Witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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00:00

Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry? Ooh, a book club.

00:08

Computer solitaire, huh? Ah, sorry, we were looking for Chumba Casino.

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That's right. ChumbaCasino .com has over a hundred casino -style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes.

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ChumbaCasino .com On this episode of The Wrap Report, I'm going to play an episode that I was on the

00:36

Think! podcast. It's a friend of mine, Joel Sedekes. He asked me to come on and talk about Jehovah Witnesses, how to witness, how to prepare to witness to Jehovah Witnesses.

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But we got into a whole lot of other topics as well. We got into, really, broader than just Jehovah Witnesses, some topics about how to be prepared to answer anything, whether defending the faith against Jehovah Witnesses or anyone else.

01:02

This is a lot of different things we talked about. I hope this encourages you. Go check out the Think! podcast. Check out the work that Joel is doing.

01:09

So, I hope you enjoy this episode of The Wrap Report, coming your way right now.

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One, two, three! Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:36

All right, Andrew Rappaport. Thank you so much for joining me. Really, really excited about our conversation today.

01:42

Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, well, you know, I knew I needed to have you on the show because…

01:50

Because you had no other guests. I had a blank spot. Yeah. None of any good quality.

01:57

Right. Actually, no. You know what it was? I had Anthony Silvestro booked, and then

02:04

I had to boot him so that I could talk to you. Actually, that is a brother I really would like to have on the show now that I mention it.

02:11

I'll have to reach out to him. But, no, you know, when it comes to this topic, when it comes to understanding the different worldviews that are out there and engaging with their adherence, both evangelistically and in terms of apologetics, the vindication of the truth of the

02:29

Christian worldview, I really respect the work that you've done in that area.

02:35

I like how you think about these things. And, I mean, you wrote the book on these other worldviews and what they believe.

02:43

And so I actually have it right here. But maybe you could tell us about your book,

02:49

What Do They Believe?, and who you are in general for those of our listeners who don't know.

02:55

Give us an introduction to you and your work. Yeah, well, thanks. Yeah, the book What Do They Believe?

03:01

is 14 years of my life of study so that you don't have to, basically. It's a little bit different of a world religions book.

03:09

Typically, you get world religions books that try to cover all the religions, and they give you a little bit of what they believe, a little bit of their authority.

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Then you have some books I'll dig in deep, but all they're trying to do is tell you how to refute them. I grew up Jewish, as you know, and I remember listening to tapes that a rabbi gave me after I converted to Christianity from this guy,

03:33

Tovia Singer. And I listened to Tovia, and I went, he speaks to people who know nothing of Christianity, so they think he's brilliant.

03:41

I realized that he's mixing Catholicism and Mormonism. And I was like, if you're speaking to ignorant people, you can get away with sounding brilliant and you really know something when you actually don't.

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And that's what he did. I never wanted to be that way, and I don't want Christians to be that way. And so I wanted to write something that tells you what the religions believe.

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And what I ended up doing was not only studying it from their authorities, but then looking at going to people, going to imams and rabbis and asking, you know, is it accurate?

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And the nice thing about that, and the reason I find it helpful, is I'll be on the streets in New York City speaking to Muslims, and they will acknowledge that I know

04:26

Islam very well. I don't misrepresent it, which gives an advantage.

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I remember with one family that I met, and they were like, you know, you really understand Islam. And at the end of the conversation,

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I said, okay, have I misrepresented anything about Islam? They said, no, no, you're very accurate.

04:43

I said, okay. And yet I've pointed out multiple times where your reading of the Quran misrepresents

04:48

Christianity. And the one guy actually said he would read the New Testament to see if that's the case.

04:56

Wow. The Quran misrepresents Christianity? Correct. Because it does.

05:02

Because it says that we believe in three gods, father, mother, son. And anyone that heard that goes, wait, what?

05:08

Yeah, Mary is the second person of the Trinity in the

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Quran. So it's things like that, that if you don't know anything of Christianity, but you study the

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Quran, that's what you're going to think Christianity is. And so I didn't want to misrepresent. So about me, you know, you're asking,

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I'm in the ministry I work for, striving for eternity. It is the idea that we have, you know, most people, it's a discipleship ministry.

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And so we're not evangelistic. We're not working our way to heaven. It's not striving in that sense. It's striving in the sense of in our sanctification, we need to have a mindset of eternity.

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And that's what is going to get us through the nightmares of this world. As we see, people are going crazy thinking everything's going to end.

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It will end. Bible says so. But it will end in God's time when He's ready. And that's going to be that.

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And we don't have to worry about that. And so the thing, though, is if our focus is on eternity, the things of this earth grow strangely dim, as, you know, a hymn says.

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And that's the way it should be, is that we're fixed upon seeing Christ. That's what you end up seeing

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Paul's attitude is, Philippians chapter 2, 1 and 2.

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He talks about that. You know, he'd rather die so he could be with Christ.

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That's not the mindset of most American Christians. You know, they're not thinking, I can't wait to die so I could be with Christ.

06:41

Yeah, and, you know, it also makes me think of Philippians 2, 12, you know, work out your own salvation for it's

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God who works in you, both to will and to work. And so, yeah, so I've actually wondered that about your ministry name.

07:01

And you know what? Sorry, real quick. I had to mute you real quick because I was getting that echo again. So I'm going to unmute you. Okay, go ahead.

07:07

Okay, the verse we actually get it from is Colossians 3. Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

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Set your mind on the things above, not the things of earth. Right on, okay.

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And so that's all encapsulated in that name, striving for eternity. And how's the ministry been going since you guys,

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I know about a year ago, give or take, maybe a little bit less. You guys recently moved, right, from one state to another, right?

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I moved out of the communist country of New Jersey and moved into a little bit of a freer

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America in Pennsylvania. Yes, God's country out there. Yeah, yeah.

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It's been good. It's been a good move. And we're, you know, it's just, you get used to new things when you don't know an area.

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But the ministry has been doing good with that. I mean, the ministry is really, the ministry itself, it doesn't matter where we're located.

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So that's the nice thing because we coded, I mean, most of what we're going to do is online or we go to churches.

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You know, we have the Christian podcast community. That's all online. That's all working with other podcasters, discipling them.

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We do our weekend seminars where we're going to churches. So our locality doesn't make a difference as much other than reducing costs.

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And what part of Pennsylvania are you in? We're in Bucks County. So we're like north of Philly.

08:45

Yeah. Which is good because now, so now I'm switching my, as you know, I do a lot of open air evangelism.

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I used to go to New York City, which I have not been back to since COVID. But now

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I'm moving to South Philly. That's looking like my new fishing hole to be headed down there.

09:03

So we're starting to move in that way. Different, I won't have, I mean, I've had my same heckler.

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I've had one heckler for 13 years. Seriously? Yeah. His name is Solomon Siegel. He's up in New York City.

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He's from Israel. And he has been heckling me for 13 years.

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And so we've had this long relationship. And that's the advantage of going to the same place and evangelizing the same place.

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You get to know your regular hecklers. And we've had a long relationship. And he's a vile individual, just needs to know

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Christ. And he's heard it more than probably anyone I know. Because, I mean, he's in Union Square where all of the preachers would go to preach on a weekly basis.

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So it's a thing where I'll have to find some new hecklers. Something tells me that won't be a problem.

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There seems to be, just like God's got people in every city, the enemy has people in every city as well.

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You wouldn't think there's people that hate God in Philadelphia, do you? No. It's the city of brotherly love.

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Well, yes, that's true. But not everybody's a brother. And not everyone loves. That's right.

