How Theology Determines Apologetics, and So Much More

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:36

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. I see a red screen up in front of me and nothing else. I'm not sure if it's frozen or just what, but that's normally what tells me we're getting going.

00:46

I don't know if we're going or not, but we're gonna roll with it one way or the other. And now it's working.

00:53

I really don't like that shot. You can see all the books over there and it just looks all cluttered and I don't know.

01:02

Looks lived in. Oh, okay. Whatever. Hey, before we get started, a couple things.

01:09

Heading up to Canadia. Hope they let me in.

01:17

Haven't tried in a while. You never know. I gotta admit, of all the customs folks at the borders, the least smiley are the

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Canadians. They really are. Just really don't even bother trying to be nice or anything like that.

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But we'll be meeting with a good group of folks and we're gonna be spending next week.

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We ain't gonna be here. There will be no Dividing Line next week whatsoever. Not doing it from the boat, nothing like that.

01:52

And look, we've done like three weeks worth over the past two weeks.

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So these programs have been really long with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of prep.

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So worthy of listening to more than once. So no complaining along those lines.

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Second point, just noting, the non -debate from last month has been posted.

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It's up on YouTube. I've linked to it on Twitter and Facebook. And that's about all that needs to be said about that.

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I've requested that people not do a bunch of memeing and stuff like that.

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If you just insist upon watching it, I can't stop you. But I really think listening to this program would be significantly more beneficial than that was in many, many ways.

02:50

Point number three, I want to thank

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Francisco Guerrero. I came into the office today and there was a gift waiting for me.

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It is an ESV. Now they don't make

03:12

Bibles big enough for me to read anymore without glasses. So it really doesn't matter anymore. I have to wear glasses to read pretty much anything now.

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And part of it is because my distance vision is returning to 20 -20. It's really weird.

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I don't have to wear lenses anymore when I drive. It's great, but I can't see anything at all right in front of my face.

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Anyway, Francisco bound this ESV for me. What's really neat is it's in paragraph form.

03:45

I like that for reading and it's non -red letter, which I also like. He did the red, sort of made it look like an

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Allen with the yap and stuff on it. But there's two really neat things about it. It's sheepskin.

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And about the only thing I asked for when my mom died was her sheepskin

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Bible, which she had had since I was, well, it's one of the first things

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I remember. And they are so soft. Oh, sheepskin. And I don't know if you can see it, but yeah, there you go.

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He put a Cairo on the front. And if those of you don't know, that's when I'm wearing short sleeves, that's what

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I've got in my right arm is a Cairo. And so, thank you.

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What? Oh, well, I'm trying to get it so that you can sort of see that, yeah, there you go.

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Get the light on it so you can see it. If you don't go, oh, when you smell a new

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Bible and the leather, something wrong with you. It doesn't, it does not, doesn't work.

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Kindle, no, no. I love it. It's great for traveling and stuff, but they're just, you know, there's no comparison.

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There really isn't, you know. You gotta love your books, gotta love your books. This is going with me to Alaska. This is, and the problem is,

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Francisco, it'll, the only problem is when you travel with a Bible like that, it's gonna get beat up and marked and all the rest of that stuff, unless you get some big, super Bible cover and then you can't feel the cover anymore and blah.

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Anyway. I can just see the memes that are gonna come out of those shots of you sitting there sniffing a

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Bible. I really don't care. I get memed all the time. I really don't,

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I really don't care. Anyway, thank you very, very much. That is very, very encouraging.

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And I very much appreciate the note that you said along with that. It is neat when folks do things like that.

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And we all need encouragement and I do too. And that's a very encouraging thing.

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There was, oh, next point. Before, we've got some big stuff to get to today. Really big stuff to get to today.

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The Hebrew Israelites are all up in arms. You know, I responded, by the way, if you want a water jug,

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I am not a paid spokesperson. I use a lot of CamelBak stuff because I'm a cyclist and they make great stuff.

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Well, I happen to see this C -H -U -T -E, I assume that's shoot. But they're these vacuum water things.

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And they're amazing. If you put just a little bit of ice in it with cold water, it stays cold for like, they say 24 hours.

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I've had it stay cold for 36 hours, which in Arizona is really cool. And I needed a drink of cold water there.

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I got my wife, this is a 40 ouncer. I got my wife a 20 ouncer and she carries it around at work and you gotta hydrate here in Arizona.

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No two ways about it. The Hebrew Israelite folks are all up in arms.

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It's hard to tell what gets them going, but I haven't seen any response from the

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IUIC guys, but I didn't expect the...

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I expect GMS and the Sakari guys and stuff to just within 12 hours have five videos up with horns and pitchforks and flames and stuff like that.

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That's what I expect from them. I didn't expect that from the IUIC guys. If they are gonna respond and they may not, but if they are, they'll do so next month or something like that.

07:51

And we'll actually think it out, which is good. It's a good thing, I suppose. But someone sent me a thing about from the

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Sakari guys saying, did you see James White ducking this? And I don't even know what they're talking about to be very honest with you.

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But what's happened is I asked vocab, look, straight up here.

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I asked vocab and I said, hey, look, I preached on Deuteronomy 28. And I keep mentioning that and I realize not everybody in the audience remembers.

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There's so much detail in it, but Deuteronomy 28, 68. Yahweh will bring you back to Egypt in ships by the way about which

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I spoke to you, you will never see it again. And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.

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If you all recall, when vocab was in studio with me, we opened up the phones and this verse came up because it is central to the idea that the

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American slave trade of the 17th, 18th into the 19th centuries somehow is a fulfillment of this text.

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The United States is Egypt, ships, male and female slaves.

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Well, that last part about there will be no buyer, we can ignore that. And so what

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I said to vocab was, now I've preached on it, I preached on this text. I forget what the date was, but about a month ago or so now at PRBC finishing up this series

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I was doing on the law of God, the holiness code. And so I would like to find someone, and I mentioned

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GMS just because, you know, as you look at YouTube, it seems like maybe they're just the loudest, not the biggest,

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I don't know. But I said, I'd like to find someone to seriously engage this text and to do so under the basic rule that this is a program that we want everyone to be able to listen to without having to market explicit lyrics or something like that.

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In other words, you use profanity and you're gone. That's all there is to it. Now, some of these guys,

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I don't know what they can do that. To be perfectly honest with you, they're so accustomed to utilizing profanity that it's just a part of the language for them.

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I don't even think about it. And I think that's really a shame for any human being at all, any adult anyways, to be in that situation.

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But if they could find somebody, great. Well, vocab mentioned this one particular guy is looked up to as being quite the expert in things.

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I'm like, well, great, but he's not GMS. Well, okay. Not really sure where he stands on Deuteronomy 28.

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And his big thing is he's into Gematria and Kabbalah.

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Now, without going into detail, it's just basic, basically it's Jewish mysticism.

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It's not even what you'd have. You know, there's a long history of esoteric

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Hebrew interpretation of things. But this is sort of numerology and certain letters representing certain things.

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And Kabbalah, it's mysticism. It's, well, what makes it pretty much irrelevant for a

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Christian is very clearly that's not how Jesus dealt with the scriptures. That's not how

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Jesus dealt with the Hebrew scriptures at all. And now, of course, this guy is not

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Messianic. So that wouldn't be necessarily relevant to him. If I can find something, you know, if he holds that view of Deuteronomy 28 and 68 and will defend the

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Hebrew Israelite view of that, then maybe we could do something on maybe Isaiah 53, Deuteronomy 28.

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But if he's gonna go off into numerology and stuff like that, I just don't have any interest. It's not that, oh, you're running away.

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No, I'm not interested in playing games with a subject where there's no objective standard to which you can refer.

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You can't say one side is right or wrong. It sort of turns out like the

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Harold Camping thing. Remember? Harold had his numerology and he wasn't interested in anybody correcting him and there wasn't any way to correct him because it's just made up in his mind.

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And so since he's the ultimate authority, well, what else could you do about it? Anyway, so you're ducking this guy.

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No, first of all, I'm scheduled well into next year, teaching all over the place, debates tens of thousands of miles in the air.

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Do forgive me once again for having a busy life.

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Many times the debates we set up, we set them up long, long out.

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And the debate we had here with Elder Aka just sort of happened.

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And that's really not the same kind of debate. Anyways, be that as it may. But you

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Sakari guys, you know, I've interacted with your stuff a little bit. A lot of zeal, very little knowledge as far as I can tell.

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But hey, do you actually have someone in your midst that's actually mature enough, adult enough to control their tongue?

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That would defend the idea that Deuteronomy 28, 68 is fulfilled in the transatlantic slave trade?

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They could actually, for example, maybe deal with what ein kone means in real

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Hebrew, not faux Hebrew, not fake Hebrew, not Hebrew with only a couple vowels, real

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Hebrew. Hebrew, you can actually pick up a Hebrew grammar that says, here it is.

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Here's standard stuff, not the made up stuff.

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Do you have somebody like that? Get in touch with us. You don't understand,

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I do not fear you because you have no truth to threaten the truth with.

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You think you do, but fact of the matter is you don't. So hey, whatever that video is about, hey, get in touch.

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Can't guarantee anything for a while. Could be going out of country, everything else.

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I've got lots and lots and lots of stuff going on. We've got G3 coming up in January.

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That's gonna be huge. I just got a note. I'm only speaking once, once the

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Q &A and Lord willing the debate, if we can find someone to debate. Look, we may have somebody to debate, but I wondered how many times people are gonna be speaking because with so many speakers, there's only so many hours.

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So normally I've spoken twice in the past, but when you've got to fit in Vody and Paul Washer and D .A.

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Carson and Phil Johnson, and only be speaking once.

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So I need to pick my topic well for G3 in January. But anyway, if you guys wanna put someone forward that will say no profanity, no drop in any type of thing like that.

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Yes, we are mature enough to control our own tongues. And yes, we will defend the idea that the actual meaning of Deuteronomy 28, 68 is that this is essential to the idea that Israelites were brought to the

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United States. Cause I don't know how you can come up with your Hebrew Israelites stuff without it. So seems sort of important.

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Then hey, get in touch with us. So there's that. All right.

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Now, okay. Someone needs to find Jake Cole and punch him in the nose.

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Just punch him in the nose. The meme that just appeared on Twitter is nose punchable.

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Just so, you're firing it up now? Hadn't had it fired up? Okay. Jake, wrong.

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Just, you're a bad man. All right. I have not been able to finish the book,

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Stealing from God. I've gotten, I don't know, two, two and a half hours into it.

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First couple of chapters. This has the foreword by Ravi Zacharias, but it's by Dr.

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Frank Turek. At the end of the last program, I started playing live without preparation.

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In other words, I had not listened to it before. A linked portion of a webcast with Dr.

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Frank Turek and Dr. Howell from Southern Evangelical Seminary. I mentioned at that time that there is a discussion between Dr.

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Howell and myself on apologetic methodology from SES available online on YouTube.

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And I was contrasting the, a reformed epistemology, the apologetic methodology that I have utilized for many decades with that which was clearly evident in what was being said in this particular presentation.

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I would like to say, as strong as these disagreements might be and of necessity,

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I think the things we're talking about today are extremely important. I still am often disturbed.

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I understand why on the other side, you know, I see just nastiness expressed toward me all the time.

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Okay, I get it, I understand. But on our side, that just shouldn't be the case.

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There should be a recognition, there should be an understanding that the doctrines of grace require the work of the

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Holy Spirit of God to testify the truthfulness of these things in our hearts, to give us that foundational understanding of who

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God is, who we are. We didn't discover these things because we were smarter than somebody else or anything like that at all.

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And that should produce a level of humility and graciousness, and very often it doesn't.

