, I'll definitely check that out. Michael, where do you stand on this question here?

59:36

I'm pretty agnostic on the whole situation because I'm always like, well, we've not died yet, so we don't know. I tend to lean towards what

59:43

I call like eventual annihilationism, that hell is the process of annihilationism, but I'm not gonna defend it.

59:49

If someone is like convinced of ECT, fine. I also say I am a hopeful universalist because I really, really like that to be true, but I just don't see a lot of good evidence for it.

01:00:00

But I won't debate that either because I want it to be true. But it's one of those things like, I'm more interested in why people go to hell and how we prevent that.

01:00:08

Okay. All right, thank you for sharing that. Okay, so here's another question here. I think this, for some reason, this question just seems like a question to ask

01:00:15

Michael. It seems like you would know this. So is Paul Seely correct? I have no idea who

01:00:21

Paul Seely is, but is Paul Seely correct in his analysis of the solid nature of the Rakhia? So I got a good friend who's a scholar named

01:00:28

Ben Stanton. I knew it. I knew he would be able to answer that one. Go ahead. So yes, it's very likely that in the ancient

01:00:35

Near East, they thought of the Rakhia as a solid dome. Does that mean God thought of it?

01:00:41

No, for the same reason that when we talk about sunrise and sunset, we don't mean the sun is literally rising and moving through the sky and then going through the underworld at night.

01:00:48

We don't think that, we just use basic terminology. But yeah, everyone in the ancient Near East would have looked at it as solid dome.

01:00:57

But again, scripture does not explicitly state it is because it's focusing on theology. There's a place in Proverbs where it says that, you know, my inner being will rejoice when you speak good on your lips.

01:01:07

In the actual word, there's kidneys because they actually thought emotions were in the organs. So they actually say, my kidneys will rejoice.

01:01:13

Okay, but that's sort of just like saying, you know, believe in Jesus with all your heart. I don't mean the thing that pumps blood. I mean, your innermost being.

01:01:19

So let's just make sure we understand the differences here. Okay, they may have thought that, but God certainly didn't think that, even though they may have been using the same terminology.

01:01:28

God is just saying the sky. You know, that thing you guys all know, the sky, that's thing up there, but it doesn't have to think it has the same definition.

01:01:34

But yeah, I would refer you to, Ben Stanhope has got a good video on his channel and explaining why people in the ancient Near East thought that and the evidence does support that they did think it, but that does not affect biblical theology.

01:01:44

So would you say, Michael, that we need to make an important distinction between what the Bible records, what people believed and what the

01:01:50

Bible actually teaches. There's an important distinction. So that when someone says, oh, but your Bible teaches flat earth, you know, which is a topic you'll be going on Dr.

01:01:58

Costa's show to talk about. And you'll say, hey, listen, that's what many people might've believed. Even some of the biblical authors might've believed something along those lines, but there's the difference between what a particular author personally believed and what that culture believed and what the

01:02:11

Bible is actually teaching. Is that an important distinction to make? Yeah, I did a video about maybe two years ago called the ancient cosmos, cultural context of the biblical world.

01:02:20

And I talk about it in there and I use an analogy. Let's say we were at a time machine and we went back to the ancient

01:02:25

Egypt and we were like, look, as the sun is gonna rise tomorrow. And when the sun rises, you're gonna see an army approaching from the

01:02:31

East. Okay, here's the thing. Okay, did I lie to the Egyptian Pharaoh? Well, no,

01:02:37

I said the sun is gonna rise and he literally thought the sun moves through the sky, but you and I do not think the sun rises.

01:02:44

We understand the earth rotates. I didn't lie to him. I'm talking about something else. I'm just using common language to explain what

01:02:50

I'm trying to get across. God can do the same thing. Sure, thank you for that. Our next question here is

01:02:55

Mer Black. I'm sorry if I'm Mer, Mer, okay. Now this is another pantheism question, but I'm gonna kind of break this apart and maybe we could address something that wasn't addressed in our prior question relating to pantheism.

01:03:08

The question here is how can we debunk pantheism? I think that was addressed. For someone struggling with new age neo -Gnostic teachings.

01:03:16

I'm gonna shoot for Matt Slick for this. I know you've dealt with some new age folks before.

01:03:22

How would you interact with a proponent of new age? How would you engage apologetically with someone who holds to that perspective?

01:03:28

Well, new age philosophy is evolving and it's merging with neo -Gnosticism and it's kind of a new thing going on.

01:03:35

But new age philosophy basically says that all is divine and you are ultimately divine.

01:03:40

The divine consciousness, you get in tune with the divine consciousness, you create your own reality by words and the power of words and tuning with frequencies, with energies, with various things.

01:03:52

This is moving into the new epistolic reformation as well. It's already in the positive confession movement. So what you do, at least what

01:03:57

I do with them is I always ask anybody in that situation, I ask them diagnostic questions.

01:04:03

What do you believe? I won't go as direct like this. These are the presuppositions

01:04:08

I'll work with or questions and then you filter them out nicely. But I wanna find out what their ultimate assumptions are, what justifies those assumptions.

01:04:17

How do they determine what truth is? What's the source of their truth and things like this. I always wanna get down to that because people are gonna have different answers to those.

01:04:24

And then depending on what answers there are, you just go that direction and then you undermine their basis for truth, morality, knowledge and things like that.

01:04:33

And then I point them to the resurrection of Christ, the evidence of the resurrection of Christ as being the proof that what he said is true, et cetera.

01:04:41

But so it just depends because apologetics in this kind of a situation is a lot art and a lot logic.

01:04:49

And you need evidence, you need rationality and move forward and stumble along the way and pray and just keep going and God uses it all.

01:04:58

All right, thank you. Anyone wanna add to that at all? All right, let's continue on here.

01:05:04

Okay, so we have another methodological, apologetic methodology question here.

01:05:11

Thank you, Jacob, for your question. For all, I think you would all agree that God can use any method to save, all right?

01:05:16

So what is your best explanation as to why your method is most God honoring?

01:05:23

You guys can share your thoughts. Maybe you can kind of just remind people what method you hold to and maybe some biblical reasons or principles that you have for why you hold them if that's where you're coming from.

01:05:35

So why don't we go with, well, let's go with Nate first.

01:05:42

I mean, I think I said this, but I don't have a, I don't hold to a method.

01:05:49

And so, you know. Ah, I know the art of fighting without fighting. He's got. That's right, there you go.

01:05:56

You know, I, but I would advocate that people are well -versed in your scripture and you are studying not only like what the scripture teaches, but also the model of how

01:06:08

Jesus, for example, communicates in the scripture. How, and I think Matt spoke on this, but how the apostle

01:06:15

Paul speaks to people in the scriptures and try to incorporate that model in the way that you communicate.

01:06:21

And so, you know, doing a study purely on Acts 17 just to see how Paul spoke at the Areopagus to the, you know, to the

01:06:28

Athenians there. I think that would be really great. You know, if you look at, so Philip actually comes to mind.

01:06:35

Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch, if you remember this in Acts. Philip is, well, that's a whole other conversation.

01:06:42

He's transported by the Holy Spirit and gets plopped down and sees, you know, a eunuch reading something.

01:06:48

What's the first thing that Philip does? He asks him a question. He's like, you know, do you understand what you're reading? And that usually kind of trades along the way that I would advocate people communicate, particularly in today's day and age, today's kind of culture, is if we go in in a more

01:07:02

Socratic method, I think that we're covering more ground in this kind of an environment, this kind of disputational, everybody's angry at each other.

01:07:10

And then if you say something I don't like, I cancel you kind of environment. If we go in asking certain kinds of questions, leading questions that are designed to get to the content of the gospel, you know, which

01:07:22

I agree with Braxton is the ultimate point. It is the ultimate goal, right? Fulfill the great commission.

01:07:28

I think that's gonna get you really close to, you know, how you wanna communicate the gospel, how you wanna make disciples.

01:07:38

Cause I would even add an element to what Braxton said earlier, which is the end goal is not to evangelize.

