February 15, 2018 Show with Brad Harrub on “Atheism’s Attack on America”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet

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Earth, listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 15th day of February 2018.

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First of all, let me thank the nearly 500 of you that sent me birthday greetings yesterday.

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I turned 56 yesterday and it was, the blow was cushioned by the graciousness and the kindness of so many of you who submitted birthday greetings for me.

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I thank you very much. I apologize if I overlooked thanking anyone, but there were so many, and I was having technical difficulties on the computer yesterday.

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So if I did not thank you yesterday, let me take this time to thank you now from the very bottom of my heart, because it does indeed mean a lot to me that so many of you listen to this program from all over the world, and in all 50 states and over 30 different foreign countries, and it gives me the motivation that I need to keep going on on this program, and I thank you so much in word,

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I cannot come up with the words to adequately describe in the English language how much you who listen to this program mean to me, and I hope that you continue to listen, and I hope the

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Lord continues to see fit to keep this program on the air. Also, I want to ask of you all to obviously pray for the families and friends and loved ones of the victims of the massacre in Parkland, Florida, and obviously yesterday we made no mention of it, because I did not even know it had occurred when

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I went on the air live, so please obviously pray for those loved ones and friends and neighbors of the victims.

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Pray that the Lord uses this tragedy, this horrific nightmare, to his praise, honor, and glory by leading many of those surviving family members to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and that they may receive the peace that surpasses all understanding, even in light of a horrific, indescribable loss.

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And tomorrow, actually, we are going to have as our guest tomorrow, Friday the 16th of February, for two hours we're going to be interviewing,

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God willing, Stephan Bomberger, who is a local pastor near Parkland, Florida, and he is going to be, basically, addressing the issues of how this has personally affected his congregation, because apparently it did directly affect his congregation.

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And we'll also be hearing a biblical lesson in the midst of this nightmare from Pastor Stephan, God willing.

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We are still in the process of wrapping things up for that interview tomorrow, so make sure you tune in for that broadcast.

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Today, we are very honored to have a first -time guest here on Iron Sherpins Iron.

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His name is Brad Hurub, Dr. Brad Hurub, and he is going to be speaking at a local

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Bible conference here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I've gotten to know Chris Krotz, the minister of the

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Carlisle Church of Christ, for the last couple of years. He has been so gracious and generous with his time to volunteer, absolutely free of charge, to be my photographer at my recent

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Iron Sherpins Iron radio minister's luncheons, and also the theological debate that I arranged over at the

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Carlisle Theater right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania between Dr.

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Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary and Robert St. Genes, who is a Roman Catholic apologist.

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They debated on the immaculate conception and sinlessness of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Chris Krotz was a photographer there and at other events that I've had.

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In fact, he told me that the catalyst for him having this upcoming conference with Brad Hurub was because of the pastor's luncheon that I had with Dr.

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Tony Costa. He was so impressed with Dr. Costa, he wanted to have a conference of his own that would address similar themes, and Dr.

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Brad Hurub earned his BS in biology from Kentucky Wesleyan College and earned his doctorate degree in anatomy and neurobiology from the

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College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. He was listed in Who's Who among scientists and researchers, conducts over 40

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Truth About Origins weekend seminars each year, and is the author of the book,

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Convicted, a Scientist Examines the Evidence for Christianity, and today we are going to be specifically addressing one of the themes at the upcoming conference here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which is on the title of that conference is

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What is Truth? One of the subtitles of that conference that we will discuss today is

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Atheism's Attack on America, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr.

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Brad Hurub. Well, thank you, Chris, and happy belated birthday to you. I appreciate that.

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Well, before we even go into the theme at hand, Atheism's Attack on America, let me give our email address for any of you who would like to join us on the air with a question of your own.

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Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous if the question involves a personal and private matter.

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But we look forward to receiving your questions at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Well, Brad, before we move on to the theme, Atheism's Attack on America, I would like you to give us an overall view or an overview of convicted a scientist examines the evidence for Christianity.

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So, several years ago, I wrote a book. I speak, like you said, about 40 weekends a year, and each weekend

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I would have college students, parents, ethics folks coming up to me saying, hey, where can

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I get all of this information? Or maybe it was a parent that was saying, my child is really struggling.

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They need evidence. So I sat down to write a book that was coming at Christianity from a more evidentiary method, looking at things like how can we prove there's a

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God? How can we prove the Bible's inspired? All the way up through things like, how do the dinosaurs fit into this thing?

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Or what about evidence for a global flood? Or fossil man? So it took me about two and a half years, poured a whole lot of my heart, soul, and research into that thing, and it's done rather well.

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Praise God for that. It's always good to hear someone from the science, the scientific world, that truly believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, who truly believes in the truths claimed in those scriptures, and who is, in fact, a

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Christian and disciple of Jesus Christ, and that's convicted. A scientist examines the evidence for Christianity.

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Tell us before, I just want to prevent myself from forgetting how, forgetting to tell our listeners how they can get a copy of that book before the end of the program.

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Absolutely. The easiest way is just to go on to our website, focuspress .org. Focuspress .org,

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great. And we'll be giving you also more information about the What is Truth conference occurring locally here on March 2nd and 3rd in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Well, atheism's attack on America, that is an interesting theme, and this has been going on for quite some time, especially beginning,

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I believe, with Madeleine Murray O 'Hare in the 1960s. Absolutely.

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If you could trace something about the history of atheism's attack on America.

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So if we were to build a timeline and look at what's happened in America just during the lifetime of individuals who are listening, you know, obviously we could go way back to 1859,

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Charles Darwin kicking off his book there, kind of founding this whole area of evolution.

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That's too far back. So if we were to focus more on what's happened during our lifetime.

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In 1950, the national government got involved in the topic of origins, man's origins.

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They formed the National Science Foundation, and those who can remember, who are living around that time, you may remember that we were actually in a race in space with the

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Russians. 1957, we got beat by Sputnik, and so all of a sudden there was lots of pressure to produce more scientists, better scientists, and at that time,

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President Eisenhower's advisors came to him and they said, look, we've got to scrap the way we're teaching science.

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We need to go with what these other countries are using. We need to get rid of God and creation.

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We need to go with evolution. Now, they based that particular advice on the countries of China, Germany, and Russia.

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Unfortunately, Eisenhower listened to them. He went ahead and actually asked for a billion dollars to change the way that we teach science in America.

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This was in 1959. So 1959, he gets a billion dollars to revamp the way we're teaching about man's origins.

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Two years later, the Supreme Court comes out and says, no more prayer in schools.

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The following year, as you just mentioned, Madeleine Murray O 'Hare was able to successfully kick out

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Bible reading in schools. So if you think about it for just a minute, what's going on is, at the same time we're injecting a godless theory, we are also systematically removing

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God from the classroom. In fact, by 1968, the state of Arkansas was told, you must teach human evolution.

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You don't really have a choice. Fast forward to, oh, let's see, about the end of the 1960s when we passed the no -fault divorce law in our country, which basically says, hey, you can get a divorce over anything, and what you get is you get the perfect recipe for the breakdown of the home and the breakdown of our education system.

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Since that time, what we have seen is an extraordinary rise in things like premarital sex, violent crime.

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When you look across all of these graphs, and I'll actually be showing some of this information during my presentation, but when you look at what our culture has been doing since 1959, we have obviously abandoned

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God, his morals, his principles, and are very quickly going towards what we saw yesterday in Florida.

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And we already have a listener question. We have

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CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, and he says,

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I share your outrage that Christianity and the

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Bible were kicked out of the public school system to a degree. The reason why

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I have some hesitancy is that I have a very strict position on theology and doctrine, and I would not want a public school teacher who does not share those convictions to be teaching my children anything.