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I have seen, again, unnecessarily harsh language. And it just seems that people can't tell the difference between needing to be harsh against falsehood as it's being presented, and then transferring that into ad hominem or feelings of anger or hatred toward a person that you don't know what their level of knowledge is, and you don't know what

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God's purpose is in not having yet given to them an understanding of his sovereignty.

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Oh, you're making yourself, no, if it's up to God, I can't tell him when he's supposed to do that for somebody else.

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So in other words, what I'm saying is I've been a little disappointed with some of the comments that I've seen on Twitter, Facebook, things like that.

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Again, just unnecessarily harsh. It distracts and detracts from the position that we are attempting to present as it is.

20:36

Now, I was struck by something. I was just finishing up a little inside ride this morning, and I got to this part of the book, and I wanted to share this with you, and then someone else who will remain nameless was kind enough to go, you know, it would be helpful if you would compare and contrast the methodology that you're presenting with that of the other side, and you could do this rather well because both you and Dr.

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Turek have both debated David Silverman and addressed the exact same topic. And I hadn't thought about that, and he was kind enough to give me the exact timestamps in our debates, so it made it easy to set up.

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And so once I give you this sort of foundational thing, and then mention a little something from Norman Geisler.

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I'll just go ahead and mention that, right? Norman Geisler has chimed in to this Andy Stanley thing, and he said, don't be so quick to jump on Andy Stanley.

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And you might go, well, he sure was quick to jump on Mike Laicona, but that's because Andy Stanley is probably

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Norman Geisler's most famous student, one of his favorite students, so he studied under Geisler. So, you know, if you're a student of Geisler's, you know, even he had to disagree with what

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Stanley was saying, and say, you know, imprecise language. It didn't really give Laicona that option.

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I found that interesting, but he's chimed in as well, trying to offer a little bit of a corrective, but in a non -condemnatory fashion, shall we say.

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Anyway, we're gonna take a look at those clips from the debates, and then we're gonna get to Andy Stanley's sermon, where I can do the whole thing, like we did last time, because to be honest with you, the last portion didn't really understand.

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It just sort of wandered all over the place, but at least enough of it to make it worthwhile.

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This is the part of the book that I got to. Listen to what it says.

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Did I tap on something here? All right, yeah, that's a huge admission.

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There's a massive leap from atheism to deism, but just a short step from deism to theism.

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So why not follow the evidence all the way to theism? We'll see why not when we get to the morality chapter.

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Dr. Krauss and his colleagues will tell us themselves. Now, we have many, many times pointed out the reality that, well, when

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I teach a class on apologetics and I'm dealing with theistic proofs and with the different kinds of apologetic methodologies,

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I always compare and contrast the opening statement of Dr.

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Greg Bonson against Dr. Gordon Stein with that of William Lane Craig versus Frank Zindler, and it can be boiled down to, in debating

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Gordon Stein, Greg Bonson, his thesis was, without the

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Christian triune God, you cannot consistently explain anything, including our being at this debate this evening.

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The Christian triune God is the necessary ground of human predication, and that the harder you try, the more your effort is only going to prove my point.

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That's basically what the Christian presuppositionalist is arguing. This is

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God's world. You're stealing from God, the ironic title of Dr. Turek's book.

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You're stealing from God to try to make your worldview work, and the more you do that, the more you demonstrate that my

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God exists, and in many ways, Dr. Turek recognizes this. He just doesn't have the theological foundation to actually make it consistent because it doesn't work for a synergist.

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Believe it or not, the gospel is central to this. It's central to an understanding of Dr. Bonson's presentation, so I compare and contrast that with Dr.

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Craig's very clear statement in the debate at Willow Creek with Frank Zindler, and that is that the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater probability of the existence of a

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God. Preponderance of the evidence, greater probability, existence of a

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God. So he is, so Dr. Bonson, in his opening statement said,

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I am not here to debate a vague general theism because a vague general theism is incoherent.

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It's indefensible, but that's exactly what William Lane Craig is defending.

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The idea is if you can get someone, you know, if you can get someone from atheism to deism, ooh, oh, and if you can then get them from deism to a vague, undefined theism, oh, oh, and it's this progressive thing, you know?

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No one's ever been able to show me where any of the apostles ever acted in that way because they didn't.

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The vague, undefined theist is going to go to hell as quickly as the atheist is.

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That's all there is to it. And the apostolic teaching is you serve those which were no gods, but now you've been come to know, been known by the one true

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God. There's this divide. It's not a little, I'm a little closer, a little closer, a little closer. No, there's a

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Grand Canyon in the way. And so when

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I, you know, when I read this and it's like, oh, that's interesting.

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The idea of deism and, you know, there's a massive leap from atheism to deism, but just a short step from deism to theism.

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Well, even Christopher Hitchens, man, I wish we'd had a chance to debate. Six weeks, six weeks.

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That's how much we missed it by. We were scheduled six weeks out. He got his cancer prognosis. Diagnosis.

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Even Christopher Hitchens saw clearly. Hey, wait a minute. Don't you realize there's a huge leap from theism to Christian theism?

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And they don't seem to, they don't really, really do not seem to see that. That's something you can sort of do in post -production.

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You know, it's a, it's a filter you can apply. You just apply the right filter, the theism, and it'll come out as try and as a

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Trinity. No, that doesn't work that way. Doesn't work that way. And so you had this, you know, discussion of why consider atheists reasonable when they ostensibly use reason and science to attack the very principle that makes reason and science possible.

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Okay, I get it. From students like John in Michigan to professors like Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins, atheists seem unwilling to follow the evidence back to where it leads.

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So contrary to the image they attempt to project to the public, they seem to be the unreasonable ones, not, ready?

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Not religious theists. Religious theists.

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Well, that's what caught my attention. I don't want someone to be a religious theist because religious theists go to hell.

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That's not my job as a, if I get someone from being an atheist or religious theist, what have

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I done for them? I've only made them more accountable before God, not less. I've just increased their judgment.

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I've done nothing. So that thought had just crossed my mind when the next chapter started.

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And Dr. Turek tells the story of him encountering a young man at Berkeley, had a universal negation sign over the cross.

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And Michael put me on the spot by asking if I knew of anything other than God that was spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.

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Now, if you're a presuppositionalist at all, you just went, oh, well, guess what?

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Here's the rest of it. My mind immediately shot back to a 1985 debate between Christian Greg Bonson and atheist

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Gordon Stein at the University of California, Irvine. The topic debate was, does God exist? Dr. Bonson made the case that logic, science, and morality cannot be explained by atheism, but are explained well by Christian theism.

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Christian theism, Dr. Turek. I found it fascinating that you quoted what

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I'm about to play for you. Because Dr. Bonson would have severely rebuked you in the preceding chapter for talking about some type of undefined theism.

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He said in this very debate, that is an incoherent position to defend.

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I don't think you agree with Dr. Bonson in this debate. Now, here's the thing.

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Already in Dr. Turek's book, I've read all sorts of things I completely agree with. We completely agree that the atheist cuts the very ground of reality from out underneath himself, that we agree on so many things.

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But the point is, the only reason we agree on these things is because we share a Christian worldview. The person you're talking to doesn't share that worldview.

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They are in moral rebellion against God. They are not at a moral neutral point. They are in rebellion against God.

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And so to put them in a position of judging these things when they have the wrong worldview, that's the whole point of the difference between evidentialism and presuppositionalism is that it's focused upon the reality of man as fallen rebellious creature.

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And you do not make the fallen rebellious creature the standard of all things.

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You do not make the fallen rebellious creature the judge of these things because he will not judge them correctly.

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He will not judge them correctly. And so he goes through and what I'm gonna do is

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I tracked it down. Instead of reading it to you, this is one of the great classics in debate history.

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It's too bad that the quality of sound isn't so good, but here's what he quotes in the book.

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Very, very plainly, Gordon Stein ran into a buzzsaw, had no idea what he was getting into.

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No idea at all. I've encountered the exact same attitude and they don't bother to read your stuff.

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They don't think you have anything worthwhile to say and stuff like this happens when that happens.

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But here's what happened. Gordon Stein at first, or at first,

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Dr. Bonson is questioning Stein and then they'll switch over.

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Just a couple of minutes. Here's that portion of that debate. Are all factual questions answered in the very same way?

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No, they are not. They're answered by the use of certain methods, though, that are the same. Reason, logic, and presenting evidence.

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I heard you mention logical bias. Logical self -contradictions in your speech.

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You did say that? I said it. I used that phrase, yes. Do you believe there are laws of logic, then?

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Absolutely. Are they universal? They're agreed upon by human beings.

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They aren't laws that exist out in nature. They are - Are they simply conventions, then? They're conventions, but they're conventions that are self -verifying.

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Are they sociological laws or laws of thought? They are laws of thought, which are interpreted by men, and promulgated by men.

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Are they material in nature? How can a law be material? That's the question I'm gonna ask you.

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I would say no. Then they switch over, and now -

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Professor Stein, now you have an opportunity to cross -examine Dr. Bonson. Dr.

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Bonson, would you call God material or immaterial? Immaterial. What is something that's immaterial?

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Something not extended in space. Can you give me an example of anything other than God that's immaterial?

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Laws of logic. One of the greatest zings of all time.

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I mean, talk about walking into a, talk about face plant, and it's quoted. The problem is,

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Dr. Bonson would object to its quotation here, because the reason that the laws of logic are universal is because they reflect the triune

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God. Bonson was an inveterate presuppositionalist.

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He believed that evidentialism was a fundamental compromise. And so the basis that he gave for the universal existence of the laws of logic is not a bare theism.

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It is specifically Christian theism, and he would say that anyone who tries to get you to a bare theism, utilizing that argumentation, is deceiving you.

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That's what he would say. And that's what struck me here, is once again, the vast difference.

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And I think what we're seeing in the Andy Stanley stuff is when someone like Stanley is exposed to this fundamental difference.

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And the reason we have differing kinds of apologetics is because we have a differing theology of God's sovereignty,

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God's interaction with man, and a different anthropology, as well as a different view of what the gospel is.

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Sometimes there's a anti -lordship concept amongst many people. Certainly Andy Stanley imbibed that.

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But the whole concept of why is the message, why is the

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Lagos to Thayou, I'm sorry, Lagos to Starou, the message of the cross, why is the message of the cross foolishness to those who are perishing, power of God to those who are being saved?

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The answer of 1 Corinthians chapter one was what? God's election. It's God's choice.

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That's what makes a difference, it's God's choice. And if you take that seriously, it will impact your apologetic.

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And if you don't believe that, then it has to impact your apologetic, which is why you have these two views. And then when you get someone like Andy Stanley trying to do something good, which is to talk to people who've left the church, but you then join that with bad theology, bad theology of the church, bad theology of the nature of faith, bad theology of lordship salvation, bad synergistic theology.

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Put all that together with a minimalist, mere Christianity apologetic, and you have the explanation as to why in the world you have someone standing up in front of 32 ,000 people on a

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Sunday with this weird idea that we need to take the focus off of the Bible and get back on the reservation.

37:58

And exactly how you do that without the Bible being the divine word of God, don't have any, it's a reliable historical record and et cetera, et cetera.

38:08

That's where all this comes from. So with that said, it is interesting to compare the debate that I had with David Silverman and the debate that Frank Turek had with the same man within just a few years of each other.

38:29

And so let's take a look. I switched the order.

38:35

So hopefully you've got that there. Let's listen to David Silverman talk with Frank Turek about the problem of evil.

38:46

And then we will listen to me talk with David Silverman about the problem of evil.

38:53

And then we'll go to Andy Stanley. How's that sound? Okay, here is David Silverman and Frank Turek.

39:03

I'm not saying Turk, by the way. They're different people. On the subject of evil.

