February 13, 2024 Show with Dr. Paul Nelson AND Dr. Edward Dalcour on “An Introduction to Christian Apologetics: Necessity & Purpose”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 13th day of February, 2024.

First Love Ministries and the Upcoming Holy Spirit Conference

And I have back two returning guests. It's just been a week since they were both on together on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one week from today, one week ago from today. And I am thrilled to have back on the program Dr. Paul Nelson and Dr. Edward Delcor of First Love Ministries.

Dr. Paul Nelson is an author whose book Presuppositionalism, A Biblical Approach to Apologetics, is going to be a part of our topic today. And he is also president of Grace Bible University in Dublin, California.

And Dr. Eddie Delcor is an author and also president and director of the Department of Christian Defense. And today we're going to be also addressing Dr. Delcor's latest book, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, Necessity and Purpose.

And we're also going to be announcing the upcoming 2024 First Love Bible Conference in Baghdad, Florida, on the theme, The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. But first of all, let me welcome back to the program Dr. Paul Nelson.

Yes. Hi, Chris. Good to be back on your show. It's great to have you back. And Dr. Eddie Delcor, it's great to have you back as well. Delighted to be here, Chris. And first of all, why don't you start off, Dr. Nelson, for those of our listeners who missed last week's program with the two of you, why don't you tell our listeners about First Love Ministries?

Yeah, First Love Ministries, it goes back about 30 years with Pastor Joe Jakowitz as the founder and director. It has four branches. One branch is the publications where we publish books and free for distribution.

And we're a faith ministry, which means essentially we don't charge any money for everything. Everything is free. Also there is a radio ministry, which we're on right now, and that's 24 -7. And then there's Grace Bible University, which is kind of the newest branch, and we're still under development with that.

And Dr. Delcor is the vice president. So it's based on missionary work. Tom Smith is the missionary director, and we have missionary trips where we train and equip pastors from third world countries. We go into Nigeria, Philippines, Nepal, and India this year.

So that's basically, in a nutshell, what First Love Ministries is.

And if anybody wants more information about First Love Ministries, go to FirstLoveMinistries .org. FirstLoveMinistries .org, and right at the top, you will see all the major branches of that ministry.

You have publications, missions, radio, and Grace Bible University. So you could click on any or all of those tabs to find out more about the specific element of First Love Ministries you want to explore.

And by the way, in case you didn't know, listeners, it is First Love Radio that livestreams Iron Trip and Zion Radio every day, Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern, 1 to 3 p .m. Pacific. And then before I forget, I just want to give a shout out publicly to Free Presbyterian Radio 92 .5 in Liberia, West Africa.

I just learned last week that they have added a Best of Iron Trip and Zion Radio to their Monday lineup at midnight. So I want to thank those fine folks. I didn't even know that they had done that, but I was thrilled to hear that they have done that.

It just broadens our audience even more. And you never know where Iron Trip and Zion Radio is being heard. Eddie Delcor, why don't you tell our listeners about the upcoming First Love Ministries second annual Bible conference on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, which is going to be held coming up very quickly, February 23rd through the 25th in Baghdad, Florida.

Yeah, we're doing a interesting, Chris, we're doing this this crusade, this conference on the Holy Spirit. And I think it's interesting that it's right outside of Pensacola, because as you recall, what happened that whole weird, bizarre thing, the Pensacola so-called revival.

So, you know, we're praying I'm praying that a lot of charismatics will come and they'll get a proper view in the Holy Spirit. It's a it's a conference. I think it's a very important conference because it it it really is based on the very doctrine that is the marrow of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit in person, in nature, in function.

We're going to talk about the spirit's role in sanctification. We're going to talk about the sealing. I think that's that's Paul Nelson's talk, Dr. Paul Nelson's topic on the sealing and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And then Joe, Pastor Joe Jacobs is going to talk about sanctification and mortification and the spirits rolled in. I think that too many Christians are are not studied enough, just basic stuff on the Holy Spirit.

That's why you have so many people, far too many Christians who misapply the functions of the Holy Spirit, who misapply the nature of the Holy Spirit, not that they reject the Trinity, but they've never been adequately taught.