01:07:44

The end goal is to make disciples. And that is the great commission. So if you come to somebody, especially a stranger, in the style of Philip in the

01:07:53

Ethiopian eunuch, and you seek to ask questions, you're building a rapport, you're building relationship with somebody, you're showing them that you care about them, and they probably will reciprocate.

01:08:05

And what's gonna happen is that initial rapport could develop by the power of the Holy Spirit into a discipling relationship later.

01:08:11

And so that's what I would say. Okay, all right, thank you. Anyone else? Braxton?

01:08:17

Go ahead, Tony. No, go ahead, Braxton. I was just gonna say, yeah, Acts 17, let's go there.

01:08:24

I think everyone sees their apologetic methodology in scripture somewhere else. They shouldn't have that apology if they can't defend it from scripture or show the principles are taught in scripture or something or some example of it.

01:08:35

And in Acts 17, when I look there, I do see an approach that's very much similar to the one that I think

01:08:41

I employ as a classical apologist, like Michael is. A classical apologist, for those that don't know, I think most of your viewers are interested in these things, so they probably know, but a classical apologist is someone who shows that first, there is a

01:08:53

God, and second, that God raised Jesus from the dead. And so that's typically how it goes.

01:08:58

And the only difference between that and in the terminology of the distinctions, an evidentialist apologist and a classical apologist, they're both evidentialist in the sense that presuppositionalists mean it.

01:09:10

But the evidentialist apologist is just a one -step. He's just showing that God raised

01:09:15

Jesus from the dead or that Jesus is in some other way divine. But the classical shows both. Well, I look at Acts 17 and I see

01:09:20

Paul showing up and he argues that there is one God who made everything, all right, and even reasons they have an altar to the one known

01:09:29

God and whether that, why they had that or whether that was an altar that fell over and they set it up and didn't know, so they said unknown

01:09:36

God or whatever, whether they set it up like most preachers say that in case we forgot one, here it is, whatever it is, we found evidence that they had such things, altar to an unknown

01:09:46

God, temple of Pergamon, I think. But anyway, the bottom line is, then he goes on to argue and using some of their own stuff from their culture, he goes on later to argue that God was gonna judge the world through a man that he raised from the dead.

01:10:00

And of course, then Paul gets cut off, right? Because the audience goes off the rails. But, and the point of that is

01:10:06

I see there God's existence, God raised Jesus from the dead, those two things being very important and an evangelistic call because he tells them that they need to repent because of this.

01:10:16

So, I think I see it there and I have found it to be very helpful.

01:10:24

When I approach people, I ask them, first of all, I let them talk. I asked them, first of all, in a one -on -one conversation, how do you understand the big questions of life?

01:10:33

What happens when, how do we get here? What's the meaning of life if there is one? And what happens when we die and let them talk and they talk and talk and talk.

01:10:41

And then I say, okay, well, what do you understand the Christian message to be? And they're gonna say it in a paragraph.

01:10:46

And if it ends with something like, and then you get 72 virgins, well, I know they've missed something somewhere about the Christian message.

01:10:52

And so then at that point, what I'll do is I'll say, okay, well, you're right. There are some Christians who think whatever they said, but, or some people, but I'd like to share with you what

01:11:01

I understand the Bible says. And the reason is I want the gospel up front. I want the evangelism to be set the stage for that really soon.

01:11:09

And I wanna know what they believe. And so, but I move that way because I think I see Paul doing that.

01:11:14

Sure. Okay. Dr. Costa, you were gonna say something and then maybe you can share your thoughts as well. I was just gonna say,

01:11:20

Hebrews 11 says that he who comes to God, he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

01:11:28

So my approach is a top -down approach. I begin with God. I think everything must begin with God. Logic itself only functions because it's rooted in the mind of God.

01:11:39

It's rooted in the triune God. Mathematical truths exist because they're rooted in the triune

01:11:46

God of scripture. And so in Acts 17, Paul begins with God. And if you notice, he presupposes

01:11:53

God exists. God created the universe. God has not just created, but he's the sovereign

01:12:00

God who has carved the boundaries of all the nations and placed the limitations of where those nations should inhabit.

01:12:07

And then Paul moves on to speak of providence, how God has provided food and he's given the rain and so forth and so on.

01:12:14

And in essence, he's basically refuting Epicureanism and Stoicism. Those are the two main philosophies he's actually combating there.

01:12:22

And then he sums it up with the gospel message. And so he begins with God, his providence, his right as creator, and then he ends with God's right as judge, that God is gonna judge the world.

01:12:35

And he's evidenced that by raising, he's appointed this man whom he raised from the dead.

01:12:41

And the response is just much the same today is some accepted, some laughed, and some were willing to hear more.

01:12:50

And all we know is there was only one convert, Dionysius. The Orophagite was the only convert that Paul seemed to make but if you look at Acts 17 very carefully,

01:12:59

I think you could see a very good case there for presuppositionalism. Paul begins with God and he works his way down.

01:13:06

Sure, and if anyone's interested in expansion of that, Greg Bonson in his book, Always Ready, if you do come from a presuppositional perspective,

01:13:13

Greg Bonson has an entire section there on Acts 17 where he argues for a presuppositional approach in Acts 17.

01:13:19

But I know folks, obviously that's a contested passage there. Matt, where do you stand on this question here?

01:13:26

Well, the only method of salvation I'm aware of is faith in Jesus Christ and what he did in the cross. So that's the method

01:13:32

I'm aware of. But when I preach the gospel to the unbelievers, I do the law of God first, the gospel of Christ second and the cost of discipleship third.

01:13:44

So law gospel cost. But you gotta have faith in the risen Lord, God in flesh, died on the cross.

01:13:51

And that's it, that's what it comes down to. All apologetics, I view, is subservient to that message of the gospel.

01:13:59

I don't care what approach, how you get to that place where you can get them to the cross and then in between them and God, I'd like to say that we're in sales, not production.

01:14:12

All right, all right, thank you for that. If I could just share my thoughts here for all, I think you would agree that God can use any method to save.

01:14:20

So what is your best explanation as to why? All right, so this is, again, so we all hold to different perspectives and we have different interpretations of various passages to defend our perspective.

01:14:30

If our reason for using our methodology is primarily based upon biblical principles,

01:14:35

I think it's not a good idea for people in the whole apologetic methodology debate to support their views simply by proof texting.

01:14:43

So I don't think that the Bible is an apologetics handbook in the sense that it gives you a list like point one, two, three, four, five.

01:14:51

I don't like to isolate specific passages. For example, there was one question that I skipped over because I wanna get to the

01:14:58

Super Chats next, but where it talked about, can you walk through this passage and show either presuppositional or evidential?

01:15:04

I don't think that's the right way to do it because I think the reason why many of us hold to our perspectives is because we wanna consider what all the

01:15:11

Bible has to say in terms of not just explicit texts of Scripture, but principles. I think there are principles of Scripture that are not necessarily explicit texts, but principles that someone can draw out and apply that to their method.

01:15:24

Maybe they think this principle here represents their method better. So for myself, as a presuppositionalist,

01:15:31

I happen to think that biblically speaking, there are principles that I think are more in line.

01:15:37

Presuppositionalism captures those principles better than the other methodologies from my perspective. And of course, you have the differing views there.

01:15:44

All right, are there anyone else that wants to touch on that before I move on to some of the Super Chats? I don't know why anyone would want 72 virgins because then that means you get 72 mother -in -laws, right?

01:15:56

So that's - Oh, yeah, I never thought of that. That's, I'm a clown. My dad was preaching one night and he said that Solomon had 700 wives and this guy in the back said, all rise.

01:16:08

And he's like, yeah, but he had 700 mother -in -laws. That'd be a lot of sandwiches.

01:16:15

Dad jokes. Oh my goodness. All right, let's get to some Super Chats here, guys.

01:16:21

Thank you so much for the Super Chats. Michelle Marie asked the question, what do you all think about Hank Hanegraaff, the

01:16:26

Bible Answer Man becoming an Orthodox Christian? Just before I throw that out to everyone else, I did have

01:16:32

Hank Hanegraaff on the show. If you look through the old episodes, we talked about his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.

