A Refutation of Jeff Durbin?

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I'm burning! Okay, we're live. Alright, here we go. Share it across.

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Alright, I'm working on it. Let's go ahead and get started, okay? Father, please bless this show for your glory. Help us,

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Lord, to communicate your truth clearly. Have a good time, delight in you, and I pray that we would bless your church in Jesus' holy name we pray.

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Amen. Alright, are you ready on the other side? Non -rockabotas must stop!

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I don't want to rock the boat, I want to sink it! Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?

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We're being delusional. Delusional? Yeah. Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional.

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You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt.

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She hung up on me! What?! What? What? Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

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The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

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Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

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That's a joke, pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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See, I have taught you statutes and rules as the

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Lord my God commanded me that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

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Keep them and do them for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who when they hear all these statutes will say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

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For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon him?

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And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I have set before you today,

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Deuteronomy chapter 4, y 'all. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. You can get more at ApologiaStudios .com

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A -P -O -L -O -G -I -A Studios .com That's where you guys can go to get all the past radio shows and podcasts.

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Very helpful stuff there. Dr. Joe Boot, so go check it out. Sign up today. Partner with us in this ministry. When you do, you make everything that we're doing possible.

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If you've seen something on Apologia Studios, be it teaching, sermons, on the street evangelism, cultural engagement, apologetics, if it's blessed you, if it's helped you, somebody else partnered with us to make sure that you saw it.

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So partner with us. All access today. ApologiaStudios .com. I'm Jeff the Comb of the Ninja. That's Luke the

04:52

Bear right there. And we're joined for the very first time by one of our deacons, one of my favorite people. This is

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Wade Orsini. Hello. The bald guy. Someone said, who's the bald guy? That's officially it.

05:03

The bald guy. Wade the Bald Guy Orsini. We were trying to figure out what would be a good name for you.

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Like a nickname. Everyone has a nickname. I have a bunch, but none of them really stuck. Yeah, we got

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King Ginger for Marcus. We got the Girl. We got the

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Bear. The Ninja. Jerry is, what do we have for Jerry? Nostril Domus.

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Because he breathes into the microphone very heavily. He puts the microphone literally in his nostril.

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Yes. So we got to think of a good name for you. You'll get it. You can call me by my first name.

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My real name, Wade's Worth. Wade's Worth. Is that really your first name? No, it's not. Just trying to show respect.

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It was a little weird. I already broke a commandment. I call him sometimes the Waderator.

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I call him Morsini because his email says W. Morsini. Yeah, sweet.

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That's good. I didn't give the rest of it. Hey, we have an important show everybody today.

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Welcome, welcome everyone in the live feed right now, live stream. Thank you guys for watching. Make sure you guys share this across dem internets, all across dem social media platforms.

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I want to encourage everybody with this word. I want to say thank you to everybody who partners with us in End Abortion Now.

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We had another save today. Ourselves. Follow Gia Church. Have a save. Where were they at today? Arcadia?

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Acacia. Arcadia. Arcadia's a place. It's up north.

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No, no, it is. Is it? Yeah. It's like between Scottsdale and Phoenix. Arcadia. Good restaurants.

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It's good restaurants up there. Yeah, good restaurants. Delicious. There used to be good restaurants.

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B .C. Before Corona. Was it B .C.? We had a save.

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Praise God. Thank you everybody for partnering with us. If you and your church haven't gone out yet to save lives at the abortion mill, if you're not working for the criminalization and abolition of abortion, work together with us.

07:03

Go to EndAbortionNow .com. We don't want anything from you. We want to bless your church with all the training, all the resources, everything that you could possibly need to do the same thing as we have like,

07:13

I think, 500 churches, local churches that are engaged in the work to bring the gospel into conflict with the issue and save lives.

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So you can join us. EndAbortionNow .com. Get all your free training. Get all your free resources. Thank you to everybody that partners with us every year for this work.

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We're grateful to God for you and we're praising God for another life saved. That's just one church, one day, and there's lots more.

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So praise the Lord for that. So lots going on in the world today. How are you guys doing in your quarantine out there?

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In the world, all over the planet, quarantined. Today, what's today?

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Today's the 15th, right, officially? Is that right? Quarantine has messed up my internal clock. Is it only the 14th?

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Quarantine has really messed up my clock. I don't know which day. My son asked me the other day, yesterday, he said, is it

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April, Dad, or May? I was like, see, that's not right. You're like, it's neither. It's March. That isn't right.

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Anyway, May 15th, officially, Governor Ducey is saying that the stay -at -home order is over.

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But, yeah, but the thing is, though, there's a way that this is sort of teased to say, oh, look, we're getting back to normalcy.

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I talked to restaurants and they still aren't opening for the next couple of weeks because there are also other unconstitutional, by the way, not lawful orders from the top that are saying things like you can open but you've got to be at like 25 % capacity and the restaurants are like, yeah, that doesn't work.

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Maybe you should take some business classes because we can't function as a business with the staff and everything else.

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Putting the lights on and air conditioning in Arizona is very important, by the way. Air conditioning is very important in this state. Especially now.

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Especially now. So we can't run at 25 % capacity, so I guess we're going to stay closed. It's almost like rubbing somebody's face in the dirt.

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Like, you know, giving them noogies. It feels like you're playing with them. We had to take a new cat to the vet and we got there and they said, we're not letting anyone in.

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You have to wait outside with 20 other people and we'll grab your animal, take him in, and then we'll bring him back out to you just because of Corona.

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So we're all out there in 105 degree weather, all huddled outside, no shade, but we'll take care of your pet and you can't come in.

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And I said, well, does it end next week? Can we reschedule next week? No, we're going to keep it going for a little while.

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Man, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Hopefully they weren't like putting their cat down there. You dirty scoundrel.

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No, I'm just saying, they're like, alright, say goodbye outside. 36 million, right?

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Officially the numbers are today. 36 million unemployed. That number is not accurate because the numbers are higher because a lot of people don't work within the same system as others in terms of private contractors, certain business owners that they're not part of that whole system.

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Tattoo artists, stuff like that. There's a lot of people just in the realm of like not getting unemployment benefits because they don't pay into the system.

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They're private contractors. They're 1099. So I think the numbers are much worse. We have now all kinds of reports globally, long lines, miles long lines of people waiting just for food.

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We have long lines in the place we planted a church actually, the island of Kauai. And it's amazing.

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People looking for food now. I mean, it's amazing. Give this a shot. Just for funsies.

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After the show today, go and look on Google and look up like rental prices

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Kauai homes, right? And just take a gander at what it costs just to rent a home on the island of Kauai.

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You'll see in some places you have like one bedroom $2 ,500 a month. It's like a studio.

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You have like two, three bedroom, $5 ,000. I saw one that was like $25 ,000 a month.

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Rental prices are already outrageous. People are already on the margins. They're struggling really, really hard just to make ends meet.

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You've got numerous families living together. And you shut down commerce in a place like that. And they just actually, we just got word from Pastor Zach that said that they're still doing the visitor quarantine order, which means through June.

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So you got May, June, they're already suffering back here. Let's push it out two more months. You have people in the streets in Kauai saying, look, we need the tourism industry to survive.

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That's how we make a living here. And you're taking it away from us. We have decisions being made that are decimating people.

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And I might be saying, okay, I understand that, Jeff, but what's the big deal? Love thy neighbors. That's the key thing that's coming from Apologia Church right now.

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Love thy neighbors. There's an S on the end of that. Plural, plural. Make sure that we're loving all of our neighbors, the sick, the vulnerable, including those who are losing their businesses, being made financially destitute, those who are being robbed of all of their income.

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And it really is tyrannical in many respects. You got something. I was just going to say Kauai has more, well,

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I don't know if it's just Kauai or Hawaii in total, but has more suicides than COVID deaths.

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Yeah, that's true. And they're not letting anybody go. I know your trip already got canceled. I was supposed to go in June.

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Now I can't go. We had some mission trips scheduled for the pastors. He has to go out and serve the church and do ministry.