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That's right. So what project are you most excited about right now? Right now, well, the project

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I'm most excited about right now for me is that we moved out here to plant a church. So that's why

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I moved out to Pennsylvania. So right now we're in the beginning stages. That takes a lot of time.

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But I'm still trying to get—I've been working on a book on the deity of Jesus Christ. It's called Jesus Christ Claims of Deity.

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I've gone through all the gospel accounts to look at the deity of Christ, both directly and indirectly.

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And it is really interesting. Most people don't realize—I was actually surprised. I'm an engineer by trade, so I like numbers and data.

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And when I looked at all the verses through the gospels, 48 % of the gospels refer to Jesus as God directly or indirectly.

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Really? People go, really? Like, look on your face. Like, really? I didn't think it'd be that many. I thought maybe 300 verses out of all four gospels.

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No, there's more than 300 verses just in Matthew. And you sit and start thinking about it.

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Just read through the gospels and think every time that Jesus read someone's mind, that's his deity on display.

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Every time he healed someone. Every time he cast out a demon. Every time you have someone using a title like son of God, son of David, son of man even.

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And why son of man being a title of deity? Because, Joel, if I have to keep reminding you I'm a man, at some point you're going to be like, of course you are.

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Who do you think you are? And yet that's what Jesus kept doing. He called himself son of man. Well, plus there's that reference to Daniel 7.

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To Daniel. Son of man who receives the dominion that lasts forever. Yeah. But see, and everyone goes there.

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But the way my mind ends up going is just picture walking with Christ. And he keeps calling himself a man.

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Don't you think at some point people are like, why does he keep doing it? Like, of course he's human. I see him eating and drinking and sleeping and, you know.

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Of course he's human. When you've been God for all eternity, the incarnation was still new to him.

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It had only been 30 years. Or if the fact of what was the false theory, a false teaching of his time was

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Gnosticism. Anything material is divine, is good. But anything material is bad and evil.

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Anything spiritual is divine and good, yeah. Yeah. So the fact that he's in human form, he's reminding everyone.

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People don't realize that he had to emphasize his humanity so much because his deity was already accepted at the time.

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That was something people knew. This is one thing Jehovah's Witnesses don't pick up on.

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They focus so much on, well, look, it says he came in flesh. He came in flesh. And he did.

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Why did he have to remind everybody that? Because they didn't think that at the time because he was divine.

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But Gnosticism, though, so the dualism and that proto -Gnosticism of who was it?

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But yeah, there were these ancient schools that believed that the physical was bad, the spiritual was good. But Gnosticism didn't really arise until later, like later first century, second century.

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Well, you know, you have that in the beginnings of it. Plato and those guys started some of that.

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That's true. So, yeah, the forms are what's really real, and the material is basically less real or even illusory.

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But the early church was dealing with it because that's what John, most of what John's dealing with when he's writing is that.

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He's trying to address that issue because so many people are saying, well, hey, I can go sleep with a prostitute.

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As long as I don't give my spirit over to it, that's divine. It's just my flesh.

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That's just evil anyway. And they'd make excuses like that. So John had to deal with that within the first century.

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So we see that creeping in. We see some of that even in Colossians. So Paul had addressing some things like that.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point. And 1 John 4 .2 says, Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

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So in other words, there's going to be those out there who say, no, he wouldn't come in. God wouldn't come in the flesh. That's degrading to God.

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Well, no, that's not what the Bible teaches. We got to watch out for those false worldviews, those false worldview ideas coming in.

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And one of the things, I mean, the reason you have people that you have sinless perfectionists, they take 1 John, totally mess it up.

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Why? Because of the fact that they don't put it in its historical context. Same thing with Jehovah Witnesses.

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They don't put it in its historical context. When they read the Bible, they read it as if it was written today. No, it wasn't. You have to ask whenever you read the

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Bible, what did the author mean by what he wrote? It's called authorial intent. What did it mean at that time to those hearers?

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What did the author mean for those hearers to hear? That's the question, not what does it mean to me today?

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We're 2 ,000 years removed from the, you know, between 2 ,000 to 3 ,500 years removed from the writing of the

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Bible. Yeah. Well, and we, so we have to understand the Bible. And we also need to understand some of those other ideas that are out there that shape our cultural and ideological landscape.

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How important is it today, would you say, to learn about other religions and cults?

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Well, I think that it's good to have at least a basic knowledge if you're going to evangelize people.

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Because what typically ends up happening is you hear something for the first time, you have to start learning it.

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And you want to learn it from a source that is not going to lead you astray in believing in what they believe.

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Because what happens then is you start talking to someone, oh, well, you know, I heard that Muslims believe that you can have 70 virgins.

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Now, there are, a lot of people think that's what Islam teaches. When you die, you get 70 virgins.

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There's one sect of Islam that teaches that, and it's not the majority. Right?

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So now you go saying something, as many Americans were doing after 9 -11, and Muslims are going, you don't understand what we're saying.

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Right. So we need to have accuracy in what we speak. The other thing is we don't want to be deceived.

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There's many people who start studying the Bible, and then Jehovah Witnesses come to their door.

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Now, this was me. Fortunately, though, my dad shooed them away. I was just completely ignorant.

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I became a Christian at 16. Jehovah Witnesses knocked on the door, and I'm now a

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Christian. And they claim to be Christian. I'm like, I want their material, because I don't have anything.

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I became a Christian, and there was no one else. I was saved on a bus tour, and that guy's gone.

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So I had nobody. So I'm like, I want that material. My dad got rid of them, and I was actually upset.

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But that was actually God's protection, because in my ignorance, not knowing anything, the only thing

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I had was my Bible. What would I have done? I would have read that and trusted it.

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In fact, that's what happened when I did get to college. I was trusting the Christians that were telling me they were Christian, and they were word of faith.

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And several years of me having to rethink everything I was taught, because they weren't teaching me the truth.

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I didn't know that. So there's a danger of being deceived. There's also a danger of misrepresenting what our discussion partners actually believe.

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And if you misrepresent them, man, you might spend 10, 15 minutes refuting a point they don't even believe. And it reminds me of Proverbs 18 .13.

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It says, if one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and his shame.

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It's like, yeah, if you spend all this time and energy refuting a point, and then the person just goes, that's all well and good,

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I don't believe that. Well, you look like an idiot. You look like a salesman.

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Joel, let me ask you this question. If I came up to you and said, I know a lot about Christianity, I know, well, you believe in three gods.

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Okay, are you going to be trusting anything I say after that about Christianity? No. No? And that's what many

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Christians do with other religions. They do not know any better because they haven't studied all those documents.

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I mean, how many people have a copy of the Koran or the Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, or the

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Talmud? The Talmud will take up that whole shelf behind you. I mean, it's a lot of volumes to go through all that.

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And then to try to systematize that, it's not easy. And unfortunately, one of the things when people study world religions,

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I don't find people doing what I did. And I don't want to write books if there's something else out there. And so when

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I try to write it, I want it to be somewhat unique in a sense. And with this, with What Do They Believe?,

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what was unique about it was, I'm giving you from their authority. I'm not quoting what a bunch of Christians say they believe.

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There's only a few areas where I'm not, and I footnote them, where there's a good history on Islam written by someone who is— the interesting thing, he's of a different cult.

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It was kind of interesting. Is that Ahmadi or— Huh? Was he an Ahmadi Muslim?

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Church of Christ. Oh, oh, oh, got it. He was a Christian. So he's in a Church of Christ kind of cult.

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But he has a great explanation of the history of Islam.

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So I got permission to include that. And that's what you end up seeing is that you have to get from their sources and be accurate, have it in context.