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In fact, that is why I think that Christians should also be sending their children, whenever at all possible, to Christian schools that reflect their own beliefs.

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What does your guest have to say about that? So I would actually agree in some aspects in that, for instance,

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I don't want a Muslim teacher teaching my child how to pray. I understand that.

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But here's where I think maybe we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. The pendulum has swung so far away from anything religious, anything

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God -like, that we now cannot even question this godless theory that's called evolution.

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So they've said, no, we don't want you teaching creation. We don't want you reading the Bible. We don't want you praying.

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We want to get rid of all of that stuff. And oh, by the way, we have this new theory that we don't even want you to question or bring up alternatives to.

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And so what I would say to the caller is this. To me, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a body of students who is willing to take a moment and recognize a higher power.

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Because if there's anything that our society needs right now, let's be honest, we have one of the most narcissistic generations coming up right now who, deep down, they don't want to bend the knee to anybody.

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So maybe pausing for a few minutes every morning to acknowledge the fact that, hey, there is something out there.

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You may call it one thing, I may call it another, but there is definitely something out there who is bigger than all of us, would at least plant a seed in the hearts and the minds of young people.

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And it would also help us to build a moral code that has a true north on the compass.

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Because right now, when you take away God, you don't have any kind of a bearing on a moral compass.

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Yes, and I think that where I would agree with you is that this be a voluntary thing that has no teacher.

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I'm talking about a public school system that has no teacher leading it. I am all in favor of Christians having

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Bible clubs. I am all in favor of Christians being given opportunity to have moments of silent prayer.

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But I do have a kinship with our listener that to have any person who is not a

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Christian leading a prayer with your children, to me, it is outside the bounds of what

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Christian conduct would be in the Scriptures. And let me throw this out there too,

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Chris. One of the dirty little secrets that nobody's talking about is, you know, we keep hearing this concept of separation of church and state.

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I'm not going to get into the specifics of why that is a poor rendering of the original and where that actually came from.

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But I do want to point out the fact that the high court has actually acknowledged atheism as a religion.

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It is a belief system. Now, they may not have a creed book like you and I do, but the bottom line is the high court says, hey, that's a religion.

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So it's really disturbing to me that that particular religion gets a front row seat in the classroom.

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And Christianity, not only do we not get a back row seat, we don't even get to get our foot in the door.

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Yes, I agree with you. Atheism is a religion because it involves teachings about God.

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It involves teachings about theology. They would not necessarily call it that, but that's what it is nonetheless.

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Absolutely. And it's definitely a belief system. It is a worldview system. And it is somewhat frightening when you think about it.

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First of all, I think that atheists, whenever they tell anybody in the world from their from their podiums in the media, whenever they tell anyone in the world that they are wrong about something, they really have no basis in doing so unless they are borrowing from a

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Christian worldview or something, because you cannot determine right and wrong if you believe that we are just evolved bags of protoplasm.

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Absolutely. And in fact, my friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, I orchestrated a debate with him and the current president of Madeleine Murray O 'Hara's organization,

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American Atheists. I orchestrated a debate between them and the theme was, is the

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New Testament evil? And when Dr. White brought up the very thing that I just brought up to you, that atheists really have no business declaring anything to be good or evil because they have no basis on which to form those opinions other than their own imaginations or unless they are borrowing from the worldviews of others.

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And the opponent of Dr. White, the president of American Atheists, said that morality is determined by whatever the majority of people think in any given geographic area in any given era of time.

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Which I guess that means the Holocaust was okay. Exactly what Dr. White said, and he even went as far, and David Silverman, by the way, who is the president of American Atheists, he is ethnically

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Jewish, and Dr. White said to him, so if you are being marched through the gates of a death camp during the

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Holocaust, the most you could say in protest to this is, I find this personally offensive.

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And David Silverman said, yes, he agreed. Wow, wow. But basically, they really have no basis to tell us what is right or wrong or good or evil.

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Absolutely not, because I asked a college professor, why is rape wrong?

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If evolution is true, there is no God, and all we're trying to do is pass our genes off to the next generation.

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If it's all about survival of the fittest, then what in the world would make rape wrong? And after stuttering and stammering for a long bit of time, he said, well, you know, realistically, it comes down to what is our opinion of right or wrong?

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And I said, who gets to make the choice? Ultimately, whose opinion matters?

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Amen. By the way, thank you, C .J. and Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. You have won a free copy of Convicted, a

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Scientist Examines the Evidence for Christianity by our guest, Dr. Brad Harab. So please make sure we have your full mailing address in Lindenhurst, New York.

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So cvbbs .com, our sponsors, can ship that out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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We have a listener in Slovenia, Joe in Slovenia, who says, thank you for your daily commitment to edifying the body of Christ via radio.

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What advice does Dr. Harab have for Christians who are teaching in the public school systems, especially for those teaching science?

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What can they legally do to promote creationism and the gospel in the classroom in natural yet creative ways?

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Thank you for your dedicated service to our King. It's a great question, and let me start by pointing out they do have their work cut out for them.

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To a teacher recently who was being chastised by the administration because they'd brought a child in and said, okay, this child is transgendered, wants to be called by a boy name, even though it was very obviously a young little girl.

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And they said, you know, from here on out, you're going to have to use female pronouns. So you've got all kinds of just crazy challenges ahead.

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Looking specifically, if we narrow down specifically to the realm of science, it is not wrong for a teacher to say something to the effect of the textbook says this.

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However, I disagree with it. Because what you've just done is you have put that student on alert that, number one, you don't buy into everything that's in the textbooks.

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Number two, you've given them kind of a green light to consider other alternatives.

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You ask for specific examples, you know, what can we do? I always encourage teachers, if there are extra credit opportunities, if there are writing research opportunities, make sure that some of those opportunities dive into creation.

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You know, ask the students, hey, if you want a couple extra points, do a research paper on intelligent design, or do a research paper on irreducible complexity, or why evolving a cell, a living cell from non -living material, makes absolutely no sense.

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Or do a research paper on where the original matter for the universe came from.

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Because what you're ultimately going to do is you'll strengthen the faith of that young person when they see, and there's a lot of stuff that this evolution thing cannot answer.

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Yeah, you're right. Well, thank you Joe in Slovenia, and also thank you for giving us an American address so it will be much more affordable for CVBBS .com

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to ship you a free copy of the book that has been written by our guest Dr. Brad Harob.

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Convicted, a scientist examines the evidence for Christianity. Thank you again, and have your daughter let you know when it arrives in the mail there in Georgia where she lives.

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And we always look forward to your excellent questions all the way from Slovenia, Joe. We have another listener from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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I'm sorry, it's not Harrisburg, it's Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. And the listener's name is Harrison, Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

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And Harrison says, which came first, your Christianity or your love for science and the accomplished degrees that you have earned?

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Ah, great question. I'll back up and start this way. My parents always instilled in me a definite belief in God.

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That was never ever a question in our house. I did not really come to a full knowledge of the truth about Christianity and have my own convictions, my own belief system until I was probably, oh, very late teens, early 20s.

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That was when I was asking questions, you know, why do we do certain things? Why do we observe certain things?

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Realized the truth at that point was still an undergrad doing just a biology chemistry route.

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Ended up going into a program at the

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University of Tennessee Neuroscience Center. We were studying primarily

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Alzheimer's and Parkinson's model and looking at different things to help that nerve growth factors.

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And the bottom line is the more I studied, the more I realized there has to be a

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God. There's no way you can get a nerve cell by chance. There's no way that you can conduct a nerve signal by chance.