So this conference is going to go through a lot of issues, a lot of different features. And we have some dynamite, fantastic speakers that will be there. I think we have like seven, seven, don't we, Paul?

Like seven speakers that will will be there. And two of them are coming from Nigeria. They're pastors there of a of a church in which First Love has a very important movement there. We go once a year.

Also, we have the school there. There's several there's graduates from the Grace, which we'll talk about shortly, Grace Bible University. So it's really exciting. These two pastors coming. And then Samuel Rye, believe it or not, the the main pastor who is so zealous of sound doctrine, unsound doctrine.

And we go to a lot of his we go to the conferences that he actually arranges in Nepal. And he's you know, we don't have time right now to talk about his background, but he will be there. He will be speaking.

So you've got to come to this conference. It's in Milton or Baghdad, Florida, right outside of Pensacola. And it's a free event. There's going to be maybe snacks. I don't know. It's going to be a lot of doctrine, though, on the Holy Spirit.

Snacks. You better be.

I get hungry at these things. You better be very clear on whether or not they have snacks, because people can get very upset if you if they are promised snacks and they show up and there are no snacks.

I have Southwest Airlines snacks.

I have arranged many, many, many events since I first became a Christian in the 1980s. And people get upset about the lack of snacks. Yeah. So did the speakers. By the way, is an old listener of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I haven't heard from him in a while, but there has been a listener in my audience from Nigeria named Osinachi. Is he going to be a part of this event? I don't know if you're familiar with that name. I think Pastor Joe Jackowitz is.

I'm not sure. Yeah, I. He sounds familiar. I don't know. I can't. I think I think his full name is Osinachi Nwoko.

But if you're listening, Chris, do we do we have a link for that conference somewhere? FirstLoveMinistries .org.

And it's right on. You just scroll down a little bit and it's right there.

It's a free event. Who's ever listening? Free event and three days. Free event. We want to come see you. All you got to do is register.

That'd be great. And so, folks, I hope that you register at FirstLoveMinistries .org and and I actually got a text from Joe Jackowitz. There will be food all three days. I think, Joe, you got to be more detailed on what you mean by food.

People might have word. People might not think you mean peanuts and.

And trail sandwiches, you know, we're going to have food trucks there where you're going to have to purchase your own food.

So I don't want to give people the wrong impression like those food trucks.

Well, one thing that is going to be available or two things, I should say, is that everybody that registers is going to get free copies of the book by my guests today. We have Paul Nelson's book, which is Presuppositionalism, a Biblical approach to apologetics.

And also Dr. Edward Delcourt Delcourt's book. Sorry, my Bell's palsy is still not 100 percent common. Sometimes I mess things up when I'm speaking. Also, Dr. Delcourt's book, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, Necessity and Purpose.

If you register and you show up, you will get a free copy of each of those two books. And so let me start with Dr. Nelson, your book on presuppositionalism. If you could define that, especially for the sake of our listeners.

We do have listeners that are new Christians, in addition to those that are seasoned Christians and pastors and theologians and published authors. We have new Christians and we even have non-Christians listening.

So why don't you define presuppositionalism, if you could?

Yeah. So a presupposition is an assumption one makes, and it's not something to be proved and it's held to as a matter of faith. And it becomes a beginning point of our reasoning and the standard of our knowledge and truth.

The Christian, the overshadowing presupposition of the Christian is the triune God and his revelation to man. And as such, God has revealed himself to man, and therefore the scripture comes to us with absolute authority, you know, and inerrant and is the standard of all truth in reality.

You know, and this becomes the focus point of presuppositional apologetics. We are theists, and that means that we believe in revelation, and revelation is our presupposition. We believe in order that we understand.

And so this is diametrically opposed to the world's philosophy, you know, of, say, empiricism and naturalism and so forth. Their presuppositions are completely different, but they don't realize that their presuppositions is a religion.

Just like we, I'm always very forthright and say, I believe the word of God is the standard of all truth and reality. And then I ask them, how do you know something is true? And that begins the conversation.

But so presuppositionalism is a worldview. It's a worldview that comprises a metaphysical aspect where there is a creator-creature distinction, and all that is real, all that exists is in context with a creator-creature relationship.