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It's tough ministry out there, but now we've had to cancel all of our ministry. And there's even certain things we'd like to do.

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Like, I'd love to go to Kauai and just spend money on feeding the people in Kauai, getting them food and whatever we can do to help.

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We can't do it. You know, we can't get out there and we can't minister. We can't get on the ground out there and participate in what people need because you're being shut down.

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If we were to fly out to Kauai right now to serve the people of Kauai when

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I'm not, I don't have COVID -19, I could take a test. All the rest, I probably already had it, actually.

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I believe I did. And Luke does as well. But I have to go there and literally be quarantined in a hotel room for two weeks.

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I have to have people bring food to me. The officials will get your phone number. They'll make regular checks to see if you're in the place.

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They'll send people to the door to check on you. The only place you're allowed to stand for those two weeks is on your balcony or right out on your lanai.

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That's it. You have no interaction with anybody. Two whole weeks. Can you imagine? That sounds like prison is what it sounds like.

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It sounds like a jail sentence. Who wants to do that? Nobody. And then all the while you want to go and blast and help other businesses, you're being stopped by the government.

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This is nothing less than hatred for neighbor and tyrannical injustice.

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Now you may be wondering, okay, what did you read that verse for at the beginning? Well, because as much as the law of God cannot justify anybody under any circumstance, you need the righteousness of Jesus imputed to your account through faith and through faith alone.

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There is only one way to God, one way to peace with God, and it is a gracious gift of God, only available through a free act of grace in Jesus Christ through trusting in Him alone.

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However, the law of God, according to God, is righteous, good, and the nation's supposed to look inside of Israel with these statutes and say, dang, dang, there's some righteous statutes.

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Like, I want to go to Israel where there's justice. I'm giving it the modern vernacular. Is that how the

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Hebrew is? Dang! Dang! There's a there's like a roll of the it's a guttural thing.

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But yeah, I mean, you have to consider that the law of God is good, just, and here's the thing, we're going to go into some really cool stuff today, important stuff, but I just want to lay this down in terms of how

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Christians can think about this. We live in a country that was influenced by the law of God, the biblical worldview.

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There's no way out of that. It's the truth. This isn't a conversation of whether or not America is a Christian nation, all that stuff.

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This is a question about, like, worldview influence, and you just can't get away from it. Christians escaped injustices when they came over, and they were creating colonies, and you've got people now organizing communities and judicial systems.

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They weren't going, hey, what do you think? How should we do this? Like, how do you handle theft? Is theft wrong?

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Is murder wrong? Rape wrong? I don't know. What should we do? I wish we had a book or something. Like, they weren't doing that.

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They were saying, oh, the law of God says here that this is the just penalty. The law of God says here. The law of God says here.

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And I always announce it, because I want you to go look it up. John Jay, our first official Supreme Court justice, I love it, because the

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Supreme Court's kind of a big deal in the country, right? First Supreme Court justice, when he's creating case law, go look it up.

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He quotes explicitly, verse verses quoted from the judicial case law system in the

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Torah, because that was justice and it was good. And so, if you like your freedom of religion, freedom of speech, you can thank

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Jesus for that. You're welcome. If you like the prohibition against warrantless searches and seizures, you don't have paganism to thank for that.

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You have explicitly the Bible to thank for that. If you like the whole thing of the fifth, the right to remain silent, not to self -incriminate, you can thank

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Moses for that, okay? You can thank the law of God for that, because that is explicitly a

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Christian doctrine against self -incrimination, need numerous witnesses, independent witnesses to bring a charge against somebody.

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I don't have to help you to create a guilty verdict for myself. I can keep my mouth shut.

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So, the right to remain silent, Second Amendment, all that stuff. Listen, also, if you really like the system of government we have in terms of checks and balances and accountability, like you have

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Congress, House, and the Senate, and all that stuff, and legislation coming from Congress and not the government, not a king, not a tyrant, if you like that, you can thank

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Protestant Christianity for that. You're welcome for that as well. But here we have a system that's supposed to defy tyrants, defy the ability of a tyrant to take control, to become a king, to become an emperor, to simply just give edicts and decrees, and like you obey, you obey.

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Listen, we can self -govern, and we can say protect the sick and the vulnerable, and we can do it self -governing without a dictator telling us, this is how you will do this.

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And by the way, anybody aware of the House or the Senate creating any laws or legislation about wearing masks or staying at home?

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Anybody aware of anything? So there is no law, is there? Now there might be actually what seems to be law, with people ignorant of history and the law, and the governing documents of our nation, but no governor has the right to defy constitutional authority and say, well this is how we're going to do this, and we'll decimate the economy because of it.

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Now by the way, for those of you guys that are new to the discussion, you don't know us, you haven't heard what we've been saying. All this comes with an understanding that we need to protect the sick and do what's right to quarantine the sick and to keep them healthy and to do what's wise, all that stuff.

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But let's keep in mind, a 99 % survival rate, less than 1 % mortality isn't the

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Black Death. It isn't the Black Plague. It isn't the Spanish Flu. It is a discriminating virus that is deadly, very, very serious.

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We need to take it very seriously and love those neighbors that are vulnerable, like the elderly and those who have compromised immune systems and all the rest.

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So all that to say, we need to be wise because as of right now, it looks like many more people are going to be decimated, dead, because of decisions made over coronavirus, more than coronavirus itself in the

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United States of America. So, what do you guys got to say? I got more here, but... No, go ahead.

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Okay, ready to go? Alright, here we go. So, I wanted to play... Sorry, okay,

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I'm just checking the live feed here. How is everyone doing? Good, okay, good. Nothing crazy going on in the live feed? No, I've been checking. By the way,

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I'll throw it in in advance for all of our friends and partners and brothers and sisters who regularly watch this and are blessed by this.

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I'll just put it, I'll lay it down ahead of time in case it gets brought up. That's the tricetra, and it's a symbol of the Trinity. It's a symbol of the

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Trinity, right there, ancient symbol of the Trinity. Someone will still pop in with five minutes left. That's right. You want to see something kind of interesting in terms of the hypocrisy.

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I wanted to show this to everybody because I think it's just delicious. Mayor Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago.

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Beetlejuice. Yeah, Beetlejuice. She, well, of course, is the one who went, you may have seen her, going on national media, or heard local media, went national, basically threatening to treat people like criminals because they were trying to go about their lives and do things, and she's like, we will arrest you, we will charge you, we will cite you, and we will take you to jail.

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Didn't she get a haircut? She did. I'm going to play this. Make sure you guys see the video feed here.

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This is a clip from the news in Chicago. Just check this out. Lightfoot is teaming up with Chicago's major sports franchises, encouraging people to stay inside, even as this weather warms up.

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But a new photo of the Mayor after a haircut is threatening to undermine that message. WJ's Eric Rung, live for us at City Hall with that.

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Eric? Good afternoon. You know, the last thing that Mayor Lightfoot wanted to talk about today was getting a haircut, and she didn't do a whole lot of talking about it, but she certainly didn't apologize for it either.

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She's begged, lashed out, and used humor to try and get people to stay at home to stop the spread of COVID -19.

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Hey, Viv, what's up? Mom, I'm bored. You're not bored. You're saving lives.

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But a photo that surfaced on social media showing the Mayor after getting a trim has some asking, what about me?

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The Mayor was asked at least twice about the haircut this afternoon. I'm out in the public eye, and, you know,

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I'm a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said,

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I felt like I needed to have a haircut. I'm not able to do that myself, and so I got a haircut.

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She says the person cutting her hair wore gloves and a mask, and the photo that was posted was one of the few she has taken with anyone since the

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COVID -19 pandemic hit. Earlier today, the Mayor was at Soldier Field to announce a new campaign to try and use

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Chicago's professional athlete's fame to help spread the word to stay home. Let's do our part to stay together.

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Let's stay home and help save lives. The Mayor also says warm weather is no excuse to congregate in parks or on streets.

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She also plans on enforcing social distancing at stores that remain open while the stay -at -home order is in effect.