39:10

Go in or you can ask Frank. Oh, no, let's go on to evil because you brought up the word evil and you said,

39:17

I'm supposed to bring up the word evil. And then you totally eliminated and went around the problem of evil.

39:24

So I wanna talk a little bit about the problem of evil. You said that evil proves

39:30

God because objective evil proves objective good. I'm telling you that there's no objective evil either.

39:37

Well, then what are you complaining about? What I'm complaining about is I wanna know about the real problem of evil that Christianity faces.

39:46

If God is all powerful and omniscient and omnibenevolent, why does he need babies to be born with cancer?

39:54

Okay, now, actually, what you're talking about here is a theological question that can be answered if the scriptures are true by going to the scriptures, but we're not -

40:04

Listen for the dancing. Listen for the dancing. No, no, no, hold on. We've got an all powerful God. He can do whatever he wants and he doesn't need babies to have cancer.

40:12

We've got an all knowing God. So he knows every baby that's going to get cancer. Now, the only thing left is benevolence.

40:19

Define benevolence and tell me why a God who can do anything under any circumstances needs babies with cancer.

40:30

Excellent question. I know. We live in a fallen world, don't we? That's a good excuse, but you can't blame

40:36

Adam. What if it's true? Oh, what if anything is true? The question is, why do we need, why do we need, why does

40:45

God need babies to be born with cancer? Okay, hold on. Let me, let me,

40:50

God doesn't need it. God might allow it. Because he's omnibenevolent? Okay, yeah, hold on.

40:56

Let's, let's get there. Let's get to the benevolence. I can't, I can't say anything better than this one minute and 46 second video, which

41:05

I'm going to show you and hopefully it'll work. I don't want a video. I want you to tell me. Oh, I will tell you because I'm telling you through this video, okay?

41:11

So stand by. I think we need a

41:18

HDMI three on. It is? Hey, stand by.

41:30

All right. This better be good, man. It's very good. If it's not good, I'm totally going to kick your butt. Hey, there's no such thing as good.

41:36

It's all relative. It is all relative. All right.

41:42

You got to listen. You got to watch closely, David. I'm sorry. You got a bad angle here, but you really got to watch closely. You're right, guys.

41:47

Ready to go? We got sound. Here we go. Is God good? If he is, why is there suffering and evil?

41:58

Let's assume for the moment that God is all powerful. This means that God can do anything that is logically possible.

42:05

So he can create galaxies and subatomic particles and rainforests and you, but God cannot do what is logically impossible.

42:16

He cannot make a square circle or a one -ended stick. So can

42:21

God make a rock so big that he can't lift it? No. So what if when

42:27

God created human beings, he wanted them to be free? Freedom's a good thing, but if humans are to be free, they cannot be forced to obey

42:38

God because freedom without choice is like a square circle. It's a logical contradiction.

42:46

No choice, no freedom. God didn't want robots. He wanted real people.

42:53

The first humans endowed with the awesome power of free choice abused their freedom. The tragic consequences of their bad choice and our bad choices ripple across the world.

43:07

God is responsible for the fact of freedom, but humans are responsible for their acts of freedom.

43:15

But let's remember, we don't suffer alone. God will put an end to suffering and evil.

43:22

And God became a man to suffer with us. God is good and he wants real people like you to know him, but the free choice is yours.

43:34

So the ultimate answer to the question is we have free will. And why do we have free will? Because that's the only way we can have love.

43:39

Free will, free will. You're actually saying God wants babies to be born with cancer so that we can have free will.

43:46

We couldn't have free will if babies didn't have cancer. No, no, no, what I'm saying is the entrance of evil into the universe was a result of free choice.

43:57

And the reason we had free choice was because that's the only way we could have love, but this also creates the possibility for evil.

44:03

The entrance of evil into the universe was a result of free choice. Let's talk about that for a second. Adam and Eve are in the

44:10

Garden of Eden and God is there with them. I'm sorry, you brought it up, I'm allowed to do this.

44:15

I understand. Do you wanna keep going on this? Yeah, I wanna finish the thought here on evil if you don't mind. Yeah, let's keep doing this because this is good stuff.

44:22

Because when it comes down to it, Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden with God and God is omniscient and God knows the future and God puts the tree of knowledge of good and evil in spot

44:34

X. And when he does that, he's omniscient and he knows that Adam is going to eat that fruit.

44:40

He knows it's going to cause the fall of man and billions of souls will go to hell and according to you, babies will start being born with cancer.

44:50

If he puts the tree of knowledge over here, it doesn't happen. Or if he doesn't put it there at all, it doesn't happen.

44:56

But God puts it where he knows with 100 % certainty that Adam is gonna eat of that fruit.

45:02

Who made that choice? God knows the end from the beginning and he created the universe and he knew what would happen.

45:13

Anytime you wanna answer the question. I'm getting there. But that doesn't mean people don't have free choice and you're saying that God then could not have done that if somebody sins.

45:22

Well, let me ask you a question. That's not what I said at all. What I asked you was, who made the choice in the

45:28

Garden of Eden? You said. Adam and Eve did. Adam and Eve made the choice. Now, let me ask a question. Let me put it this way.

45:34

God knows with 100 % certainty that if I put the tree of knowledge here, billions of souls go to hell and babies get cancer according to you, which doesn't fall.

45:45

By the way, how many times have I said the only consistent

45:51

Arminian is an open theist? How many times have I said it? Has anyone proven it any more clearly than the atheist is right now?

46:00

Isn't that fascinating? Because the open theist goes, nope, nope, had no idea. Nope, didn't know.

46:08

But the stuttering and the stammering right now is because if you don't have a sovereign decree of God and if your ultimate good is human autonomy rather than divine autonomy, this is what you're stuck with.

46:23

This is what you're stuck with. Either, but I'll let you pass on the point. But wait, wait, wait. Stop. But if I put it over here. No, no, hold on, hold on.

46:28

No, no, this is the point. There's nothing wrong with babies getting cancer because it's all relative. You know what?

46:34

I judge that. I judge that to be wrong. Well, that's just your personal problem. But you're also avoiding. Now, I get

46:41

Silverman on the same point. I don't think of the section where we play, but in one of the things, I get him the same point.

46:46

He's, okay, he's being inconsistent. Okay, fine. The atheist is wrong, but you're not answering the question that way, are you?

46:54

No, you're just saying, well, you can't raise that objection. You don't have sufficient ground to raise that objection.

47:00

Agreed. It doesn't mean you've answered the objection. In a great big way. No, no, no. If you allow me to continue with my presentation,

47:07

I'll go into it. Another video? I want you to answer me. It's not another video. Okay, answer me. When God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil here, instead of here, knowing that when he put it here, knowing with 100 % certainty.

47:21

I got it. Let me answer it. Go for it. Here's the problem. The problem here, David, is that you're assuming that God could have created another universe where nobody sinned.

47:31

That while it's logically possible, it might not be actually achievable with free creatures. So sin was not a matter.

47:36

I hope y 'all recognize what that was. That was Molinism. That was Molinism raising its next to impossible explain in a fast way head.

47:47

But it just sort of popped up there just, well, you gotta come up with something. If you're not gonna go with open theism, simple foreknowledge just collapses if it's pressed hard enough.

47:56

So you gotta go somewhere. Was not an option. No sin, if God creates a universe with free creatures, he might not be able to create a universe where everybody freely chooses not to sin.

48:07

So he creates the universe we're in now, people freely choose to sin. And then his job, the whole purpose of the

48:14

Bible, and we're not really even here to talk about the Bible, but since you brought it up, the whole theme of the

48:20

Bible from Genesis to maps is one word. And that is redemption. You have paradise lost in Genesis, paradise regained in Revelation.

48:28

You are totally avoiding my question. No, I'm getting there. Before Adam ate that apple, he was without sin.

48:34

Yes. Before he ate that apple, he was without sin. God... Do you see what the problem with the answer was saying redemption?

48:42

That's wrong. It's God's glory. Is redemption part of the way in which

48:49

God glorifies himself? Central. But it isn't the central thing.

48:54

It's God's glory. It's all about God. Once you take it off of God, once you take it off of his purpose, once you no longer have a sovereign

49:00

God, once you no longer have a sovereign decree, it's not a coherent system. It doesn't make sense anymore.

49:07

And even the atheists can tell. They can see that you've got big holes and the big holes are because the theology you're standing on ain't big enough.

49:19

Theology matters and it determines the apologetic methodology that you have to use. Okay. So let's compare that then with the same topic when it came up with somebody else that isn't nearly as nicely dressed as Dr.

49:40

Turek was because he's wearing a bow tie. But here's me and Silverman, same subject.

49:47

I'm really having a good time tonight. I hope you're all having a good time tonight and enjoying yourselves. I really appreciate the hospitality that I'm being offered.

49:56

Dr. White, let's talk a bit about original sin. Adam and Eve are in the

50:02

Garden of Eden. Before they eat that apple, we'll call it an apple, they're perfect, yes?

50:16

I think testing one, two, okay, there you go. Perfect as in God created them to be upright, yes.

50:22

Perfect as in knowing good from evil? Not in the sense that they had, not experientially as yet, no.

50:31

Okay. So Adam is in the Garden of Eden and God puts the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the

50:38

Garden of Eden. Adam hasn't sinned yet. Adam hasn't eaten the apple yet. God knows at that point in time that you and I are going to have this conversation right now.

50:50

Not only knows that he decreed it, that's why he knows it. His knowledge is based upon his decree. Okay. So Adam.

50:57

Y 'all realize the two of us just left each, I'm no longer responding. The paths just diverged between my response and Dr.

51:09

Turk's response because I don't think he would say that. Only reformed people can say what

51:15

I just said. He decreed it would happen, that's how he knows it would happen. So we've just diverged, you'll see what the effect of that is down the road.

51:25

Eating the apple was part of God's plan. Yes, sir. Are there babies in hell?

51:33

Are there babies in hell? Yeah. As you may have,

51:38

I'm not sure if you were quoting me when you were talking or not, I believe that God has the exact same freedom in the salvation of infants that he has in the salvation of adults.

51:48

That's not my answer, that's not my question. Well, but I'm explaining it. Sorry, sorry. You asked are there quote unquote babies in hell.

51:55

I believe that God has the same freedom in the salvation of infants that he has in adults. Since all of us, no matter what our stage of development, are fallen sons and daughters of Adam, then

52:05

God would not be under any compulsion to show mercy to anyone. But I believe that he does based upon the very same freedom that he has in saving any adult person as well.

52:18

So I do not know, I cannot look someone, and I've been a hospital chaplain so I've had to do this more than once,

52:24

I cannot look at someone and play God and tell them what God is going to do in that situation.

52:32

My response always is the judge of all the earth will do right and leave it to the very same thing that I do with my children or anyone in my family.

52:40

So when Adam was about to eat that apple, when God put that tree of knowledge of good and evil in the

52:47

Garden of Eden, he knew that he would be in this situation right now. He decreed it.

52:53

He insisted on it. He made it happen. He chose to glorify himself in this particular fashion through the atonement of Christ.

53:01

He made it happen. When you say made it happen, what do you mean? Are you differentiating between primary movers, secondary means, et cetera, et cetera?

53:10

I'm saying that if I take my keys and I drop them, the keys have no will.

53:20

I'm saying that I know that I'm going to drop these keys and they're going to fall.

53:28

I knew that was going to happen, but God was more sure than I was that Adam would eat the fruit, that that would cause the fall of man, and that billions and billions of souls created by God, who he loved, would go to hell as a result.

53:51

God's knowledge of the future is not analogous to your knowledge of physical laws. That would be a category error.

53:57

However, the point that you're making is that God knows the future and that the future flows from his own decree.

54:04

Of course, what did not follow was the conclusion that you included in your question. Is it not then

54:10

God's will that billions and billions of souls are in hell? It is God's will to glorify himself in the salvation of particular people and to demonstrate his justice in his just punishment of many others.