01:16:38

I also had Tony Costa share his thoughts as well as to what he thought about Hank Hanegraaff's conversion.

01:16:45

And so you guys can look at the older episodes there if you want to take a look at that. All of those were excellent conversations.

01:16:52

I actually had the privilege to actually meet with Hank Hanegraaff at the Bible Answer Man radio station.

01:16:58

And I have to say, I sat in his office and talked for three and a half hours on Eastern Orthodoxy and what the gospel is.

01:17:08

And it was one of the best conversations I've had. We disagreed, obviously, as I come from a reform perspective and I think there are important dividing lines, but I really appreciated the conversation and we covered a lot of important areas.

01:17:21

So I do think this is an important question. I know some folks might have different perspectives as to what they think about the significance of his conversion, but they do cover very important theological differences.

01:17:31

So with that said, does anyone wanna share their thoughts first about what do you think of Hank Hanegraaff's conversion?

01:17:39

Yeah, I'd be glad to comment. Okay. First John 2 .19, they went out from us because they never were of us.

01:17:46

If they had been of us, they would have remained. So he showed his true colors as not being truly regenerate.

01:17:51

The Eastern Orthodox Church does not teach justification by faith alone. It denies a substitutionary atonement.

01:17:57

It teaches what's called theosis and the necessity of getting involved with the energies or the graces of God that gradually change you, by which you then are adopted in the family through baptism and chrismation and various things.

01:18:10

And then you gradually manifest salvation, no justification, but salvation through your efforts and your works as you're conformed more to Christ likeness.

01:18:19

So you can never say you're justified. You can never say you're saved. In other words, you have to go through a process in order to get to that place of theosis, deification, where you become

01:18:28

God, but you're not divine. And then you can obtain salvation through that. This is what Eastern Orthodoxy teaches.

01:18:35

And that is heretical. How can any true Christian who understands Romans 4, Romans 3 .28,

01:18:40

Romans 4 .1 -6, Galatians 2 .16, go through varying verses and then say, yeah, that salvation is a process that you obtain through participating in the graceful energies of God that changes you more like Jesus.

01:18:54

You become justified. You become saved through the process. So that's an apostate doctrine.

01:19:00

And I don't understand why he would do that except to go back to scripture and say, they went out from us because they never were of us.

01:19:07

If they had been of us, well, they would have remained. That's my view. All right, anyone else wanna share their thoughts?

01:19:13

I was just gonna say that I think Hank should be called the Orthodox Answer Man, not so much the

01:19:20

Bible Answer Man. And for the same reason I mentioned earlier, the Orthodox Church, like the Roman Catholic Church, denies the gospel of grace.

01:19:26

It does not believe we're saved by grace alone. It believes that you're saved by good works and by merit, by baptism, and so forth.

01:19:33

We also have the problem with iconography. They will claim they're not worshiping these icons, these images, but the language they use, veneration versus Julia versus Latra, these are all really arbitrary terms that have no support in scripture whatsoever.

01:19:49

And of course you have, the Orthodox Church also anathematizes all other churches.

01:19:55

So in the 17th century Council of Jerusalem, the Orthodox Church made it very clear that the

01:20:00

Roman Church is heretical, all the Protestant churches are heretical, and unless you're in the

01:20:06

Orthodox Church, you are lost. Now, Hank Hanegraaff doesn't talk about that, but that is official

01:20:12

Orthodox Church doctrine. So my main concern here, because I know a lot of Eastern Orthodox friends, and that includes others in the

01:20:19

Orientalist churches, the Coptic Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, sometimes called Nestorian, the

01:20:25

Copts and so forth, they're not trusting Christ alone for their salvation. They're looking for intercession from Mary, from the saints.

01:20:34

They're looking for merit by their good works. And once again, what does the

01:20:41

Apostle Paul say? That those of you who think you can be justified by the law, you have fallen from grace.

01:20:47

Christ is of no effect to you. So yeah, I think that that was a very sad occasion that Hank Hanegraaff went back into the, or went into the

01:20:58

Orthodox Church. And that's why I've cautioned people from listening to Hank.

01:21:04

Okay, anyone else wanna share their thoughts? And don't hesitate.

01:21:10

I promise you're free to share your thoughts. No one will jump on you. I wanted people to hear the differing perspectives and they can make up their own mind as to who they think is answering the question in line with what they think are the real issue.

01:21:25

So please don't hesitate. No one's gonna jump on you. Yeah, I was just gonna say, I used to listen to Hank Hanegraaff back before that transition.

01:21:33

Thought it was great. Enjoyed the show, but I don't get it.

01:21:40

I just don't get it. I'm not as knowledgeable about Eastern Orthodoxy as others here perhaps.

01:21:45

But I just, from what I do understand, I don't see how he got there. Okay, all right, anyone else before we move on to another

01:21:53

Super Chat? Okay, all right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, guys.

01:21:59

Alexander, thanks again for your $4 .99 Super Chat. Here we go.

01:22:05

Hold on, I gotta put my calm face on. We're all here to share our thoughts, okay?

01:22:12

I promise I won't make a response video after this. I'm totally kidding. All right,

01:22:17

Alexander Wright, thanks for your Super Chat. He says, I would love to know Michael Jones' comments on why he dislikes presuppositional apologetics so much.

01:22:24

I thought this was one of the best views to use. So, and feel free to just be as brutally honest as you'd like.

01:22:30

We all know we come from different perspectives and so feel free to share your thoughts on this question.

01:22:35

I mean, if you want me to be brutally honest, I'll be brutally honest. Go for it, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, I just, I do not, from talking with atheists in private, seeing their

01:22:44

Hangouts, this to them, they find this the least convincing. I don't think it's appropriate for the culture.

01:22:50

I don't think it has a strong, and I use that word, I mean, I think you could make a biblical basis for it, but I don't think you can make a strong biblical basis for it.

01:22:57

I think the most biblical basis would be using an evidential or classical approach. And personally, once again,

01:23:04

I would much rather be doing apologetics than talking about how to do apologetics. Classical approach has been working great for me.

01:23:13

I'm getting testimonies at minimal once a month from that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it idea. So I'm going ahead with that.

01:23:20

But again, I just - Why do you say that? I mean - If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's working and I like doing apologetics.

01:23:26

I don't like talking about apologetics. I don't feel presuppositionalism is entirely intuitive.

01:23:31

I feel like presupps have to spend a lot of time explaining what they're doing and why they're doing it. It just doesn't really...

01:23:38

It doesn't... People sort of hear at the surface level understanding of presupp. And they go, what? Wait, tell me more.

01:23:44

I don't get it kind of thing. And that people have to spend a lot of time explaining what they're doing. Whereas the classical approach, I think just fits more with the intuitive nature of how humans are gonna think and how they're gonna go for it.

01:23:53

And again, I take my classical approach from biblical passages like in Acts 17, where Paul appeals to the philosopher,

01:24:01

Eratos to make his point. Or the Matthew 6, where Jesus says, look, if you wanna know how your father loves you, consider the lilies of the fields or the birds of the air, appealing to the natural order of things, taking evidence and bringing it in to sort of teach you things.

01:24:15

Or the contests with prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal, using evidence to sort of make his case.

01:24:20

I mean, I could go to places in Deuteronomy as well. It's just, I think this is the most biblical approach. I think you could make a biblical case for precept, but I think it is not the most biblical approach.

01:24:29

I think it is the most effective, especially in our culture today. I don't think precept as nearly as effective. But again,

01:24:35

I'm coming from my experience. I'm coming from what I have seen works hand to hand. I have coming from conversations where I'm talking with atheists and I'm really trying to understand them.

01:24:44

I'm really trying to get to their level because I want to be a good witness to them. And precept to them, they find to be the least convincing time and time again.

01:24:52

And I don't wanna use something that is not going to engage the culture. As Paul said, I become like all things to all men. To like those under the law,

01:24:59

I become like those under the law. Okay, well, I'm going to enter into the culture to try to find the best way to win as many people as I can.

01:25:05

And I think the classical approach has always been the best to do that, especially in today's culture. Sure. All right.

01:25:10

Thank you for that. I think I did a good job. I didn't, okay. It's all right. It's all right. I didn't think so too much.