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We are sending inspectors out. We will demand that you do this, and if you do not, we will shut you down.

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Man, hardcore, and what amazing hypocrisy as well. Just think about the situation, okay?

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So she tells everyone, we'll shut you down, we'll arrest you, we'll treat you like a common criminal, and then people catch her getting a haircut, and her response is so prideful, and it's despotism, it's a tyrant.

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She says, well, I take my personal hygiene very seriously, as if everybody else doesn't, right?

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The peasants, you don't need to take your hygiene very seriously, but I take mine very seriously, and don't worry, in the place

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I got it done, she wore gloves and a mask, and you might think to yourself, okay, can't everybody do that?

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Can everybody take those measures, or only you? And it just goes to show the kind of tyranny that can take place when you don't understand law, when you're irrational, and when you deal with things with a heavy hand.

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That's what you're dealing with. And that's in Chicago, that's where your old stomping grounds. She better not ruin the pizza.

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Alright, so, okay, so we have lots to talk about today, lots to talk about today, and, well, since we're up to it, let's go ahead and put it in here.

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This is a news report, Pastor Luke sent me a tweet from, where's it at here?

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I'm going to pull it up. The tweet was from LA, some of you guys have probably already seen this, and it'd be good to talk about this.

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Where's that at here? Yeah, here we go. The mayor of LA tweeted out, we're requiring all

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Angelinos, I like that, it's like Brangelina. We're requiring Brangelina to wear a face covering.

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We're requiring all Angelinos to wear face coverings when they leave the house.

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There are exceptions in place for small children or those with disabilities. Okay.

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There's no logic. Well, there's no logic in it, especially considering that you've got various experts, disease experts, doctors that have announced, even

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CDC stuff, announcing like, well, this isn't really ultimately effective, and can't really control this thing or contain this thing.

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It's helpful in some context, but everybody wearing this thing in some sense could actually be more destructive, and you could actually be in a greater danger of some health risks.

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But we're just going to go ahead and just blanket the city of Los Angeles. If you're going to leave your house, you're going to wear a face mask.

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That just seems... Unless you're a child. Unless you're a child. Or in a wheelchair or something. They don't really matter as much. That's the same way I was just saying

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American. I booked a flight for the end of July, hopefully. Hopefully I'll be able to go on my trip.

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But, like, it said they're requiring everyone to wear a mask, unless you're a small child. Well, here's the thing.

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You and I have taken some long trips. We're talking like 13, 14 hour flights, 11 hour flights sort of a thing.

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Can you imagine being in a flight for 11 hours with a face mask? I would... I tried it once when my daughter got sick.

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I wore it for about 15 minutes and said, nope, nothing like that. You feel like you're going to pass out. You're breathing in all your own air.

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It's hot. It just seems impossible. Moist. Moist. I've been seeing, like, cyclists on the side of the road with no one around them with masks on.

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I just don't get it, I guess. It's in some respects. Listen, there could be a certain case, situation where it's good to have a mask.

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Right? Of course. But in terms of when you see people that are driving down the highway at 65 miles per hour wearing a mask in their car.

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Alone. Alone. Or they're, like you said, riding a bicycle by themselves on a stretch of road and they've got it on.

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It can become, it can become the new virtually, virtual... Virtue signaling.

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Virtue signaling. The new virtue signaling. And it can also be, and you just got to say it, it can also be sort of a symbol of your submission and obedience.

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And there's nothing wrong with Christians submitting to the government when it's acting righteously and it's

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God's servant. But there are elements, we just have to pay attention to this, we've lost sight of the sinfulness and fallenness of mankind.

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There are instances of people abusing authority and ultimately dealing things with too heavy of a hand and controlling things.

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And there's narratives that are spun, and it is true that people sometimes are wearing these as a form of virtue signaling.

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Look at me. Look what I do. I'm wearing this. Selfie. Yeah, exactly. We'll save that conversation for later.

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We will. And we have Toby Sumter coming on to talk about that exactly. He's going to start a Sumter fire. Yes, he will. Okay, so we wanted to talk about a video, and I kind of just wanted to talk about this is fun.

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This is fun. In light of the situation we're in with the face masks and everything else,

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I found this film and I think it actually speaks to something rather interesting and important.

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This is a little Kevin James short film. It's called Out of Touch. You guys see this? It's only about a minute and a half long or so.

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It's actually really good. If you guys are seeing this for the first time, I think you'll really enjoy it. It's good cultural commentary.

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I love things like this. And if you're a Christian and you've got good cameras and you've got good ideas, create content like this that can actually speak truth.

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It's actually really important that we engage in this world as well because know this, there's a dark and nefarious side, unbelieving worldview that shares things that are not true, not good, and they try to do it in a creative and convincing way.

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So we need to do it back with the truth. It's called Out of Touch by Kevin James. Really good.

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Check it out. Shhh. I can't do this anymore,

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Marcus. I can't. I'm gonna die. I'm too young to die. This is our life now, okay?

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We gotta go on. I can't go on, Marcus. I can't do this. Why'd you shake my hand?

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I gotta run. I can't go to jail, Marcus. Calm down. Oh god, they're coming.

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They're coming. Shut up. Shut up. No. No. Oh, hey,

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Ted. Oh, hey, Marcus. How are you? Good. We out for a little run? Yeah, yeah. Just did seven. Might do another seven, you know?

29:06

Wow. I don't want to hold you up. Let's grab dinner sometime. I would love that. Alright. Good seeing you. Absolutely.

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911. What's your emergency? Hi. Yeah. I got a couple handshakers right in front of me. Okay, sir.

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Are they still in the vicinity? Yeah. I'm staring at them right now. Run.

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That's so great. That's good commentary right there. It really is. Excellent. Excellent cultural commentary.

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I hope you guys enjoyed that. Alright, so let's... We got a lot to get through to you, so I'll just jump right into it today.

29:52

Alright, I had a video come across and it's by a channel called TMM. The title of the video is

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Why Presuppositionalists Can't Prove Christianity. So that's the title of the video. Why Presuppositionalists Can't Prove Christianity.

30:07

It's about eight minutes long. I tried to look through a few of this gentleman's videos.

30:13

A couple of them look like early on maybe agnosticism and then more atheism. I just wanted to do it because the video title screen thing is me.

30:26

It's yours truly. So I was like, oh, that's interesting. Eight minutes. I'll take a look. Why Presuppositionalists Can't Prove Christianity.

30:33

If you're new to this discussion, when we talk about presuppositionalism, we're talking about Christian apologetics.

30:39

We're talking about the world of Christian philosophy. We're talking about proof. We're talking about evidence. We're talking about worldview stuff.

30:47

How do you prove the existence of God? How do you know something is true? These are epistemological questions.

30:53

These are questions that get to metaphysics, ontology, ethics. So this is an important discussion and it comes down to Christian apologetics and methodology.

31:01

It also is a discussion that comes outside of the realm explicitly of Christian apologetics because we're dealing with questions of knowledge.

31:08

How do you know something is true? Is there anything real? What is the nature of this?

31:15

What's the nature of reality? So it's an important question because you're alive. You're thinking right now.

31:20

You're watching this. You're assuming things need to be coherent, meaningful, understandable, that I need to make sense.

31:27

I'm not allowed to contradict myself. So everyone right now watching this is expecting me to hold to laws of logic.

31:35

There's an assumption here that they are universal. In other words, I don't even know where you're watching this right now.

31:40

You could be watching this in Timbuktu. You could be watching this in New Zealand, Australia.

31:47

You could be watching it anywhere in the UK. You could be watching it in Russia, Iceland, wherever. And there's an assumption wherever you're watching this, if you're watching it in English and you understand my language, you're assuming that I'm supposed to be coherent, that I'm supposed to make sense, that I have to hold to laws of non -contradiction.

32:06

And so all of us have these assumptions all the time. They're operating all the time. And everybody right now watching this assumes that there's an ethical obligation

32:16

I have and ought above all of us, that I not lie to you.