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And then the more I studied in medical school and we started taking just a cell apart by itself and you start looking at ion gated channels and voltage gated channels and all of the complexity that goes along with that, you realize this is so far off the chart of chance and, you know, anything that would evolve that this is the handiwork of God.

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And so it was actually a situation where the more I studied, the deeper and stronger my faith got.

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Yes, I find the same to be true of history. It's interesting.

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The more I learn of science, the more I'm convinced I am a Christian. Not the other way around as the secular world would have us think, but also the more

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I learn of history, the more I am convinced. Unlike what my

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Roman Catholic friends have to say, there is a famous quote by Cardinal Newman, who was a convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.

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And he said, to be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant. And I believe that he is very, very wrong.

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The more I learn of history, the more I'm convinced that the Roman Catholic Church has seriously departed from the truths of the scripture.

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But anyway, well, thank you very much for your question,

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Harrison, and please make sure we have your full mailing address so cvbbs .com can ship you the free copy of Convicted, A Scientist Examines the

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Evidence for Christianity that you have won today for submitting your excellent question. We're going to be going to our first station break right now.

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If anybody else would like to join us, we still have a couple of people on the line waiting to ask a question. But if anybody else would like to join them, please send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence in your country of residence.

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If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

29:39

Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Dr. Brad Harab and more of our discussion on atheism's attack on America.

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If you mention Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. Well, we are back now with our discussion with Dr.

36:23

Brad Harrab. He is going to be involved in a Bible conference on March 2nd and March 3rd right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

36:32

The theme is, What is Truth? And that's on Friday, March 2nd and Saturday, March 3rd here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the

36:44

Carlisle Church of Christ. And as I said before, the minister there, Chris Kratz, has become a friend and has been my volunteer photographer.

36:53

He's a professional photographer, obviously a bivocational minister, and he has been providing us with his services free of charge when we have special events here in Carlisle, and we thank the

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Lord for him. And if you want more details on this conference, go to carlislecofc .org,

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and the subtitles under the major theme, What is Truth, are

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Atheism's Attack on America, the Christian Worldview versus the

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Secular Worldview, and Is the Bible a Good Book? Can We Prove God Exists?,

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and The Problem of Evil, Pain, and Suffering. Those are the six subheadings of the major theme,

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What is Truth? And there's also going to be free meals Friday at 6 p .m.

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and Saturday at 12 noon. So bring an open mind and an appetite to this conference, and I'm assuming it's absolutely free because there's no mention.

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It's absolutely free. Great. And that's, once again, carlislecofc .org

38:14

is the website to find out more details. I think that where we left off actually lends itself to one of the other themes that you're going to be speaking on at the conference, a

38:29

Christian worldview versus a secular worldview. If you could explain both of those worldviews to us.

38:36

Absolutely. So, Chris, as you know, a worldview is kind of the lens that we perceive everything, and it is shaped by things like our education, our life experiences, all the different inputs that we have.

38:53

But what your listeners need to realize is your worldview doesn't just affect your religious beliefs.

39:00

It also affects things like politics, the way you view history, everything from biology, law, everything is affected by your worldview.

39:15

And so a person with a Christian worldview is looking at everything through the lens of God's word.

39:24

Someone with a secular worldview looks at things through the lens of what basically the world is saying is correct or right.

39:34

You know, there's a lot, and I'm sure you probably, given your background with history and your love for it, you are probably more aware than I am of how our society has shifted from truth -seeking to going by emotion.

39:53

You know, today everything is emotion -driven. How does that make me feel? Well, at the end of the day, there is nothing that is the foundation of emotion.

40:06

And so somebody with a biblical worldview says, okay, I know there's a lot of emotion about certain topics, like, for instance, abortion.

40:16

But what does, let's lay all of the emotion aside, and let's ask the question, what does the

40:22

Bible say? You know, what does the Bible say regarding when life begins? How does

40:27

God view life to begin? And it's through that lens that you then say, okay, here's where I'm going to stand.

40:36

Here's how I'm going to approach that particular topic. Here's how I'm going to look at everything.

40:42

So we'll get into quite a bit on that, and we'll also talk a little bit about some of the historical things that have really changed things.

40:53

You know, this country used to not shy away from the concept of God. Obviously, we have it on our currency, a lot of our national monuments.

41:04

But now, today, in 2018, it is almost viewed as criminal.

41:10

You know, it's a very threatening thing for people to have public displays of any kind of allegiance to God.

41:19

And so we'll touch on quite a bit of that as well. Great.

41:24

Do you think that all too often, Christians, or especially those who are professing to be

41:31

Christians, naively or unconsciously behave as if they are operating through the lenses of a secular worldview rather than a

41:43

Christian one or biblical? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think Christians in America—I've been blessed to kind of do my work all over the world—I think

41:54

Christians in America are more influenced by the world than they really think about.

42:01

And I think one of the things that has really plagued Christianity is affluence.

42:07

You know, when you look at the everyday person in your neighborhood, they've got a nice -sized house, two -car garage, a couple of cars, 401K, and in the back of their mind, they're basically saying, you know what?

42:23

I don't really need anything. I don't need God. Maybe if I get cancer,

42:29

I'll look you up, but otherwise I'm okay. And they don't realize that all of that is just material stuff.

42:38

And add to that, the common person in the pew is ingesting hours and hours of media, usually either through the internet or through television that is secular -based, that is promoting kind of an immoral culture.

42:56

And you start to realize, hey, we've been infected with this secular worldview, even in Christianity.

43:06

Yeah, I get the very strong opinion from people that I talk with.

43:12

I've been in the Christian media since the mid -1980s. I've met a lot of different people who profess to be

43:19

Christian and a lot of different types of fellowships, brotherhoods, denominations, sex, and all kinds of things.

43:27

But I very often get the strong impression that if you really are to be nice to people and friendly and kind and good, you really can't operate from a biblical worldview.

43:41

In other words, it's kinder to treat people other than the

43:48

Bible might lead you to. And that is really remarkable to me. But in fact, actually there is some truth in that.

43:55

I don't think that we are always meant to be nice because if you are really looking out for the absolute best of any individual, which of course involves their eternity, you're not always going to be nice.

44:11

You should never add insult through your own personality to the gospel because the gospel itself is guaranteed to insult the unbeliever.

44:25

But don't you think that people are far more concerned about being nice than they are being truthful? Absolutely. We have hit the point where Christians are avoiding any kind of controversy or conflict, and we have this messed up mentality that maybe we can love them to the gospel, which if you know anything at all about the

44:49

Bible and what Jesus did, at some point there has to come that day where you say, you know what, buddy?

44:57

You're lost. You are in sin, and there has to be that godly sorrow in their heart to go, wow,

45:08

I need to make some changes. I need to do something about this. And I think, you know, in modern -day

45:15

Christianity, we've kind of hit this cotton -candy, love -fluffy thing where we think we can avoid talking about sin, and Jesus' main sermon was to repent.

45:31

And one thing that has troubled me greatly when I watch the news every day is that there is being promoted by the left a hypersensitivity over language that even if things are being said with the best of intentions, perhaps they're clumsily worded, perhaps not, perhaps people are just violating a specific code of vocabulary that the left has demanded of us.

46:05

But the immediate reaction toward many people, even if they are far from being racists or misogynists, is that they are guilty of those crimes.

46:16

Oh, you're a racist because you've said this. Oh, you're a misogynist because you've said that. This really has driven people to be terrified to speak openly about many things and about many subjects.