54:21

I don't know. First of all, I don't think there's anybody in hell right now so I want to correct that.

54:27

I believe that's a future state. But the fact of the matter is, I don't know what the percentage of people is going to be who are going to experience his grace and the percentage of people is going to be who will not.

54:39

So I don't know how many people there are, but their just punishment was not only known to God, but the result of his will from the beginning.

54:46

Yes, no question about that. So you don't think that there's anybody damned? No, I do believe that there are people that are damned.

54:55

All I said was hell is a, if you're familiar with the book of Revelation, it says that death and Hades were cast in the lake of fire.

55:03

The dead right now are not in a place called hell, they're in a place called Hades. They're not the same thing. Maybe you're confusing those two terms.

55:10

But God had all of this in mind when Adam ate the apple.

55:17

In fact, it was God's will. It was God's intention. God could have stopped it if he didn't want it to happen, but he chose not to.

55:26

Certainly God could have stopped anything that he did not want to have happen, as he does very regularly in curbing the evil of man.

55:33

We never thank him for that. But I do differentiate very strongly between talking about God's decree and the fact that God's will, as revealed to us, is found in his law.

55:44

We don't know what God's secret decree is. God's will says thou shall not murder. So you need to differentiate when you're using the term will because you're asking a

55:54

Christian theologian what he believes about that, and I will have to differentiate on the basis of the scripture at that point. I'm confused.

56:01

Okay. God could put everyone in heaven anytime he wanted to.

56:09

God could show his grace. God could show himself. God has, and many times during the

56:15

Bible. Very complex question. You've already gotten to two different places that I would have to interrupt you and to answer part of the question.

56:24

Please do. When you said God could, are you talking about before creation, before he began to do his work?

56:31

Are you talking about now? Both. Well, theoretically, prior to the fall of man and to the working out of his will,

56:41

God could have just created us all to go to heaven and that would have been it. He never would have glorified himself in the cross.

56:47

He never would have demonstrated his love or mercy. He could have, theoretically. But once the fall took place, then no longer is that a theoretical possibility because God has already begun to act, make promises, and God's not gonna go back upon the promises he's already made to the prophets or whatever else it might be.

57:06

So you have to pick and choose which area you're gonna approach there. Let's do that again.

57:13

God could not choose right now to send everybody to heaven? No, because he's made revelation.

57:21

He has revealed exactly how a person is to go to heaven and exactly upon what grounds he has given prophecies.

57:30

He'd have to be able to lie and the scripture says God cannot lie. And so to vitiate his own prophecies, he would have to be able to change his own nature and be able to say,

57:40

I was dishonest in what I said before. Moses had one covenant. God gave us a second covenant with Jesus.

57:47

That changed the rules. No, it did not. Two minutes. No, it did not change the rules. You're not understanding the relationship of the covenant of grace, which actually begins with Adam and that each one of those covenants are a representation of that covenant of grace.

58:00

There is a fundamental unity that exists through those, even though that there is a difference in how those things are worked out.

58:09

The book of Hebrews makes it very plain that the argument you just made is not really an accurate argument in the New Testament.

58:14

It's not an accurate argument. So God could have done something once before, which is send everybody to heaven and just glorified himself by showing himself to everybody.

58:28

Now he can't do that. Now he has to glorify himself by sending lots of people to Hades.

58:35

God will be consistent with the promises he has already made. Yes, he does not change.

58:41

And he has made a revelation as to what he's doing and he's not going to change that. All right.

58:51

Quite different. Very, very different. You might say, yeah, Silverman was much less animated.

58:59

I think he was lost. He didn't really know where to go with me because I was willing to just straight out say, yeah,

59:09

God decreed all things. It's like, well, drat. Yeah, he was having to feel his way around you a good bit where with Frank, it's, you know.

59:19

Well, he knew what to expect. There's a big gaping hole I'm going to drive my truck right through. Right, big time. Yeah, most definitely.

59:27

All right, so there you see the difference. You see how it works out.

59:34

The practical ramifications, the practical application of how it works out with the exact same atheist, which again,

59:46

I would not have thought of making that contrast, but mainly because I didn't realize that Dr.

59:53

Turek had debated him on the same subject. And even if I had, it probably would not have struck me to go, hey,

59:59

I wonder if we discussed the same things and stuff. So I am appreciative for that information.

01:00:04

It made it quite educational. All right, here we go. I've got some people asking, can you give link to this debate or title?

01:00:13

Which one? I look up David Silverman debates on YouTube, I imagine.

01:00:21

David Silverman, Frank Turek, David Silverman, James White. They'll pop up. That's that little box at the top is all about.

01:00:28

So let's get to Andy Stanley. He spent the first half.

01:00:36

Now remember, these sermons are only about half an hour long and they are really high speed.

01:00:43

Man, I mean, I've just been listening to the speed at which he moves. And it's amazing.

01:00:50

I went, when I preached last week, I went even Sunday evening, which is normally only about 30 to 35 minutes.

01:00:58

I went 45 minutes Sunday evening. And I'm not sure how much more information

01:01:03

I got in, but he talked really, really quickly. But the first half was pretty much just a redux, a restatement of the week before, except that he responded to critics.

01:01:16

And when you respond to your critics, you either have to do what politicians do.

01:01:25

And that is obfuscate, spin, lob smoke bombs, whatever.

01:01:35

Or if more times than not, it clarifies things. You end up having to restate things and something that may have been unclear comes across.

01:01:47

And I think that's what happened here. So let's, I forgot to, fast forward because there's this long, cool introduction with all sorts of music and weird things like that.

01:02:07

Okay, maybe not. I thought there was. Oh, well. Oh, that's right. I fixed it.

01:02:13

Well, happy Labor Day weekend to all of you here at Buckhead Church. And for those of you at North Point Community Church and East Auditorium, West Auditorium, thanks for being in church today.

01:02:21

For those of you who are still in your pajamas, you're at the lake and you're at the beach, we're not jealous, we're not haters. We're just grateful that you decided to come to church via the internet.

01:02:31

So we're glad that you're here. And all of our... Okay, I guess I fully intended to stop right there and point out one of the major problems, one of the major differences.

01:02:44

That's not church. If you're sitting in your pajamas watching a screen, that's not church.

01:02:51

Now, some of us are, well, what about people who, look, if you normally are a part of a fellowship and you're there and you support it and you interact with the people and you're there for the baptisms and you're there for the

01:03:01

Lord's Supper and you're there in service and you're sick, you have an operation, you can't go for a while.

01:03:08

Okay, I get it. But that's not what he's talking about. The idea here is you go to church by simply listening to the music and what he's saying.

01:03:22

That's not church. That would not be recognized as going to church by any of the apostles.

01:03:35

And there is a fundamental difference between what I see the

01:03:40

New Testament teaching and what Andy Stanley teaches in regards to what the church is, how it functions.

01:03:48

If you do not have elders and deacons and the ministry of the word and the ordinances of the church and church discipline, if you do not see the church as the spotless bride of Christ that gathers in holiness with the primary purpose being the worship and the lifting up of the name of Jesus Christ, then what you're doing is you're just getting together with lots of lights and entertaining people.

01:04:20

But don't call it church. Don't call it church if that's not your purpose. And at this point, there's just so much in the

01:04:30

New Testament on this that it's amazing to me. And of almost all topics in the

01:04:36

New Testament, the one that most modern day Christians are the most ignorant of is ecclesiology, is what the

01:04:44

Bible teaches about the church, what the form of the church to be. I mean, that one chapter in Corinthians about the putting the guy out and all that, oh man, there's a skip over that.

01:04:58

That's creepy, that's icky. That was the other topic

01:05:04

I was gonna address at the beginning and I forgot. We'll get to it another time. But sitting around in your

01:05:12

PJs and popping Andy Stanley on on Sunday morning, or out at the lake, that ain't church.

01:05:23

It's just not church, I'm sorry. Don't call it that. You know, say, hey, thanks for tuning in.

01:05:29

Hope someday you come here to church. But it's not church. Good luck making an argument from the

01:05:37

New Testament for that. But then again, if you don't think the New Testament is actually the foundation of everything, you sort of skip over that anyway.

01:05:44

Partners all over the country and now more and more all around the world, it's just so fun to be a part of this growing community of people who are approaching life and approaching

01:05:52

Christianity a little bit different way than maybe some of us grew up with. We're in the middle of a series called

01:05:57

Who Needs God? And if ever there has been a series where you need to catch up this.

01:06:03

Okay, now, I got interrupted by someone yelling on the other side of the window there and I'm not sure what was being yelled at me, but we do things differently here than you might have grown up with.

01:06:17

So, yeah, there does seem to be a sort of a kickback against his own upbringing here.

01:06:25

And everyone's pointing out to me, this is not a Southern Baptist church. Okay, fine, he was certainly raised Southern Baptist. And there's certainly

01:06:31

Southern Baptist churches that are doing the exact same thing, the multi -campus, big preacher, never wear a tie jacket type thing, all approachable, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no discipline, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:06:42

Now, thankfully, there are people pushing back, including Southern Baptists that are pushing back and going, excuse me, excuse me, this is, no, no, no.

01:06:49

They're saying a lot of the same things I am, appreciative of that, but anyway.

01:06:55

Because we're taking off today and moving in a little bit of a different direction. Last week was a real mind bender. I promise not to do that to you until two weeks from today.

01:07:03

We'll go back to just mind bending kinds of new and fun stuff. Well, that's interesting.

01:07:09

Nice to get a warning. So I guess the Sunday we get back from Alaska is the one to be watching for on that.

01:07:18

This has been a really fun series for me and I've enjoyed getting ready for it. However, there are people who are not a part of our church community who watch from the outside who don't understand what they do, what we do.

01:07:30

And it's always amusing to read the comments of people who are not a part of our gathering of churches in the

01:07:36

Atlanta area and around the country. And so some people have come to the conclusion that I don't believe the Bible, which

01:07:41

I know. I'm glad you laughed and didn't go, well, duh. I'm glad, yeah, exactly. So anyway, and I realized part of the reason that I'm easily misunderstood by people who don't understand what we do because they don't do what we do and they're not part of this fabulous community that you've helped us create, whether you're a

01:07:55

Jesus follower or not and have chosen to be part of one of our churches. Did you catch that? Did you catch that?

01:08:02

Whether you're a Jesus follower or not, you chose to be part of one of our churches. That's not the church.

01:08:10

The church is the bride of Christ. Andy Stanley now has the idea that the church includes unbelievers.

01:08:16

So you bring unbelievers in and you friendship them in. Hey folks, this is just the logical conclusion to all this friendship evangelism and seeker sensitive, hyper seeker sensitive stuff that's been going on for a long, long time.

01:08:35

Just bring them on in. You know, let them have the Lord's supper and you know, just, you know, this idea of a radical call for discipleship, take up your cross, deny yourselves, die to self.

01:08:53

That's super Christian stuff. And the ground out of which this has grown is the anti -lordship movement,

01:09:04

Zane Hodges, Wilkin, Dallas Theological Seminary. I know there's people managed to get out of Dallas without being anti -lordship, but let's face it, that's part and parcel of it.

01:09:17

We listened to this and now you're going, wait, unbelievers part of the church and you want it that way?

01:09:28

Yep, yep. How did we get there? Theology matters. Theology matters.

01:09:35

Your gospel matters. And if your gospel is based upon getting someone to tip the hat toward God, then that's gonna have ramifications.

01:09:51

It's gonna have a result down the road. And so when you hear this guy talking about how all these little churches need to close down and just sell their property, give the money to the big churches, the mega churches doing stuff that he's doing, how did he get there?