32:22

So like for example, I don't know much about this gentleman who did this video, but wouldn't it be wrong if I introduced the name of his channel as TMM, and I said this man is a devout

32:32

Buddhist and he just absolutely loves the Catholic Church. He's submitted to the

32:37

Pope. But he's kind of a weird atheist in that way. He'd probably go, excuse me,

32:42

I reject all of that. Who do you think you are? There's an assumption there of an ethic, an ought, that exists that we have to have integrity.

32:50

There's a moral aspect to investigation. Another example of that, and we're going to get to the video here, is science itself.

32:58

When we talk about the scientific method, there's issues related to that in terms of preconditions that are necessary to have a scientific discussion intelligible.

33:07

But there's also a moral component to science. Did you catch that? Science is not just a methodology.

33:14

It's not just a methodology. There's a moral ought within the realm of scientific methodology that you shall not lie.

33:23

Right? How far do you think you're going to go in scientific journals if you're lying through your teeth about something and everybody knows it?

33:32

You're not going to go far at all. Why? Because even scientists who are trying to appeal to observational evidence, they're trying to use empiricism and the scientific method say, you shall not lie.

33:42

Isn't it interesting? There's a moral component even to the scientific method. So, here's the question. How do we deal with the issue of apologetics?

33:50

That's the defense of the Christian faith. By the way, Christian apologetics is not just a Christian thing.

33:55

This guy is, again, I'm confused because I've seen some of the older videos, newer ones. I see agnosticism, atheism.

34:01

He seems like a harder atheist now. But I don't want to misrepresent him, so I'll leave it at that.

34:07

I don't know exactly where he's at. Well, he's an atheist apologist.

34:13

He's an apologist for his worldview. Put it that way. You've got Mormon apologists, Catholic apologists.

34:19

You've got Marxist apologists. An apologist is somebody who's providing a defense for a position.

34:25

So, when we're talking about Christian apologetics, we're asking the question of, what's a consistent, coherent defense of the

34:37

Christian worldview? What's faithful to God? What morally ought we to do?

34:43

What is philosophically coherent? And what's true? So, we're talking about Christian apologetics, we need to recognize that there are different approaches to the defense of the

34:53

Christian faith. For example, if you want to talk evidence and the historicity of the Bible, archaeology, the defense of the historical resurrection, all

35:02

Christians, I think, who know about the facts and the history and the evidence are like, let's do it. Let's play. Let's play ball.

35:07

I'm ready. Let's do it. Let's throw down. Get all the evidence out. But the question is, is that the problem?

35:13

Is that the problem? Is the problem of a rejection of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, is a problem of the rejection of the

35:21

Bible a problem of facts and evidences? We would say, based upon the biblical worldview, the answer is no.

35:28

It's not a problem of a lack of evidence or a lack of proof for the existence of God or the inerrancy of Scripture, the transmission throughout the history of the world, those sorts of things.

35:40

We'd say it's a problem of rebellion and it's a spiritual problem because we believe that every image bearer of God knows the true

35:48

God. The problem is we don't want to know Him, and so we suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness and we switch

35:55

God for idols. We try to develop very, very sophisticated, complex, erudite worldviews to try to make excuses for our rejection of God's existence.

36:07

And so there's different aspects or lanes people have chosen to get into the discussion of, say, the existence of God.

36:16

Evidentialism or classical apologetics or you have more of a transcendental or presuppositional approach.

36:22

And we, of course, believe in the transcendental or presuppositional approach, and we believe that there is the self -attesting nature of the

36:32

Word of God, and we believe that God is the principium. Now, watch. This is so critical, because I'm going to play this in a second here, and if you guys have been following the discussion for any length of time, you listened to this already, right?

36:43

Okay. This was really interesting. This gentleman, I don't know much about him, but it's interesting to me that he did a video eight minutes long on why presuppositionalists can't prove

36:54

Christianity, but within the first 60 seconds, he misrepresents presuppositionalism. Which I find compelling in a way.

37:04

I find it compelling that you would do a video and leave a record for yourself to try to refute a system of thought that you don't know.

37:13

You haven't done, you haven't spent any time really trying to understand, what do you really believe? Like, for example, when

37:18

I've tried to engage with atheists in the past, what I try to do is listen to them. I try to read their stuff and listen to them.

37:25

We had a public debate fairly recently in Utah, and what did I do?

37:30

I spent as much time as I possibly could digging up all of their lectures, looking for all their talks, trying to find whatever they wrote to say, how do

37:38

I represent them and their system best? I want to make sure I have integrity, and I'm speaking to them, not to something else that's irrelevant.

37:47

I think it's important that we do that. Like, when I've tried to engage with content from Richard Dawkins before, you know, what did

37:53

I do? I read The Blind Watchmaker, I read The River Out of Eden, I tried to read his stuff, you know, you're talking about The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens, you're talking about anything

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I can get my hands on when I'm dealing with the materialist worldview or their perspective, I want to faithfully represent their perspective.

38:10

Now, this gentleman, he went another way. He went another way. Now, according to his worldview, it's irrelevant.

38:17

Truth isn't really ultimate in the first place, and so he doesn't, I guess to be consistent, he doesn't have to pursue truth and what's really true and real.

38:27

He could misrepresent. There's no moral ought in his universe, in his perspective. So I guess if he was consistent with his own perspective, he could say, yeah, yeah, you're right.

38:36

I didn't represent you correctly, and I don't have to, because there's no moral ought above any of us, and truth isn't really a thing anyways, and so I guess he's being consistent, but when we're talking about presuppositional apologetics or transcendental methodology of getting into this, we're talking about epistemology.

38:52

We're talking about the preconditions necessary for knowledge at all, and what we say as presuppositionalists, always have, you will find nothing different in the literature.

39:05

Go anywhere in Van Til, go anywhere in Bonson, and find me anything different in this respect.

39:12

What do we say? That we are not, we refuse to defend a bare or general theism.

39:20

We think that that's incoherent. We think defending general forms of theism aren't effective, and it isn't faithful to Scripture, it's not philosophically consistent, and so what you will find strenuously argued for in all of the literature, and audio lectures, seminary, whatever courses, whatever you're looking for, you will find a consistent appeal to the self -attesting revelation of the triune

39:50

God of Scripture. That we are not trying to defend a bare general theism, we are defending the triune

39:55

God of the Bible, this self -attesting word, the word of God is the principium, it's the reference point, not general theism.

40:03

Now, the mistake this gentleman makes is in the first 60 seconds, he doesn't know what presuppositionalism is, but he's doing a video refuting it.

40:12

My recommendation is that you pull it down, spend some time doing your homework, and then get back at it.

40:19

Presuppositional apologetics is an approach that tries to establish that a God exists a priori, that is, in a way that does not appeal to evidence.

40:26

Presuppositional apologists insist that the existence of a God must be assumed before any argument can be made, because in order for any argument to be completely reliable, there must be an infallible source of knowledge.

40:37

Okay, let's deal with that. Sorry, I didn't blow that up there, did I? Isaac's probably gonna set me right on the other side. Presuppositional apologetics is an approach that tries to establish that a

40:46

God exists a priori, in a way that does not appeal to evidence, false on both counts.

40:54

On both counts. There are different appeals to evidence, okay?

41:00

So, for example, somebody could say, I'd like you to try to prove to me that the law of non -contradiction is a necessary thing that we hold to, that it's universal, it's invariant, those sorts of things.

41:11

Can I ask you a question? You're gonna prove that empirically? You're gonna prove that through observation empirically?

41:18

What is a law of logic? Can you find one, smell one, taste one, touch one? We're talking about an immaterial, abstract concept, law, that is universal and unchanging, and it's binding.

41:31

But when we talk about evidence, presuppositionalists appeal to evidence all the time.

41:36

But what we say is, is that you have to have a meaningful, coherent foundation for evidence at all.