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Because just like we're going to reject them if they take what we say out of context, they're going to do that to us.

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Let me pose this question to you because a few years back, for a couple years in a row, I was able to speak at this

19:57

Muslim high school. And I went there, and I actually got to teach about Christianity. The teacher was actually pretty cool.

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She wanted her students to hear about Christianity from an adherent. And the really fun part was after I gave my lesson, for about 45 minutes after class, she had a free period, or it was the end of the day or whatever, and we just engaged back and forth, and she would fire objections at me.

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And it was mostly me on the defense of defending Christianity. And that was a lot of fun.

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But she made this comment. She said she was talking about purported experts in different religions.

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And she said something that I don't agree with, but I wanted to hear your take on it. She said you can't claim to be an expert on a religion if you're not an adherent of that religion.

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And I haven't found that to be true, but I wanted to know what are your thoughts on that? No. The reality is that you can be fair with a religion and accurate with it, but you have to realize every one of us has presuppositions we come to the

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Bible with, we come to everything with, and we have to be able to question our own presuppositions and look at them in the context of the thinking of someone else.

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One of the things is that I can debate, and part of this is my upbringing.

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In a Jewish home, we debate. It's probably why so many Jewish people become lawyers, because you're just raised debating.

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We debate. There's no emotion to it. It's to strengthen arguments, to be kind of what the

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Bible would say, iron sharpening iron. And so I'm used to being just given a topic and having to debate something, even if I don't hold to it.

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And that's what we can do. The reality, though, is there's something where this professor does have a point, that most people will misrepresent the view they don't hold to.

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Why? Because it is way easier to knock down a straw man than the real argument.

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And so because of the straw man argument that many people make, that's the reason that people hold to that.

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However, let's be honest, the person's a Muslim. There's going to be plenty of Muslims who misrepresent

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Islam as well. Yeah, and that's what didn't stick really right with me, sit right with me, is because I know a lot of Christians who aren't experts on Christianity, and even a lot of the purported

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Christian experts on Christianity. I don't agree with a lot of things. It's like, you know, all right.

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But I like what you said about, I mean, you can be fair. You can be fair with the religion, even if you don't adhere to it. And it reminds me of what you asked those

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Muslims you were engaging with. Hey, have I misrepresented anything that you actually believe? That's probably a pretty good question to ask,

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I would think, when you're engaging with people. It's actually what I asked of people when I did my book. When I finished each chapter,

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I went to authorities, went to a Catholic cardinal, I went to, you know, an Orthodox rabbi, went to an imam, you know, a couple of them.

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And I'd say, am I teaching anything here? Am I saying anything you don't hold to?

22:56

In fact, this is kind of interesting side note, but I went to a Mormon thing where they had, you know, it's this pageant they would have each year.

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And one of the Mormon apologists was challenging me. And he said, there's no

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Christian that writes any book on Mormonism that accurately explains Mormonism.

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And I said, well, I'll tell you what, I'll send you a free copy of my book. You go through it.

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And here's the deal. If you can't find anything where I've misrepresented you, you buy the book.

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And he agreed to it. He's got it. He's found three like grammar issues.

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Okay, that's not a big deal. Two issues that he literally said he's bringing them up because he admits he's trying to find something.

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And then one where he said, and the one was just an issue where in Mormonism, there is debate over whether Jesus and Satan, I know this sounds strange for any

23:53

Christians, but that Lucifer and Satan were born at the same time, or was Jesus born before him?

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Jesus and Satan or Jesus and Lucifer, right? Because they're considered brothers. Right.

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And so in Mormonism, and he said, you have the order wrong. I said, but is this actually what some

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Mormon doctrines that are official doctrines teach? And he was like, well, yes. By the way,

24:18

I've never seen the $15 for the book. But he was desperate to find something.

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He actually ended up having to admit that, yeah, it's fairly representing Mormonism. That's what we should be striving to do as Christians.

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Don't take the easy road of misrepresentation to win an argument.

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Yeah, and it can be especially hard to with religions that or cults that are very similar, at least in their language and terminology to Christianity.

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Mormonism is one of those. Matter of fact, you listen to Mormons speak today and correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the language that they'll use is different.

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The way that they phrase things, term things is different now, even than it was a generation ago, to the extent where you almost might think that you're speaking to a

25:06

Christian if you don't know the right questions to ask, especially because Mormons are so stinking nice.

25:12

I mean, Mormons are they're just nice. They seem like morally upstanding citizens. And it's like, oh, you know, you're kind of a model citizen here.

25:21

But what sort of questions should we be asking? What sort of differences should we be looking for when we're investigating different systems, cults, worldviews?

25:31

What do we need to be asking? Well, you're right that there is that different. In fact, you could look at several, look at Catholicism a few centuries ago, look at Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses.

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They all used to say that Christianity was anathema, that Christianity, Mormonism would say

25:48

Christianity had to be restored because we lost it. Somehow the church lost the truth of Christianity and they had to restore it.

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And now each one of those groups are saying we're Christian. We're Christian. Mormons actually had a whole campaign.

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We are Christian. Wait, you said we were wrong.

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We lost the gospel. And now you want to say you're just like us. It's amazing. Jehovah Witnesses redid their website.

26:13

Same thing with them. They all want to say they're Christian now, which I find very interesting.

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And so with any discussion, it doesn't matter who you're talking to, even if you're speaking to another

26:24

Christian, you should always ask, what do you mean by that? I mean, you want to get definitions.

26:31

People will, I was in a debate recently on my Apologetics Live show, and we're debating the issue of Calvinism.

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And this guy is telling me what I believe. And I'm like, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. And not all

26:44

Calvinists believe what he was claiming. And it was interesting because at one point I said, well, he goes, well, you're a

26:50

Calvinist. You have to believe this. And I said, when did I ever say I'm a Calvinist? And he went, wait, what? He's like, well, how could you do this debate?

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I said, I could debate something and not know about it but not hold to that view. And he goes, oh, that's true.

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But the reality is I'm not going to say whether I'm a Calvinist because what happens with him, his definition of Calvinism is way off, right?

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So I have a long record when people ask me, are you a Calvinist? My answer is

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I'm a Rapportian. And if you want to know what I believe, you have to ask me, well, what's Rapportianism? Well, my last name is

27:22

Rappaport. You have to ask me what I believe. You want, go to Striving for Eternity.

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I've got a very long, it's like a 12 or 13 -page doctrinal statement. You could read it all. That's what

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I believe. The reality is if we don't get to definitions, we don't know what we accurately believe.

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And if I was to represent what you believe and I start telling you what you believe and you're going, no, that's not what

27:48

I believe, then you're no longer going to have much respect for anything I say.

27:55

Now, what do we got to do? And someone says, well, I believe in the Trinity. Well, how do you define that?

28:01

In Mormonism, you're going to be dealing with the fact that the Trinity is that God the Father, or Almighty God, Heavenly Father, who had relations with his wife, produced

28:16

Jesus Christ. Now, that's very different than what you had said earlier in this program,

28:23

Joel, where Jesus is eternal. You have a very big difference there.

28:29

If you look at Islam, you look at Jehovah Witnesses, and what do you have? They believe we believe in three gods.

28:37

Is that the doctrine of the Trinity? No. So you ask someone to define it. When I was in New York with that Muslim family

28:42

I mentioned earlier, I asked the guy, which was a fun thing to do, I said, well, what is the Christian definition of the

28:49

Trinity? Can you explain it to me? And he says, well, it's the belief that you have three gods.

28:55

He said you believe that the Father is God and the Son is God and the Spirit is God. And I said, but are they three gods or three persons?