46:28

And it's quite an interesting thing, because liberals throughout the history of this country were always accusing, and I think at times rightly accusing, the conservatives and those on the right over being the thought police.

46:42

Now there seems to be a radical reversal in that, a 180 -degree reversal. Am I right on this?

46:49

I think you're right. But I think eventually that may come back to bite them.

46:56

Yes. You can only go so far with that mentality before it's like, wait a second, where does that put you?

47:05

Exactly. I actually posted something on Facebook recently in regard to the toppling of confederate monuments.

47:16

And I can only wonder, because of this frenzy that the left is in right now, when we will reach a point when the monuments of great black men of history may be toppled, because they may have had views regarding gender roles that were not egalitarian.

47:39

They may be viewed as misogynist and chauvinist. And then you may have the homosexual activists toppling great monuments or monuments to great women of history, because these women may have held to a biblical understanding of marriage being confined to one man and one woman, and even sexuality being confined to one man and one woman for life.

48:01

Absolutely. And so where does this stop? Because the folks who they may be holding up today as icons, the reality is in five years from now, those folks may be guilty of some thought police crime that we're going to have to topple that one as well.

48:23

So yeah, I'm right there with you. We've hit a point where it's almost lunacy and everything is driven by emotion.

48:33

And not just emotion, it's my emotion. What you think is fine, but what

48:39

I think is what really defines the argument and really defines everything.

48:47

And so individualistic narcissism is just,

48:54

I think it's really going to take its toll on this country if we don't start using some common sense and logic.

49:02

Yeah. And one thing that we were talking about, how Christians sometimes naively operate as if they are looking through the lenses of a secular worldview.

49:12

Too many American Christians have a twisted and unhistoric understanding of exactly what separation of church and state really means.

49:24

That is not in the constitution. The only thing that's in the constitution that remotely resembles that is that this country shall not establish a religion.

49:34

But was not the separation of church and state credo developed from Thomas Jefferson's trying to appease or calm the anxiety of Baptists who were fearful?

49:51

Absolutely. He wrote a letter to the Baptist, the Danbury Convention, saying, hey, look, there will be a separation of church and state, basically trying to reassure them we're not going to encroach on what you're doing.

50:06

Right. We've now completely flipped that thing. You know, rather than it being that we have the free exercise to practice the

50:18

Christian religion and that the government is not going to encroach on that, they've now flipped it to where religion cannot encroach on the government in any way.

50:31

And whether that's a public square, whether that's a library, whether that's anything. And, you know, at this point, we're way, way past that.

50:39

As you know, Chris, we're now looking at suing bakers and florists and photographers.

50:45

And if folks do not think that the government is going to get involved in their organized religion, they probably need to take a major wake -up call.

50:58

Because, you know, things like 501c3s and tax -deductible contributions are hanging in the balance as to whether or not, you know, if let's say that we passed something off as hate speech, does that mean that if a certain group of people get up and preach against it, are they going to lose their 501c3 tax -deductible status?

51:26

Yes, and you know that whole thing, that whole scenario was a canard.

51:33

They were doing this, the homosexuals. And I hate to identify people that way, because homosexual is not a people group, it's a behavior.

51:45

Homosexuality is a behavior. But the people that were suing the bakery, and there's no doubt more than one bakery that's been sued for this, but you know that they planned this because, number one, why on earth, especially when it comes to an edible product, would you want somebody making something for you that has got a polar opposite view of what you are requiring?

52:12

You're asking this cake for a ceremony that they despise, and why on earth would you want them to make it in the first place, especially when there are thousands of bakeries that would be more than happy to make any kind of a cake for you?

52:29

And no doubt, it's interesting that there were no homosexual activists protesting that they did not look for a homosexual -owned bakery.

52:39

Right, isn't it interesting that the Muslims haven't been targeted for not making, and you know, obviously their stance against it is, to me, even a whole lot stronger.

52:55

They're more, quite a bit more militant, and yet they get left alone. Right, but we have to go to our midway break right now.

53:02

This is the longer break that we have because Grace Life Radio, 91 .3

53:07

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break between our two hours, so please be patient with us.

53:15

This is about approximately 10 minutes in length, 10 to 12 minutes. Please hang in there and take this time to get in line and ask a question of our guest,

53:25

Dr. Brad Harub. Send that to or send those questions to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

53:33

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and as always, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

53:43

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

53:49

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back after this break with more of Dr. Brad Harub and atheism's attack on America.

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Iron Sharpens today. Welcome back, and before we return to our discussion with Dr.

01:04:44

Brad Harab on atheism's attack on America, we have some important announcements to make.

01:04:50

First of all, the event that involves our guest, Dr. Brad Harab, that is the

01:04:58

What is Truth conference, is going to be held March 2nd and March 3rd at the

01:05:03

Carlisle Church of Christ right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on Walnut Bottom Road, and the event begins on Friday, March 2nd, covering the themes of atheism's attack on America, our subject today,

01:05:18

Christian worldview versus secular worldview, and then on Saturday, the themes will be, is the

01:05:26

Bible just a good book, can we prove God exists, and the problem of evil, pain, and suffering.

01:05:33

The Friday sessions are at 7 p .m. and 8 p .m., and the Saturday sessions are at 10 a .m., 11 a .m.,

01:05:39

and 1 p .m., and that's March 2nd and the 3rd. Registration is absolutely free of charge, and there are free meals

01:05:48

Friday at 6 p .m. and Saturday at 12 noon. If you want more information on this event and how to register absolutely free of charge, go to carlislecofc .org,

01:06:00

carlislecofc .org. And also, coming up in April, one of my favorite events to attend, the

01:06:11

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology is coming up, although it is not being held in Philadelphia and hasn't been for quite a while.

01:06:21

It's being named Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, I believe, merely for sentimental reasons, because this conference began decades ago at the 10th

01:06:34

Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, who is now spending eternity with our

01:06:41

Lord, but I remember those days well visiting 10th Presbyterian Church. But now the event is being held at two locations.

01:06:51

The first is the First Christian Reform Church of Byron Center, Michigan, and that's April 13th through the 15th.

01:06:58

The second, one closer to home here, is Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and that's

01:07:05

April 27th through the 28th. The plenary speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, and one of my favorite preachers, maybe the most powerful living preacher anywhere in the world,

01:07:18

Dr. Conrad Mbewe of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, who's been a friend of mine since 1995.

01:07:26

He alone is worth the trip to go to the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

01:07:32

And another friend of mine, Dr. Richard Phillips, is also on the roster. Workshop speakers include

01:07:37

Jonathan Master, David Murray, and Scott Oliphant. If you'd like to register, go to alliancenet .org,

01:07:45

alliancenet .org. By the way, the theme of the conference this year is the

01:07:50

Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit. I think it actually dovetails with our theme for today on Iron Sherpa's Iron.

01:08:01

And so if you'd like to register, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, click on Events, and then go to Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, 2018, and the

01:08:10

Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit. Please tell my friends at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about these events in April from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.

01:08:24

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01:11:01

And now we are back with our guest, Dr. Brad Harab and our discussion, the atheism's attack upon America.

01:11:10

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

01:11:16

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence. Dr. Harab, we have some more questions for you from our listeners.

01:11:24

All right. We have a Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and that's

01:11:29

Tony with an I, a female Tony. And she says the public school system is of the world.

01:11:37

The world is going to act like the world. Pagans act like pagans. They celebrate sin and depravity.

01:11:43

They promote anything that contradicts God, such as evolution. I believe Paul warns the Corinthians about judging the world while tolerating sin in the church.