01:10:05

Started small, but there were cracks in the foundation and eventually it all gives way and you gotta put something else in its place.

01:10:12

And it's not gonna be something New Testament. And this ain't certainly New Testament. So there you go.

01:10:20

Maybe I haven't been clear on exactly why I'm doing this series and exactly who I'm talking to. So I wanna be super, super clear and then we're gonna take off and move in a little bit different direction, okay?

01:10:32

I want all the people who grew up in church and then left church because they couldn't figure out how to reconcile what they learned in school or what they experienced in life with what they learned in church and you decided, you know what, it's just irreconcilable.

01:10:47

Science is irreconcilable with faith. Pain is irreconcilable with faith. Pain and suffering in the world is irreconcilable with faith.

01:10:53

My life experience is irreconcilable with faith. And by the way, where should all of those topics have been repeatedly addressed?

01:11:07

If you're preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God regularly.

01:11:13

If the words of the apostle Paul echo in your ears, I am innocent of the blood of all men because I have not shrunk back from proclaiming to you the whole counsel of God.

01:11:27

If you've proclaimed the whole counsel of God, every single thing that he's talking about has been addressed repeatedly in your presence, in your upbringing, in a sound biblical church that has not been infected by a sub -biblical, cultural, easy -believe -ism, anti -lordship type of entertainment.

01:11:59

So it's certainly understandable why he would know lots of people who've left all that because it wasn't addressed because they were just being entertained rather than being challenged.

01:12:10

That's understandable. Learning what I've experienced as an adult is irreconcilable with faith. And so there's this tension, and I can either pretend that I believe something

01:12:17

I'm not sure exists, or I can go with what's obvious and with what's undeniable. I want you to reconsider

01:12:23

Christianity because I think some of you, I'm guessing a whole lot of you, but I don't want to judge. A lot of you though, you left

01:12:31

Christianity for reasons that really have nothing to do with the Christian faith. You left unnecessarily.

01:12:37

So I'm inviting all of you to reconsider Christianity, not the Christianity of your childhood, but a grown -up faith with a grown -up

01:12:44

God with a little bit different perspective because I want you to come back. Okay, so from his perspective, what he's presenting is a grown -up faith.

01:12:52

The way they're doing church is the grown -up way. And a grown -up faith doesn't actually answer all these questions.

01:13:03

A grown -up faith is the faith that's going to say, well, you know, the Christian faith really isn't based upon scripture. It's based upon the resurrection of Christ.

01:13:11

The scriptures are just a collection of ancient books, very useful, very important, but there's this more esoteric way of understanding things.

01:13:24

Exactly how it ends up working out. I don't even want to raise the idea of Andy Stanley debating someone that would actually push him on these topics because unfortunately,

01:13:36

I think it would be bad. Let's be honest. Some of you miss us a little bit.

01:13:42

I mean, you just can't bring yourself to go back to church because it's just all that nonsense that you've decided it's just all nonsense.

01:13:48

But some of you are old enough now, you've been having kids of your own and there's something in the back of your mind, like, am I robbing my kids of the foundation

01:13:54

I had? And so all that sort of stuff. So I am just trying to put the rungs as low as possible on the ladder to let you know whatever your objection is to Christianity and whatever your objection is or was to church, it may not be, and this isn't meant as an insult, it may not be a valid objection.

01:14:11

You might have left unnecessarily. Now, you know, if you tell somebody I'm putting the rungs as low as possible and then turn around and say,

01:14:18

I'm not trying to offend you. Really? I, you know, I know what he's trying to do, but what's totally missing, what's totally missing anywhere in here.

01:14:30

What about the spiritual aspect? What about the idea that maybe someone left because they were never actually truly born again?

01:14:40

Oh, well, that's not possible because all you gotta do is tip your hat toward God and you're saved.

01:14:48

So the whole theological truth of false faith and hence that element of apostasy, what about people who just, they know the truth, but they love their sin more and they were never challenged with the message of holiness, with the message of obedience to Christ within a context of a easy -believe -ism type of Christianity or sub -Christianity,

01:15:21

I guess would be a better way of putting it. I don't want you, in fact, I don't want any of us to stay stuck in this false dichotomy, this false tension of doubt and despair.

01:15:29

You know, you embrace religion and you have all these questions, you have all these doubts, you ask really good, you know, fact -based questions and you keep getting faith -based answers.

01:15:39

And if the - Fact -based questions versus faith -based answers. So what's the definition of faith here?

01:15:49

Because remember, he's gonna say something later in this sermon, he said it already before when he's talking about the disciples, when they're in Jesus' presence, they didn't need to have faith because they could see him.

01:16:01

And I'm like, what do you think faith is? This is a horrifically unbiblical understanding of the term faith and what faith is, the role of the spirit in saving faith, so on and so forth.

01:16:15

The answers you've gotten to your fact -based questions are faith -based answers. No wonder you have doubt and no wonder you've turned your back on Christianity or religion in general.

01:16:24

But most of you, because you're smart, most of you have not stepped into the realm of atheism because the whole idea of a godless universe where somehow you've got a mind and figure out how to come up with purpose and morality and absolutes and all those things, you are smart enough to know there's something in you that hesitates and the very thought of a godless universe, a creator -less universe, just leaves you and fills you with kind of a sense of dread and despair.

01:16:50

And I'm not saying that all atheists live in despair and all atheists live in dread. I'm not saying that at all. But most people kind of have this gut sense that if I check the atheist box...

01:17:01

Could I just point out that the only logical conclusion to atheism is despair?

01:17:08

You know, he's so seeker -sensitive. I don't want to offend anybody. Yeah, well, and don't tell him the truth in the process.

01:17:14

Are you actually leaving the door open for the idea that there could be an atheism that doesn't result... The only atheism that doesn't result in despair is an atheism that hasn't been thought through.

01:17:23

Isn't it good to push somebody to think it through? Maybe, possibly, anyway. Not sure

01:17:28

I can defend that either. I'm not sure I just won't have another set of doubts. So you just feel stuck in the middle.

01:17:35

And so for those of you who've kind of stepped away but haven't really stepped into anything else, you're a nun, you're non -affiliated, this just isn't, you've just decided to check out,

01:17:45

I want you to reconsider. And I want you to come back because I think perhaps the church did a horrible job, and I'm owning that, that people who have my job, pastors, did a horrible job laying a foundation for you.

01:17:57

They gave you a childhood faith that never grew up and you outgrew it. And if I knew what you...

01:18:02

Okay, so what we've been presented, what we were presented in the last sermon is a mature faith.

01:18:09

A mature faith is the scriptures are not foundational, that the early church fathers didn't say thus say a scripture even though you can fill pages with where they did.

01:18:23

That completely ignores the centrality of the Greek Septuagint to the

01:18:29

New Testament scriptures and the citations of scripture and all that kind of stuff. That's the mature

01:18:34

Christianity. Now, it could very well be that what he's thinking is the immature

01:18:41

Christianity. Is the old style surface level evangelicalism, the churchy entity of his own youth.

01:18:53

What he doesn't seem to realize is neither one of those are actually grounded in any type of meaningful

01:19:00

New Testament perspective. Is he really saying, let's talk, you know, he was raised in a mega church.

01:19:09

Let's talk about a mega church that does it right. A mega church where the word of God is central.

01:19:15

A mega church where exegesis is exemplified every single

01:19:21

Sunday from the pulpit. John MacArthur's church, Grace Community Church.

01:19:26

Mega church and yet they recognize you can't have fellowship in a mega church so that you have these fellowship groups which they recognize are truly churches in and of themselves in the sense that they're very concerned about what the leadership is and the exegesis of the text in those contexts as well.

01:19:48

Are you saying, Andy Stanley, that that's childish Christianity? What John MacArthur has?

01:19:56

I'd be interested in knowing what he thinks about that because obviously MacArthur doesn't do it the way he's doing it.

01:20:02

They have this thing called church discipline and John MacArthur is absolutely convinced that you let the word of God speak.

01:20:15

You don't come to hear a special person. You come to hear the one special person and you hear him through his word.

01:20:25

Is that childish Christianity? I just wonder. And if I'd experienced what you'd experienced,

01:20:31

I'm sure I would feel the same way but I just want you to know maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe there's more and I would love for you to come back.

01:20:39

One of our students said this after week two when we talked about all the different kinds of gods.

01:20:45

He said this. He said, I thought I was an atheist but I realize now I don't believe in boyfriend

01:20:51

God. Remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the gods of the No Testament, the gods that don't exist because what has happened, a lot of you have sort of the big

01:21:00

G God lost his appeal or lost its appeal depending on how you view God. Big G God lost his or its appeal because your world got cluttered up with a bunch of gods that we said a few weeks ago don't even exist.

01:21:13

And then also there was another student, super smart guy goes to a university not too far from here. And he said this. He said,

01:21:19

I watched that first episode of the series. He said, I had no idea there was a way to reconcile science with faith.

01:21:26

I thought you had to choose science or you had to choose faith but I thought they were totally irreconcilable.

01:21:31

I'm so glad to know that at least there's a category there is a version of my faith.

01:21:37

There's a version of Christianity where those two things are not in conflict. And then last week we did a little bit of a history lesson and we talked about a

01:21:45

Bible tells me so Jesus where we made the point and this is so huge and I'm gonna try not to review too much of this.

01:21:52

We made the point that Christianity doesn't exist because of the Bible. Christianity does not exist because of the

01:21:59

Bible. It is the other way around. The reason there is the Bible is because of Christianity.

01:22:06

And this is one of the concepts that so many people outside our network of churches have a hard time understanding. I think that you get it cause you're above average intelligence if you attend one of our churches, okay?

01:22:16

You get this. But most of us, because we never think about it. I mean, we just, the way we were raised, we don't think about it. Somehow we've gotten the idea that the

01:22:24

Bible is Christianity. And as the Bible goes, so goes Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth in fact.

01:22:29

Okay, so he's doubling down. We've already, you know, we're not gonna repeat what we did last week in demonstrating the many category errors that Pastor Stanley seems to be suffering from.

01:22:42

Nor the incoherence of his distinction, his distinction between the

01:22:52

Bible and what he calls the faith or Christianity. How he knows the one without the other, I don't know.

01:22:59

As well as his unwillingness to recognize the centrality of the scriptures, which was the

01:23:08

Tanakh to the New Testament church during the period of time while the New Testament itself was being written.

01:23:15

We point out these problems last time, not gonna go back through it again, but we are rightfully left wondering what this

01:23:25

Christianity looks like that he is trying to present to us that does not have as its foundation the revelation of God in scripture.

01:23:35

Now, if all he's saying is that there was a Christian church before there was a

01:23:41

New Testament, that's obvious. But that's not what he's saying.

01:23:50

And portions of the New Testament, especially the gospels and the Pauline literature began functioning normatively as scripture within the first generation of Christians.

01:24:03

And so trying to somehow separate the Bible out so that the constant attacks upon the

01:24:11

Bible can be differentiated from a constant attack upon the Christian faith doesn't work.

01:24:18

I don't know what you think you're accomplishing there. Yes. I was gonna say, it struck me odd in the interview with Russell Moore, and maybe this wasn't his point at all, but when he posited the question, if you could be the evangelical pope, and I'm listening to this and I'm starting to see where that's coming from.

01:24:37

I'm hearing elements of sola ecclesia. I'm hearing we're really smart.

01:24:42

We're doing it, you know. Well, I don't think he'd have any idea what sola ecclesia is.

01:24:48

I know, but he certainly does believe that the North Point, and recognizes there are other churches are doing the same thing.

01:24:56

This multi -campus, social media savvy, get rid of all the words that offend the culture type perspective is the future of the church in this culture.

01:25:11

I do very firmly believe that what we're seeing here is the, and I've told you,

01:25:18

I've told our audience many, many times, most of what calls itself evangelicalism is going to collapse on key issues, such as homosexuality.