29:05

And he said, three gods. I said, now I know that's what the Koran teaches. So here's what I did. We had 25 evangelists out there, and I just turned to one after another, pulling them aside, going, hey,

29:16

Chris, define the Trinity. You know, hey, Fred, what's the Trinity? And one after another, defining the

29:23

Trinity. And there were like three persons and one God. You know, one God, three persons, right?

29:29

They're giving a proper definition to a point where he goes, okay, okay. After like six, seven people, he goes, I get the point.

29:34

I don't have a right definition. You need to get to definitions. If you're just using terminology and not getting to what the terms mean, you could talk past each other.

29:45

Okay, so definitions are really important. I want to just show you something that I made. I like to make these shareable graphics that are, you know,

29:54

I'll post them on social media. And, you know, hopefully, you know, people can share them if they find them helpful.

30:04

Or I don't know if you can see that, but this is a graphic that I shared. And basically what it says is, for those who are listening on the audio, it says,

30:11

Dads, prepare your kids to defend the Christian message by teaching them to ask these six questions. What do you mean by that?

30:17

Can you give me an example? How do you know that? So what? How certain are you about that?

30:24

And then the infamous precept question, according to what standard or by what standard? What do you think about those questions?

30:31

Well, those are good questions. Some of them, you know, you may have gotten, may have gotten.

30:37

I don't want to accuse you of plagiarism or anything. Oh, in my post, I mentioned, I say where I got them from. I got them from Seitzenberg and Cate, Jeff Durbin, Greg Bonson, primarily those three.

30:49

So the one where I, and the book I recommend for asking questions is

30:54

Greg Kokel's book, Tactics. You know what? I have that book. I haven't started it yet, but it's every week.

31:00

Oh, it's good. I hope you have the second edition. What's that? Hope you have the second edition because he added like 30 % more. Oh, did he really?

31:06

Yeah. So that book is really good at just teaching you how to navigate conversations and asking good questions.

31:13

And this is one of the things I've said with Greg. I've talked to him like he uses these illustrations that are great for his generation.

31:20

He calls it the Columbo tactic. Now, if you've watched Inspector Columbo and you know that show, by saying that, and this is what a label does, right, or a term, by saying that, you immediately know, your eyes lit up when

31:34

I said Columbo. You know exactly who he is. He's this inspector who asks lots of questions. But if you don't know who that is, then it makes no sense, right?

31:45

But his book really does walk through the purpose of questions, how to ask good questions.

31:50

Because a good question, when I do my evangelism training, we have an evangelism training style that we call Ambassador Evangelism, and we teach people to ask good questions.

32:00

It's one of the points. So it's three points of our evangelism is disarm their defenses because they can get defensive and start having an argument.

32:08

You don't want to debate. You don't want to argue. You want to share the gospel. That's the goal, right? So you want to get past all the argumentation where someone's just trying to win an argument, and they'll do it at any cost.

32:19

Avoid them being defensive by being polite because that's something we should be doing.

32:25

That's part of the ambassador part, okay? Just being polite and using humor.

32:33

When you give a defense, do it with gentleness and respect. Correct. Yeah. And humor is a great tool.

32:40

You want to see someone using humor effectively, just watch Ray Comfort, right? But we can be defensive as well.

32:46

And so to disarm our own defenses, I teach people to ask good questions. And then the third principle is to avoid being judgmental by using the law.

32:53

In other words, we let the law be the standard of defining what sin is. But by asking good questions, you can actually guide a conversation and control the conversation by asking questions.

33:05

And the beauty of it, Joel, I know you can't pull this off like I can. I know this, but it lets you play dumb.

33:13

See, you can't pull that off as well. I can pull it off better than you. I have no idea what you're talking about.

33:22

But I've had times where I've been evangelizing, and I just play dumb. Act like I don't know what they're talking about and ask questions.

33:29

You know, someone tells me, oh, the Bible was edited in the 1500s. Really? I don't understand how that could be.

33:35

Let me ask questions. And by the end of that conversation, this guy at Montclair State University just goes, man, this isn't making any sense to me.

33:42

I'm like, well, that's good. It wasn't making sense to me either at the beginning, but I'm glad we agree. Right? And I controlled the whole conversation with questions.

33:49

Well, that's probably—oh, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, I had witnesses that came over, a couple that—they came over for about a year and a half every week.

33:58

Wow. And all I did was ask questions. Really? And I controlled the entire—I controlled where that conversation went because I go, well,

34:04

I just don't understand this. Can you explain this? How does this then work? And they're in the position where they have to be defensive.

34:12

They have to answer the questions. But here's the importance of a good question. It changes your thinking process.

34:19

This is something that Socrates had realized. That's why it's called the Socratic model. If I'm saying something,

34:26

Joel, and you just want to point fingers at it or peck holes at it and try to find where I got some errors, you don't have to actually engage in dialogue with what

34:35

I'm saying. You're just poking at it. Okay? You don't have to just look for failures in the argument.

34:40

But if I ask you a question, you don't want me now to poke holes in your argument, so what do you do?

34:46

Your thought process actually changes, and your thought process is going to be to figure out how to answer this, and you're going to think through it in greater detail.

34:56

That's the advantage of a good question. Yeah. Well, and it does a good job, too,

35:01

I think, doesn't it, of reminding your discussion partner that there's a shared burden of proof here.

35:10

I don't know if you've experienced this, and tell me if you have, where oftentimes the

35:15

Christian is put on the defense. Well, you've got a Mr. Atheist, Mr.

35:21

Skeptic, Mr. Jehovah's Witness puts the Christian on defense and says, what about this?

35:26

What about the genocide in the Old Testament? What about the unscientific nature of Genesis 1 through 3? What about this?

35:32

What about the lack of historical documentation? And like you said, the

35:37

Bible's been edited so many times over the years, and we get put on defense.

35:43

But when you just simply ask a question like, well, could you give me an example of that? What do you mean by that? What are the implications of what you're saying?

35:50

Suddenly, Christianity is still, we're still on defense, but they're the ones making the accusation, and now they've got to defend that accusation and give evidence for it, the very thing that they're demanding of us.

36:02

So I think it has a nice little way of turning the tables. Oh, it definitely turns the tables.

36:08

Yeah. In fact, we have a regular heckler, a guy, Jason Cross, he heckled me for probably about eight years, ten years, and he was a regular.

36:18

But before I got there, he was used to heckling the Christians. And I was up there preaching one day, and he's saying, there is no

36:24

God because there's evil in the world. There is no God because there's evil in the world. And that worked for him with a lot of preachers. I just turned to him and said, sir, can you explain to me how you can have evil without God?

36:34

And he just stopped. He never thought about that. He's like, well, you tell me what evil is. I said, I didn't say it exists.

36:40

You did. Can you explain how you have evil without God? And he was stuttering.

36:45

He goes, well, no, you tell me. Tell me what evil is. I said, okay, evil is the absence of good. Good is defined by the nature of God.

36:51

How can you have evil without God? And he threw up his hands and walked out. Because he never had to actually answer that question, but it was one of his go -tos to challenge

37:00

Christians with. Wow. That's awesome. So we talked about the importance of asking questions and how to engage with other believers, people who believe in different religious systems, cultic systems.

37:13

Can we hone in on Jehovah's Witnesses? What do Christians need to understand about the

37:21

Jehovah's Witness cult? Well, Jehovah's Witness is one of the major things that they do.

37:27

They actually appeal mostly to Roman Catholics, but also nominal

37:32

Christians, people who grew up in a Christian home. Their number one argument that they're going to argue is the Trinity.