01:25:16

All right. I'm sure folks from the presuppositional side can tell. Now, again, me personally,

01:25:21

I don't use presuppositional apologetic methodology simply because I see it work.

01:25:28

I do, I am convinced that it's based on biblical principles, but I hear what you're saying. Does anyone wanna speak to that in terms of maybe our fellow presuppositionalist,

01:25:38

Tony Costa, Matt Slick, if you wanna share your thoughts? Yeah, I'd like to just jump in and add a little bit of that.

01:25:45

Yeah, yeah. There are different levels of apologetics. And what

01:25:50

I've found is I won't use advanced presuppositional apologetics if I'm talking presuppositions or the necessary preconditions for intelligibility or universals, the one in the mini issue.

01:26:02

That gets more advanced stuff. Just to find out where they're at. For the basics, and I'm not knocking anybody, for the basics,

01:26:09

I use evidence. Look, Jesus rose from the dead. Often I'll be in a room with atheists and I can give all these arguments.

01:26:15

I can talk about the nature of presuppositions or propositions being truth -bearing entities. And I can say, but you know what?

01:26:23

Jesus rose from the dead. And I just point back to that a lot, because that's what it comes down to.

01:26:29

No one's gonna be convinced by my presuppositional argumentation of logic or anybody else's.

01:26:34

God has to grant them repentance, 2 Timothy 2 .25. He's gotta open their mind to receive the scriptures,

01:26:40

Luke 24 .45. He's gotta grant that they believe, Philippians 1 .29. That belief's gotta be in Christ, John 6 .29.

01:26:45

And I can go on. And so I use what's necessary for the time, but I always have that sword of presuppositionalism as we go up and up to get to it.

01:26:58

And I'll use it in different levels as well. And, but I'm with them.

01:27:04

Hey, we're out there witnessing resurrection of Christ. Keep it simple. Absolutely. Now I resonate very much with what

01:27:11

Michael said, of course, coming from a presuppositional perspective myself. I think when we start always talking about presuppositions, there's a lot of explaining to do because a lot of people don't really know, like, well, what are you talking about?

01:27:22

But again, that is not essential to the presuppositional methodology and its application. For instance, there's nothing anti -presuppositional about talking about specific evidences and talking about that first, sometimes not even getting to the presuppositions.

01:27:36

I'm gonna read a quick quote. This is from Cornelius Van Til, who actually addressed this very point.

01:27:42

He says, quote, this does not imply that we must always, and in every instance, bring in the discussion of authority, the presuppositions, at the outset of every argument with those we seek to win for Christianity.

01:27:53

This may frequently be omitted if only we ourselves do not fall into the temptation of thinking that we can stand on neutral ground with those who hold to a non -Christian position.

01:28:02

So Van Til would warn Christians to avoid neutrality and autonomy in the way that we argue, but it's not necessary that we always talk about the issue of authority and presuppositions and things like that.

01:28:13

Even Van Til said himself, there are some contexts in which he finds it essential to go into the historical arguments for the resurrection.

01:28:20

So I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but I resonate with what Michael says that a lot of people online, a lot of presuppositionalists will just ad nauseum talk about presuppositions and worldview without addressing some of the specific questions and objections that people address.

01:28:33

So I think I would make the distinction of how people use presuppositionalism versus what presuppositionalism is itself as a methodology.

01:28:43

And I think there's sometimes a disconnect there, but that's my two thoughts. Anyone else wanna add to that? I'll just say this, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, works for you, fine.

01:28:50

I don't prefer it, I like what I'm doing, and I prefer to do apologetics the way I do, it works.

01:28:56

All right, anyone else wanna chime in? I would just say it's not an either or, I do believe it's both and, but I would place more emphasis on presuppositional apologetics.

01:29:05

But at the end of the day, I think we can all agree unless the Holy Spirit converts the heart, unless the

01:29:11

Holy Spirit changes the heart, unless the Holy Spirit, God takes away that stony heart and puts a heart of flesh in its place, unless salvation is of the

01:29:20

Lord, it is God's work. And we're just instruments, we're just broken vessels that God uses, we're crooked sticks that God uses to make straight lines.

01:29:28

And so I think we need to understand at the end of the day, this isn't the Joel Osteen version of apologetics step one, two, three.

01:29:35

At the end of the day, if the Spirit of the Lord does not do His work, if He does not change the heart, unless He opens their eyes, they will not see, unless He opens their ears, they will not hear.

01:29:46

You know, one thing that I think it comes up a lot in our classes at Trinity with new apologetic students is who are reformed and who love presuppositionalism is when we're talking through this,

01:29:57

I always tell them, I want you to pick the apologetic approach that complements your doctrinal positions and things like that.

01:30:03

And that's the important thing. But you know, when it comes to evidentialism, I always hear from my

01:30:09

Calvinist brothers, God uses means, right? The Holy Spirit uses means, right? The preaching of the gospel is a means.

01:30:16

And what is a good apologetic presentation, but a proclamation of the gospel in a certain way, it should include the gospel.

01:30:26

If it doesn't, you haven't done apologetics in the manner that I think is important. I don't know that you've done biblical apologetics.

01:30:32

And so I think that's a really important thing is to get to that point.

01:30:38

I think I was going somewhere else with that. Oh yeah, so God uses means. So if God uses means like the preaching of the gospel, why can't he use the preaching of the gospel?

01:30:47

That includes instead of perhaps illustrations or something, arguments and evidence, reason, things like that.

01:30:54

The Holy Spirit, I believe can use that, can use those things in that way. And I think my presuppositional friends here think that he can too, and even within their presuppositional approach.

01:31:04

That's right, all right. I think I need to tell everyone that the moment that Tony mentioned

01:31:11

Joel Osteen, my mullet grew three inches, at least for the record. Somebody online said that John Frame is a superior precept over Van Till.

01:31:19

So anybody wanna? A superior? I mean, if Cornelius Van Till is considered the father of presuppositionalism, how do you outdo the father of presuppositionalism?

01:31:33

I would argue in favor of John Frame in this way, that John Frame by far is a better communicator.

01:31:40

If you could grab the golden nuggets in the writings of Van Till, you will benefit greatly, but you need to dig.

01:31:47

And it can be very difficult when reading through Van Till. John Frame is a very clear writer, and I think he's expanded a lot on what

01:31:54

Van Till started. And I think Greg Bonson probably would have overshadowed John Frame's work if he had lived longer, but I think his followers,

01:32:03

Van Till's followers have done a great, a better job at communicating the various points that he had. So in the sense of communication,

01:32:10

I think yes. In the sense of just originality of thought and what he was scratching in terms of the important philosophical issues of his day and the importance of presuppositions and things like that,

01:32:22

I think Van Till is rightly called the godfather of presuppositionalism, right?

01:32:28

Those are my thoughts there. Can I add a little something? Sure, yeah, go for it. John Frame was my professor in seminary, and I used to go over his house and we would just talk.

01:32:38

The guy was nice and he was polite and he was sincere, and I was incredibly impressed with his ability to take complicated things, just like you said, break it down until you could go, oh,

01:32:52

I get it. That's what he was super gifted at. Sure, yeah, Braxton. Yeah, so I wanted to add something to that too.

01:32:59

I have a presentation that I gave at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and a few other places in which I quote

01:33:04

Frame talking about apologetics and evangelism and the importance. I just thought of this while I was sitting here.

01:33:10

I also have a quote here from Matt Slick in that same presentation that I delivered there at New Orleans.

01:33:15

And here's the quote, nevertheless, apologetics and evangelism are related.

01:33:21

You're making the point they're not exactly the same thing. When needed, apologetics is a means by which the way is both prepared and protected so that the message of the gospel can properly be presented.

01:33:32

Apologetics is like the soldier who battles to protect the messenger who has the gospel to deliver.

01:33:38

Even got a rhythm to it, man. I wrote that? That's pretty good. Where did I write that?

01:33:44

Man, I'm surprised. All right, thank you for that. Now, this is a repeat question, but the person was so nice to give a $20 super chat.