01:11:52

1 Corinthians 5, 12 through 13. Which brings me to my question. There are multitudes of so -called theistic evolutionists determined to convince the church that Darwinian evolution is compatible with the

01:12:05

Bible. This is a blasphemous lie of the devil, because the Genesis creation account is the foundation of the cross.

01:12:13

Evolution's so -called fossil record says death existed millions of years before a fully formed man.

01:12:20

But believers know that sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam, a fully formed man.

01:12:25

Many of these evolutionary heretics in the church will even claim to believe in a literal

01:12:31

Adam in an effort to sell their blasphemous theory. Should we really grieve the public school system accepting these theories when it is all over the church?

01:12:44

Shouldn't that be the outrage? And Dr. Howard? Wow. Let me first thank

01:12:50

Toni for her question and kind of throw in an amen that theistic evolution is plaguing both the church and the world.

01:13:02

Bottom line is, if you compromise the opening chapters of God's word, you've basically just called into question the rest of it.

01:13:11

And without a garden, without a literal Adam and Eve, without sin in the garden, then what need was there for a redeemer?

01:13:22

I would point your listeners to a couple of verses for, because I know there's always folks out there who think, well, maybe we can squeeze millions of years into this thing.

01:13:35

A couple of things to think about. The first is that Jesus clearly said in Mark chapter 10, verse 6, and Matthew chapter 19, that there were males and females here from the beginning of creation.

01:13:53

There is no way you can harmonize any kind of big bang cosmology with that idea that man was here from the beginning.

01:14:03

In fact, evolution has man coming in at the very, very pale end. Add to that, that according to scripture, there were plants here before there were any heavenly bodies out in space, before the sun, the moon, the stars.

01:14:21

I'm sorry, there's just no way you can harmonize that with this idea of millions and millions of years.

01:14:29

Now I do know some folks would like to stretch out the days, but the easiest way around that, the easiest way to look at that is, those plants were created on day three.

01:14:40

They've got to have sunlight. They've got to have water, the right atmosphere. But almost every plant, all flowering plants that we know of, have to be pollinated.

01:14:51

You know, those little honeybees that start coming out here in about a month that drive some people crazy, they actually serve a purpose in God's creative activities.

01:15:02

All of the flying creatures, according to scripture, were created on day five.

01:15:09

So if we take the position that each one of these days was millions of years, what you're saying is,

01:15:15

God put the plants here, and we had to wait two million years before they could ever be pollinated.

01:15:25

That is illogical, and it just is not going to work. You know, a much, much easier way to look at it is,

01:15:34

God said it, He's able to communicate to us, and that's how it happened. So I definitely do believe in a literal six -day creation.

01:15:45

I think the rest of scripture also believes in that. In fact, I've challenged groups before, told them, you know, if you don't really believe it, then what you need to do is go home and take your scissors, cut out every

01:16:00

New Testament book that refers back to the opening chapters of Genesis as real and historical.

01:16:07

Because after all, if it didn't happen, then we should call those into question. If you do that, you would only be left with three books.

01:16:16

That would be 2nd and 3rd John and the book of Phileas. Which, you know,

01:16:21

Chris, it would make reading the Bible through pretty easy in a year. But it would also totally mess up the entire scheme of redemption.

01:16:34

Sounds something like what Thomas Jefferson did to the Bible in regard to miracles and supernatural occurrences.

01:16:40

That's right. Anything he didn't like, he just cut out. Well, thank you so much,

01:16:46

Tony. And we need your full mailing address in Rock Hill, South Carolina, because you have also won a free copy of Dr.

01:16:55

Harub's book, Convicted. So please make sure you get that to us, so that cvbbs .com

01:17:01

can mail you a free copy of the book at no expense to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:17:08

And we thank you for your contribution today with an excellent, excellent question slash comment.

01:17:15

And keep spreading the word about the show in South Carolina and beyond. We have a first -time questioner from Rome, New York.

01:17:24

And that's Charlie in Rome, New York. And he says, How can we convince brothers and sisters in Christ that we need to inject our morality into politics instead of living with a two -kingdom theology?

01:17:42

By this I mean, it is the bent of some Christians to be entirely secular when dealing with politics.

01:17:51

Thank you. And I think that may be an oversimplification of those that adhere to a two -kingdom theology.

01:17:58

In fact, I aired a debate on this, Charlie, that you might want to look up in the archive of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:18:05

But if you could respond, Dr. Harub. Oh, I was just actually drooling, waiting to hear your response.

01:18:12

And I'll look up your debate, because I'm sure you covered it well. At the end of the day, if you take

01:18:20

God out of the equation, then, as I mentioned earlier, you don't have a moral compass.

01:18:25

You don't have a standard for right and for wrong. Ultimately, it comes down to what does man say is right or wrong.

01:18:35

And we all know what the problem with is. You know, if you allow men to discern what is right and wrong, then morals and ethics are absolutely going to go out the window, because everybody's going to view their version of right and wrong just a little bit differently.

01:18:52

And so, you know, to me, one of the areas that I think

01:18:57

Christians really have dropped the ball in the last 30 years is we've done exactly what this particular writer, this questioner, has said, and that is we've kind of separated our

01:19:10

Christianity from the rest of our life. And to me, you can't do that.

01:19:16

True Christians should be living out Christianity in every aspect of their life, in their marriage, in the way they raise their children, in the way they conduct themselves at work.

01:19:28

And so there should not be this divorcing of who I am on Sunday versus who

01:19:35

I am Monday through Friday. It's when you get that divorce that you get confusion, you start to have a foundation that crumbles, and ultimately your community is going to implode.

01:19:50

You know, it reminds me of years ago, I believe it may have been during one of the presidential races that Bill Clinton was involved in, and a young woman,

01:20:04

I believe she was in college, who professed to be a Christian, was interviewing him. And she said something about, are you going to use the

01:20:16

Bible when it comes to policies and other ways in which you conduct yourself as president?

01:20:23

And of course, I'm paraphrasing what she said. And Bill Clinton, and I'm also paraphrasing this as well, but he said something of the effect, and I'm not exaggerating what he said, but he said,

01:20:34

I love my Bible. I read my Bible every day. It's the most important book to me.

01:20:41

But that does not mean I have to gain the teachings from the

01:20:47

Bible and use them as I perform as a president of the

01:20:52

United States. Now, to me, that was just an absolute absurd statement. Because it's one thing if you're going to have some theocratic dictator who imposes specific doctrinal details upon the populace and imposes ordinances and religious practices upon the populace.

01:21:18

That's one thing. That would be ridiculous. I'm a Baptist, and I would never want a president or a government that forced people to only be baptized by immersion in water as a believer, as opposed to infant baptism.

01:21:33

You know, that kind of thing is ridiculous. But when it comes to morality, everybody, whether they're on the left or the right, is really trying to impose their morality on policy and law.

01:21:46

I mean, the whole civil rights movement is based on that. Am I off base here? Dr. Harrop?

01:21:54

Dr. Harrop, are you there? Yes, you are 100 % correct. You know, you go back to Clinton's comment, and it would almost be like if I met you for the first time,

01:22:08

Chris, and you said, man, Brad, you're 10 minutes late. What happened? And I said, well, you know,

01:22:14

I was coming into your studio, and lo and behold, I crossed the street, and this massive bus just plowed me over, and I'm so lucky to be here.

01:22:26

And you look at me, and you don't see any dirt, no rocks, no scratches, and you're thinking, how in the world could that be the truth?

01:22:36

You know, the bottom line is, if you read and believe the Bible, it should impact your life a whole lot more than getting hit by that bus.

01:22:47

People should be able to see it. People should be able to have a comprehension that you are different from this world.