37:38

It's kind of like their go -to. Why? Because, well, simply, you and I can't fully understand the

37:44

Trinity, can't fully comprehend it. So there is some mystery there, and they capitalize on that.

37:50

Their way of capitalizing on it is to say this was just a doctrine that the Catholic Church came up with.

37:56

They just created it. Now, they're going to go and appeal to all of the references to Jesus being human.

38:02

I was actually at the Museum of the Bible. Sorry, not Museum of the

38:08

Bible, the Creation Museum. And we had someone call the ministry, and I forwarded the phones over to my phone after hours.

38:16

Or if no one's in the office, we'll get a call while I'm at the museum. And it's this guy.

38:22

He's called before. He calls every couple of years. And he's a Jehovah's Witness. And he comes on pretending to ask a question.

38:29

I just have one question. You teach that Jesus Christ is actually

38:35

God, but in the Bible it says that no one's seen the face of God, and yet plenty of people saw the face of Jesus.

38:42

How could that be? Now, can I sit and answer that? Now, this is a thing when it comes to it.

38:49

In a guy like that, he wasn't looking for an answer. He wanted to teach. Right. Right?

38:54

So I treat him differently than someone that's asking and saying, hey, you know, I've never thought about this, but how could people have seen

39:01

Jesus and yet no one saw the face of God? Good question. God became man.

39:07

They weren't seeing God. They saw his humanity. They saw his flesh. They didn't see his deity. They didn't see all of his glory because it would have killed him.

39:15

Right? Even Moses could only see the glory of God passing by. Yeah.

39:20

So you were using the idea of seeing in two different ways. Oh, that's interesting.

39:26

I usually go—we're speaking about the Father there. You know, in the New Testament, oftentimes the term

39:32

God, theos, refers to sort of shorthand for Father, Jesus being the perfect reflection of the

39:39

Father. We can see Jesus. But you're right. It's the enfleshed God. It's the incarnate

39:44

God. You're not—you literally can't see a spirit. Your eyes can't see spirits.

39:50

Spirit is by definition immaterial. There's no light bouncing off of a spirit. So it's not exactly possible.

39:57

Yeah. And see, this is where what he's doing is a category error when we look in logic.

40:04

And so I could sit and point that out. Now, with this guy, my answer is, you know, come on to Apologetics Live, Thursday nights, 8 to 10,

40:12

Eastern Time. You can ask me anything. I can answer any question you have about God in the Bible. You come on in, do it.

40:18

He's like, I'm not going to come on that show. I said, okay, well, you're here to teach and, you know, have a good day.

40:24

You know, right? Then what am I doing there? I'm doing a difference in how I'm going to handle people as well, too. Someone that's just looking to come on the attack and try to challenge you,

40:33

I may not answer their question. In fact, I love what happened with, I don't know if you know Chad Williams.

40:39

He used to work at Living Waters. He's a Navy SEAL. He wrote a book called Seal of God. We were at Huntington Beach one time, and there's this guy that comes up to him and goes, he's just, he's argumentative.

40:52

And Chad just looks at this guy and goes, you know what? I was going to give you the gospel today, but no gospel for you.

40:59

You're not getting it. And the guy walked away like angry. And Chad gets done preaching.

41:04

I'm like, Chad, what was that? He goes, I don't know. I just felt like I was throwing pearls before swine, and I didn't think he deserved an answer with his attitude.

41:12

He was just so prideful. Well, just as we're having this conversation, the guy walks up to Chad. And he goes, hey, sir, can you explain to me why

41:21

I can't get the gospel? And Chad goes, now you can. Because there was a heart change. His whole attitude changed.

41:27

And that was just really neat to see. And so what Jehovah's Witnesses are going to do is they want to come in on something that you may not fully comprehend.

41:36

No one can. They're going to look for little things that look like they're contradictions.

41:42

And what they're doing by that is trying to put doubt in the mind of the person who professes to be a

41:48

Christian. They're looking to say that the church has corrupted things.

41:55

They've made these doctrines up. That's why you need the watchtower. And one of the things with any cult, and in the beginning of my book,

42:03

I define what a cult is, but they're controlling. That's the thing that they're going to do. It's a control group. They're going to have different ways that they control, whether it's through behavior, through information, through thought, or through emotion.

42:13

That's a style that I've come upon recently. Someone else had written called the bite method.

42:21

But it's controlling behavior, controlling information, controlling thought, controlling emotion. That's what they're going to try to do.

42:28

One of the things with a Christian cult or religious cult is they're going to claim that they are the only authority on interpreting

42:35

Scripture. So what they do is they say, well, the Catholic church got it wrong, but the watchtower has it right.

42:40

Because look, we don't have these errors. We can explain that Jesus was a created being who created all other things.

42:48

And this is one of the things they're going to teach. Now, there's a lot of different ways you could address that. Just like you and I in how we are going to address them saying that no one could see the

42:57

Father. Both arguments are right, and they're both biblical.

43:03

Which one are you going to use? Who knows? One may work better for one person than the other. But one of the things

43:09

I like to do is I will try to affirm their teaching. Now, notice I'm saying

43:14

I don't affirm them. I'm not affirming the teaching saying it's true. I'm affirming this is what they believe.

43:21

And so what I'll do is I'll go to Colossians 1. And I will ask them.

43:26

And I'll ask them to read it in the New World Translation. And I'll say, could you read for me what

43:33

Colossians 1 says in verses 15 to 17? Now, I'm going to read this at a new

43:41

American standard because that's what I have in front of me. But I'm going to add a word in. I'm going to add an important word in there.

43:47

Is there a version to add the word? Their word, they will have this word. He is the image of the invisible

43:54

God, the firstborn of all creation, and for by him and through him both the heavens and the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities, have been created through him and for him.

44:13

Actually, I should have read this out of King James because I don't have it. So it's for him, for by him, all other things is the word that they add.

44:24

Now, let me read it. They'll put that in. It's four times. Verse 16, for by him and all other things were created.

44:32

All other things have been created through him and for him. Now, do you notice a difference there? If I add the word other, why is that added?

44:41

Now, they'll say that's to make things easier to understand. Right, right. Only if you believe

44:46

Jesus is a created being. Right. Right? Now, they've been a little deceptive in their translation.

44:52

They originally used to have no brackets around the word other. The brackets in their translation would say this isn't a word in the

44:59

Greek. So it was added. There's nothing unusual about that. When you do translation, we have that. If you have a

45:04

King James, New King James, ESV, New American Standard, you're going to have words in italics. Those words are not in the

45:10

Greek, but they've been added for our English. Well, what you have here is a case that's the same thing.

45:16

They've added the word other. They say, well, we added it for English, except it changes the meaning altogether. See, if it's that for by him all things were created, all things, then he can't be a created being.

45:30

Right. It corroborates with John 1, verse 3. Nothing that was made was made apart from him.

45:38

Correct. Well, see, they have no problem with that. You see, because they say he was created as Michael the archangel, and then

45:45

Michael the archangel created everything, and then Michael became Jesus. So they would have no problem with that.

45:51

But here, they have to add the word other. Now, why do I say they're deceptive? They used to put no brackets.

45:57

For many decades, they had brackets in there to show you that it was, that English word is not in the

46:03

Greek. And many Christians would capitalize on that. But then what they did in the most recent version is they've taken the brackets out again.

46:11

So I actually have some older copies so I could show them that. But here's what you do.

46:16

I get them to confirm that. And I say, so okay, so you believe that Jesus created all other things.

46:22

Is that correct? And they say yes. And I want them to say yes. I want them to affirm the teaching of the watchtower.