01:33:52

We'll go through it again. Who is the most influential apologist or theologian for each panel member? God bless y 'all and go

01:33:57

Raiders. All right, let's just go quick since that person can go back to the beginning. You could just list the names and they can go back.

01:34:04

So Braxton, who is it for you again? Oh, I don't know. The apologist, probably

01:34:10

William Lane Craig. I'll just be the straightforward fan boy. And then theologian,

01:34:16

I like FF Bruce. His Gospel of John commentary made me cry at the end. All right, cool.

01:34:23

Tony Costa? Yeah, I would say obviously Walter Martin because he's the one that the

01:34:28

Lord used to put me on the straight path. And I would also say William Lane Craig. I really appreciate the work of R .C.

01:34:36

Sproul and other reformed writers. Okay, all right, thank you.

01:34:42

Michael? I would say probably Richard Swinburne and N .T. Wright, maybe Tim Keller to some degree as well.

01:34:48

Okay, all right, cool. Nate? I mean, I mentioned this, JP Moreland.

01:34:55

Greg Kokel had a seminal influence on me in the formative years as a Christian theologian. D. Martin Lloyd -Jones.

01:35:05

All right, nice choice there. That was a good one. All right, Matt, Matthew? Walter Martin helped just ground me, but I liked

01:35:13

Greg Bonson that introduced me to the issue of transcendentals. And I've used that ad infinitum ad nauseam, and it's been very helpful.

01:35:23

Okay, very good. Thank you for that. And Chris Date, friend of ours, a lot of us know who he is.

01:35:28

Michael Jones, Braxton, and myself will be speaking at the Rethinking Hell Conference in October 28th. Is it 28?

01:35:35

Yeah, okay. So if you're familiar with Chris Date, he holds to the conditional immortality perspective.

01:35:41

I do not. I hold to a traditional view. So he's invited multiple people to kind of share from their perspective, covering various topics.

01:35:50

Michael and Braxton, do you wanna really quickly kind of just let people know what you'll be talking about, just like the title of your talk?

01:35:57

You don't have to go into all the details, so folks can have a heads up on that. Michael, why don't you go first?

01:36:03

Sure, I'll be talking about the issue of does God send people to hell? How do we theologically wrestle that with a loving

01:36:09

God? And so I'll be talking about how they work together, and I'll be arguing that the very existence of a loving

01:36:16

God means that hell has to exist. And so that'll be what I'll be on. All right, Braxton, what about you?

01:36:22

Yeah, so I'm excited about this event. It's gonna take place at the church I attend here in Evansville, Indiana.

01:36:28

And Chris teaches Greek and Hebrew for us at Trinity College Bible and Theological Seminary.

01:36:33

And so I have to say he's one of my closest friends, and I'm proud to have him as a close friend. People should know that the

01:36:39

Rethinking Hell Conference has both traditionalists, or people that believe in eternal conscious torment, just like it has conditionalists speaking at the conference each year, most of the time, every one

01:36:51

I've been aware of. And so if you think, well, I don't think my view is gonna be represented, it probably will.

01:36:57

And so I encourage you to come. I'd love for people to show up. I don't know what I'm gonna be speaking about. Something to do with hell,

01:37:03

I'm sure. And so I hope you'll be there. All right, cool. And I'll be talking about, my talk will be called,

01:37:10

Is Eternal Conscious Torment a Problem for Apologetics? So I'll be talking about the traditional view, how it can really turn a lot of people off, but does that create a problem for us when we're defending the faith?

01:37:21

And so that'll be my topic. Eli, thank you. I promised that after we'd go out and do shots, just so you know. Fail. Well, we can do shots of a glass of milk.

01:37:31

No, no, we're doing hard liquor, sir. All right, thank you,

01:37:36

Chris. I appreciate that $20 super chat. Alexander Wright, thank you for your $4 .99

01:37:41

super chat. Can we hear a brief here, I'm a teacher, so that's gonna get me

01:37:46

H -E -A -R. That's wrong here, but can we hear a brief summary of how everyone was converted?

01:37:54

So maybe just a quick thumbnail sketch of how you came to the Lord. That's a great question and I really appreciate it.

01:38:00

Matt, why don't you share quickly your perspective and then we'll move from there. Well, it'd be hard to get it to be short, but I'll try and get to the point.

01:38:09

When I was 17 years old, I was tricked into walking up forward to receive Christ at a church. And while up there, considering just running out of the exit,

01:38:18

I still remember it, I decided to give Jesus a chance. Oh yeah, yikes. I just wait for the lightning bolt to come get me there.

01:38:27

And I started, I just started asking Jesus if he was real to save me, might as well give him a try.

01:38:34

That was my attitude. And all I can tell you is the Holy Spirit himself overshadowed me with such power that I was reduced to a sobbing mass of weeping tears, just puking up my sin out of my, every orifice just snot, tears, moaning, groaning in the presence of the incredible holiness.

01:38:54

And then next to me was Jesus. Couldn't see him or touch him, but it was him.

01:39:00

It wasn't like some, I feel something, it was him. And I remember his presence. I remember his attention. I remember everything.

01:39:07

And I'm skipping a lot of stuff, of course. And he just moved into me and I had a physical sensation of my sin leaving.

01:39:16

And that was when I was 17. I'm 65 now. I've calmed down a lot since then.

01:39:25

All right. Thank you for that. Nate, how did God turn you from a pagan sinner to a wise disciple?

01:39:35

You see what I did there? Oh, I like that. Kind of the opposite, well, similar tracks as Matt.

01:39:43

By the way, everybody said this, Matt, I have been heavily influenced by your work as well.

01:39:49

And it's just been a pleasure. Gentlemen, you all inspire me. So I'm really grateful to be here. I had an experience of God when

01:39:57

I was 30 years old and I was outside a hospital in San Diego. And I'll never forget it.

01:40:03

Like it happened yesterday. I can still remember it. I just felt God's presence. So it was the opposite in a sense of Matt, I was a mess.

01:40:12

I had received some really bad news and I was just weeping. And the only thing that I could muster up, because I grew up in church,

01:40:21

I was not saved. I treated it like a club. Hey, there's so -and -so, lobby relationships in the church

01:40:27

Sunday mornings. You know how it goes. And so I just, I thought Christians were idiots.

01:40:33

And in the moment though, at my most desperate hour, so to speak,

01:40:39

I just, I cried out to God in probably the most sincere prayer I've ever prayed in my entire life.

01:40:44

I'm 43 now. And I basically just said, help, you know? And I felt, I don't know how else to describe it.

01:40:50

I felt God's presence and I felt His peace. And it kind of, it just went through me.

01:40:58

And I recognized that I had a spiritual moment. I felt the

01:41:03

Lord. And so that just sparked me to begin a journey to understand my experience. And that incorporated a lot of apologetics and theology.

01:41:13

I jumped into school immediately, got a theology degree, stuff like that, just to understand. And praise God, I've been a

01:41:19

Christian now for 14 years. Awesome, thank you. Michael?

01:41:26

Yeah, it wasn't for Joel Osteen, guys. I'm kidding. No, I don't ever really had one of those moments.

01:41:33

I feel like it was just a long process for me, studying, trying to find truth. And I don't know that I ever really had a moment.

01:41:40

It was just, I kept digging and digging and I eventually just said, yeah, I think I'm a Christian. I think the evidence supports the resurrection enough that I can be convinced by this.

01:41:48

And I still believe it. Okay, thanks for that. I'm not a very emotional person, sorry.

01:41:54

Hey, listen, I know, listen, I'm just, if I can just jump in and share.

01:42:00

I was raised in church and see, Michael, behave. I was raised in church and I never had kind of this strong experience, but there was this weird kind of silent presence in my life.

01:42:15

As a little kid, when I would see people kind of go off and do crazy things, I always had this kind of this quiet knowledge that God was saying, you're mine.

01:42:26

And even when I was going off and doing things and behaving the way that I was behaving,

01:42:31

I always had this intangible feeling that I was his and that he wasn't gonna let me go.

01:42:38

And it was only until I think seventh grade when I first started taking that more seriously and being more intentional about my faith.