01:25:28

There's already good evidence that Andy Stanley is very compromised on that subject already as far as the position of the church is concerned.

01:25:36

I've said that that's coming. This is the way it's gonna happen, is, you know, think back to the debate last year in South Africa, Graham Codrington.

01:25:48

What happened in regards to his bibliology and the decentralization of the scripture as the defining factor for what the church is supposed to believe and do within the culture over against the hermeneutic of love?

01:26:04

Well, now we have the hermeneutic of, I don't know what you would call it, but normally what it's called is a

01:26:12

Christocentric hermeneutic in the sense that it's all about Christ. Then when you start pushing who is he, they can't really answer that without going back to scripture, unless they wanna get into some type of esoteric

01:26:23

Gnosticism or something like that, where it's all an experiential thing. But anyway. My daughter, who's a college student, you know, she was reading some of the critiques of this series.

01:26:31

She's going, Dad, I don't get it. Do they think the Bible caused the resurrection?

01:26:37

Do they think the Bible caused it? Somehow the resurrection exists because the Bible, she said, isn't it obvious to everyone that something happened and then someone wrote about it and the documenting of something, isn't the same thing, is it happening?

01:26:49

I'm going. Okay. With all due respect to Andy Stanley's daughter, and the fact that he's repeating this means that's what he's hearing too.

01:27:01

You didn't hear the point. No one has ever suggested that the scriptures caused the resurrection.

01:27:15

That's not even, that's not even, I don't even know how someone could come up with that idea. I'll be perfectly honest with you.

01:27:20

All due respect to the young lady. I don't know how anybody could come up with that idea. What we are saying is that my knowledge of not only the historical fact of the resurrection, but why it matters, what it means, what it means to have faith in Jesus, what it means to have faith in his sacrificial death and his life -saving resurrection.

01:27:48

That is all explained to me, not by mere history books.

01:27:54

I need to have a divine revelation of what all of that means.

01:28:00

Otherwise, if I don't have that, then you can be like the, you know, Greg Bonson used to talk about the, some professor in California, don't remember what the guy's name was, but who came to the conclusion, you know what, miracles happen.

01:28:12

Strange things happen in this world. So Jesus rose from the dead. Well, strange things happen in this world.

01:28:19

Because if you don't have, if you don't have the coherent message, the prophecies, the law, the very basis of understanding why the cross and resurrection can bring about redemption is found in understanding what

01:28:35

God prefigured in the law, in the giving of the prophecies, this one to come, Isaiah 53,

01:28:42

Psalm 22, that gives you the basis. And then in the New Testament, you have the explication of these things.

01:28:49

So when I have faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the object of my faith is divine.

01:28:58

It is a divine revelation. It took place in history, but what it means is only understandable in the full flow of what

01:29:10

God has revealed and what God has said. And that's scripture.

01:29:17

And that's why it's foundational. That's why it can't just be a collection of ancient books because a collection of ancient books that is not theanoustos, it is not

01:29:30

God speaking, is insufficient to give you a basis for believing all these things about the atonement.

01:29:38

All you'd be left with, with simply reliable historical books is, wow, something happened in the past and a lot of people have had different ideas about what it meant.

01:29:46

That would be it. It's all you got. And since you don't have anything of revelation left, then you end up having to fill stuff in with traditions and all the rest of that stuff.

01:29:57

That's what liberalism is all about. That's why liberalism always explodes out into all this wackiness and looniness.

01:30:05

So I don't understand why our objection is not being heard because your background should be sufficient.

01:30:14

I'll bet you Charles Stanley gets it. I'll bet you he understands. You are so smart.

01:30:23

Who are your parents? Okay, anyway. So the point is this. The point is this. Christianity does not rise and fall on the integrity or the verifiability of the entire

01:30:36

Bible. And I know that if you grew up in church. The entire Bible. Why say the entire

01:30:43

Bible? What about the parts about the resurrection? What about the parts about prophecy?

01:30:49

What about the parts about the incarnation? Could the parts about the incarnation be false so that you've got a

01:30:56

Jesus who really isn't the God man? Which parts,

01:31:03

Pastor Stanley, are negotiable here? Because I know what you're trying to do.

01:31:09

You want to try to minimize the targets. You want to try to lessen the range of fire because we live in a society where there is a constant expression of hatred toward the word of God and constant attacks upon the word of God.

01:31:24

I get it. I got to deal with them all the time. I understand. I know what you're trying to do.

01:31:30

And maybe I'm just not as smart as all of you folks at North Point.

01:31:38

But I don't see how you're accomplishing anything. If I'm one of these people listening to you and I've quote unquote walked away from the faith, leaving aside all the other issues that that might entail, how is what you're saying accomplishing anything?

01:31:58

What is it giving to someone? Hey, you know what? There are enough reliable parts of the

01:32:06

Bible to know a little something about Jesus, but we can't really tell you which parts they are because we can't give you a consistent criterion.

01:32:16

That's what you think is going to help folks? I don't get it.

01:32:23

Or sort of handed the, you know, when you were a kid, they said, pray this prayer. Here's your Bible. Remember that? Pray this prayer, ask

01:32:29

Jesus in your heart. Here's the book. You know, God bless you. Good luck. Okay. Hey, if that's what

01:32:35

Andy Stanley experienced, I am sorry. I'm sorry. Cause that is wrong.

01:32:44

That's not New Testament Christianity. It never has been. You don't, yeah,

01:32:52

I get it. Easy believism, no discipleship, no depth. Hey, if that's what you think the quote unquote church is, if that's what the church of these people's youth is, hey, let's just be honest.

01:33:04

That's not really Christianity. But you don't correct that by then saying, it's not really based upon all of the

01:33:14

Bible, but only parts of the Bible. All right. I understand because, you know, we were children, but at some point we need to grow up and see this the way that it actually is.

01:33:25

And the great news is Christianity does not hang by the thread of the Bible. Christianity preceded the

01:33:31

Bible. The reason we have the Bible. Christianity did not precede the Bible.

01:33:38

Pastor Stanley, wake up. That's, I'm sorry. Could someone communicate this to him?

01:33:45

That sir is a lie. L -I -E, stop lying to your people. You've been corrected.

01:33:51

You've heard the corrections. Open your ears. There is no apostle of Jesus Christ that presented the gospel message without saying, thus saith the scriptures.

01:34:05

Read Acts. Read it. And then sir, the thread of the

01:34:15

Bible. Do forgive some of us for wondering just exactly how robust your faith in the word of God truly is, sir.

01:34:25

The, it hangs by the thread of the Bible. Can you name me something else you'd like to hang by that would be stronger than God's word, sir?

01:34:40

Just, just, just something. Your sermons? I would hope not.

01:34:48

Oh, and you wonder, you wonder why you're getting criticism. We, because we've heard this language before.

01:34:57

It's just always from enemies, not from people standing in what's supposed to be a Christian church in front of 32 ,000 people.

01:35:03

That's what makes it different. Is because of something that happened.

01:35:09

Now here's something kind of interesting that I got to move on. When, when Jesus was walking around on the earth, he did the strangest thing.

01:35:16

In fact, Jewish, Jesus told the Jewish people in the first, well, just the old

01:35:22

Testament scripture, the, I mean, excuse me, the Jewish scriptures, we call it the old Testament, you know. Again, what is the significant difference between, why is the

01:35:34

Bible? I admit that that's a later term. Who cares? How is that not synonymous with scripture?

01:35:43

When, when, when Paul says, pasa grafe, all scripture, what's he referring to?

01:35:54

Would it be appropriate for me to say that that's the Bible? Now I know in his context would be the old

01:36:01

Testament, but it just seems to me that you're trying to protect people from modernistic attacks upon particular aspects of biblical revelation.

01:36:15

But then you're leaving them only with the old Testament, which is the primary area of attack anyways. The historical attacks, it's all about the

01:36:23

Exodus and science and creation. It's, you're just leaving them with the old Testament anyways.

01:36:29

There's, there's no way around that. I just, I do not understand this false distinction and why it actually carries any type of merit.

01:36:39

30 years later, but the Jewish scriptures, Jesus went around saying, did you know that our scripture, because he's

01:36:45

Jewish, did you know that our scripture is all about me? He told the people, he said, did you know everything in our scriptures points to me?

01:36:53

And this was blasphemy. What do you mean? He said, yes. Time out. He did this after the resurrection and he opened their hearts and minds to understand all the prophecies from Moses all the way through and how it was all about himself.

01:37:11

And they didn't say it was blasphemy because they were his followers and were now had their minds opened by supernatural force.

01:37:24

And the fulfillment of all of this stuff that we grew up as Jewish children hearing about, it is all fulfilled in me.

01:37:31

I'm fulfilling all of it. And it was like, are you kidding? Who in the world would say that? And some of his closest followers in the first century, they began to believe it.

01:37:39

They're like, you know what? It kind of lines up. You know, our scripture says this and he did that. And our Jewish scripture says this and he did that.

01:37:45

What is he talking about? I'm sorry, but what are you talking about?

01:37:52

Could you give us a Bible verse once in a while? You know, I know it's not the foundation.

01:37:59

So I guess it's the Andy Stanley version, but could you give us a Bible verse? When are you talking about this? Is this before the crucifixion?

01:38:05

Is this after the crucifixion? Is it before the resurrection, after the resurrection and coming to the Holy spirit? What are you talking about? There was no little process where someone was sitting around going, you know, this prophecy thing,

01:38:17

I'm starting to see some stuff here, you know, and maybe, yeah, there's a... And this is supposed to be bringing people back.

01:38:28

He started believing maybe this is the Messiah who is the fulfillment of all the Jewish scriptures.

01:38:33

And then he was crucified. Okay. Game over. So this is before the crucifixion.

01:38:41

And so before the crucifixion, some of them are starting to look at the

01:38:47

Bible and going, maybe this is the Messiah. I thought that, is that Peter?

01:38:55

Andrew? Obviously he was wrong and we were wrong about him.

01:39:04

And there were no Jesus followers after the crucifixion.

01:39:09

And there was no one on planet earth that believed Jesus was the son of God when they saw him die.

01:39:27

You know, I just wonder if maybe some of these folks that he's trying to get to might, and maybe this is what he doesn't want them to do, but they might pick this up and they might open it up and they might start looking and they run into the crucifixion.

01:39:47

Okay. Crucifixion. All right. There it is. And then they read the section where Jesus dies.

01:39:56

And again, I'm just getting old. Used to be able to read these things really easily, but can't do it anymore.

01:40:04

And then they run into this Centurion guy. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.

01:40:13

And the curtain of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom. And when the Centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, truly, this man was the son of God.

01:40:29

They might run into stuff like this, you know? And they might go, what are you talking about?

01:40:43

Anyway. Then he rose from the dead and the whole thing got started.

01:40:49

And suddenly all those Jewish followers went back to those scriptures that Jesus claimed, predicted him, and they said to the

01:40:55

Jewish community in Jerusalem, he was right, we lost faith. He's back, we're back.

01:41:00

Everything in the Old Testament, our Jewish scriptures points to Jesus. And what happened, this is,

01:41:07

I gotta move on. But what happened then is the Gentiles who started becoming Jesus followers, they got interested in the

01:41:13

Jewish scriptures. Why, because they wanted to become Jewish? Nope, they would have already done that. They got interested in the

01:41:18

Jewish scriptures because as they were able to have access to, and that was difficult for second, third century, but as they became exposed to and had access to the

01:41:27

Jewish scriptures, they realized that what Jesus said was exactly right. The entire, what we would call

01:41:32

Old Testament, pointed to Jesus. And so Gentiles got interested in the

01:41:37

Jewish scripture. There's one little problem with the theory here, and that is that one of the most fertile fields of evangelism for the early church, seen over and over again in the

01:41:53

Book of Acts, were the God -fearers. The God -fearers were Gentiles who were attracted to the

01:42:00

Jewish scriptures because of what the Jewish scriptures taught, monotheism. But they had never heard of Jesus.