46:29

Yeah. Why? Because I'm going to turn to Isaiah 44, 24, which they probably haven't read.

46:37

This is what Isaiah 44, 24 says. Thus says the Lord, your

46:43

Redeemer, the one who formed you from the womb. I am

46:48

Jehovah. That's an important word for them. I am Jehovah, the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself.

46:58

Now, if I stopped there, they'd go, well, yeah, he's the maker of all things through Michael the archangel. And spreading out the earth all alone.

47:08

Oops. God says no one else did it. He said he stretched it out by himself, and he emphasizes that it was all alone.

47:16

So if Christ was the one who created everything, and Jehovah did it all alone, you see, they've got a problem.

47:25

Yeah, and I still think they have a problem with John 1, 3. I haven't heard a Jehovah's Witness successfully rebut that.

47:32

Because that verse effectively divides everything into two categories, created things and uncreated things.

47:40

And if you read that verse, the word is in the uncreated category.

47:46

He has to be, because he can't create himself. So I think if you break it down,

47:51

I don't remember, I don't know if it was Tim Challies or somebody pointed that out.

47:56

You can make like a T chart and say, okay, there's two categories, created, all things that have been made.

48:03

And then there's everything that hasn't been made. Now, read this again and see which category, which column does the word fit into?

48:13

Well, nothing was made that was made. Of the things that were made, nothing was made apart from him.

48:19

So he can't be in that category. So he has to be in the uncreated category. What do we call a creator who is uncreated himself?

48:27

That's God. So it doesn't, it doesn't work. And I just, I haven't seen, maybe you have,

48:33

I haven't seen a successful rebuttal to that. Yeah, no, I mean, the reality is, I don't care what religious system you deal with.

48:41

They have a mechanism to save themselves. Okay. In terms of the argument.

48:48

Of the argument. They're going to get creative with it sometimes, but they'll have a way to rationalize it so it all wraps up.

48:55

And so don't be surprised when that happens. Okay. But you're right. Some of these kind of arguments point out their biggest thing is, how could

49:03

Jesus be God? I mean, one of my favorite passages to go to is Jeremiah 23, verse 5.

49:09

And I'll ask them to read this out of their translation. Let me just read it. Jeremiah 23, 5.

49:15

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch.

49:21

And he will reign as king, act wisely, and do justly, and righteousness in the land.

49:28

And I stop them and say, okay, who is that speaking of? And they say, well, the raising up from David, the branch, that righteous branch is

49:35

Jesus. So that's Jesus. Yes. Okay. Can you read verse 6? And in his days, he will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.

49:45

And this is the name by which he will be called Yahweh Sikhenu, the

49:51

Lord, our righteousness. And now they got a problem. Jesus is going to be called

49:56

Jehovah. Okay. In verse 6. And they stop. Now, I've only had one person give an argument for that.

50:04

And the argument that they give is, well, that's just his name. I said, yes, but calling someone Jehovah is blasphemy, is it not?

50:11

And this is what his name is. He's going to be called Jehovah Sikhenu. You don't have people being called

50:17

Jehovah. And they have a problem with that one. But the only thing I've ever seen is someone go, oh, well, it's just the name he's going to be called by.

50:27

You're muted. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I can hear that because,

50:33

I mean, my name, Joel, Yah -el, Jehovah is

50:38

God, Yahweh is God. I mean, by having that name, I'm not being called Yahweh. But, no, you're right.

50:47

It's clearly a divine title. And because he's being called

50:52

Yahweh or Jehovah, our righteousness. It's not just a name.

50:59

Like your name means man, right? Manly. I live up to it, don't I? No, let's not go there.

51:04

I was just going to say. I've seen you in person, and you probably live up to that name a little bit more than me.

51:13

I don't know. You've been doing jujitsu longer than me. So let's not put that to the test. Yeah, you've been in the gym longer than me.

51:20

Okay, so when we're talking about engaging with Jehovah's Witnesses, what

51:26

I'd like to do, because I know we are limited on time, and one of the major focuses for this show,

51:32

Andrew, is we want to equip dads to lead their families well in defending the truth of the

51:40

Christian message. So for the dads who are listening, what is something that they can take away?

51:48

One, so that they can successfully have an apologetic, evangelistic conversation with the

51:54

Jehovah's Witness pair that comes to their door. And then two, what can they do to be preparing their own kids, even right now, to engage thoughtfully, robustly with this worldview so that their kids are prepared?

52:09

Even if the Jehovah's Witness never comes to the door, you know, when they're a child, they're going to grow up and they're going to have these conversations.

52:15

What can dads be doing now to prepare their kids for them? And I've actually been saying it throughout the show, when

52:20

I say this, people pick up, learn how to ask good questions, learn how to debate. So one of the things in a

52:26

Jewish household, not all Jewish households, obviously, but what a lot of Jewish households do is teach their children to debate.

52:34

Not with the emotion, and this is part of the thing, you know, on social media, people disagree, like, oh, you hate me. No, I just disagree with your argument.

52:41

You know, it's a bad argument. It has no emotion behind it, right? Teaching people. I mean, one of the things, and I did this with my kids as well at times, but just having, okay, you know,

52:52

Joel, you're going to be pro -life. You're going to argue for a pro -life position. Andrew, you're going to argue for an anti -life position.

53:00

Okay, they wouldn't call it that, but that's what it is. Go for it. Start the debate, start the discussion, right?

53:07

What kind of questions do you want to ask in that? This would be the first thing we'd train our kids to do. Learn how to ask what questions do you first need to do?

53:15

I had to argue for slavery, and I'm like, how do I argue for slavery? I don't know any good for slavery.

53:23

Okay, well, let's start with that then. What kind of things do you have to understand about slavery? And so that, before I could have that debate, we first had to have a discussion of, well, what things are good out of slavery?

53:35

What things would be positive? And I'm like, nothing, right? I didn't think there was anything. But then you start thinking, you know,

53:41

I've only been taught one view of slavery. I wasn't taught about the fact that, hey, slavery you provided for people.

53:48

It wasn't always torturing people and treating people badly. You provided for all their livelihood and their care.

53:56

Okay, there's things you could actually argue for. That doesn't mean I agree with slavery, by the way. Right, right, but you have to know how to make those arguments because people were making those arguments in the antebellum

54:08

South. I mean, it's not like they would just go, yeah, we know slavery is bad, evil, terrible, but we don't care because we're horrible demons.

54:16

Like, they didn't say that. You know, like everybody wants to self -justify. It's like you said earlier. Everyone has a mechanism that they use to save themselves, to save their argument.

54:25

It might not be a good one or rational or coherent, but we at least need to know what those are.

54:31

You and I, if we're going to refute a position, we need to know what their best arguments are in defense of that position.

54:37

Yes? Well, the better we can argue their position, guess what? The better we can see where their position has issues.

54:44

And so if you train your children to be able to analyze what someone's worldview is for the purpose of understanding it and refuting it.

54:55

Now, here's the reason that many parents don't want to do that. At least nowadays, the Christian families, they're so afraid that, oh, if my children start engaging with Jehovah Witnesses and trying to understand the argument, they may believe it.

55:09

Right. The reality is, and I remember when I, my parents, after they found out

55:14

I was looking to go to seminary, they wanted me to go back to this Jewish psychiatrist and talk to him and, you know, see if he could set me straight.

55:22

And the other elders in my church were really concerned about it. They didn't want me to go. And I remember talking to one of the other pastors and I said, look, if this guy could talk me out of Christianity, because that's what he's afraid of.