01:42:45

So it wasn't like a magical moment. When I got baptized, I got baptized with a couple of friends and they asked me, how do you feel after you're getting baptized in front of the church?

01:42:55

And one guy was like, yeah, I feel replenished or I feel renewed. And I didn't say this, but I should have.

01:43:02

I was like, I feel wet. There wasn't like this magical feeling. It was just this silent knowledge that like I'm his and he's there.

01:43:12

And I just can't explain it. So I very much resonate. I'm not a super emotional type of guy and that's fine.

01:43:17

God saves us and he does it in his own time, in his own way. And we all have a kind of a different backstory there.

01:43:23

So no worries there, bud. All right, what about you, Dr. Costa? Yeah, I was raised in a very religious

01:43:29

Roman Catholic home. We had relatives who were priests and I was religious, but I was very lost.

01:43:35

I had no peace with God. I had no assurance of salvation. I feared death that if I were to die,

01:43:41

I would go straight to hell. And so I met two cousins of mine one evening. They in Toronto, they started just talking about this new birth that they experienced with Christ.

01:43:52

And I thought, what in the world are you talking about? They said, oh, it's grace, the grace of God. And they shared the gospel with me.

01:43:59

I was more upset at the fact that they were out of the, they left the Roman Catholic church. So I challenged them.

01:44:04

I said, I'm gonna get a Bible and I'm gonna prove you wrong. So there's a 15 year old kid, of Portuguese immigrant parents, runs off to the store, buys his first King James Bible, this little

01:44:14

Bible thing. And I literally read from Genesis to Revelation. My whole point was to prove them wrong.

01:44:19

And instead, the Lord Jesus Christ penetrated my heart. His words pierced my heart. And it was through the reading of his word that I came,

01:44:27

I fell to my knees and I acknowledged him to be Lord and savior. And it was from that moment on that he didn't just save me, but he propelled me into the field of apologetics.

01:44:38

And so that's why I do what I do today. But yeah, it's wonderful knowing the

01:44:43

Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. How about you Braxton? So my father was a mega church pastor in Jacksonville, Florida, and we lived in a pastorum there on the river.

01:44:55

And one morning when I was years old, and I remember this, I wandered into the living room, told my dad, listen,

01:45:03

I know who Jesus is. And I know that I'm a sinner and I know that I need my sins forgiven.

01:45:10

And I think I want to do with Jesus what you and mom have done with Jesus. And I want him to be my savior.

01:45:17

And so I got down on the brown shag carpet of that pastorum and prayed my own prayer to receive

01:45:23

Christ, repented of my sins and trusted in Jesus. And I was baptized that day. Now, when

01:45:29

I was 11 and my dad had gone into evangelism, I remember sitting in a revival service and it was hot.

01:45:36

And man, it was thick in the room. If you've never been in a revival service like that,

01:45:41

I feel bad for you. There's something about it. And it smells like hymnals and it's hot and the preacher stomping around.

01:45:49

And - That's not all it smells like. Yeah, this is my childhood, man. This is my childhood. And I got up because at this church we were staying underneath.

01:45:58

There was like a, what they used to call a prophet's room off the fellowship hall. I went down there and I was afraid my dad was going to get mad at me for leaving the service, but I didn't care.

01:46:08

And I told God, I said, Lord, I don't know what's going on. I know that I feel really convicted.

01:46:15

I know that I prayed to be saved when I was five years old and I remember it. But Lord, if I've never given my heart to you,

01:46:21

I give it to you today. Now, did I get saved when I was five or when I was 10 or 11? I don't know.

01:46:26

I just know I prayed 600 times for the Lord to save me and one time it took. That's what Peter Lord did. Peter Lord, pastor in Titusville, Georgia Park.

01:46:34

I don't know. I know that by the time I was 10, I'd gotten some sinning under my belt and maybe that's where the source of the conviction was and I misinterpreted it.

01:46:42

But all I know is Jesus saved me and my most important credential is that I'm a servant of the

01:46:47

King. Amen. Excellent. Thank you for that. And thank you, Alexander. We'll go through just a couple more.

01:46:53

You guys have been so generous with your time. I really do appreciate it. I do have one last question.

01:46:58

Eventually, I will take maybe a few more and then I have one last question I want to end with and I want to hear your thoughts on that.

01:47:04

But Michelle, thank you again for your $4 .99 super chat. It's a comment here.

01:47:10

Thank you, Matt Slick, for your great answers. Thank you. Thank all of you for your time and wisdom. I didn't mean to put anyone on the spot.

01:47:17

So Michelle had asked a question, perhaps one with controversial implications. So thank you.

01:47:22

Thank you so much. Actually, let me see here. Kind of went out of order.

01:47:28

I don't know if you guys caught anything that stuck out to you.

01:47:34

See, the thing with a StreamYard, you got to scroll through unless someone prefaces their question with questions.

01:47:39

So I do apologize if I missed anyone's questions, but if I can't find anyone, any question here,

01:47:44

I'll just ask my last question. All right, well, just let's wrap things up here. I'll ask my question here.

01:47:50

And I just, before I ask this question, I want to thank you guys so much. This has been awesome. I think even in the midst of our disagreements,

01:47:58

I think we did pretty good. I noticed a couple of facial expressions when someone gave it.

01:48:05

That's okay. It's very hard to just sit and hear something you disagree with and not say something.

01:48:11

I think you guys did an excellent, excellent job. Eli, somebody named Eric is hollering at you.

01:48:18

Ah, okay. So Eric paid for a super hat. I don't know what a super hat is, but a super chat.

01:48:24

So let's see here if I missed it. So Eric, let's see if I can find yours here.

01:48:31

That shouldn't be too quick, too hard to find. So there's Michelle. Okay. Can he just state it in the chat again really quickly?

01:48:39

Yeah, maybe he could ask the question again in the chat. Because I don't see it either. I don't see it, yeah.

01:48:46

Alexander, no, no, no. I think his question is, what are your thoughts on Pickleball?

01:48:52

Matt, you go first. Eric, no, it's not. Here, I found it. Is it Eric Collins? I'm on the top.

01:48:57

Is it Eric Collins who asked the question? Okay, so here it is here.

01:49:03

Oh, I got this one. Okay, I think it was Eric. Yes, okay.

01:49:09

Sorry about that, Eric. This will be the last question, and then we'll wrap things up. You guys could all chime in on it. I know there's gonna be different perspectives here, and that's fine.

01:49:18

But after we wrap up this question, I'll ask you my last question, then we'll wrap things up, okay? All right,

01:49:23

Michael, if you wanted to address that one. Given evolution, how do we reconcile that death is not a consequence of sin, but rather is what has exerted the pressures that led to us?

01:49:33

And how does this affect the idea of Christ defeating death? So I think

01:49:38

I'm probably the only one here who would say that they are a proud theistic evolutionist. And so I will take this one, because I'm sure some other people who would just say, well,

01:49:47

I reject evolution, but I accept it. So I think we need to, I would argue, I'm actually gonna be debating

01:49:52

Dr. Marcus Ross on this in a couple of weeks at the Capturing Christianity Conference on Genesis and Evolution.

01:49:57

And I'll be talking about this. But generally what I would say is that I don't see any place in the Bible where it definitively says that physical death came from the fall.

01:50:05

People go to Romans 5. But of course, if you read past Romans 5 .12, it says that death ran from Adam to Moses. And it says we all have life in Christ.

01:50:12

Okay, well, it seems to be talking about spiritual death in life. How do we reconcile death with the consequence of sin? Well, I think death is a consequence of sin.

01:50:19

I mean, it says in Genesis 3 that a man is taken of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and they cut him off from the tree of life lest he hold of it.

01:50:25

Okay, well, that is the context. It says right there, their access to immortality came from eating of the tree of life.

01:50:30

So scholars, a great scholar named Joshua John Vanee, he wrote his dissertation called Death in the Garden. He makes a pretty good case, death did exist before the fall based on a good reading of Genesis 1 .28,

01:50:42

where it talks about how, you know, subdue the earth and you have dominion over the animals. Well, those two words in Hebrew are very, very harsh.