And then the other element would be epistemology, how we know something, and I've already described that as the word of God is our standard in which we understand all the truth of this universe. You know, the third part is ethics of a worldview, and that again is the word of God, and God the creator has given us his word, he's given us his law, and that establishes our whole concept of ethics, what is right and wrong.

So these three aspects create a worldview. And so when we're dealing with presuppositional apologetics, there's a conflict between the Christian worldview and the world's concept of what is true and what is reality.

You know, they have to push God out of everything, and their reality is what they will put man's reasoning above the word of God. And once you do that, you're claiming yourself to be a higher authority than the word of God.

But as theists, we hold the word of God to be our highest authority, and absolute truth, and you know, we all have the same facts, but this is a matter of interpreting facts. So when we interpret facts, what is our basis for understanding them?

And so we're not deists. I think I was an evidentialist, pretty committed evidentialist, and as a scientist, I had a lot of debates in the lunchroom and in different places. And it was all about evidences of, you know, creation of fossils and so forth.

And you know, the person who probably read the most and studied the most would always win those debates. And I'm just thinking, you know, something's wrong with this situation, because God's word is true and absolute.

It's not a matter of who can argue the best. It's a matter of the truth of the word of God. And then there is a, this is what converted me to presuppositionalism, that I keep up with the scientific journals, and in the journal Nature, there is an editorial, and a guy was critiquing the Creation Institute, and he says, why are they, as theists, acting like deists?

And that really stuck with me, because a deist has nothing to do with revealed truth, has nothing to do with Scripture. Everything is by the material world and empiricism and naturalism. So that's, I kind of went off a little tangent there.

But anyway—.

Well, maybe it would be good for you to give a clear definition of evidentialism, since that is the one of the opposing views. And would evidentialism be synonymous with what has been called classic apologetics?

Well, classic apologetics, it's involved, but it's more on the rational proofs of God than classical apologetics. So, with evidential apologetics, it's a naturalistic approach, it's a materialism, where they judge, they take a neutral position as far as how they interpret, and they capitulate to the world's presuppositions, and they ignore the Scripture.

And this is my whole point about evidentialism. Scott Oliphant tells the story of a conference on apologetics, and the coordinator of the conference says, you don't need to bring your Bibles, because we're going to discuss the evidences.

So here they're trying to defend the faith without the Word of God. You know, something is really wrong with that position, right? So, and that's where I came from. I was using the scientific worldview to argue a theistic position without the Bible.

And that seems odd, because although I am, these days, leaning a lot more heavily toward presuppositionalism, albeit still retaining admiration for some evidentialists. But it's odd, your critic, your criticism, I'm sorry, of evidentialism, because two of my greatest heroes, who are now in heaven, modern day heroes, are R .C. Sproul and his mentor, John Gerstner.

And they actually wrote a book that was critiquing and opposing presuppositionalism. And it seemed to me that these two wonderful giants of modern day Christianity were not being consistent with the rest of their own theology.

Is that too harsh of a criticism, do you think?

That they're not being true to their theology?

They're not being consistent with it by being evidentialists. And of course, they're in heaven now, so they're presuppositionalists.

So I love those men. I don't want to say anything negative about them. You know, they're great men, far greater than I could ever hope to be. They are incredible. But I would say this, presuppositionalism in apologetics is the place you give to Scripture, is really, to me, defines what true apologetics is.

Evidentialism pushes Scripture out and argues from human rationalism. And it puts man's reasoning above the Word of God. And that's really the issue. We can't put anything above God's Word, because once we do that, we're the judge of God's Word.

And who are we to judge God's Word? So we presuppose that the Word of God is the ultimate reality, the ultimate standard for judging reality and for knowing all things. So it's really, I just want to underscore, it's the place you give to Scripture.

But—.

Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, every presuppositionalist I ever interviewed, however, said they do not dismiss using evidences at any and all times. Yeah. In fact, I have heard presuppositionalism teaches that everything is evidence.

Yeah, so, yeah, of course, heaven declares the glory of God. But the problem with that is man's sinful nature. Romans 118 tells us that he continually suppresses the truth. He wants to hold it down. He's aware of God, and there's a sense of deity within him.