41:42

And as an atheist or as an agnostic, you don't have it. Further, presuppositional apologetics is an approach that tries to establish that a

41:50

God exists a priori. False. We are not William Lane Craig. False, false, and this demonstrates,

41:59

I'm gonna say this with as much respect to this gentleman because he's made in the image of God. I want him to know the truth and to know

42:05

Jesus. You wrote a sentence and got it wrong. Presuppositionalists would never want to say that.

42:13

Presuppositional apologists insist that the existence of a God must be assumed before any argument can be made because in order for any argument to be completely reliable, there must be an infallible source of knowledge.

42:25

Well, again, presuppositional apologists insist that the existence of a God must be assumed.

42:31

No, we say that the God of the Bible, the Triune God who's revealed

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Himself in history, in nature, and in special revelation in the Bible, must be the grounding for any appeal to knowledge at all.

42:45

Not a God, some God, but the specific God who's given us His revelation in history.

42:51

It's very very important. And here's an example, I've already given you a couple examples, but an example as to why.

42:57

When you talk about this gentleman, or any, let's just make it more general, so I'm not just going after him.

43:05

Let's say we're talking about somebody who's a materialist. They believe that all that exists is the material world, the material realm.

43:12

That's all that exists is matter. We're all matter in motion. We're sort of dancing out our DNA, kind of a thing.

43:19

You know, the thoughts that are going on in our heads right now are just the result of chemical processes. I believe this man is very much into that.

43:28

It's just chemical responses, neurons firing, that sort of a thing. So we've just got matter in motion.

43:34

Well, you've got to ask the question, when you're debating a person who's a materialist, you're having an argument, just please pay attention to this very simple thing.

43:43

The person that you're talking to is a materialist that believes all that exists is matter. But as they're challenging your worldview, what are they upset about?

43:52

They're saying things like, well, this isn't consistent. That's not logical. That's not reasonable.

43:57

And you have to ask, you have to stop and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, this sounds so very Christian. Where do they get that?

44:03

Yeah, this sounds like I'm in a conversation with a Christian. Consistent, logical, truthful, those sort of things, they make sense with the biblical worldview and God's revelation underneath you in terms of certain claims to knowledge.

44:18

God is grounding the foundation of all knowledge and all certainty in Scripture.

44:25

It says the fool rejects God's existence, right?

44:30

And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, is the beginning of knowledge. And so ultimately, there is no true knowledge or understanding without reverent submission and awe to God.

44:40

And let's talk about it just on this one point, just the problem of the laws of logic. The materialist is challenging the

44:46

Christian. That's not consistent. That's not true. That's foolish. That sounds stupid.

44:51

That's ridiculous. All those things comport with a Christian view of reality, right?

44:57

Because God cannot lie. That is to say that God cannot engage in logical contradiction.

45:03

God doesn't change. God is immaterial. God is spirit. God is holy

45:10

God. He cannot lie. And so lying is a sin in debate, right? And so what

45:15

Christians are doing is they're actually grounding an understanding of these concepts in the nature of God.

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Not something that he has to appeal to that's above him, but it's grounded in the very nature of God.

45:27

So, for example, how come I don't lie about evidences in a debate with atheists? How come? Just because I don't want to?

45:34

Just because? Just because I think it's uncomfortable or I don't want to get caught doing it?

45:39

No, I don't want to lie in a debate because lying is a sin against God. Because God's character is a character...

45:47

God is truth. God cannot lie. And so when a Christian doesn't lie in a conversation, it's because God is not a liar.

45:56

Do you get it? I have the character and grounding of God's own... his own nature itself as the source, the reference point.

46:06

And then when you're talking about laws of logic, again, remember this, you're watching this all over the world right now and somehow we're all assuming the same thing.

46:14

These laws of logic and these appeals are universal. We can't just contradict ourselves.

46:20

These things are unchanging. We're not assuming that maybe they've changed in the United States. Maybe in Arizona right now laws of logic are not that important.

46:27

Are the laws of logic just something people make up? Do we get together as meat machines that grew out of fish in this long evolutionary process?

46:38

Meat machines? Do we get to just sort of create and establish what these laws and rules are?

46:45

Meat machines? Do we? Think about it. If laws of logic, according to some people, are conventional, like societies get together and sort of decree like, well, here's a law of logic we're going to appeal to.

47:00

Well, why should I do that? Well, because we said. Like, we decided that over here. It's like, well, on that basis there could be another weird society 5 ,000 miles away that creates their own set of laws of logic that say, hey, go ahead and contradict yourself.

47:14

That's the way to do things, right? That's the rule for us. Well, you have no debate with them.

47:19

If it's just conventional, people just make it up, then it's meaningless.

47:25

And if thinking is just the result, if all there is is matter, and all you are is a meat machine fizzing, well, then all this stuff is just irrelevant anyways, because you're just fizzing differently than me.

47:38

There's no rules anybody has to follow. But if you assume that there is actually an immaterial nature to all of us, and there's a transcendent being, the

47:48

Triune God of Scripture, you can have a meaningful basis in appealing to things like immaterial realities, like mathematics, laws of logic, when you're talking about things that go beyond the material realm that the atheist is always appealing to, you have it if you have the

48:06

Triune God of Scripture who gives you certainty. And it's a self -attesting revelation. But we're only 19 seconds into the video.

48:12

Are we even going to get through? No, not today. I just wanted to touch... Well, I think, because I don't know how much we're going to get through, but it's about the halfway point, because it's kind of play off what you were saying.

48:22

He totally just shoots himself in the foot, takes his own legs off, because he starts saying,

48:28

I don't care. Right. What's the point? Right. Well, let's play through. Let's get through. One of the many problems with this approach is that even if it is the case that we need an infallible source of knowledge, which it isn't, this only establishes theism to be necessary.

48:42

It doesn't show that we must subscribe to any particular religion. And... there you go.

48:48

Once again, so you're on your second screen here. One of the many problems with this approach is that even if it is the case that we need an infallible source of knowledge, which it isn't, by authority, this only establishes theism to be necessary.

49:03

Well, I don't know if presuppositionalism was what you're describing, maybe, but it isn't.

49:09

I can encourage you to read some important works on the subject so that you don't make this kind of mistake in the future, but you're not dealing with...

49:18

this is called straw man argumentation. You're arguing the other direction. You're attacking and beating down a straw man.

49:25

So, onward. My question is, when you debate a belief system that affirms absolute truth from another source, like the

49:33

Quran or the Book of Mormon, by showing its internal inconsistencies, isn't that actually evidential apologetics and not presuppositional?

49:43

No, because it comes down to... So, there's a confusion about what presuppositional or evidential apologetics is.

49:51

Presuppositionalists believe in the use of evidence, but it's a coherent appeal to those evidences.

49:59

What we would say is you don't appeal to those evidences apart from the authority of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture.

50:06

You don't appeal to those evidences apart from something that grounds those appeals to evidence, right?

50:14

How would that be different from how a Muslim presuppositionalist would argue? Even if you believe that to argue at all is to presuppose some ultimate source of truth or ultimate ground of evidence, how could you presuppose it to be the

50:26

Bible rather than the Quran? Good question. We've talked about this a lot, and I encourage you to read the literature in this area or engage with somebody who is a presuppositionalist who would happily answer this.

50:39

There's a massive difference between a Muslim presuppositionalist I'm not even sure I've ever met one, personally.

50:46

That sounds very strange. Here's what you need to understand. Islam came long after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection and ascension.

50:55

We're talking about hundreds of years of past. You're talking about Christian tribes that have been spreading out throughout the world, and you've got

51:02

Muhammad hearing stories from Christians, collecting stories, understandings, and all that goes into what is part and parcel to the

51:10

Islamic worldview. But here's the question or the challenge is this. The materialist atheist doesn't share the same worldview as the

51:19

Muslim. The Muslim agrees that there is a creator God. They borrowed that from Christianity. The Muslim agrees that Jesus existed.

51:27

The Muslim agrees that Moses, they have all these stories because they borrowed them from Christianity. They don't share the same materialist worldview.