01:22:57

And for Bill Clinton to say, I can read this Bible, I can get hit by a bus, but it's not going to affect me, is absolutely ludicrous.

01:23:08

I mean, it's just, you know, I don't mean to be crass, but why is he wasting his time?

01:23:14

Right. I mean, among other things, the Bible teaches us how to be the best humans that we can possibly be.

01:23:26

I mean, that's not the main reason the Bible exists. The Bible is there to teach us not only how to conduct ourselves in the church, but how we may become right with God, how we may be saved through the sacrifice of Christ.

01:23:39

But to say that you're not going to extract the teachings of the

01:23:45

Bible in order to form a code of conduct and morality by which you are going to serve the nation as a president, or serve the nation, or even your neighborhood in whatever you do as a person, as a citizen.

01:24:02

I mean, it's insane, and it's just really a fraudulent answer. It goes back to what you and I were talking about just a moment ago, and that is worldview.

01:24:12

If Bill Clinton can read, or anyone can read the Bible and it not shift their overall worldview, then there is a disconnect there that, you know, is, to me, indicates that that person is not walking in the light.

01:24:36

Because to me, true Christians are going to read the Bible, and that is going to be the lens through which they look at everything.

01:24:45

That's going to shape their worldview of right and wrong, and it's going to shape their worldview of everything, like I said earlier, politics, history, everything.

01:24:55

By the way, Charlie in Rome, New York, has one other question. He says, Why do Christians think that compromising the biblical account and inerrancy of the scriptures is going to preserve our witness in the world when the

01:25:07

Bible clearly teaches that our being different is what God wants and one of the ways he attracts his lost sheep?

01:25:14

That's interesting. Yeah, because there are professed Christians.

01:25:20

There are those even within conservative fellowships, brotherhoods, and denominations who deny a creation account, and it seems clear to me,

01:25:34

I mean, I can't read their minds and hearts, but it seems they want to win the approval of the intelligentsia of this world.

01:25:42

They want to be welcomed with open arms in the halls of academia, and they don't want to... In fact, some of these individuals have said that you and I, since we believe in a young earth, a literal six -day creation, that we are responsible for souls going to hell because people think that Christianity is nothing but a bunch of morons that misread the scriptures and turn them into fairy tales that we have deemed to be history and science, and I think our listener in Rome makes a good point here.

01:26:20

What is your comments on that? Yeah, I think you hit it spot on. I call it intellectual intimidation, and that is where those who are in academia have basically succeeded in communicating the message that all intelligent people believe in evolution or believe in this billion -year -old earth, and that religion is basically a crutch for the weak -minded.

01:26:51

And what's tragic is they've not only succeeded in communicating that message to a lot of folks just out in the public, they're also convincing many of our children.

01:27:03

And so even in the church, what I'm seeing is, you know, a child hits about 18, they run off to school, and lo and behold, they come home at spring break thinking that mom and dad are dumb and that this atheistic professor has all the answers, and, oh, by the way, mom and dad,

01:27:21

I don't really believe in God anymore. You know, I've seen it just countless times where they've communicated this idea up in front of a class, maybe wearing a white starched lab coat, you know, have a couple of initials after their name, and that's very, very intimidating to a college freshman.

01:27:47

And we're going, oh, by the way, Charlie in Rome, New York, please give us your full mailing address, because not only have you won a free copy of Convicted, a

01:27:57

Scientist Examines the Evidence for Christianity by our guest, Dr. Brad Harab, but since you are a first -time questioner, you've also won a free

01:28:05

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, one of the primary sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:28:14

So please give us your full mailing address so that CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship both the book

01:28:22

Convicted and the NAS Bible to you as soon as possible, free of charge to you and to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:28:30

And once again, we thank Dr. Brad Harab for providing us with these copies of his book

01:28:36

Convicted, and we also thank CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, owned by Todd and Patty Jennings.

01:28:44

We thank them for shipping out all of our winners every day, the Bibles and books and CDs and DVDs and other materials that we give away to those asking questions of our guests.

01:28:56

And, well, we give them away nearly every day, not every day. At least every week we give away things.

01:29:02

But thank you very much, Charlie. Keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Rome, New York, and keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and contributing excellent questions to our guests.

01:29:13

We are going to our final break right now. It's a much shorter break than the last one. There's still a couple of you who are waiting patiently to have your questions asked and answered.

01:29:23

I don't know if you're actually waiting patiently. You might be being filled with anxiety and anger. I don't know, but you're waiting.

01:29:31

And I thank you for waiting, and we will get to as many of you as possible before the time runs out. But if you want to get in line, shoot us an email right now at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:29:43

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01:29:49

Don't go away, God willing. We'll be right back with Dr. Brad Harab in our final half hour of our conversation on atheism's attack on America.

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01:31:41

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01:32:14

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01:32:26

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01:34:04

And now we are back with the final 25 minutes or so of the program and our interview with Dr.

01:34:11

Brad Harib and our discussion of atheism's attack on America.

01:34:16

If you could tell us something of your awareness of how the strategy of atheists may have changed since those days in the 60s when

01:34:26

Madeleine Murray O 'Hare was causing so much trouble. I have known one thing that has changed amongst atheists is that it used to be a very common thing for atheists to claim that Jesus Christ never existed, not even as a human being.

01:34:45

And today it is very hard to find an atheist that ignorant.

01:34:52

At least I'm talking about an atheist that's involved in public speaking and writing books. Not your average person.

01:34:58

There's a lot of average people who are agnostic or atheists who are totally ignorant about the historicity of Jesus Christ.

01:35:05

But today the common answer from most learned atheists will be that, oh, of course,

01:35:12

Jesus Christ was a real person. We just strongly reject that he was God because we don't believe that God even exists.

01:35:19

And we just believe that this is a story made up about this true figure from history that was basically a cult of Jews and then eventually

01:35:30

Gentiles in the early centuries who developed this cult, this false religion that declared

01:35:37

Jesus was God, but he never, as a human being, even claimed to be. But other than that, what—

01:35:44

Yeah, Chris, the intellectually honest atheists have got to admit the fact that he walked the earth.

01:35:52

They would even give credence to most of the letters in the New Testament, either whether it be

01:35:59

Paul or whoever as the author. I think the biggest shift that we're seeing— and I've actually heard this voiced by the atheist community, so what

01:36:10

I'm saying is not necessarily my own thoughts or my own connotation— but atheists today are not nearly as deep a thinker as in the past.

01:36:24

Instead, they are very rabid. They are very vitriolic, very bitter.

01:36:32

And in the long run, I don't think it's doing them any good because, you know, being shallow and being angry and meat -spirited is not going to win you that many new converts to your belief system.

01:36:51

What young people today, the Gen Z generation is looking for, they're wanting evidence.

01:36:58

They're wanting to know why we should believe what you believe. And if the atheist cannot give them those answers and instead they just respond out of pure hatred, emotion, etc.,

01:37:13

eventually that's going to get old and folks are going to realize what it is for what it is.

01:37:21

So in a way, I'm kind of thankful that we have the Richard Dawkins, the

01:37:27

Harris's of today who are a lot— obviously, I don't like reading some of their stuff.

01:37:33

I don't like some of the nasty comments they make, but intellectually their arguments are much, much weaker than previous generations.

01:37:44

And that is interesting, what you said, because there seems to be, because of the very fact that I just mentioned, that most learned atheists or most atheists that make their living speaking to audiences and writing books, they have removed from their vocabulary the ridiculous notion that Jesus is a figment of the imagination of those who have created fantasy, myth, and folklore and have borrowed

01:38:20

Jesus from the mythology of pagan religions. Most of them have become too intelligent to carry on that ridiculous lie and they do acknowledge that he was an actual historic figure.