01:50:50

The word for having dominion usually refers to the idea of you can enslavement, conquest, harsh rulership.

01:50:57

That's how it's used throughout the Bible. And he argues quite, I think, well, that it's showing that animals were given to humanity for whatever purposes they needed.

01:51:05

So I do think physical death existed before the fall. I think Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, given a special tree that granted them immortality.

01:51:12

When they broke the covenant, they fell, they lost access to that tree. And so we all die in Adam because he was our first priest that failed.

01:51:18

And Christ is the priest who has succeeded. And we will all live in him through real immortality in the resurrection that is to come.

01:51:25

So I don't think this is really a problem. There's a lot more on my YouTube channel. I have a Genesis 1 to 11 series where I go through each chapter of Genesis in one graphic animated style video.

01:51:35

And I talk about death in videos on Genesis 1 and Genesis 3. I don't think this is a problem. I don't think the

01:51:40

Bible definitively says physical death existed before the fall. And I think there were strong arguments. Scholars like John Walton, Michael Heizer, Joshua Jomini put forward to support this.

01:51:49

Okay, now I know there are folks who disagree. If you disagree, you can share your disagreement or some observations or maybe points you want to kind of respond to if you feel compelled to do so.

01:52:00

I would like to. I've been studying evolution for decades and have lots of notes, information on it.

01:52:07

And I don't believe it has any coherence logically or evidentially or informationally.

01:52:14

I don't think it works. I don't know if you mean information as in abiogenesis, formation, information structure, formation, transmission, and things like that.

01:52:22

There's a lot of counter evidence to it. But so it'd be an interesting discussion to have on that.

01:52:29

And when you say, I don't want to be very polite here, but there's some ramifications that are necessarily the fruit of theistic evolution.

01:52:43

And maybe we could talk about them sometime. Just have a nice friendly discussion and see. If you want to have me on,

01:52:48

I'd be glad to do it. I'd be happy to host. I'm sure Eli would love to host. I may or may not judge it.

01:52:56

Yeah, okay. I know this is definitely a hot button issue for people. And again, that would take,

01:53:02

I mean, to go into the details and back and forth would take a little bit of expansion and explanation and things like that.

01:53:09

So I know it's an important topic. Hey, listen guys, I know that some of the answers that some of us have given, they're different, important differences.

01:53:17

I get it. But I hope that you guys are able to hear what each person has to say and you use the discernment you think is necessary to come to the conclusions that you think are more in line with the

01:53:28

Bible and various forms of argumentation. So I hope that people could take these different answers of perspectives from that perspective, if that makes sense.

01:53:36

All right, well, my last question, thank you so much for that super chat. My last question for you guys, and you guys can answer it just one at a time there.

01:53:43

In your opinion, what do you think is the most important apologetic issue confronting the church today?

01:53:50

And what can we do to rise to the occasion to respond to those big challenges that you think the church faces today?

01:53:58

Michael, why don't you go first? I'm going in order of my screen here. So Michael, Tony, Matt, Nate, and Braxton. Oh, that's a good question.

01:54:07

Most important apologetic question that we are facing today. It's hard for me to really say anything.

01:54:14

I think a lot of it probably has more, I think a lot of them come from an underlying philosophical belief, which may be a belief in strong naturalism.

01:54:23

We still see verificationism seeping throughout the culture and that affects the way a lot of people think.

01:54:28

The idea that if I don't see anything or I can't experience something through my senses, it's not real. A lot of people sort of think that because it's an older philosophy that sort of has seeped into the culture and it has affected everything, now people just sort of throw that out.

01:54:41

That it's a Carl Sagan kind of slogan. If I don't see it, there's no evidence for it, I'm not gonna believe it. So I think we need to combat a lot of the underlying philosophies like verificationism or logical positivism, which is really deeply built in our own culture.

01:54:54

And I think once we can uproot that, we'll start to see a lot of changes. I think a lot of the other objections sort of stem from that.

01:55:00

Another, and I think the other thing is maybe one, maybe on the Christian side, is we need to combat anti -intellectualism in the church.

01:55:06

There's a lot of Christians that are like, I just need faith, or I just need some emotional strong music with strobe lights and all the good fog in the big megachurch.

01:55:13

Come on, a good smoke machine can go a long way. Oh, come on.

01:55:18

No, I think we need to combat, because I've been to churches and I've been like, do you have apologetics here? Do you do anything? And I think we don't really do that here.

01:55:24

We just want to focus on winning souls. I'm like, you're not winning souls if you're not including that. Let's be honest here.

01:55:29

So I think we need to combat the logical positivism in the culture, which is a lot of the roots of a lot of the anti -Christian sentiment.

01:55:38

And we need to combat the anti -intellectualism within the church. All right. Thank you, Tony. Yep, go ahead.

01:55:44

I'm sorry, because mine is so similar to Michael. I probably in a different context,

01:55:49

Michael, I bet you and I would get along famously and hang out and I'll take a shot with you. I'm not going to push back on that.

01:55:56

Okay, great. I won't tell you what's in it, but it's good. No, but -

01:56:01

That sounds creepy, especially with your mustache. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Hey, look, I saw Top Gun Maverick and I said, you know.

01:56:08

Anyway. No, but I would totally agree because I think I would approach your question,

01:56:14

Eli, from just a kind of a different angle, which is what Michael did here. Anti -intellectualism and biblical illiteracy are huge because my question and where I'm coming from is like, what are we saying?

01:56:25

If we're going to engage folks, right? And this comes back to, I think what Braxton was saying, like, what are we doing it for?

01:56:31

We're doing it to fulfill the Great Commission, right? And so my biggest, so I'm a pastor, been a pastor for years at a church here in Las Vegas.

01:56:42

My biggest concern has always been, what do people do once they make a quote unquote decision?

01:56:48

And that's a whole other episode, right? For another time. But like, what do they do? And most

01:56:53

Christians in my experience that I've been dealing with, they have no idea. And so that's where, to me, the answer is anti -intellectualism and biblical illiteracy.

01:57:02

If we can develop those from within the church, we'll have a much better vantage point by which to also like engage the culture that's outside.

01:57:10

But also when someone comes over and they're converted, we can best set them up for success, spiritually speaking.

01:57:19

All right, thank you for that. Dr. Costa? Yeah, I would say that it depends on where you are.

01:57:26

I mean, in the continent of Africa, we're dealing with the onslaught of Islam, of jihad, where Christians are being massacred in Nigeria and other parts.

01:57:35

We don't hear about that in the West because it doesn't seem to matter to Westerners. We're more concerned about,

01:57:41

I guess, Europe, Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. But it really depends where you are.

01:57:46

In the West, my major concern in the West is the onslaught of cultural Marxism, the social justice movement, progressivism, which is causing havoc in our

01:57:57

Western society. By West, I mean North America, South America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, where we have people who are confused about their sexual identity.

01:58:06

They're confused about their gender. They're confused about sexual orientation. We got critical race theory that has been causing havoc in the

01:58:16

Southern Baptist Convention. And I think that we are at a point, a crossroads in the

01:58:23

West, where we need to recapture the legacy of our rich Christian heritage. We do have an answer to these questions.

01:58:29

Morals are objective. There is objective morality. There is meaning and purpose in the universe. And social justice, progressivism, all of that based on a

01:58:37

Marxist ideology is destroying the fabric of our freedoms, of our Western democracies.

01:58:44

That's why there's, I'm a Canadian, and my country is almost appearing like North Korea.

01:58:50

I'm still a prisoner in my own country. I cannot travel because I need to have that miraculous shot.

01:58:57

And they basically interrogate you on your way back into the country. So right now in the

01:59:05

United States, there's even talks about getting rid of your Second Amendment, even the First Amendment. So I think we need to, in the

01:59:11

West, we need to engage the culture with a reasoned response, with a powerful gospel message that assures people that they're not just accidents of nature, that God did create us in his image, male and female, he created them.

01:59:30

And so if we don't do this, we are going to see some serious ramifications, and it's already happening, not just in my country, more so in my country, but it's also happening across the

01:59:43

United States and across the Western world. Thank you for that. Matt, what do you think is the biggest apologetic issue that challenges the face of the church today?

01:59:53

I've always thought that answer, or that question is answered one way, for me, just for me, is that the church is not taking the inspired word of God seriously as a final and ultimate authority, that it is.

02:00:05

I believe, my personal opinion is that the word of God, God said, let there be light. And Jesus is the word made flesh.

02:00:11

We have the word we can hold in our hands. If we're to take it seriously, believe what it says, elevate Jesus Christ, preach that gospel, that's what's gonna transform the world.

02:00:19

I think the church has compromised a lot. I think a lot of pastors and elders all over are teaching a mamby -pamby theology, feel -good theology.

02:00:29

We see it on TV a lot, and I don't think they're taking the word of God seriously. And if we do take the word of God seriously, we'll live for Jesus Christ, we'll die for Jesus Christ.

02:00:38

We will stand up for Jesus Christ and do what's necessary for the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our savior.

02:00:44

That's what I think. If you believe the word and it's the ultimate authority and you behave like what you believe, then things will change.

02:00:50

That's my position. It's variations what they're saying too. Like what Tony said too, of course.

02:00:56

All right, thank you. Nate, I think you - I gotta be on teaching someplace else. Oh, go for it. Yes, thank you so much,

02:01:01

Matt. I really appreciate it. Hey, you guys are awesome, man. Except for Tony. But you guys are great. And so it's really good stuff.

02:01:09

He said, except for Tony. Hey, it's nice to see you, Tony, too. Take care. Okay, I gotta go.

02:01:15

All right, see you guys. All right. Nate, you cheated and you jumped in, right?

02:01:22

It's okay. So we're gonna skip over you since you've already shared your thoughts, if that's okay.

02:01:28

And Braxton, you could finish this off. Yeah, I agree. Everybody said some great things. The good thing about going last is nobody gets to come after you and say the spiritual thing that makes yours look stupid.

02:01:38

That's right. Wait, I haven't gone yet. No, that's true. That's true.

02:01:43

I can put my lights on, make me glow and say really holy and sanctimonious things. Calvin's going after me.

02:01:48

He's gonna sound spiritual. Anyway, no, I honestly agree a lot with what

02:01:54

Tony and Michael said. We heard a lot from them about the philosophical underpinnings of various positions that are movements that are taking place in the

02:02:03

West right now. I think the cultural issues are big.

02:02:09

And I think, honestly, that just recently, I saw someone say, an atheist person out there,

02:02:17

Ben Watkins was saying, how he criticizes new atheism online, the loud atheists that are online.

02:02:25

And he said, Christians love that. And so until I start talking about Christian stuff, and he mentioned

02:02:31

Calvinism, a couple other things and bigoted Christians. Well, not the other two things he mentioned, but so I said, well, maybe a bit, there are people who consider me a bigot, but I have been told that I'm the most loving bigot they've ever met.

02:02:44

I said that. And that was shared by a polytheist who said, in fact, a polytheist that Michael Jones has debated.

02:02:58

He said, look at this guy proud of being a bigot. And I said, I'm not proud of it. I'm not proud that people think

02:03:04

I'm a bigot. I'm just aware people think I'm a bigot. The fact is everyone's a bigot in the eyes of somebody else.

02:03:10

I mean, when you talk about issues like LGBT, I get why they say the things they do.

02:03:15

But then on the other hand, when we're talking about murdering children in abortion clinics by the millions, I think there are some people that think that's a bigoted thing to do as well.

02:03:24

So we're gonna hear that. You might as well get used to it. And here's the thing. If you go back to 2010 up to about 2014, notice how quickly people started putting the rainbow flags on their pictures and things like that.

02:03:37

Now, the point is just that Christians who decried certain things because of biblical sexuality before, in two years time, in the space of two years, went from being adamantly opposed to promoting it in those particular ways on their site.

02:03:52

That's gonna continue to happen. And those people are gonna find those philosophical positions that they need to support what they're saying.

02:04:00

And so I just think that actually, here's the surprising thing I would say about that. And I'm not anybody special.

02:04:05

It's just that I've been a pastor and an apologist like several other people here. And I think what we need is to hit them with the truth, clear truth on these intellectual issues, but also be pastoral with them and love on them and ask them to go talk in a private chat somewhere instead of public where you're both beating your own chests.

02:04:24

I think that's really important. So I think the cultural thing is big. And I think we're just gonna need to get used to being considered and called bigots if we'd stand on biblical positions into the future.

02:04:36

All right, thank you for that. Now, since I'm the last, I can, you know, I could... It's all about Jesus.

02:04:43

Listen, the biggest problem with the Christian church is that we are not letting

02:04:48

God be God. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, if I could just share my thoughts,

02:04:54

I think one of the big, everyone has touched on something that I think is an important thing to keep in mind.

02:05:00

And it is definitely something that the church needs to deal with. But me working as a teacher, working with young people,

02:05:05

I think one of the greatest challenges the church is facing is losing the youth. We're losing the,

02:05:12

I mean, it's very easy to kind of get caught up in like what we're doing now. But if the church does not think in terms of the future, raising up an educated youth, young people that are grounded in the word of God, young people that are able to do apologetics and evangelize and to be biblically grounded in solid theology and not knowing simply what they believe, but knowing why they believe it and being able to convey that to the culture in a loving and respectful way.

02:05:41

If we're not raising up the next generation, right, to do those things, I think that's going to have that long -term negative effect that we're seeing generations leaving, right?

02:05:51

We're seeing that problem. So I think the church really needs to put energy into raising up a generation.

02:05:57

And I know that sounds really kind of, you know, preachery and all that. Generation, you know, we've all heard sermons like that, but I think it's true.

02:06:04

We need to think in terms of the long game and that really affects the way we look at raising our kids and teaching young people and equipping the young people for the tasks that they're going to be, they're already facing and what they're going to face in the future as well.

02:06:19

So that's just my two cents. Well, guys, we've gone two hours and six minutes.

02:06:25

I want to thank you guys so much. You guys, I respect all of you. Again, I strongly disagree with a few of you on various issues, but I do appreciate you and what you're doing.

02:06:37

And I know that as brother Tony said, God can strike a blow with a crooked stick, right?

02:06:42

And I think that in that foundational sense, I think that I can pray that God continues to bless what each and every one of you are doing.

02:06:52

And of course, you know, even with the differences and all that important stuff,

02:06:58

I think we are still able to kind of, it's awesome. We can sit here and talk and not argue with each other yet disagree very strongly.

02:07:05

It's just me and Michael, Eli. It's just me and Michael you have the disagreements with. Let's just say it. Blow it up, bro.

02:07:12

Hey, no, listen, whether it's Michael or I know that you and I disagree on some stuff and I'm not so sure.

02:07:21

I mean, Tony, I think we're in agreement in a lot of areas. So I wouldn't be able to pinpoint. And Nate, I'm not sure.

02:07:28

I guess, I don't know some of the specific stance but the fact that we're able to be here and to talk about it and not, you know, kind of try to strangle each other through the screen.

02:07:37

I think that says a lot. And I hope that when people watch this, they can say, wow, like I don't need to get all hot and bothered when

02:07:45

I'm having a conversation with another Christian that I strongly disagree over, you know, various issues.

02:07:50

They're not unimportant. We should have those discussions and debates but that doesn't mean we can't sit at the table and talk about them.

02:07:57

I hope that really is conveyed in this episode. So without further ado, guys, I wanna conclude this special episode.

02:08:04

You guys, I thank you so much and thank you for the 5 ,000 plus subscribers. And I really appreciate the super chats and all the support.

02:08:12

Until next time, guys, keep your eyes peeled and your ears open.

02:08:17

I'm gonna be having some really interesting guests in the future that folks might be interested in.

02:08:23

So I'll keep you guys updated on that as well. Where's your ear again, Eli? Yeah, I don't know. Did I mess up?

02:08:29

Keep your ears peeled. Just in case you didn't know, he's pulling on it. It's your ear. That's right.

02:08:35

Well, that's it. Let me end this before I say something stupid. Okay, take care, guys. That's it for this episode.