55:35

You know, he might talk you out of things. If this guy could talk me out of Christianity, you do not want me as a leader in this church.

55:43

Oh, sure. It was me going back to the rabbi. And I said, I have no problem, or to the

55:48

Jewish psychiatrist. Yeah. I have no problem talking to the guy. Why? He's not going to convince me

55:54

Christianity is wrong because I know what I believe. The only way he can convince me that Christianity is wrong is if I'm not a believer.

56:02

That's a totally different issue. Right. Yeah. That would actually expose that I shouldn't be a pastor of a church.

56:08

If some Jewish psychiatrist can convince me otherwise. You should want me to know.

56:13

You were on track for pastoral ministry at this time. No, I was already, yeah, I was already in leadership of a church at that time.

56:20

Oh. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, not the preaching pastor, but the thing was that what ends up happening?

56:28

We are so afraid that if our children hear anything other than what we give them, they might not believe.

56:36

Yeah. As if we can make our children believe. Right. Okay, reality, God does that.

56:41

God brings us to repentance. So, don't worry, not your responsibility, just teach the truth.

56:48

But as parents, a lot of times we have that mindset. Well, it's better that your children know why they believe what they believe if they believe.

56:58

And so we should be asking them, why is this true? Why is Jesus Christ claimed to be

57:05

God? Where do we get that from? I remember when I first became a pastor of the Chinese church I pastored, they already had a retreat set up and so they had speakers that were there.

57:16

So, I wasn't going to be the speaker because it had already been decided before. Fine. I said, you know what, my wife and I, we're going to teach that.

57:22

We'll take the children. We have three days with the kids. What are you going to teach? I said, we're going to teach them the doctrine of the

57:27

Trinity. And one of the deacons is like, no, no, no, no, no, you can't teach children this. I said, yes, we can.

57:34

And they can understand it. And after three days, I did something. This is why I don't always win favor with people, right?

57:41

So, what I did was to pick up the kids, the parents were asked two questions. Can you define the

57:47

Trinity? Can you support it in scripture? You asked the parents this? I asked the parents this.

57:53

And when the parents went, I turned to their kids and said, can you help out mom and dad?

57:59

And so the kids would define the Trinity and then start giving biblical support for it. And the parents were like, what did everyone learn?

58:07

The kids, and we're talking kids between five and eight years old, could understand the definition of the

58:13

Trinity, could defend the definition of the Trinity, and can support it in argumentation.

58:20

And it only took three days of training to do that. And so the parents were like, our kids can't understand stuff.

58:26

Totally started changing the way we looked at youth group, by the way, because it wasn't like, hey, let's just do fun and games.

58:32

No, let's actually engage with the culture's arguments and see what they're saying.

58:38

Because the number one argument that's causing many to have problems now is not

58:44

Jehovah Witnesses, not whether Jesus is God. It's, well, if I love someone of the same sex, that's still love.

58:53

And that's captivating these young children right now, because they have never explained how to defend and define why homosexuality is a sin.

59:04

And so what happens is because we don't teach them to learn to define things, to ask good questions, to think the way others argue so that you can see what's wrong with it, because we don't do that as fathers, we don't train them in these other areas as well.

59:20

And so then when they look at this and go, well, hey, you know, I have a friend in school that loves another guy that's the same sex.

59:26

What's the problem? They're great people. And they think there's nothing wrong with it. Typically what happens is that happens in college.

59:32

Parents have kept them in secluded, not letting them hear anything other than Christianity, and then they get to college and hear everything else, or they get out of college and hear other things if they went to a

59:42

Christian college. Once they leave that bubble, it's like, oh, wait, I never thought about that.

59:47

You never want your children growing up and going, I never thought about that in an argument against Christianity.

59:53

You as a parent, dad, your job is to be the one to give him the arguments that Jehovah Witnesses make so that when they hear it from a

01:00:02

Jehovah Witness, it's not the first time they've heard it. Make the arguments that homosexuals make so that it's not the first time they've heard it.

01:00:12

And now you have helped guide them to an answer to refute it. Man, I like that.

01:00:17

We talked about jujitsu a little bit, but it reminds me of the fighting style of Muay Thai. You know, there's different fighting styles, of course.

01:00:26

And my understanding of Muay Thai, and by no means I'm an expert in it, but Muay Thai trains you to receive blows.

01:00:34

So you get hit in the shin over and over and over. You get hit in the trunk, even in the head.

01:00:41

And you know how to take these hits. And so when you go out and you're competing and you're in a fight and someone hits you, it's not the first time you've been hit.

01:00:50

Your bones, they've received many little micro breaks. They're callous.

01:00:57

They're callous. And we need that. It's like you go to lift. The first time you go back into the gym after a number of years, you might get blisters on your hands.

01:01:05

Your hands are all in pain. But after a month, you've got calluses on your hands.

01:01:12

And it's like we're doing that with our kids, right? We're training them to receive these questions.

01:01:18

They've dealt with the arguments. They've even wrestled with the uncertainty and the fear of not having an answer, like you mentioned with the parents and that kid's coming to pick up their kids.

01:01:31

Oh, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this. Well, those parents have now experienced that. They can go home.

01:01:36

They can study it. They can find that in Scripture. Now, when the Jehovah's Witness or the Mormon or the

01:01:41

Muslim comes and says, What about the Trinity? Man, they're ready. They're callous, if you will. They've got an immunity built up.

01:01:48

I know I'm mixing metaphors, but hopefully it stands. What I've done with some churches with youth groups is they have me come in because they don't have any idea who

01:01:57

I am. And I'll play the role of a Muslim or an atheist. And I will give the arguments that they're going to hear until they get stuck.

01:02:06

And when I get them all, you get them to the point where they don't know how to answer,

01:02:11

I go, Okay, now let me let you guys know I'm actually a Christian. Now let me give you how to answer every one of those arguments that I just made with you.

01:02:22

And I've done that a number of times. Why? Because sometimes when you get stuck like that, as a kid, you go,

01:02:29

I want to know how to answer this. And if you never engage with it,

01:02:34

Dad, if you never engage with this with your children, they never get stuck. They never have to think about that.

01:02:42

But when you're doing it in a controlled environment, in other words, you're in your home, you're controlling that.

01:02:48

You're controlling that conversation. You can ask that and have that exchange. That's much better than when they go on the street and hear it for the first time.

01:02:56

Because now that person keeps informing. I love a story that happened with my daughter.

01:03:03

So I was doing open air evangelism. We were in Washington Square Park in New York City. And we had been doing a week of evangelism.

01:03:10

I was doing a training up there. I'm up there doing open air. My daughter was like, Hey, Dad, before I started, she's like, Dad, is it okay if I just sit down?

01:03:17

She was just tired. It's been a long week. I said, Yeah, sure. So she sits down off behind me to my right.

01:03:23

And so I keep turning and looking to my right to check on her. And so this guy she's talking to, after 45 minutes of doing open air,

01:03:32

I walk over to her right away. And he goes, Is this your daughter? I said,

01:03:37

Yes, sir. He goes, When she gets older, she's going to write books, and I'll read them. I said, Really? What were you guys discussing?

01:03:43

He said, I don't want to talk to you. And he just got up and ran away. And so I'm like, Okay, hey, honey, what were you guys talking about?

01:03:51

And she's like, Well, he kept trying to argue that science proves that God doesn't exist.

01:03:57

And then when I get to college, I would learn these things and know that God doesn't exist. And she's like,

01:04:03

But I kept asking him, Well, have you been to college? And he goes, Yes, I have a master's degree. She goes,

01:04:08

Okay, well, I only have a high school degree in biology. How about you explain to me the biology, why this doesn't work?