But when you put evidences—let me just, I'll back up a little bit. Okay, so why, when we hear an evidential message, we glory in it, right? Why do we glory when we see all these, when we hear about all these wonderful works of God?

We glory in it because we already presuppose the Word of God to be true. And so we understand it. We're defining things the way God defines them. And as Christians, regenerate Christians, we can see God.

So when someone, you know, a canned ham or something, gives us a message on the glory of creation, yeah, we are so excited about it. Because what, when God converted us, we now believe in the Word of God as absolute truth.

And so we see it unfolding, and it's wonderful. But let me tell you, science does not look at it like that at all. Science can't see it. They're blinded to it. There's noetic effects of sin, you know, where they're in darkness.

And it takes the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit to open the eyes that they see these things from a biblical point of view.

And don't you think that those scientists who are anti-Christian, who claim to be atheists or agnostics, and we know from Romans 1 that there are no real atheists, but don't you think that these scientists very often are acting and teaching in a way that a presuppositionalist would, but they are coming from unbiblical presuppositions.

They teach what they claim is scientific truth, basing their arguments on things that they will also claim are true that are not true and have never been proven. And like, for instance, they still call it the theory of evolution.

There's never been a declaration that, hey, ladies and gentlemen, the theory of evolution is now fact. We've proven it. That's never been announced to anybody because it hasn't been.

You always ask them, what one thing do you know that's absolutely true about evolution? And if they're honest, they can't answer that. But I think the text of Scripture that really describes science is Romans 1, verse 25, who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator.

It's probably more appropriate to translate that creation more than the Creator who is blessed forever. To worship the creation is essentially a pantheistic point of view. And secular science is a religion.

For instance, they ascribe to nature all these attributes, such as their attributes of God, like matter. If you ask them where did matter come from, it always existed. It's self-existent and it's eternal.

So they give to matter an attribute of God. They also say that the universe is self-contained and self-sufficient. Those are attributes of God as well. And they say that nothing transcends the cosmos or the universe.

So they completely push God out and presuppose nature to have these attributes. Natural law is absolute to them. They couldn't do science if there wasn't uniformity in natural law. And you can go on and on and on that they are ascribing attributes of deity to nature.

And it's a religious philosophy.

And I am assuming from what you just said about natural law, that Thomism is incompatible with presuppositionalism, Thomas Aquinas' philosophy.

Yeah, he was more towards a classical approach to apologetics. Natural law is such a quagmire to scientists because they give it the attribute of immutability. It cannot change. That's the whole point of science.

It's reproducible. If the same experiment was run exactly the same, you got a different result, then you couldn't trust natural law anymore and you couldn't do science anymore. Also, this is what's really interesting about natural law is that they say, you know, we talk about intelligent design and they totally deny that.

But then in their doctrine of natural law, they have a self-determining attribute. And how does this self-determining attribute play in? Nature becomes self-organizing, even though there's no purpose.

It's non-telelogical, but it's self-organizing. And then they give nature these personal attributes of mother nature or that nature is a poet. And they try to use this figurative language because they're in trouble because they can't explain intelligent design.

And then they say everything comes about through randomness and chance. And I said, so if everything comes about random and chance, how can you have order, you know, in a created universe? And that's a big contradiction.

They can't answer it. And I always push them on this one on natural law.

Well, we have to go to our midway. I'm sorry, first commercial break. We're not ready for the midway one yet. If anybody has a question, please submit it to Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.

Give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Paul Nelson and Dr. Eddie Delcor after these messages from our sponsors.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with our conversation with Paul Nelson and Eddie Dalcor, and we are going to be continuing our conversation on apologetics, and is there anything that you wanted to say to wrap up your presentation on presuppositionalism, Dr. Nelson?

Because we also want to move on to Dr. Dalcor's latest book, which is entitled An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, Necessity and Purpose.

Yeah, just a very brief summary, it's, you know, we hold to the inspiration of God to be absolute in authority for all reasoning and knowledge, and the virtue of apologetics lies in its loyalty to Scripture.

So if our approach to apologetics is not scriptural, then I think it's not pleasing to the Lord.