01:38:36

Now, even though that they have, for lack of a better term, evolved in their understanding that at least is closer to the truth, you still think that they have gotten as a whole less intelligent.

01:38:47

I do. I think they're more shallow. When you put up someone like Gary Habermas, who is—I don't know if you hear—

01:38:57

Yes, I've interviewed Gary. I've interviewed Gary on the resurrection, actually. So you know his work on the resurrection?

01:39:03

Yeah. Gary has done a tremendous amount of research on the resurrection and it's scholarly and it is, you know, to me, there is meat and there's substance there.

01:39:15

And when you pit him against some of these modern -day guys who are just trying to get a quick soundbite out there, it reveals the shallowness of their arguments and the fact that these guys really haven't done their homework.

01:39:31

They don't know the arguments and basically what they're doing is they're just trying to shout loud enough to get a microphone for five minutes.

01:39:41

Yeah. And sometimes you wonder how, especially when they become accomplished, successful speakers and are getting, you know, fairly high honorariums and so on, you wonder sometimes how much they actually believe what they're spouting.

01:40:02

Well, and I always laugh at the— and I think it's a valid point, and that is you've got folks like the

01:40:09

Richard Dawkins of the world who are making lots of money being mad about something they allegedly don't believe in.

01:40:18

That's right. Yeah, a friend of mine, David Wood, who's an apologist primarily who debates

01:40:24

Muslims, although he also debates atheists because he himself was an atheist before he became a

01:40:29

Christian. He has said to atheists, for people who don't believe in God, you sure talk about him a lot.

01:40:39

Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, they allow this thing that they don't believe in to really, really get under their skin and drive their emotions.

01:40:49

And, you know, if somebody came up to me and said, hey, Brad, there are no pink polka -dotted—

01:40:58

Japanese unicorns, I would not spend 30 seconds trying to defend those because I don't believe in them.

01:41:06

You know, there's no evidence that they exist. So what? I would say, yeah, so what? Who cares?

01:41:12

But these folks are spending their entire existence over something that they think is not there.

01:41:21

Now, the reason why they do that is they claim, is an often regurgitated claim that religion is responsible for the death of more humans and the abuse and persecution of more humans than any other thing in the history of the world.

01:41:39

Now, I don't necessarily disagree with that because I do believe there is a thing, such a thing as false religion.

01:41:46

I believe that Christianity is the only true religion and therefore, anything that masquerades as a people of God that is outside of the

01:41:59

Christian faith is doing more harm to the human race than anything else because they are leading people to hell and they may, not necessarily, depending on who you're talking about, they may even be involved in horrific atrocities like ISIS and so on and flying planes into the

01:42:17

World Trade Center and the Pentagon building and things like that. But, irregardless, to borrow the phrase from my

01:42:27

Massachusetts friends, irregardless, whether or not that that is true, whether religion is the cause of that,

01:42:38

I think that Christians, and correct me if I'm wrong, Christians very often,

01:42:43

I have noticed, especially when it comes to the apologetic realm with atheists, they seem to be satisfied with defending the existence of God rather than the truthfulness of Christianity.

01:42:58

And there are going to be a lot of monotheists in hell who are not covered with the blood of Christ.

01:43:06

Don't we need to be careful about merely being satisfied with winning an argument over whether or not there is a

01:43:12

God? Because the story doesn't end there. You know, to me, that's not the complete story.

01:43:19

And I do, I feel like it's a pretty good myth that they perpetuate on us as far as saying, hey, you know, religion's responsible for more deaths.

01:43:30

And you and I both, I think, would easily agree that somebody who is following the true tenets of Christianity is not going to be behaving in a manner that is going to lead to all the death and the destruction etc.

01:43:47

etc. Right, right. Because our enemies, those who are in the secular world, they very often bring up atrocities that the

01:43:54

Church of Rome is guilty for. And I believe, of course, even true believers can be guilty of the sins that involve atrocities.

01:44:04

I know that some of my Protestant heroes did some and said some very unfortunate things.

01:44:11

But that is not what is taught in the scripture. They're not acting upon the teachings of Jesus Christ.

01:44:18

Exactly. And that's why what you said just a moment ago is so crucial that yes, proving

01:44:24

God is good, but we have to go that next step and talk about Jesus Christ and what was his message.

01:44:35

Now, one of your subtitles at the conference coming up in March intrigues me because I don't know whether or not you and I would agree over this.

01:44:49

Okay. Because I don't know the answer to your question that you pose. Can we prove

01:44:54

God exists? Well, the way that I would answer that is that number one, because of what we read in Romans 1, that all humans really know the truth but they suppress the truth.

01:45:10

Absolutely. His invisible attributes are clearly seen. Yes, but I don't know if we could prove, though, to human satisfaction the existence of God, nor do

01:45:21

I think we need to because of the fact that I said all men really know he does exist to begin with. So one of the things that we'll be looking at in that particular lesson is going to be things like the complexity of DNA.

01:45:38

You know, anytime you see that much design, there's got to be a designer behind it.

01:45:44

You don't get a code without a code giver. And so we're going to be looking at that.

01:45:52

We'll talk a little bit about some of the arguments that I know you're very familiar with, like the cosmological argument, the anthropological argument, the theological argument, just as logical ways of proving him.

01:46:07

I think, Chris, the problem is society has convinced people that we have to use the scientific method.

01:46:13

In order to prove things, you know, we have to be able to take it into a lab, use our five senses and repeat that experiment before something is viewed as being real and being accurate.

01:46:29

Well, God is a spirit. You're not going to be able to harness him into a laboratory and use your five senses.

01:46:36

But that does not exclude the very real truth that he exists.

01:46:43

So we're going to talk a little bit about that. I was confronted one time by an atheist who basically said, look, if you can't use your five senses and measure it, it's not real.

01:46:53

And I asked the guy, I said, do you have a conscience? And he kind of stopped and looked at me and said, yeah, everybody does.

01:47:00

I said, well, I'm glad to hear you've got a conscience. Could you measure that in a laboratory for me? Now, again, my background is actually in neuroscience.

01:47:09

We did human recordings in the brain. And we dropped probes in.

01:47:14

And I can tell you, you know, we saw all kind of fun things when you drop a probe in the brain. But the one thing we did never find was the conscience.

01:47:23

You can't take it into a laboratory and measure it. But yet we all recognize that conscience exists.

01:47:31

So, you know, even an atheist would admit, I got a conscience, but I can't measure that in a laboratory.

01:47:40

You know, one thing that agnostics have said, as opposed to atheists, that is true.

01:47:46

In fact, I think I have even heard Bill Maher utter this, not that I would encourage people to go to Bill Maher as any source of wisdom or truth.

01:47:57

But I'm almost certain he once said, when somebody asked him whether he was an atheist or an agnostic,

01:48:03

I believe he said, and I'm paraphrasing again, I'm an agnostic, which means that I doubt or question the existence of God.

01:48:11

To be an atheist would be a claim that I have all knowledge of all things, and I obviously don't.

01:48:18

So that is an interesting quote, which is true. I mean, to claim to be an atheist, you are actually claiming to have all knowledge.

01:48:28

And you're claiming that the entire spectrum of the universe has been investigated and the possibility of a

01:48:38

God ruled out. Right. Which, you know, is ludicrous.

01:48:44

For them to say, we, because, you know, you hear the, oh, we've never seen him.