51:34

So of course, I engage with the Muslim in a different way because I hold to scripture as the grounding than I do with the materialist atheist because he has a different worldview.

51:45

Okay? So the materialist rejects there's time and chance acting on matter.

51:50

That's what they say. All of us came from fish somewhere down the pipeline. There is no ultimate standard of truth.

51:57

Those sorts of things. Morals are not ultimate. It can be arbitrary, subjective, all those sorts of things.

52:03

So my challenge to the materialist seems to sound very different than my challenge to the Muslim because I'm standing on scripture and the interesting thing is when

52:11

I deal with the Muslim, I'm dealing with his worldview and I'm doing an internal critique. I'm answering the fool according to his folly.

52:19

I'm stepping into his worldview and I'm saying to the Muslim, I'm saying you borrowed from the

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Christian worldview and you claim to be from the same God. The problem is is that the

52:32

Jesus revealed in this revelation doesn't match the Jesus revealed in the Islamic revelation and this should be obvious to anybody who has done a study of these different belief systems.

52:44

The Muslim God is not triune. He's unipersonal.

52:50

One person, one God. Jesus is not God according to Islam. Jesus did not die for our sins.

52:58

He is not the ultimate redeemer and savior and all the rest. You're talking about two completely different worldviews and when you deal with the

53:07

Muslim because he borrows from the Christian worldview, you show the internal inconsistencies in the claims of Muhammad in the

53:15

Quran. It's a very different situation but here's the thing. In both cases, you're standing on the same revelation.

53:22

It's the same self -attesting revelation that's the very reference point. And so, if you believe that to argue at all is to presuppose some ultimate source of truth or ultimate ground of evidence, how could you presuppose it to be the

53:37

Bible rather than the Quran? This honestly is so simple. The Bible came first. God's revelation existed first.

53:42

Muhammad, Islam, borrows from the Bible and then distorts the message and so what do you do?

53:48

You go to the original source of the revelation and you demonstrate that Muhammad borrowed from it and distorted from it and distorted it.

53:56

You see, Islam can't do, listen, Islam cannot do coherently what the presuppositionalist does.

54:03

Why? Because Islam is dependent on the previous revelation already given to make sense of its claims.

54:12

The problem is the claims don't match. From the Christian perspective, you have an original source grounding revelation of God in nature, we believe that, in history in the person of Jesus Christ and ultimately in this revelation, the self -attesting nature of God's revelation is the grounding.

54:31

The fact is too, there's only one authority whether you believe that or not.

54:37

You're either suppressing the truth in unrighteousness or you've been granted that belief. There's one authority, so we all have to appeal to something.

54:47

They're appealing to, I don't know, their own ideas, their own knowledges that, but really that only makes sense in a

54:54

Christian worldview anyway. Logic, reason. Right. It's interesting too because this comes as an attack upon transcendental argumentation.

55:02

By the way, transcendental argumentation is long understood in the world of philosophy. You're talking about Kant and the preconditions necessary for knowledge.

55:09

Oh, this is not new stuff. I mean, you've got guys like Alvin Plantica today talking about things that are properly basic. This is not like a peculiar presupposition of the school.

55:17

How weird is this? It's transcendental argumentation talking about the necessary preconditions for knowledge.

55:23

Yeah. Okay? It's not new. Also, if you're really engaged in this and you want to have understanding, can

55:29

I point something out? This isn't a problem for the presuppositionalist in terms of having an ultimate grounding for knowledge like Wade is talking about because every person who believes that truth is meaningful at all or is making an argument has an ultimate grounding that they're standing on, that they're not going past.

55:48

Right? Because this. So you can talk, for example, and we'll probably end on this today. I'll do more of this later.

55:53

You talk about the person that, say, believes in rationalism. That's their system of thought. That's how they know rationalism.

56:01

It has to be reason. That's how I know something to be true. It has to be consistent. It has to be logical.

56:06

It has to be rational. So rationalism is their ultimate commitment. It's their system.

56:12

Well, ask them. How do you know that rationalism is rational?

56:18

Right. Can you do it? Can you show me that rationalism is rational without appealing to reason?

56:27

Do you see the point? Every ultimate is just that. Ultimate.

56:33

If you have to go behind it, right, to prove it, then what does that make it?

56:41

Not ultimate. Do you get the point? Because that other thing is now the ultimate.

56:48

Everyone, this is a problem because this is God's world. It's his universe.

56:53

Right? But here's the point. Watch this. The rationalism, the rationalist can't have his rationalism without a proper grounding that actually can make sense of rationalism.

57:06

So for example, and we've already talked a lot about it, laws of logic, reason, law of non -contradiction, all that stuff matters.

57:13

If you think the laws of logic are universal, in other words, they apply, they're everywhere, they apply everywhere. If you think they're unchanging, invariant, that they don't change over time, all those things, if you think they're like realities that are meaningful, true, that exist, then you've got to deal with the question of, are they immaterial?

57:32

Are they material in nature? Well, they're definitely immaterial in nature. Right? Are they true? Well, yeah, they are really true.

57:39

Do they exist outside of your own personal experience and preferences? Yeah, I think they'd be here and be important if I was here or not.

57:46

Fantastic. Who's to say that I have to appeal to those? Why? On what basis? Right? Well, because we want you to be reasonable.

57:52

What? You? Like, so? Why can't I be irrational? Like, who says

57:58

I've got to be reasonable? Well, you could really hurt yourself and a lot of people. You're assuming human value and dignity.

58:04

You're assuming humans matter. You're assuming truth matters. In what worldview? The descendants of fish have to be, ought to be truthful to one another?

58:13

We got to care about stuff like this? How about we kerosene the whole anthill? That sounds like a good idea.

58:19

Do you get the point? So, you can't have your rationalism and discuss it meaningfully without preconditions that make it meaningful.

58:28

Like, even things like human beings are more than meat machines and they actually matter.

58:34

Right? Beyond your own profession and subjective likes and dislikes that's like an ultimate ought.

58:42

Right? Those sorts of things. So, even rationalism, remaining and relying upon itself isn't coherent without a meaningful worldview underneath it.

58:51

And I would say that only the triune God of Scripture, the God of this revelation, can give meaning to rationalism at all.

58:58

See, here's the amazing thing. As a presuppositionalist, because I stand on God's word as the starting point, I get rationalism.

59:04

I get empiricism. I get it all. Why? Because I can have a meaningful appeal to sense perception, observational evidence, scientific methodology, laws of logic.

59:17

Why? Because those comport with the Christian worldview. They don't comport with yours. Why even make the video?

59:25

Because if everything is purposeless, if everything is futility, it's vanity, if none of it really matters, why even be upset about it?

59:36

Why waste the energy when you could be putting that energy into...

59:43

Eating pudding. Yeah. Whatever else. Do something enjoyable. Do something pleasurable.

59:49

I mean, it's silly. It's funny. But it's true, right? Why spend time making videos where you misrepresent presuppositionalism, by the way, to try to prove something as wrong when, man, you know how much time, coronavirus, it's out there, man.

01:00:05

You should be buying pudding, ice cream. Enjoy yourself. Buy some chocolate. Eat some candy. Do something fun.

01:00:12

Go splash around in a pool in your backyard. I don't know. Do something enjoyable for your pleasure because this is all you've got.

01:00:19

You've got to grab it all before you go. Right? You don't have to be in your backyard because you can't do it publicly. And you said it too.

01:00:26

To prove it wrong. So he's assuming that there is some sort of truth.

01:00:31

Exactly. So we're going to take a quick commercial break. We're bringing on Pastor Toby Sumter from CrossPolitik, Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho.

01:00:41

We're going to have our boy on to talk about current events. You guys don't want to miss this. He was on fire this past week on CrossPolitik.

01:00:48

I think it was the fourth. Fairly recently, yeah. We love

01:00:54

Toby. He's a good man of God. Solid pastor. Great, great content. You guys want to get to know him.

01:00:59

But don't leave because we're coming right back and just get ready because we're going to drop some

01:01:05

B -O -M -B -S. I'm spelling it because there's actually things that read the audio in the

01:01:10

YouTube videos and if you say that it might think, oh my gosh, this is serious and they'll kill your video.

01:01:16

So some stuff's going to happen. Fire. Is coming. Alright? So we'll be right back in just a moment here, guys.

01:01:23

Stay with us. Make sure you guys share and like the content. Thank you guys for watching. ApologiaStudios .com

01:01:30

is where you guys go to get more. Thank you so much. Be right back. I want their faith to not just be something that stands but something around which culture can be built.

01:01:42

We want students who can think critically about arguments but also about the culture around them that can then speak clearly to it and that also have the ability to influence and shape because of the power of their message.

01:01:54

Because that's really what the gospel does. The gospel throws down all the arguments against it. It speaks to the hearts of people.

01:02:01

It influences and it changes. The goal for New St.

01:02:10

Andrews College as it trains its students is not to make people who will be able to go out and just get jobs.

01:02:19

People who will just be bricks in the wall of our society. The goal for New St. Andrews College is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture.

01:03:19

Don't you worry about it.

01:04:14

Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it.

01:04:20

Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it.

01:05:07

Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it.

01:05:12

Don't you worry about it.

01:05:38

Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it.

01:06:11

Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it.

01:06:19

Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it.

01:06:39

Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it.

01:07:04

Don't you worry about it.

01:07:10

Don't you worry about it. The audience has to admit, the audio sounds great. It does sound better. We got some new hardware equipment.

01:07:16

We did get some new hardware. Working some things out. Hey, let's get Toby on already. Well, yes.

01:07:21

He only has 20 minutes, I think, so. Is Toby on? At this point, not yet. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and play this video here, guys.

01:07:26

This is a video about masks now being required while outdoors in Los Angeles, and here we go. So many announcements today, and in fact, a lot of the day was spent cleaning up some of the confusion from yesterday when it was announced that LA County could possibly be on lockdown for the next three months.

01:07:43

City and county leaders are trying to assure everyone now that the slow reopening will continue.

01:07:50

Fighting words for Mayor Eric Garcetti as he battles against angry and cooped up residents, and says we will not be on lockdown for the next three months.

01:07:59

It pisses me off when I hear people saying, oh, those are just old people. Did you know that so many of the people that are dying are our parents, and our grandparents, and our neighbors?

01:08:07

The mayor and LA County public. What a way for a mayor to talk, though, where like, it pisses me off.

01:08:13

Okay, well, that sounds very dignified of you. Like, it pisses me off. Okay, all right, but also, have you really heard anybody say, it's just old people?

01:08:23

Like, have you ever heard, have you heard, have you really heard people say, that's just old people? Or are you spinning their argument to make your tyrannical decisions look better?

01:08:36

For example, if people are saying to you, hey, we need sanity here.

01:08:42

We're talking about a 99 % survival and recovery rate, and we know a segment of the population that is most endangered by this, so let's protect them, and let's recognize we deal with communicable viruses all the time, and we don't destroy the global economy and all the businesses in LA because of it.

01:09:01

Are you spinning their argument to say it's just old people? Or are they saying, we know who the vulnerable are.

01:09:07

Let's not destroy everybody's lives. Are you doing that? We need to think about that.

01:09:13

Is he on now? Is that where? I don't know. Is he on? No, I'd imagine he's not. Okay. I'm not sure

01:09:19

Toby's gonna be a guest today. Oh, okay. Is he trying to call you? Well, let's try one more thing.

01:09:27

And he might just kind of come on. Okay, that's fine. So I'll go ahead and play through the rest of this video. Just go back to the video.

01:09:32

Here we go. Health director, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, walking back the statements she made yesterday, declaring the stay at home orders would likely go on until August.

01:09:42

I had no intention of messaging that we weren't changing our order to reflect our recovery journey.

01:09:48

It will go on and be modified over time as appropriate. In fact, today, more closures.

01:09:54

Real fast, I don't, I just wanna look at that part again there. Back today, more closures were lifted, as promised in the county and city's slow reopening plans.

01:10:04

All retail shops can now do curbside pickup with the exception of malls and indoor shopping centers.

01:10:09

Then on Friday, LA County parks will open more outdoor recreation areas, including tennis courts, equestrian centers, community gardens, and shooting ranges.

01:10:19

You know, do I think that it's feasible for us to get to at least smaller gatherings, you know, later in the year?

01:10:25

Absolutely. But it really depends on all of us. Do I think it's feasible that we'll get to smaller gatherings near the end, later in the year?

01:10:33

Did you say later in the year? So it's the illusion of protection.

01:10:39

We're gonna open up parks, we're gonna open up this, we'll open up that, but not everything else. You guys all stay shut down.

01:10:44

We'll open up some of these things, but don't worry, Ghaul, that we're just protecting you, and that's not tyranny at all.

01:10:50

It's just the illusion of safety, and it's done in such a way as it's destroying whole communities.

01:10:55

Is that Toby Sumter? Is that Toby? What's happening today?

01:11:02

I don't think it is. All right, here we go. And more video. But as some restrictions ease, others are put in place.

01:11:08

Masks are now required for Angelenos when they're outside. And did you hear that?

01:11:15

The statement being made, masks are now being required by Angelenos when they're outside.

01:11:22

Guys, you guys gotta kill that audio in the background if it's Toby's audio. Hey, he says he can hear you.

01:11:28

Can you hear me, Toby? Very faintly. Oh, there you go.

01:11:33

Okay. We got him. Sorry, guys, we got a new audio system that's working out here. Sorry, brother. All right, so can you hear me now even better?

01:11:42

It sounds like you're far away. Okay, well, I think we're just gonna have to work with it, so I'll do my best to speak clearly and loudly enough that you can hear me.

01:11:57

Okay. Did you hear me? I hear you. Okay. All right, so Luke, bring us into the discussion.

01:12:05

So I know Toby has limited time here, so I think it was the May 4th show,

01:12:10

I listened on CrossPolitik, and which there was two parts. We're not gonna get time to get everything today.

01:12:16

The first part was the dude wearing the dress, which was fantastic. Least your commentary,

01:12:22

Toby. But then the specific part I wanna talk about was just right at the end of the show, you were talking about how the wearing of the masks and the cleanliness and all this stuff is modern day

01:12:36

Pharisaism. And I thought your commentary was just spot on and really great.

01:12:41

So I was really hoping we could get you to kind of talk about that a little bit. Toby? Did we seriously lose him?

01:12:57

I think we're just not gonna, this is not gonna happen today. It's not gonna happen today. Well, we got, let's see here.

01:13:04

Let me play this. Here we go. So in the light of the discussion of should we all wear masks, let's listen to this news report on COVID -19 and masks.

01:13:15

I have a great faith in Dr. Fauci. The head of the Chicago Medical Society says 47 % of emergency room doctors surveyed think that their institutions are not doing enough to protect them from COVID -19.

01:13:26

But general mask wearing probably won't help because what's needed is the sophisticated N95 mask, the one in short supply for frontline medical staff.

01:13:36

The N95 mask has adequate filtration for viruses. If you wear a surgical mask, that doesn't provide adequate protection.

01:13:44

But the debate rages after Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the president's White House Coronavirus Task Force, said on CNN this morning that a new policy may be coming.

01:13:55

Right now, the CDC is saying masks should only be worn if you're sick or you're taking care of someone who is.

01:14:01

But when we get in a situation where we have enough masks, I believe there will be some very serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks.

01:14:12

We're not there yet, but I think we're close to coming to some determination. The Chicago Medical Society is worried that a call for general mask wearing will reduce social distancing, and soon we'll be like Spain where healthcare workers make up an out of proportion 14 % of COVID cases.

01:14:29

Surgical masks are not that effective either. If you sneeze, that prevents the droplets from going out at a very small angle.

01:14:36

Doesn't prevent it from going out the side of your mask. But the head of the Chinese CDC says America may be making a mistake by not mandating mask usage.