Why Apologetics Must Be Scriptural and Gospel-Centered

Okay, great. And now, Dr. Eddie Dalcor, you have this new book out, it is, as I've already been mentioning, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, Necessity and Purpose. Can you tell us, with all the books that are already on the shelves of serious students of the Bible on apologetics, why did you feel a need to bring into the hands of Christians everywhere this new book?

Yeah, first, it will be available at the conference, by the way, if anyone's thinking of coming. And again, you can get the information of the conference, firstloveministries .org, firstloveministries .org.

Or if you're familiar with my website, christiandefense .org, you can always write me and ask me where is this conference and what is the link. Firstloveministries .org has all the information on the conference, hotels, transportation, everything you can think of.

Chris, you know, some of my books in the past were somewhat academic, like the Oneness book that I, such as the Oneness book that I wrote, A Definitive Look at Oneness Theology, Defending the Triunity of God, I think was the title.

But, and it was, I think it was like 250 pages. And then I, some of the books I co-authored, like the one of the last books, which is this very thick book called Our God is Triune, different authors, including Anthony Rogers and a whole list of other authors.

It was very academic. And as you said, you know, there's a lot of students of the word who want that. They want the languages, they want the interaction exegetically and all these things, which is really good.

But I need a book, I wanted a book that really appealed to the average Christian without sacrificing the exegesis of very, very, very important passages. And I wanted also to dismantle the false notion that so many people have that apologetics is just refuting and that's it.

That's it. It's just refuting, winning that argument, going home and feeling good about yourself because you just refuted some kind of false view. Actually, that's not the definition of apologetics. That's not what I wanted to communicate as well.

I wanted to overthrow, which I think is an erroneous definition of apologetics, biblically speaking. Apologetics simply, and keep in mind, biblically speaking, the Christian, all Christians do have a mandate to be theologians, meaning studying, right?

Studying God, who God is. First Peter 315.

Always have an answer for the hope that lies within us.

Always, yeah, contend for the faith. And also 2 Peter 318, grow in the grace and knowledge, right? Knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Growing is a commandment. It's something that increases.

And we're always, we have a mandate to contend for the faith. And Jude 1, 3, to argue for the faith that was once for all delivered to the believers. And we have a mandate also to evangelize in which God said in Romans 10, 15, the Lord said, our feet are beautiful.

Those who are gospelizing, our feet are beautiful when you gospelize. The participle there in 10, 15 of Romans is gospelizing. So I really wanted to communicate the simplicity of apologetics and fundamental doctrine.

Because it's as, it's more important actually to present a positive affirmation of the gospel. Because you're always going to meet smarter people. And this is what I had in mind when I wrote this book.

I want the average person to understand essential theology and the role of apologetics. But you first have to understand the essentials of the Christian faith. Because without that, even if you win an argument, say on the deity of Christ.

But you're super weak on the Trinity or you don't know what sanctification is. What do you say to them afterwards? Do you direct them to a church? And Chris, I know a lot of apologists out there. And there's too many who are lone rangers.

That means they're normally single. They have no church home. We probably know the same people, Chris, that are under this category. And they're horrible. They have a horrible personal life. Right? They're horrible in their personal life.

And pretty much their whole world revolves around refuting. And that's it. Winning arguments. And a lot of them are vile in their language and their speech. And a lot of them just have bad theology in other things.

They really do. So that's not apologetics. That's not the biblical view of how a Christian should behave. So I wanted a book that does really target the average Christian and the student. Because I don't sacrifice in this book exegesis.

A lot of the advanced material, not all of it, but a lot of it is in the footnotes. And everything is transliterated. It's not a bunch of Greek everywhere. And where it's necessary, I will amplify the text when it's necessary to go into original language.

Because it's important. But the term apologetics is, and we get that from not only 1 Peter 3 .15. But Paul says, tells the Philippian church, hey, I'm here. He didn't say hey, but I'm here because the apologetics.

The defense and the confirmation of the gospel. He says, I'm here because of apologetics. Right? So we know it's something, it's a biblical activity to be sure to defend the faith. And it comes from the noun apologia.

Which, you know, in all cases and forms, which means to defend or to answer. But here's what's interesting, Chris. The very hallmark verse that everyone goes to. Especially the Lone Ranger apologists.