01:42:07

So they were attracted by those very scriptures that he said, well, that's not why they were interested.

01:42:13

Well, what about the God -fearers? They were central, absolutely central, to the founding of the church and the missions.

01:42:26

The founding of the church of Philippi. Anyway. Examples of this, I just wanna give you one, then

01:42:31

I gotta move on. It's Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah 53. Now, let me just give you a little homework assignment, especially if you would say, you know,

01:42:39

I'm kind of a nun, I'm not really into it, I don't know. Just, this would be so simple. In fact, you can stop watching and do this.

01:42:46

This is how cool this is, okay? Isaiah 53. Okay, now, I would never, ever, ever discourage someone from getting people to go read

01:42:55

Isaiah 53. And the rest of the stories you could tell about this is great, you know? Jewish guy, never heard of it.

01:43:02

Michael Brown's told similar stories more than once about the huge impact that Isaiah 53 has.

01:43:10

Pastor Stanley, you've already told people that the foundation of the faith isn't the scriptures anyways. And how do you know that this section of the

01:43:19

Bible is inspired, is literally

01:43:25

God speaking? How do you know this wasn't a lucky guess?

01:43:31

Or that it's been changed or altered or, you know, I just wonder, you know, where are you going with it?

01:43:40

That's all. This was written about 700 BCs. You know, 680 to 720 years before Jesus.

01:43:48

And when you read Isaiah 53, ask yourself this question. Who does that sound like?

01:43:54

Who does that sound like? And it sounds exactly like Jesus. And Jesus said, talking about me.

01:44:00

And nobody believed that until after the resurrection. It's like, how could we miss it? In fact, I have a friend, when I was in graduate school,

01:44:06

I met a guy and his story was this. He was Jewish and he became a Christian. And so when you meet a

01:44:11

Jewish person who's a Christian, there's always a story. And this was his story. When he was a senior, I think a senior in college, he had a friend who was a

01:44:18

Christian who kept inviting him to church. And he would say, I'm not coming to your church. And this is just his story. This isn't a statement about Jewish people.

01:44:24

This is just his story. He told his friend, look, I'm not gonna go to your church. I don't even go to mine, okay? So he said, I'm just not into that.

01:44:31

And his friend kept saying, no, you gotta come. And then his friend said, look, if you won't come to church with me, will you read something?

01:44:36

And he's like, whatever. So he thought he was gonna bring him a book or an article. His friend brings him a piece of paper, fold it up and hands it to him and says, just read this.

01:44:44

So he goes back to his dorm and opens it up. And it's Isaiah 53. And his friend had written out the whole thing.

01:44:49

He's like, great. And he arrives and reads this and he's like. And he thought, there is no way this isn't the

01:44:55

Jewish scriptures. He reads this and he says, you know what? The Christians have taken the

01:45:01

Jewish scriptures and they've changed them and they twisted them. There is no way this is in the Bible, art and not the

01:45:06

Bible. There's no way this is in the text that I grew up with as a young Jew. So between semesters, he goes home, he finds his

01:45:12

Jewish Bible, pulls it out, Isaiah 53, and lo and behold, it is the very same thing that's found in the

01:45:19

Christian Bible. So now he's really disturbed. So he goes to see his rabbi, the rabbi that their family grew up with, makes an appointment, goes to see him.

01:45:26

And he says to his rabbi, he says, rabbi, this friend of mine's a Christian. He told me to read Isaiah 53. And he says to his rabbi, who is this referring to?

01:45:36

And his rabbi kind of chuckled and said, well, it sounds a lot like Jesus, doesn't it?

01:45:42

And he said, yes, that's why I'm here. That's what's bothering me. And he said that his rabbi said, well, it does sound a lot like Jesus, but we're

01:45:48

Jewish and we don't follow Jesus. He said, he drove away thinking that's not an answer.

01:45:54

That's just an observation. I already knew that Jewish people don't follow Jesus, but that's not an answer to my question.

01:46:00

Who is this about? The point is when you read Isaiah 53 and it's written 600, 700 years before Jesus, you go, so what happened is

01:46:07

Gentiles, the first, second, third, before Christianity became legalized, they became, the

01:46:13

Gentiles became enamored with the Jewish scriptures. And then they did something that was so offensive to Jewish people.

01:46:19

I'm sure we still owe Jewish people an apology. The Christians took the

01:46:24

Jewish scriptures and combined them with the first century documents written by the followers of Jesus, bound them together, eventually called it the

01:46:35

Bible. They basically just - Excuse me, we owe them an apology?

01:46:43

If it's the fulfillment and Jesus taught it, the apology would be for, for what?

01:46:49

Some type of hyper social sensitivity, maybe? Political correctness?

01:46:57

There's no reason for an apology. Jewish scriptures, now why in the world would

01:47:05

Gentiles care anything about the Jewish scriptures? They're not, they didn't want to become Jewish. In fact, there was so much conflict between Jews and Gentiles in the first century and second century.

01:47:14

In fact, there's always been at some level somewhere in the world, an unfortunate and unnecessary conflict between Jewish people sometimes and the communities that they live in.

01:47:23

But at the same time, in spite of this kind of racism toward each other, the

01:47:28

Gentiles were so fascinated by the Jewish scriptures because once they became followers of Jesus, they couldn't help but recognize the

01:47:37

Jewish scriptures seem to point to the coming of this Jewish Messiah.

01:47:43

That's not the only reason. And what's our evidence for this?

01:47:50

The New Testament itself, where the law concerning, well, there is a story in the news today about a mother and daughter.

01:48:06

Here's some news for concerning well the story in the news. Shut up, Siri. There's a news today.

01:48:14

How did that sound like? I don't know. There's a story in the news today. A mother and a daughter married. Thank you very much, homosexual advocates.

01:48:22

And then they discover their mother and daughter. So now they've been arrested for incest. Now I was going to bring that story up and just point to all of the radicals promoting this stuff and say, what are you complaining about?

01:48:37

Why isn't Barack Obama out defending these families? Granting them a presidential pardon. You don't have a leg to stand on to even find that disgusting.

01:48:51

You sawed that branch off with the

01:48:56

Obergefell decision. It's done. It's over with. You can't object to that. What is your problem?

01:49:02

Anyway, there's a good example. There is a issue of incest in 1

01:49:08

Corinthians 5. And when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he said, this is how you should have handled it.

01:49:15

And you should have known these things. Why? Because the law says it. It's right there in Leviticus 18,

01:49:21

Leviticus 20. So it wasn't just this, there were prophecies of the

01:49:27

Messiah and all the rest of this stuff. It's part of the very fabric of all the

01:49:36

New Testament epistles. The intertextuality that is so plain in the

01:49:44

New Testament, it's just getting skipped over here. Gentiles took them, put them together, said, hey, there's a top half and a bottom half, a first half and a second half.

01:49:53

We're gonna call the first half the Old Covenant, which was very offensive to Jewish people because they're, wait a minute, it's not old.

01:49:59

It's current to us. This is who we are. But the Gentiles said, nope, we're gonna call it the Old Covenant because it's in contrast to what

01:50:06

Jesus said when he said, today I am launching, right before his crucifixion, I am inaugurating a new covenant.

01:50:13

So about 130 AD, a guy - So evidently, the very language of the book of Hebrews is also offensive in that way.

01:50:21

Is that what he's saying? It might be what he's saying. You might be saying, yes, the language of Hebrews is very offensive to certain

01:50:27

Jewish people, and it is, but I'm not sure what the point of that is. Melito from Sardis, Melito from Sardis.

01:50:35

He's the first person to actually label the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament. This is 130, about 130

01:50:41

AD, and in fact, he - Melito's later than that, sorry, but he is very important, but he's later than that.

01:50:48

But he was so fascinated by the fact that the Jewish scriptures foretold Jesus, he was wealthy, he traveled to, as he says in his letter, we have a letter that survived antiquity.

01:50:58

In this letter, he says he traveled to, and he called it Palestine, I traveled to Palestine to find out for myself about the

01:51:04

Jewish scriptures. And he gives us the first Christian list of the Old Testament, what we would call books, of our

01:51:12

Bible. The point is this, for a couple hundred - But by the way, Melito's testimony in regards to the

01:51:18

Old Testament canon is extremely important, really is. And it's one of the earliest ones to testify that the apocryphal books are not canonical.

01:51:27

That actually happens to be correct there. Give credit where credit's due.

01:51:33

Years, Gentiles were following Jesus, they were fascinated by the Jewish scriptures, and eventually they incorporated those scriptures together with New Testament documents that became the

01:51:43

Bible. The point of all that is this, Christianity preceded the

01:51:48

Bible. In the sense that the New Testament is written after the events it narrates, of course.

01:51:57

But Christianity does not precede scripture. That, I mean -

01:52:07

Christianity is why we have a Bible. The Bible didn't cause Christianity. Now why is that important to you if you've kind of stepped back from Christianity?

01:52:14

Okay, the epistemological and category errors there are gargantuan, and you went through them in one sentence.

01:52:22

So temporally, historically, there is a process, the writing of the

01:52:28

New Testament and the canonization, and you don't get the binding together of all these documents into one volume as if that was necessary.

01:52:38

I mean, hello, the Old Testament scrolls weren't in one scroll either. Did that mean something, that there wasn't a

01:52:44

Tanakh because they're in different scrolls? Of course not. So what is this?

01:52:50

Well, eventually in Sinaiticus, you know, there's Sinaiticus down there, the big, huge thing.

01:52:58

Eventually, you get it bound together, and now you have the Bible, but Christianity was before that.

01:53:05

So stinking what? Divine revelation upon which you know the truth and the significance and the meaning of the incarnation, the crucifixion, the burial, the resurrection, the concept of atonement, justification, sanctification, glorification, where do you get it all?

01:53:33

You get it all from those documents that are God -breathed.

01:53:40

So what does any of this have to do with attacks upon the Bible not being relevant to Christianity?

01:53:48

If the Bible is not true, Christianity is not left with any message. We can't define it any longer.

01:53:57

So what's your point? I don't get it. I don't hear what you're saying, but it took a long time to be bound together.

01:54:08

So what? We're not saying that it's just because you can put all of this in small type into one bound volume.

01:54:17

Doesn't mean anything. It's not the order of the books or the form of the publication or anything else.

01:54:25

I've got all sorts of Bibles on this and there's no cover at all. So what? It's the words and what they mean, not whether they're bound together.

01:54:37

I just feel like you're giving somebody a false hope because I don't see how it answers any of the issues.

01:54:44

Simply this, and I said this last week, if you walked away from faith because of something in the

01:54:50

Bible that you just couldn't jive with, it didn't make sense to you, you can't add up with science. What if it was in Isaiah 52,

01:54:57

Pastor Stanley? What if it's in Isaiah 52? What if it was in Psalm 21, which is right next to Psalm 22?

01:55:08

The prophecies, the very prophecies you were just talking about. What if it was in the very same chapters?

01:55:15

What then? How do you make this distinction to where, I don't worry about that stuff over there, just hold on to this stuff over here.

01:55:23

What's the criteria? You probably walked away from Christianity unnecessarily because Christianity does not rise and fall on a book.

01:55:34

And Christianity doesn't rise and fall on the Bible. The Bible came much later as Jewish scriptures because they talked about Jesus and pointed to Jesus.

01:55:43

In fact, and I'll sum it up this way, the reason, and nobody told you this because if you grew up in church, who cares?

01:55:48

But it's become more and more important now that we're smarter and we're asking bigger and broader questions. Yeah, we're smarter. The reason that Christians take the old -

01:55:56

Yeah, we're smarter. Yeah, we're smarter than Jonathan Edwards and all those dumb people back then.

01:56:04

We're smarter. They thought about this stuff when they were in diapers. Testament seriously is because it pointed to Jesus.

01:56:13

And the reason we take the Old Testament seriously is because Jesus did. Now I'm a very simple person.

01:56:19

Jesus did? How do you know Jesus did? All you've got are a bunch of historical documents.

01:56:25

You don't know what Jesus did or didn't do. You already cut off the found, you already cut yourself off the knees.

01:56:37

All you gotta do is say, you don't know what Jesus did. Well, Matthew, you don't know Matthew wrote that.

01:56:44

Matthew's writing for, that's just the Matthean community. You don't have a guy named

01:56:49

Matthew. You can't prove that. Bart Ehrman says that. And he's writing for a particular community.

01:56:54

He's changing stuff that Mark says. You don't know what Jesus said. Mark may have gotten it wrong and then Matthew's changing something he doesn't even know about.

01:57:01

See how easy it is to do this? I mean, I listen to skeptics all the time. It's real easy to do it.

01:57:07

And you've given us absolutely no criterion at all by which to know one way or the other, none.

01:57:17

Okay, and I've said this before. When someone predicts and pull, someone predicts their own death, which is easy, but when somebody predicts their death and resurrection and pulls it off,

01:57:27

I go with whatever they say. You know, I used the exact argument on the

01:57:35

Dr. Drew show last year, remember? Remember what I said to one of the guys? Hey, when you prophesy your own death and resurrection, and then

01:57:43

I think if you rise from the dead, that gives you ultimate authority in deciding these issues. I agree a thousand percent.

01:57:50

Problem is, I have a divine revelation from God that tells me that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. God has spoken.

01:58:01

You seemingly are telling people, eh, it's not dependent on that. These are just historical documents.

01:58:08

And they may say this, and so we might choose to believe it, but how it interprets it or what it says it's supposed to mean, how do you ground that,

01:58:17

I wonder? I don't know, we're not told. So Jesus, I mean,

01:58:22

Jesus said, don't change anything about the Jewish scriptures. He said, I am the fulfillment of the

01:58:28

Jewish scriptures. Jesus seemed to have taken literally much of the Jewish scriptures, and so I just stand with Jesus.

01:58:35

Taken literally much of the Jewish scriptures. What do you mean by that? What do you mean literally?

01:58:42

And what do you mean by much? You mean there are sections that he didn't take literally? You mean he didn't accept or he did accept, but interpreted them metaphorically?

01:58:54

These words are supposed to have meanings to them, and you're not really using them in a way that's understandable. And I don't want you to miss this, okay?

01:59:01

As disturbing as this may sound. Having said all of that, in fact, people say, Andy, what's your view of the Old Testament?

01:59:06

And I say, I wanna have the same view of the Jewish scriptures, our Old Testament, I wanna have the same view that Jesus did.

01:59:14

That's right. And to the best of my ability, that's my view of the Jewish scriptures, and I would encourage you to have the same view, but you didn't need a but, that would be all you'd need.

01:59:25

Now, you would need to recognize that the New Testament gives us

01:59:31

Jesus's view, and it does so accurately, because otherwise you just don't know, it's just a guess.

01:59:40

You don't need a but. Jesus said, have you not read what

01:59:47

God spoke to you saying Matthew chapter 22? That means

01:59:52

Jesus's view was when you read those scriptures, it's God speaking to you.

01:59:59

You don't need a but, you don't need an addendum, you don't need a codicil, that's enough.

02:00:07

Christianity does not rise and fall on the verifiability of everything in the Jewish scriptures. In fact,

02:00:13

I'd go so far as to say this, if you never opened the Old Testament, if you didn't own an

02:00:19

Old Testament, if suddenly the entire Old Testament Jewish scriptures vanished from Christianity, it does nothing to undermine

02:00:28

Christianity, because Christianity began when Jesus rose from the dead and they recognized he was who he claimed to be, and this is a big.

02:00:37

Okay, that is simply incoherent hooey. That is incoherent hooey.

02:00:46

I have no respect for that. No New Testament writer who would have heard those words would have said, amen.

02:00:53

Not a one, not a one. Nobody in the early church, none of the early fathers, none of the

02:01:00

New Testament writers, this is liberal garbage. I'm sorry,

02:01:06

I cannot show respect for this. I went to Fuller Seminary, I had to sit under liberals.

02:01:12

Okay, you sit there and you go, no, no, no, no, no. This guy's standing in front of 32 ,000 people, and he's saying this publicly, and that was hooey.

02:01:24

It's just absurd on a level it's difficult to even begin to comprehend. The Jesus who makes it his first priority in his first ministry to his own disciples after his resurrection, to walk with them on the road to Emmaus and talk about those very

02:01:50

Jewish scriptures, to open their minds to understand. He meets with the disciples afterwards.

02:01:57

He opens their minds to understand the scriptures. And then you're gonna stand up there in front of these people and say, we wanna have

02:02:07

Jews as we have the scriptures, but hey, if they just disappeared, Christianity wouldn't be impacted because Christianity starts after the resurrection.

02:02:16

You don't know what the resurrection means without them. You are tearing apart the revelation of God for no reason.

02:02:26

What you're giving to people is so shallow, it could be torn apart by any meaningful, if I could tear it apart, any meaningful atheist could tear it apart too.

02:02:49

Is this the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy? From the childhood, you've known the

02:02:57

Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation, which is Christ Jesus. But we don't need them because Christianity only really starts after the resurrection.

02:03:11

Some of my Presbyterian friends are going, well, that's what those Baptists get. We're not Covenantal Baptists, but yeah, there is a certain eschatological perspective that is behind some of what he's saying here right now.

02:03:22

Yeah, I get it. I hear it. No two ways about it. People follow Jesus after the resurrection because of the resurrection.

02:03:31

And when they preach to people, they explain what the resurrection meant and what it meant to them and how they should believe based upon Scripture.

02:03:41

Let's give the whole story, shall we? People followed Jesus after the resurrection because of the resurrection.

02:03:49

And the evidence, let me think about this. The evidence was overwhelming. There was nothing religious.

02:03:57

There was nothing religious about the faith of Jesus' first century followers.

02:04:09

Do you see what's on the screen? There was nothing religious about the faith of Jesus' first century followers.

02:04:19

Maybe he'll explain what religious means. There was nothing religious about the faith of Jesus' first century followers.

02:04:26

Christians, Christianity, this is so big. Christianity did not begin with people who believed something.

02:04:33

Christianity began with people who saw something and then believed in the person they saw back from the dead.

02:04:41

That's very different than belief and belief and you just gotta have faith. Don't miss this. You become a

02:04:47

Christian through faith. You should never become a Christian because of faith.

02:04:53

It's two very different things. Now, other religions demand you to have faith in faith. Christianity from day one never demanded anyone to have faith in faith.

02:05:00

You just have to believe. It was overwhelming evidence. We saw him die. We looked into an empty tomb.

02:05:05

We had breakfast with him on the beach. Who wouldn't believe? Come on. Who wouldn't believe?

02:05:15

Keep that in mind. We're almost done here because we've gone over two hours and Rich and I are about to fall off our chairs anyways.

02:05:27

Good meme just showed up on Twitter that's sort of interesting. Check this out, check this out.

02:05:35

What faith does that take? Almost none. That's how the

02:05:40

Christian faith got started. That's why I look up here and I say this. It is not near as fragile as you may think.

02:05:46

It does not hang by the thread of some passage of scripture or some miracle in the Old Testament or even some random miracle in the

02:05:53

New Testament. It is much more sturdy than that. If it was that fragile, Christianity would have never survived the first century.

02:06:02

So the disciples sitting with Jesus didn't have to have faith because of the overwhelming evidence.

02:06:11

Now, again, how he's even defining faith, it's certainly not a biblical concept.

02:06:21

But let me Matthew chapter 28 verse 16 using my new

02:06:35

Bible. Now, the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

02:06:42

And when they saw him, they worshiped him. What's the last three words in English translation?

02:06:50

But some doubted. What? No, no, no.

02:06:57

Pastor Stanley just told us it doesn't take. They didn't have religious faith. Overwhelming evidence.

02:07:03

They looked in the tomb. Yeah, when Peter looked in the tomb, did he believe in the resurrection?

02:07:09

No, not until Jesus appeared to him. And even when Jesus appeared to people, some doubted.

02:07:16

Why? Because it takes work of the Holy Spirit. Oh, I guess that theology thing hitting again, huh?

02:07:22

Yeah, it's that theology thing hitting again. Yes, sir. A well -known story.

02:07:28

Are you asking for mercy? Please, please, stop. A well -known story from Scripture comes to mind immediately regarding evidence.

02:07:37

And a particular disciple who demanded evidence did not believe unless he would put his fingers in the hole.

02:07:45

And what did Jesus say to him when he let him do that? I correct thee, there is no evidence that he actually did it.

02:07:54

Okay. Thank you. My head is about to explode anyway. Blessed are those who believe.

02:08:01

Not having seen. Not having seen. Not having seen. Without the evidence. That's not faith in faith.

02:08:06

That is faith in a divine revelation and reality of the promises of God. Uh, I think in a couple of seconds, he's going to say, and now to start today's sermon.

02:08:21

That was a that was a recap of of the last one.

02:08:27

I don't know what two weeks from now is going to look like. I don't know if I can handle too much more of it myself. Yeah.

02:08:34

If they let us out of Canada. Yeah. Canada. Well, what what do you say to something like that?

02:08:44

I don't honestly know. We've covered a lot today. Hey, look, folks, there's still going to people.

02:08:51

There are going to be people that are going to whine because we're not doing a dividing line because we can't because both

02:08:57

Rich and I are going to be gone. And that's the entire staff in case you hadn't put two and two together. Actually, it's one and one, actually.

02:09:06

But if you add up the last two weeks worth of programs, they're about four weeks worth of programs.

02:09:15

Yeah. And they've been pretty heavy. Let me once again. I would love to see

02:09:23

Andy Stanley get grounded a little late now, stand in front of thirty two thousand people, and I'm not sure you'd have thirty two thousand people listening to you if you really were grounded.

02:09:36

The John MacArthur's and the R .C. Sproul's of the world are pretty rare. And I think that place would would empty out.

02:09:49

If you ended up with all the truly offensive elements, the gospel being fully, fully proclaimed.

02:09:55

But I sure would like to see him get firmly grounded. But once again. You know,

02:10:02

I compared and contrasted. My apologetic with Frank Turk's apologetic.

02:10:10

You got to watch that. We discussed what the foundational issues are, the theological issues.

02:10:19

Please, please, please recognize the difference. Between pointing out the errors that someone might have apologetically or theologically.

02:10:34

And the next step that so many people feel they have to take of becoming a judge and standing in God's place, leave the judging to God.

02:10:45

Deal with the teaching, deal with the teaching on the basis of Scripture. I can't look into people's hearts, but I can look into this and speak to this.

02:10:55

Stick to that. You'll be safe. You don't want to end up having to answer to God for stuff that you were never called to actually do.

02:11:04

OK, just a word of warning. So I believe we're talking about the 20th of September.

02:11:16

September 20th, Lord willing, we'll be back. And something tells me that there will have been events in the world.

02:11:25

The big sermon that Andy Stanley was talking about will, I think, be on the 17th.

02:11:36

So, or no, 18th. OK. So I have a feeling we'll probably have a few things to talk about.

02:11:49

Probably have a few things to talk about. Hopefully this marathon has been useful to you. Hopefully it's laid out what the differences are.