01:48:50

Okay, first off, he's a spirit, and we won't get into that argument, but can an atheist say beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have checked every corner of the universe and that they can now conclusively stand and say, we've looked everywhere, there is no

01:49:08

God. And the answer to that is no. I think perhaps we could even conclude the program with a discussion, or at least the wetting of the appetite of our listeners in regard to one of your subheadings under what is truth.

01:49:26

Is the Bible just a good book? Perhaps you could tell us a little bit of something about that. Absolutely, Chris.

01:49:33

So it kind of goes along with what you were just saying with, okay, it's one thing to say there's a

01:49:38

God, but if you don't go the next step, to say that Jesus was real, you're not getting the full picture.

01:49:46

I would say the same thing with the Bible. If you don't look at the Bible as the inspired word of God, then you've totally missed the message.

01:49:59

Because otherwise at that point, it just becomes a good book that people will select from what they agree with or what they, you know, the parts that they like.

01:50:11

So what I usually will do in a lesson like that is I will try to show the scientific accuracy of the

01:50:19

Bible, scientific foreknowledge that could only have found its way in God's word, be it through the inspiration of God.

01:50:27

I'll give you one real quick example. You look in the book of Genesis where it talks about God telling

01:50:35

Abraham to circumcise newborn males on the eighth day. Well, why day eight?

01:50:43

Why not day 12 or day 15? Today we know the reason. We know that blood clotting is dependent on three factors, platelets, prothrombin, and vitamin

01:50:53

K. You can have all three of them. We also know through centuries of trial and error experiments on blood clotting that vitamin

01:51:02

K is actually responsible for the production of that second clotting factor, prothrombin.

01:51:09

So if you don't, if the infant doesn't have enough vitamin K, what's going to happen is you'll make an incision, he'll hemorrhage out and die.

01:51:17

We've also learned that vitamin K is produced in the infant's intestinal tract on day five through seven.

01:51:25

So it makes sense if you're going to perform a surgical procedure, you wait until after that point.

01:51:30

The question is, why did God specify day eight in Genesis chapter eight? And the answer is day eight is the perfect day.

01:51:40

It is the day in which you've got the most clotting factors available. And so, you know,

01:51:48

I know people today are thinking, well, wait a second, my sister, she had a little boy, he was circumcised, went home, got up, go two days later.

01:51:55

Yes, and that child was given an injection of vitamin K, usually in the first five minutes of life, allowing the physicians to perform that procedure at their leisure, also allowing your insurance company to send you home quicker.

01:52:12

But how did that information, how did day eight find its way into the

01:52:17

Bible unless it was through inspiration? Because the

01:52:23

Quran cannot do that. The Book of Mormon cannot do that. Only God's word has those kinds of truths because only

01:52:34

God's word is inspired. Amen. And don't you believe that there is a requirement of the

01:52:45

Holy Spirit working in the heart and mind of a person before they can truly see these spiritual things from the

01:52:51

Bible? Because you have geniuses who are liberal, if not leftist

01:52:57

Bible scholars, who actually can recite from memory enormous portions of the

01:53:04

Bible without even looking at notes. And yet they don't believe in the contents of the book.

01:53:11

Don't you think that the Holy Spirit is required for a lost sinner to even really see the beauty and the truth of these biblical concepts?

01:53:21

Absolutely. And I think the Holy Spirit's probably one of the most overlooked parts of the whole equation.

01:53:30

And I don't know if that is just something that folks have, you know, become afraid of, if it's something that we just have neglected.

01:53:42

I think sometimes people have an overreaction to the charismatic and Pentecostal world.

01:53:48

They don't want to be broad -brushed with them. They're fearful of resembling them so that they run too far the other way and wind up being guilty of their own heresies.

01:54:00

Right, right. And I think probably 30, 40 years ago, what the church did was we said, oh, we can't be like them.

01:54:07

And they swung the pendulum, but instead of stopping in the middle, they went all the way to the other side and have almost built a religion without the

01:54:17

Holy Spirit, which is tragic. Well, I want you to have about three minutes just to uninterrupted summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:54:28

Well, let me focus their hearts and their minds for just a moment on the tragedy in Florida.

01:54:34

Honestly, our prayers go out to them, to the families, to all of those who are touched by that.

01:54:41

I wish, Chris, that I could say that that was a surprising event, but given our nation's trajectory, given the fact that for 18 years, what we do is we teach young people that they are nothing more than an advanced ape -like creature, you know, that there is no purpose in life.

01:55:04

There is no God. It's not shocking anymore when these kinds of things happen because, like I say, you know, 12 years in a school system, what we've done is we have trained them that humans are just advanced animals, and we have actually removed the soul of man.

01:55:27

And that's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we're created in the image and likeness of God and that we do have souls and that we are here for a purpose.

01:55:37

I hope and I pray that your listeners, those especially in the Carlisle area, will come out, listen, share some time with me.

01:55:45

We will open it up for questions and answers. And so, you know, if you are there right now thinking, oh man,

01:55:53

I wish I could ask him X, Y, Z, bring your question with you. I'd love to meet you, spend some time with you.

01:56:00

And as I said again, our prayers are with those in Florida. Yeah, you know, when you were speaking,

01:56:07

I just had chills run up my spine because I remember, now I can't look into the heart of Jeffrey Dahmer, who is now deceased, but after he claimed to be a born -again

01:56:17

Christian in prison, he used the very reasoning that you just described, the rejection of human beings being made in the image of God and having souls and then being just mere animals.

01:56:32

He used that rejection to justify his lust for murder.

01:56:40

And when he became a born -again believer, at least he professed to be, he saw that human beings are deserving of respect and that they are deserving of being treated with dignity because they are made in the image of God and that murdering people, humans, is not the same as killing animals.

01:57:02

And it just... You're absolutely correct. I talked to his dad on several occasions. Oh, really?

01:57:09

He, you hit it on the head. I mean, he was actually baptized, immersed there in prison, and he actually made the comment that the

01:57:21

Christian evidence material was what really helped kind of solidify and magnify his mistakes in the past.

01:57:30

It really showed him where he had gotten off and what had infected his mind. And to me, it's tragic.

01:57:38

They were just about to start doing some real psychological testing of him when he was murdered because he wanted to basically make sure that that kind of thing never happened again.

01:57:51

And unfortunately, he was killed in prison. Yeah, by a fellow inmate. Well, it has been such a joy to have you on the program for the first time.

01:57:59

I look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio as a guest. I also look forward to seeing you in person because I do plan to attend the

01:58:09

What Is Truth Conference at the Carlisle Church of Christ on Walnut Bottom Road in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, March 2nd.

01:58:16

The sessions begin at 7 p .m. and then continue at 8 p .m. and then Saturday, March 3rd.

01:58:23

The sessions are 10 a .m., 11 a .m. and 1 p .m. and both Friday and Saturday sessions include free meals.

01:58:31

If you want further details, you can go to carlislecofc .org

01:58:37

Carlisle, C -A -R -L -I -S -L -E -C -O -F -C .org or you can call them at 717 -249 -3267.

01:58:47

717 -249 -3267. And I know that your website is focuspress .org,

01:58:57

focuspress .org. And you can look up all the information that you need to know on how to contact our guest,

01:59:04

Dr. Brad Harab. Anything final to say about where or how people can contact you?

01:59:10

Oh, if they'll check us out on the website, we also have a Facebook page.

01:59:16

They can follow me on Twitter. But Chris, look very forward to meeting you in person, maybe having a cup of coffee with you and sitting down and talking about some good stuff.

01:59:26

Sounds great, brother. And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially all of you who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:32

I apologize for those of you who we ran out of time to ask your questions on the air, but perhaps the next time

01:59:38

Dr. Harab is on, you can submit those questions. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater