The Unreasonable Reason Rally Outreach Discussion

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Well, welcome to Striving for Eternity Academy.

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I'm going to technical note, Yim, I need you to just lower the camera just a little, angle it down.

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Sorry about that. As you can see, we have some special guests with us.

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This is going to be a little bit of a different show because we're going to do more of an interview this evening.

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And we have some people to my right. We have

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Mike Stockwell with Cross Country Evangelism.

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We also have with us to his right, smile, there we go.

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Chris Sipley, he's with Jeremiah Cry. So we welcome both of you guys here.

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Thank you. And we're going to be talking about, if you look just over my shoulder here, the treason rally, because Jesus Christ is king.

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And so that's what we're going to be discussing today. And so what we're doing now is, for those who don't know, the three of us were out at the 500s outreach at the reason rally, and we had opportunity to talk to some very nice people, right?

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Well, they call themselves atheists. They said that was a reason rally?

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Like you said, it was treason against heaven's high king. So and that we're going to talk about today, we want to do a little bit of a special show because of that event.

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And so first off, what we want to do is thank some people who helped out tremendously with the outreach.

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One I want to thank, Marv Plementos from 1milliontracks .com made us some great tracks.

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And as you can see, they kind of resemble what the reason rally sign was.

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But we added the real reason rally, Are You Reasonable? Thanks to Cy Timbrodenkate from proofthatgodexists .org.

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He made the back of the track, which this track just looked really sharp. It was really fun because we were just walking around saying, did you get your reason rally card?

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And people were taking them. But this track is still probably pretty good for a while to come. So if you're interested, we do still have a couple hundred that were left over.

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It was a little bit of a, what should we say, a rainy day? Oh, it was raining. Heavy duty.

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Heavy duty, that's right. We also need to thank Michael Corral from washingtondcevangelist .com.

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He really helped us do all the legwork to put this together. But the reality of it, when we started this, it was something where what happened was that someone in my church wanted to, suggested we come out and reach out to the atheists here.

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And some others heard about it. John Speed, he runs the

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Log College. And if you're not familiar with that, it's a college. Four month is that, I think?

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It's about four months. And it's basically teaching on open air preaching, but a whole lot more. It goes into prayer, learning how to prepare sermons, a whole lot.

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Expository preaching and church planting. And church planting, yeah. And so it's really good training.

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And so John got a hold of another brother, Marcus Pittman, who runs the 500, or him and John kind of do.

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And Marcus is with Crown Rights Media, a great, great source for media.

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And so they created what was called the 500. And you can go to the website even now and find the

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Facebook page and hopefully see, people are hopefully going to put up pictures and some stories up there.

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But the 500 .org that you can go to for that. And so what we're going to do tonight is talk a little bit about what had happened this weekend.

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So you guys were out with some teams. Mike, give us your take first, how things are going.

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Well, things went pretty well, I thought. When we first got there, we ran into a little confrontation about being on the sidewalks and preaching right there.

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We weren't right in the rally, but we were right on the border of it. And we stood our ground and we managed to preach there throughout the day.

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And the rain came and we still preached. And eventually the teams handed out two boxes of 180

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DVDs, handed out many of the big question, biggest question

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DVDs. And it was a good outreach. Plenty of tracks handed out, a lot of good encounters, and we just had a great time out there.

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Even though they came out to just spew hatred over our

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God. But it wasn't atheism. It was more about blaspheming the name of our

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God. But we stood our ground and we defended Christ. And it was very important to be out there.

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And it seems in the chat room we got someone that was on your team and said they gave out all the

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DVDs. And that's true. DVDs were donated by Living Waters, 2 ,000 180

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DVDs, and I think another 3 ,000 biggest question DVDs from Wretched Radio.

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So if you are in the chat room, I'm going to be watching the chat room more tonight than other times.

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So if you have questions for any of us, post it there. If you're not in the chat room, get in there.

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Chris, how do you think things went? Well, I was sent up farther by the monument.

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And so I had a mixed crowd. I had a crowd of people going to the Reason Rally and also a crowd of people that were just simply going to see the monument.

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So I had some people who were asking. They'd ask first before they'd take the material because they wanted to know if it had anything to do with the rally because they didn't want to have anything to do with that.

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And I had the opposite response. So it was kind of a mixed reaction for us. We did have great conversations.

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Some of the atheists that came by were very willing to talk at length, even for over an hour.

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And so we did have very good responses. Also, a very common theme, something that Cy touched on the evening before, was that you can almost with certainty ask the people that are going here, hey, what church did you grow up in?

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And they're going to give you an answer that they most certainly did. And so I experimented with that.

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And sure enough, every single person that I asked gave me an answer in regards to a church that they did grow up in.

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Even having some people who were so profane and spewing out such blasphemy against the Lord and saying, I was just like you.

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I grew up in the church. I did what you were doing. I open air preached. I won people to the Lord. And these people were so belligerent that they couldn't even finish a conversation.

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Just talking about them made them just seethe with such hatred that they couldn't even finish talking to you, even with all the graciousness and humility that you try to be showing them.

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They just couldn't. They just despised God. As Douglas Wilson rightly says, there's two tenets to atheism.

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One is there is no God, and the second is I hate him. So you're saying they weren't being reasonable?

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Some of them were putting on a front of reasonable. But like, for instance, one gentleman that I spoke with, and I'd say, well, do you believe in truth?

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And he says, no. He says, I believe in facts. I said, do you think facts are true? He said, no,

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I think that they're verified. I said, do you think verified facts are true? And he said, no,

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I think you play word games, and I'm not going to go into your trap. But the next sentence he used, he was saying that what he believed was true.

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And a paragraph or two later, he used the word absolute, and true, and objective in the same sentence.

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So he was the one who was just dodging. I wasn't playing word games because the thing he said he didn't believe, he used to his own advantage, but he just dodged it so I couldn't corner him.

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That was the reasonable one. We've got a question. Did any of you guys see any of the Westboro Baptist folks?

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Yes, I did. I saw them down there. I did see some other, there were some other groups out there.

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We know a couple other groups, I saw a couple groups. Were they positioned anywhere near?

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They were down the opposite corner of us. They were at 14th and Madison. One of the things we had done was we got there early.

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Michael had gotten in with all the DVDs. We dropped him and Rob Parker off very early, and they got in a space so we could pick up all the

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DVDs. And we basically took every single corner, pretty much, into the

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Washington Mall. So anyone that was going to go to the rally because we were there so early, they walked past somewhere where they were getting the gospel, either preached, handed a

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DVD, or a tract. Yeah, they had to get through the gauntlet to get into that rally, that's for sure. So, yeah, someone was asking, someone just tuned in maybe, but said,

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Mike I know, but Chris I don't know. So there's who Chris Sipley is with Jeremiah Cry for the person who was just asking.

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And so we had some, I know I had some interesting conversations.

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I had one where I was sharing with you guys earlier. I had one individual who, like Chris was saying, comes up and says, hey,

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I was where you are. I was doing this when I was younger. I think it was about a 20, 21 -year -old man.

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And he was, I've been to church. I went through the faith outreach movement and did this and that, and he's given all these things.

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And really what he was trying to argue was that he's been where we are and that he did the things we did, which was kind of funny.

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I just said to him, if you understand the scriptures as much as you say, you understand that 1

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John says that you went out among us from among us because you were never of us. And he said, yeah. So I said, you were never where we are.

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And he said, well, yeah. And I had a thing when I was there and I was talking to them.

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I said, I was where you were. And now God has opened up my eyes.

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I was blind like you, and it wasn't through but the grace of God and through his Holy Spirit that God changed me and opened up my eyes.

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I said, you know, the God of this age has blinded them, lest the light of the gospel should shine in their hearts.

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So they were, you know, looking at them. I said, I was right there.

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So we just got someone that said, a guy he was witnessing to at work, works in D .C.,

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worked in D .C. over the weekend, and he asked him, did you hear any preaching? And he said, yes.

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So he thanks us for our faithfulness. Well, it's really self -defeating. The whole concept of the

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Reason Rally is very self -defeating because have you ever seen a rally where 10 ,000, 20 ,000, 30 ,000 people gather together to speak their mind against Santa Claus and the oppression until Christmas or the

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Easter Bunny or anything like that? No, they'd actually said it was good and healthy for the imagination of children as they develop.

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But they gather together, and it's not God in general because their blasphemies that they were speaking out were geared specifically towards Jesus Christ.

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So their gathering together wasn't reasonable. It was just an expression of a hatred towards the one true

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God of Scripture and towards His Son, Jesus Christ. Two things that are interesting that happened was John Speed, I think it was, was talking to someone, and he asked him why he's so angry.

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Does he get angry that people believe in Santa Claus? And the guy actually made the statement,

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I don't get angry over Santa Claus because he doesn't exist. In which case, argument closed.

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That's the reason you're getting angry over God because you know He exists. I had a real neat experience with a young lady,

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Jalyn, who she just came up to me telling me that she was very upset because of just that we're opening our voices, and she felt kind of offended by that.

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But she thought that we weren't sure, that I wasn't treating people as a human being.

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But what happened was I saw she started getting really emotional. I personally don't think it's good to, if you have someone there that's starting to be contrite and broken, to have a whole crowd like I had watching that.

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So what ended up happening was I just wanted to take her aside and I gave the preaching amplifier to someone else and I just wanted to talk to her.

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Her protective boyfriend came in, though. He didn't want to let that happen, and she ended up sending him away like two or three times.

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Told him just to go for a walk one time. She told him to take ten steps over there. And I think the thing that made the most impact was not that she was broken and got converted that I know of.

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She may have afterwards. But her final words to me as I left was, and you have to understand that we were discussing some things.

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I really, based on what she was saying, think that she may have been planning to actually take her life that day.

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I'm not sure. But she said this when we left. She said, you know, I may not believe what you believe and I may not end up believing what you believe, but I know that I will live longer on earth because I met you today.

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And I pray that she lives long enough to repent. And that's the thing.

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I had to try to explain to her, open air preaching, people think you're being rude and things like that just because you're raising your voice up.

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But it's because we're trying to communicate to a lot of people. And I got to talk to her one -on -one for over two hours in the pouring rain and really was able to communicate with her at a different level seeing that she was very broken.

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And so, I mean, you could pray for her. There's a lot of others that were hearing the gospel and some were more thoughtful than others.

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It was a great opportunity because it really brought up the whole thing of Christ and God.

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And you couldn't get a better format to come out there and to lay out the scriptures and proclaim the gospel other than because we were given the reason for the reason rally.

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Well, actually, let's talk about that for a moment because a lot of us were doing that. We should probably mention Friday night before the reason rally, which was on Saturday.

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A bunch of us got together at Bethel World Outreach Church, I think is the name, there in Silver Springs.

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And we got together there, which is a beautiful church building. And we went in and had some training on being a good ambassador, on recognizing the enemies that we're going into.

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And then we had Cy from proofthatgodexists .org give a great thing on the presuppositional apologetic.

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And then he called up Dustin Seavers to do a Q &A with folks, which I think a lot of people had enjoyed.

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And I think that that was helpful to a lot of people. And so I want to talk about that last part because we really did, when we went on the streets, we were really tackling that issue of reason a lot with them and that we have the worldview that has reason and not them.

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So, I mean, why don't we go into that and how did you guys, when you were confronting people, talking to people?

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Well, I liked it because, like Cy was teaching us, is, you know, we stand on the

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Word of God. We have the God of the Bible as our guide.

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And they know that God, the Christian God, and they suppress it, but we know that they know it.

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So we're out there telling them that you know there's God and you're without an excuse. That's right.

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And I think Cy touched on a really good point and that is the Scriptures tell us to sanctify the

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Lord your God, Jesus Christ is Lord in your heart. And that's really the key apologetics, is that you actually believe that Jesus Christ is

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Lord and you believe the Bible. And the first few seconds of his talk, he said, here's what

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I'm going to teach you today. Believe the Bible. He said, and basically I'm going to take an hour to repeat that to you because it takes so much repetition for you actually to understand that.

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All you need to do is believe the Bible. And he said, basically, we say Jesus Christ is Lord, there is a

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God, He's the creator of all things. But then we get out in the street and say, well, what if there's a God? You know, what if He were a

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God? Like, we act like we don't believe it. And so it takes so much of the load off to just realize that the

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Word of God is truth, that the divine psychology that's revealed in the Scriptures, what God has revealed to us about man's mind is true.

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And I mean, it's happened. People say, I don't believe in God. And you look at them and say, yes, you do. And I've even heard them,

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I've seen them turn around and say, well, you're right, I do. But, I mean, not all of them will do that, but it's still true.

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It doesn't negate the fact that God's Word is true and that everyone is without an excuse.

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It's revealed in the creation order. It's in the very constitution of the human heart. And that in order to even confess that there's no

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God, they have to suppress that truth and forfeit what they already know and become fools.

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Yeah, Romans 1, right? So let's go through, because for some folks this may be new.

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And I know there are some people that are really kind of nervous about the idea of going into hardcore atheist territory.

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Yeah, me for one. Me for two. I mean, I didn't want to go out in the middle of them.

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You know, you're concerned about, well, what if they say something that I can't answer?

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So what? We don't have every answer. I didn't have every answer for everyone, but I had the truth of the

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Word of God and I used that as my sword. Well, what really takes a lot off there, again, and something

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I appreciate so much from Sonic, was he said, basically, even if you hear a claim that comes that you've never even heard before, if you say, well, you see the

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Bible says this, and that opposes what you say, and when they react with, well, I don't believe the Bible's true.

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Oh, you don't believe the Bible's true? Well, how do you account for truth without God? So instead of jumping in at the level they're trying to reason with you at, it's begging the question that it's true.

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And where do they get that from? And so you don't actually have to know anything about the arguments that they're bringing.

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It's what he calls racing for pink slips. Like, you have to prove to me that you even have the right to have this conversation.

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That instead of debating about fossils and dinosaur bones and transitional forms, where do you have truth without God?

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Because until you can answer that question, you're standing on the truth of Scripture from a theistic worldview to even argue against the existence of God.

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The starting point is not only do they already know

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God exists, but they're basing their God -given reasoning to deny the

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God that gave them the reasoning. And so let's walk through that. You know, I'm an atheist.

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I walk up to you. And I'm at the reason rally. So how would you...

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I'd say you're not an atheist. Which shocks them, doesn't it? Why would you say they're not an atheist?

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Because we're just saying they know there's a God. I was telling them, I said, you're not an atheist, you're a theist.

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You know that God exists. So you're without an excuse. It was clearly...

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That would be how I would draw the man. I'd ask, are you an atheist? And they'd say, yes, I am. And I'd say, no, you're not.

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And they'd be like, what do you mean, no, I'm not? And, you know, the thing is that it's funny because when you do that, and as the one person

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I said, you know God exists. And he said, prove that I know God exists. I said, you're going to live 70 years of your life, what, trying to do all this research to debunk

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Christianity? I mean, there's better things we could do with life. But the fact that you spend, by his own admission, 20 years of his life trying to prove

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God does not exist? You don't try to suppress Santa Claus.

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You only need to suppress it if it's true. That's right. I have better things to do with my time than to prove that pink elephants don't live on Mars.

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I have much better things to do with my time than that. So I claim, okay, I'm an atheist.

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You say I'm not. And what would you then say? I'd say that the

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Word of God clearly shows that you are. It says, although they knew

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God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful. So everyone knows, it says, his invisible attributes are clearly seen by his creation.

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So they're without excuse. So, I mean, the Bible says it, and that is our foundation, that is our standard, that they know there's a

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God, because the Bible says that they do. And so one of the things we were doing also was we were addressing the issue of reason, the very thing they thought that they have the foothold in and the foundation in.

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And we were taking that kind of apart, weren't we? Yeah, we were. I mean, you think of any argument, you know,

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God doesn't exist, or the world evolved out of nothing, or anything that they bring at you.

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You don't have to be skilled in those areas of science or philosophy. You simply have to say, well, actually the

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Word of God says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And you've declared truth to them, and when they respond with,

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I don't believe that, as Sai taught us, you don't believe the Bible's true? Well, tell me then, where do you get truth about God?

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And it skips what they're putting on the surface as their excuse, and it goes to the heart of the issue, their hatred for God.

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You know, it's so simple, and it's really true that apologetics should be rooted in the

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Bible's true, and I believe it. And when God says that He created the heavens and the earth, He does exist.

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I don't have to ask them what if He does. And when it says that all people everywhere, without excuse, because His invisible attributes are clearly seen in the things that He made, then that's true, and they are without excuse.

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Yeah. And I'm not a real apologetist. I want to learn more about apologetics.

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I think we may disagree with that, by the way. So, I don't know a lot, but I know the

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Gospel, and I can, even if I knew a lot about apologetics, which

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I'm learning more, if I win the argument, and I don't proclaim the

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Gospel to them, then it was a wasted time. But the fact was that the little bit of apologetics that I knew was enough to get me in the conversation, kind of show how their worldview was a little off there, and then be able to proclaim the

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Gospel to them, which is ultimately why we're there, to proclaim Christ. Go ahead.

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Well, just a quick comment on that is, I've tried to learn a lot of different forms of apologetics, and just get different tools in the toolbox, so to speak.

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But what I really like about pre -suppositional apologetics, and going right to the source of truth, is you have to start with the

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Scripture, and it leaves you ending with the Scripture. You start assuming it's true, and exposing that they have no truth without it, and then you're right back into it.

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You can go right to the Gospel. How do you go from a dinosaur bone, a

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T -Rex bone, with soft tissue in it, to Christ died for your sins?

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It's not as easy of a transition as, well, in the beginning God prayed, and if you don't believe that, how do you get truth about God?

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The only way you can account for truth, absolutely, in an abstract universe, is through God's existence.

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And the only truth that's out there that's consistent from beginning to end, you don't have consistency from beginning to end, in Islam, or Mormonism, or the

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Jehovah's Witnesses, or whatnot. So, it automatically begs the question, where do you get truth without God?

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Any of their arguments, whether it be through science or philosophy, begs the question. And really, all you have to do is, when they end up asking you something, it's like, ah, gee, they're going to give you some big answers, with these big words that we can't even comprehend, and you just say, yeah, but how do you know that to be true?

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And they're going to say the reasoning, but they can't account for their reasoning. That's right. So, you say, how do you know that's true?

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Well, it makes sense. Okay, so you reason that your reason is true, therefore you know your reason is true.

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Yes. Or, I know it through my senses. Well, how do you test your senses? Through my senses. So, they test their reason through their senses, and their senses through their reasoning, and therefore it's circular, and it's viciously circular.

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They say, when you start with the Bible, and end with the Bible, that's circular. It is, but it's consistent.

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You know, a vicious circle is inconsistent, because reasoning, not all people's senses or reasonings are equal or all valid.

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So, if it's really the case, then you should have various forms of reasoning that are all equally valid, even if they oppose one another.

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Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that, when we get to the heart of the issue of the reasoning, there's one individual that I was talking with, and I was sharing with you guys earlier, who, when going through this, you know, couldn't account for his reasoning, and yet he knew

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God didn't exist, so then I asked him, based on what he said, you know, how can he know anything?

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He says, well, I can't. He goes, I can't even know I exist. And that's the foolishness of if they're going to be honest and consistent where they have to go.

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They can't, like he says, how do you know anything? Oh, you can't. And he at least recognized that, but then, how do you go there?

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I think another thing, too, and we've got to ask ourselves, how much do I believe the Bible? Because when

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I really want to sharpen up on apologetics, and I'm not dismissing evidence, I'm not dismissing, you know, the created order of things, but when the

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Bible says the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two -edged sword, you know, that that is the good seed that's sown into the heart of man that produces fruit to eternal life, then why not sow that?

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You know, it's almost like sometimes I go out there and if I listen to myself, I believe that, you know, science or philosophy is the sword that cuts to man's heart or is the good seed that produces fruit.

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Really, it's not. And I'm not taking away from using those and tearing down arguments with it, but if the goal isn't to get to the gospel, it's in vain.

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Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. I mean, we're out there. We're out there really to represent

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Christ. We're not out there to win debates. And, you know, one of the things

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I think that was good out of this was, you know, for those who don't know, and I know someone asked it in the chat room earlier, but, you know,

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Westboro Baptist Church was actually invited to this event by the organizers of it.

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And you get to, why would anyone invite Westboro Baptist Church, especially when they know that they protest the way they protest and all that?

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Unless, of course, you want to say this is what Christianity is. And I'm just so happy to see there were over 100

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Christians with the 500 that went out there and presented Christ, not being rude, not being argumentative, but giving truth and giving reason and giving the gospel.

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I mean, some people could go and protest. You know, we get into political things because you have to understand, the reason rally, the organizers of the reason rally were very clear on what their goal was.

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Their goal was to make a political statement that there's more atheists than religionists or theists, and therefore,

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America is really an atheist nation, and they want to have their voice heard.

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They always play the role of the victim, and that's what they're doing. They're playing the role of victim. If you see

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Richard Dawkins, and he's been saying that all along, that they're a minority group, and they want their voice to be heard like all the other minority groups.

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And the reality is that they're trying to play a victim, and they want to silence the Christian voice.

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And we have a couple options. We can go out there and protest them and demand that our voice be heard, but I think those at the 500 had a much better way of doing it.

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We went out there with the gospel because the simple reality, if those professing atheists, because they're not real atheists, they just profess, so if those professing atheists were to become

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Christians, then those are less people that are going to be promoting the atheist voice and more on the

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Christian voice. And so, you know, this isn't our world that we have to be fighting for.

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Our citizenship as Christians is not here on earth. We have eternal life with Christ in heaven.

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And this is not what we're going to fight for, to be here on earth and have a Christian nation.

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You know, I'm not saying that we don't get involved politically and stuff, but our goal is the gospel as Christians and to see more people in eternity.

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And I can't wait to be in heaven and see some of those people that we are witnessing to this weekend, maybe, and seeing them.

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And I think in a mind where we're no longer tainted with sin and we have perfect recognition, we're going to remember who we met and we're going to remember where we met them.

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I think it's like, hey, you were the guy that was preaching on that box at the Reason Rail. I remember you, you know?

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Yeah, and I look at it too. We were there and we were exalting

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Jesus Christ in that atmosphere where these people were blaspheming

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Him. And I look at being able to stand up for the truth and proclaim and exalt

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Jesus Christ in that area. If we weren't there, who would be doing it?

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No one. And I'm just thankful to be part of that, that I can look back at life and say that I stood for the truth and exalted

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Christ. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it was, there were a lot of people, we had one young man broke the sound barrier.

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In other words, he open air preached for the first time. He did a real good job. Just really, you know, even though he was nervous,

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I think we all were nervous. But, you know, just getting out of our comfort zones.

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You know, it's easier when you know that you have, you know, every corner of the Washington Mall had a dozen or so Christians, you know.

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And we're not trusting in our own flesh, our own cleverness. The Holy Spirit has to lead you out there.

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And that's exactly what happened. I stepped out and I've preached in front of thousands of people.

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I was more nervous to go talk to a couple of atheists. But once I got out there and I did it,

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God's Holy Spirit just spoke through me. Yeah. So, you went in.

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I know that I had gone in toward the time when, you know, I guess maybe

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I shouldn't have, during when Richard Dawkinson showed up and some of those characters. But you were there for a while even after the teams left.

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And you went in, had some run -ins. Yeah, we did. But we stayed until after it was over.

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And we had some great encounters, though. There were some divine appointments there.

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I really thought it was great that we were there. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was, some people were very hard toward the

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Gospel. And, you know, like I had said, you know, Friday night when we had the thing, most of these atheists,

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I mean, 99 % of the time if you talk to an atheist, just ask them what church they grew up in.

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Because they did. They're really, most of the time, they're not responding to real evidence that they have that proves

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God doesn't exist. It's really, they seem to more be responding to the way they grew up. They don't like the way they grew up and that's what they're really responding to.

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And I said to one individual who said that he was where I was, I said, you know, you're kind of more like the ex -smoker.

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You know, the guy who just quit smoking is the one that wants everyone else to quit and he can't be around anyone that smokes because it reminds him of what he used to do.

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And that's what it seems like. It's like... Yeah, I think part of it too is, you know, the thing is, if they believe in God, then they're accountable.

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And they don't want to be accountable. They want to live their life the way they want to live it and say, oh, you know, there's no

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God. So then they're not, you know, under his law. But they're wrong because they are.

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And it's sad. So that's why we're there. We're there to wake them up and give them the truth.

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Yeah, well, Scripture tells us that this is the judgment, that light has come into the world. And not men didn't have enough evidence, men didn't have enough reasoning.

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Men lacked science, knowledge of scientific method and experiments and theories.

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But they loved darkness. And so one thing that was quite amazing about the reasoner only was that what you were hearing wasn't science.

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What you were hearing wasn't... That's right. People coming together to reason together like a think tank.

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These people came together to laugh, to mock Jesus Christ, to blaspheme his name, to revel in their sin and to speak out against his rule and reign and his right to have jurisdiction over their body, over their morals.

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But in an atheist, in a universe where there is no God, how can you speak of right?

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How can you speak of morality when all you are is a bag of molecules? So it's really just...

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Why don't they believe Dawkins? It's cruel cold indifference out there. But yet they're arguing for a moral created order without a moral creator.

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I had the one guy that we were sharing with earlier that actually said he will not allow a

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God to have control over him. And I was like, who do you think you are?

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You're going to dictate to God. He's sovereign.

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That's right. So that was the reason,

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Raleigh. I don't know if there were any questions in the chat room because I got booted out. Oh, you got booted out. What did you say?

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I don't know. I guess the moderator must have booted me. I haven't seen anything.

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But what I do want to do, though, is spend some time talking about you guys are both full -time evangelists.

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So let's start with you, Mike. You're with Cross Country Evangelism. Tell us about it. It started about three years ago.

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April 20th will be three years. The Lord called me to go out on the road and preach the gospel throughout the

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United States and other parts of the world. But it's been a great experience because I've been able to go alongside other brothers and sisters and proclaim

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Christ and encourage other people to get out there and to share their faith and proclaim the

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Word of God. And along the way, though, it's been a great experience for me because other people have encouraged me and to keep me strong and pushing on and pressing on to the high calling.

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And it's just been a great experience to be out here in the United States and in different parts of the world preaching the gospel.

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But you're not just Cross Country anymore, are you? Cross Countries? Yeah, that might be more.

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You might have to change the name. Well, we do, yeah. We do an outreach to Jamaica every year in January, usually for anywhere from three to four weeks.

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And we're excited about that. We started that three years ago, Robert, Gray, and myself.

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And since then, we've grown to about 16 people last year, the last outreach we had in Jamaica.

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And it was just a great experience. And it's just, for someone who doesn't go out and share their faith, this is the place to go because it's very receptive.

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And we preach the word with the Half Mile Hailer just about every day. Yeah. And you get an opportunity,

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I know you're going to talk about it, so I'll let you with Scotland. But Chris Shipley's with Jeremiah Cry.

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That's right. Yeah, Jeremiah Cry Ministries started by Jeff Rose. And what it is, it's a ministry exalting

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Jesus Christ through public proclamation of the Gospel and also training up believers in how to evangelize as well through the context, preferably a local church, when that is possible.

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So basically, an evangelist is not someone who's called simply to evangelize, but someone who's called to equip the saints.

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And a real important element is discipleship and multiplication and edifying and equipping the church to go and to do the same.

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And so one of the most encouraging things is when you go and travel place to place and meet new believers and meet people who are growing in grace and growing in their desire to reach the lost and He's sharpened them, and they sharpen you.

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And it's a real privilege and honor to serve Christ in this capacity and go out sowing the seed of the

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Gospel and seeing Him do His work that He promised to do. It's not going to return void. And so I see a question in the chat room about how do you begin as a full -time evangelist.

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I got back on. I don't know if you did. But that's a really good question because a lot of people, they grow in a desire for evangelism and they grow in the activity of it.

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And I don't think I'm best qualified to answer the question, but a couple of things that come to mind would be go to the elders of your church and talk to them about it.

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The body of Christ should have more involvement in this.

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We should not be autonomous. We should not be out there dictating our own lives by our own feelings and whims.

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I think if you're in a healthy church, and I know not everybody is, so I'm not going to presume that. But if you are, go to your elders, your pastor, and talk to them about that.

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See if they see that in you and how they can help thrust you forward. Because that's not just, if God's laid on your heart, it's not just your job.

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You're part of a body. And I think if you're in a healthy church, your elders and pastors would be excited to hear that.

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And if not, then talk to them about it and see as to why. So that would be the first thing. You don't want to just presume upon what the

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Lord is, based on feelings, what the Lord has called you to do. There will be fruit of it.

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And if there is, then those that are around you, they'll be able to look at that and see. And that would be one of the first things

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I would suggest. Andrew was a pastor for years. What would you say to a young man in your congregation who says,

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Andrew, I believe the Lord is calling me to do the work of an evangelist. How do I pursue that? I'll actually back up with that.

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Because there's something that a lot of people don't understand about their pastors. A lot of people,

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I'm a pastor who, we each have a mutual friend, Pat Nicarado, and I remember the first time I met him, actually through some friends, he called me up and he couldn't believe that there was a pastor that actually evangelizes.

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He was like, I want to meet you. So I may be a little bit different than the majority of pastors, but something to think about with your pastor is, you know, a lot of the pastors spend their entire day with believers.

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They're not engaged in a workplace with unbelievers. Some of them don't even have family that are unbelievers.

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And so their whole day is with believers. And so to evangelize, they have to structure their day with.

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And so a lot of them don't do that. I shouldn't say it's, you know, it's just they're very busy and a lot of them aren't setting time aside for that.

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It's when they meet someone, they'll share the gospel, but they're not going out every day or once a week or something like that.

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And so for some of them, they're just uncomfortable because they're not doing it. It's like with any of us.

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If we're not out there practicing, these guys are practicing every single day and that's why they're so good at it.

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We would be with anything that we practice regularly. And for a lot of the pastors, they're just not practicing it every day.

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So the transitions into the gospel are a little bit harder. I mean, someone comes into church, well, it's easy.

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They're in the church, so it's easy to start that conversation. And so sometimes it's because the pastor themselves aren't doing it that they feel uncomfortable with someone that's really fired up doing it.

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And so keep that in mind too. Maybe just invite your pastor to go with you. I mean,

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I'm thrilled when someone would be in my church and be like, I want to go out and do some evangelism, but I'm maybe different in that way because I'm out there on a regular basis.

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But I know a lot of guys, they encourage it and they like to see it, but when they see someone so fired up, part of me sometimes thinks that maybe it's just something within us.

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Like we would be with anyone that we see that's really on fire for something that we know we should be, and we're not, and we cringe a little.

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And so I think that sometimes it would just be good to invite your pastor to come with you as an authority.

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You can even say, hey, pastor, can you just come with me if I get stuck with something that you could just help me out when

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I get stuck? That might be a good thing to do. Well, Mike here is sent out by his local church.

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Yeah, I happen to be blessed. I have a church that's backing what I do.

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They love what I do. And my pastor is an evangelist. He's out there doing it.

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He went to the Ambassador's Academy out in California. He's out regularly, out at the local railroad stations proclaiming the

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Gospel. It's just an encouragement to see my pastor out there doing it too.

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Right, and the same thing. And as I said before, I understand not everybody has the blessing and privilege of being in a healthy evangelistic local church.

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It's very welcoming, especially to this form of what some would call confrontational evangelism.

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But with Mike, the elders at my local church that I attend are behind their ministry.

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They give it their blessing. Many in the church and the elders themselves come out and evangelize on a regular basis.

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And sometimes I say, well, I don't have that. And I'm not saying you need that to go out. But if you don't have that, what are you doing to pursue that?

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I would ask you. Even if you say, well, my pastor's not really for that. I don't think he'd like it.

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Well, why not just invite him out and say, hey, could you just stand with me and maybe pray while I hand out tracts and maybe listen in to some of the conversations?

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Because a lot of people, they don't become evangelists by reading books. It's because they saw someone else do it and were challenged.

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Oftentimes you'll be out preaching the gospel or sharing faith. And Mike and Andrew can testify to this.

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And someone will come up, a Christian will come up, challenged by what you're doing and encouraged. And it'll move them to do the same.

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I think of one brother who was preaching at the 500 rally with us there, at the

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Reason rally. And he watched a video on open air preaching. And he wasn't doing it.

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And he called up the producer of the film and said, I'm so convicted after watching this film. I know I have to get up and do something.

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What do I do? And so just seeing somebody. So one of the best things you could do,

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I think, would be ask someone in church, hey, listen, I was wondering if you could come tag along.

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I'm not even asking you to hand out a track. Would you just come? I'd feel a lot better if I had someone with me. Someone in the chat room just said he tried to talk to his pastor and no dice.

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That's why I say ask your pastor to come along as your authority. Ask your pastor to be there, to kind of be the one that, hey, if I get stuck,

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I get a theological question, I don't know, can you help me out? There may be something where he may be willing to come out for that.

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And so what we're going to do is I just want to, you know, with the reason rally, and if you're interested in getting, we still have a couple more, a hundred of these, they'll still be good because they still have a message on them.

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And I want to read the back because we're talking about the presuppositional apologetic. And it really, the back of this,

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I think Sy did a great job with this in explaining how to use this very quickly.

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And basically this is the back of this track. It says, Reason, the capacity for logic, rationale, and analytic thought.

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Reason requires logic. Logic is universal, applies to all people of all times everywhere.

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Immaterial means not of matter. And invariant, does not change. God is universal, immaterial, and invariant.

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Logic makes sense in the Christian worldview because it reflects the nature and thinking of God.

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But cannot make sense in an atheistic worldview which cannot account for universal, immaterial, invariant entities.

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Scripture teaches us that in order to know anything, we must start with God. Proverbs 1 .7

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Without God, reason and knowledge are impossible.

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But people who deny God do reason and know things.

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How is that possible? Simple. They're denying the God they know exists.

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Romans 1. God does not send people to hell for denying what they do not know, but for the sins that God, for the sins against the

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God they do know. If you've been denying God, repent. Turn from your sins.

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Against the God you do know exists. And put your faith in Jesus Christ alone who paid the price for sinners on the cross.

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Read your Bible daily and obey what it says. And that's it right there.

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If you can, on the back of this little track, if you can remember that, that is kind of the presuppositional apologetic we were talking about and talking all weekend about at the reason rally or should we say the unreasonable rally?

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Or more of the treason rally? There it is. Because Jesus Christ is

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King. So I hope that you enjoyed it. Those who are students of the academy, we'll get on a call in case you guys have some questions in about 10 minutes or so.

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And we'll be there to answer any of the questions that you have. If you're interested in becoming a student and want to find out more, go to the website www .strivingforeternity

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.org and go to the Striving for Eternity Academy and you can learn more about the studies we're going through though not this week on the school of biblical hermeneutics.