01:04:16

He goes, When you get to college, you'll figure it out. She goes, But you said you went to college. You even have a master's degree. If you can't answer questions from a high school student, what did you learn?

01:04:26

She didn't bother going into all the debating of biology. By the way, she's got her degree in molecular biochemistry.

01:04:32

She could argue that. She didn't do that. She just said, Well, how about you explain it to me?

01:04:38

Well, if you can't explain it to me, why do you think someone else is going to? I have answers, and you don't seem to be able to provide answers.

01:04:46

Our theory was that he figured he couldn't answer the questions from a 16 -year -old. He didn't want to deal with that.

01:04:53

But she was trained for that. She was put in environments where I had no problem.

01:04:59

When we go on the streets and evangelize, I had no problem trusting that she could hold her own when she discusses with someone, and she's not going to hear something she hasn't heard before.

01:05:09

Why? She was trained for it at home. That's awesome, man. That is very inspiring. I mean, that's inspiring to me.

01:05:17

My kids are younger. My oldest is nine, and he's actually visiting the Ark Encounter and the

01:05:23

Creation Museum right now with my parents. He's been to the Ark. We took him to the Ark this spring, but they're going to do a two -day trip to the

01:05:30

Creation Museum as well. So he's interested in apologetics. All my kids are to different degrees, but my oldest is most like me and loves to debate, loves to argue.

01:05:41

So that's very inspiring to hear, and I'm sure it's going to be inspiring to a lot of the young dads who listen.

01:05:50

There's a lot of aspiring dads who listen, guys in their late 20s, early 30s. So I appreciate you sharing that.

01:05:56

Well, let me give a quick warning with it too. Okay, yeah, yeah, please. And that's this. We can train our children to debate, and debating for debate's sake isn't so good.

01:06:06

We want to train our children to evangelize. So in other words, we've got to train them that there's something more important than winning an argument, and it's the gospel.

01:06:15

Amen. Apologetics has to serve our evangelism. Correct. And you know what that gives us as parents? It gives us an opportunity to keep sharing the gospel with our children.

01:06:22

Yes. Right? And so we just keep explaining. Remember, we're not here to win this debate on atheism.

01:06:28

What's our goal again? The gospel. And what's the gospel? Have them reiterate it. Make sure they understand it so that they can explain it.

01:06:35

We have a lot of people who like to win debates. I will admit, there's a pride factor that we all have.

01:06:42

When we can win a debate, when you get someone, their mouth is stuck open, and they don't know what to say, oh, yeah,

01:06:48

I nailed that guy. We don't want to train our children for pride. We want to let them know that the purpose of the apologetics, the purpose of that is to shut the mouth of the ignorant so the gospel can go forth.

01:07:01

That's what we end up seeing in Titus. Paul tells Titus with the false teachers. The purpose is shut the mouth of the ignorant.

01:07:09

Amen. Okay. How can people follow your work and get in touch with you?

01:07:15

Well, they call you up. Because everything's together. Most of the stuff you can find is at strivingforeturning .org.

01:07:24

If you would like to follow the podcast, you can go to christianpodcastcommunity .org. I have several podcasts.

01:07:31

My Andrew Rapoport's Rap Report is, there's a daily that I haven't been doing as much.

01:07:36

That's a short one, but my hourly one that I do weekly, I still have been doing. I also have a podcast called

01:07:42

Apologetics Live. You can go to apologeticslive .com. It tells you how to join. If you have any questions, dad, child, anyone, if you have questions, don't know how to answer, your son asked you a question you didn't have an answer to, you can come to apologeticslive .com.

01:07:58

That's what it's for. We have people that join. Some people just ask their questions in the chat. We'll usually have some topic until people start coming in with questions, but we're there for that purpose.

01:08:09

I say, Joel, I can answer any question you have about God in the Bible, any question. I kind of believe that I don't know is actually a good answer.

01:08:20

Amen. Andrew, thanks so much for joining me, man. I really enjoyed it, appreciated the conversation.

01:08:25

There's going to be a lot, this is going to be one of those ones people are going to want to go back and listen to twice because there's a lot of information there.

01:08:30

It was very rich and I'm going to be posting it as a series of YouTube videos and then

01:08:36

I'll post the whole thing as an audio podcast. Always appreciate talking with you, brother.

01:08:42

Glad we finally got to do this and let's do it again sometime. Maybe next time at Cruciform, we'll do one live together.

01:08:49

I'll hold you to it. Absolutely. I definitely don't think I want to do any jiu -jitsu with you since you've been starting up.

01:08:55

I felt those arms when I grabbed you the one time. I was like, okay, he's got some strength behind this. Listen, man, listen.

01:09:01

What does the Bible say about flattery? I don't think it's a good thing. No, it was pretty truthful.

01:09:08

Pretty truthful. There's a lot of people I wouldn't want to roll with. Vodie Bachum, for one. That's the one we can agree on right there.

01:09:16

Yeah. That's true. I also can see what you're doing right now. It's the same thing

01:09:21

I used to do when I was on the wrestling team in high school. When I had a younger guy who was going to challenge me for the varsity spot,

01:09:27

I would go to him and I'd go, you know what, man? I'm really not feeling it today. I've been watching your practice.

01:09:33

You're looking tough out there. I don't do that. No, no, no. When I had a guy come in,

01:09:38

I had an 18 -year -old that wrestled nationals, or wrestled state, sorry. He came into the gym.

01:09:45

I'm an old man. See, the reason I don't do my Muay Thai is because I'm old. I can't take those hits. That's why

01:09:51

I do jiu -jitsu, okay? But I had this 18 -year -old. I'm like, dude, dude, relax, relax. This is a gentle art.

01:09:58

It's easy. Control. He just wouldn't, so it came time for a live roll. I told him, I said, look, you're going to hurt me, so I'm going to put you out.

01:10:06

And I just literally, I grabbed his gi, I grabbed his leg, I pulled him, I just got on top of him, and I lied on him for eight minutes.

01:10:13

He's wiggling, wiggling, wiggling, trying to get out. He was completely exhausted after eight minutes, and I said, okay, are we done?

01:10:19

Because once the buzzer went off, I said, how much energy do you exert? He has his arms out on each side.

01:10:24

He's exhausted. He's like, oh, I'm so tired. I'm like, how much energy did I exert? He's like, same.

01:10:29

I said, no, I exerted none. I said, right now, I could rip your arm off and beat you over the head with it, and there's nothing you could do to stop me because you're too tired.

01:10:36

This is the difference between wrestling and jiu -jitsu. Gentle. It's control.

01:10:42

So, no, I'm not going to boost you up so that I could then, no, that's not my style.

01:10:48

If I think I can take you, I'll tell you. I'm going to beat you up. So, there's this phrase.

01:10:55

You've got to go. I've got to let you go here, but there's this term that I've come up with. I've got to figure out how to turn it into an apologetic method or ministry or program or something, but I want to take the principles of jiu -jitsu and apply them to apologetics, and I want to call it apologitsu.

01:11:11

So, I know that's corny, but I think it might have some leg. It could work. It might work.

01:11:17

I'll get you in touch with the right person to work that through with. Sounds good. All right, brother. Until next time.

01:11:23

Thanks again. Thanks so much for having me. I really like everything that you do. I enjoy the ministry that God has put you in and how he's been using you.

01:11:32

It's great when we get to be together and speak at conferences together, so I really look forward to seeing what

01:11:37

God's going to do through you. I got you, brother. Appreciate you. Talk to you later. Thanks. Okay.

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