01:14:43

So there you go. Just a discussion. Listen, this is not making any claims about specific scenarios and situations where you would wear a mask appropriately.

01:14:54

But it is a discussion about whether or not the mask is ultimately helpful in this situation, and whether rules where we're telling healthy people to stay inside, and if you're gonna go outside, you must wear a mask.

01:15:12

Everyone has to have a mask on. We talked about it as being the new virtue signaling, right?

01:15:17

Like, look at me, I'm wearing my mask. I mean, there's videos right now out and about. You can see them of people getting in tussles at supermarkets and all the rest where everyone else has a mask on.

01:15:26

Someone comes in without a mask, and they're not allowed to buy groceries or to buy food because they don't have a mask on.

01:15:33

And people being challenged in parking lots. How dare you? How dare you treat others that way, not wearing a mask?

01:15:41

Yeah, I mean, it becomes a question of principle and what's right. And are we thinking in a rational and a consistent way?

01:15:50

When you've got Center for Disease Control, when you've got doctors and scientists, those who are experts in medicine and viral infections saying, yeah, the masks, you know, people have said, it's like trying to protect your house from mosquitoes by building a chain link fence.

01:16:04

You know, it's not ultimately going to help the situation. It is helpful in certain circumstances, but to require all of a healthy population to demand of them, you wear this mask to engage in regular activities in life, that's ultimately tyranny.

01:16:25

It is ultimately tyranny, especially when the science behind it actually challenges the usefulness of it.

01:16:33

Because when you, listen, here's the thing. When you tell people, yeah, this isn't ultimately effective. Yeah, and scientifically speaking, it's not ultimately doing it.

01:16:41

Like everybody wear it, yeah, it's not really. But everybody wear it. Everybody wear it, and you must wear it or you're in trouble, right?

01:16:49

You're getting into a situation where you have to realize we're being governed by children and people who are driven by fear, right?

01:16:58

And it is amazing. I'll shut up here and pass it off to you guys here. It is amazing to me.

01:17:03

It is amazing to me. We've tried to say from the very beginning of this as pastors, we need to be balanced. We need to be wise.

01:17:09

We need to show love for all of our neighbors. We need to follow biblical laws of quarantine, but we need to actually speak out against the injustices that are destroying families, businesses, all the rest.

01:17:19

We've tried to get balanced the whole way through this. And at the same time, we're at a place now where what we were saying at the very beginning has been vindicated.

01:17:29

And that is not something we boast in. We're saddened about where we're at now.

01:17:35

But we're at a place now where we ought to speak out against injustices and speak out against irrational behavior that has robbed people of their livelihoods and their liberties all because of fear.

01:17:50

And it's fear, this is what gets me. It's fear over something that is demonstrably recoverable by 99 % percentile.

01:18:02

We're not talking about the Spanish flu. We're not talking about the black death.

01:18:09

I mean, you can go back and look at the numbers from the Hong Kong flu. We didn't blow up the global economy because of the

01:18:15

Hong Kong flu. Why? What is going on in the world today where we actually think that it's appropriate to destroy people's lives?

01:18:22

36 million people unemployed in the US alone, lines miles long just to eat, people to get food, houses gonna go under, businesses gone under.

01:18:33

One in four businesses right now in Phoenix is now permanently closed. One in four, one in four. And all because of a virus that we're gonna have to contend with now for a long time.

01:18:45

And we're gonna have to deal with more every single year. Are we gonna shut down the economy every single time we have flu season? Are we gonna do that?

01:18:51

What if more people die from 2022's seasonal flu?

01:18:57

We're gonna shut down the whole economy again? We're just gonna go in and out of great depressions constantly because we've forgotten that we live in a fallen world.

01:19:04

You see, it's Christian presuppositions that solve this problem. Worldly presuppositions can't.

01:19:09

Christian presuppositions can solve the problem with wisdom when dealing with viruses.

01:19:16

You know, I think not letting people work, not letting men provide for their families, it goes so against the created order because God created the heavens and the earth and then he rested.

01:19:31

And he calls men, he called Adam to work in the garden and keep it.

01:19:36

And that work was established even before the fall. So work is good. Work is a good thing.

01:19:42

So all these guys at home wanting to provide for their families and they can't, it goes against everything that we are as men and as humans, so.

01:19:54

Yeah, just to kind of tie this all together, my computer just died on me. I forgot my power cord today.

01:20:01

I made a meme the other day I shared. It was a quote from Sam Adams. And he said, mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

01:20:10

And I thought it was really appropriate for right now. There's just, there's no objective reason, reasoning for anything right now.

01:20:17

It's completely just arbitrary and subjective even from like city to cities we're talking about. And again, it does go back to your presuppositions.

01:20:24

You need to have an objective starting point for even how to deal with the corona, right?

01:20:29

And like talking about Kauai and your pastor Zach was saying, what was it? The government's now allowing them to have 30 minutes on the beach before sunset.

01:20:39

And I'm just like, what is this? It's totally arbitrary. Completely arbitrary. It's just control. Exactly.

01:20:44

Don't they have like the lowest, one of the lowest numbers? Zero deaths at Kauai, zero deaths from COVID, five suicides.

01:20:51

Yeah. So more people have died as a result of decisions than died of coronavirus in Kauai.

01:20:57

That's one location. And you get 30 minutes on the beach. Wow. And that's such a fantastic point.

01:21:03

I'm glad you brought that up. I totally forgot about that. Just the arbitrary nature of those decisions. Like for example, saying we're gonna shut down, we have a nighttime curfew from 9 p .m.

01:21:11

till 5 a .m. And that's gonna solve, when everybody is mostly in bed anyways, that's gonna solve the problem of COVID -19.

01:21:19

Or when you're saying, all right, we will allow and be very generous gods and allow you guys 30 minutes before the sun comes up and 30 minutes before it goes down, you guys can be on the beach.

01:21:28

You can see, you can go watch the sunset. That's just control. Exactly. It's not saving anybody's lives.

01:21:34

It's totally arbitrary. And it needs to be called out as such, especially on an island where you've got now lines of cars waiting for their daily meal.

01:21:47

Yeah. And here's the thing. You can't say, well, it's coronavirus that did this. No, no, no.

01:21:54

It's tyrannical rule that did this. It's insanity that did this.

01:21:59

It's inconsistency that did this. Because let's keep a finger pointed on Kauai for a second.

01:22:06

You shut down the economy, you destroy and decimate families because that's what we're talking about here. Real people, image bearers of God that are being decimated by this.

01:22:13

You shut it down and you go, because we're trying to stop the spread and protect everybody.

01:22:19

Great. Okay. How many people died? Zero. Oh, okay. Can we open up now?

01:22:25

Because zero people died. We're okay now. We're like weeks into this. We're okay now.

01:22:30

Can we open up now? Because my family's starving. My business is destroyed. Can we open up now? Well, no. How many people died?

01:22:37

Zero. Okay, zero people died. Are we trying to go for a negative number before we open?

01:22:43

How do you get a negative number? It's zero. How do you get to a negative number where someone goes, okay, yeah, now?

01:22:51

Because I have news for everybody and I don't mean this in an arrogant or a haughty way. We just gotta think about it consistently.

01:22:57

When these economies open back up again, whether it's in one month, two months, three months, four months from now, whether it's six months from now, guess what's gonna happen?

01:23:04

COVID's gonna spread. It's gonna spread. People are gonna spread it one to another. You're gonna get cases of COVID.

01:23:11

You are. And so you gotta ask. It's a cost -benefit analysis in a fallen world that, watch this, listen please.

01:23:17

This is not to be dismissive or to be cold -hearted. We've gotta make these cost -benefit analysis analyses all the time, every single year.

01:23:27

You got, man, all these people are dying from this communicable virus. It's in our community. People are dying every day in the hospital. Should we lock all the healthy into their homes?

01:23:35

Well, we can't do that. Why? Because we gotta love those people. They gotta feed their kids. They gotta take care of things. We gotta go on as a society, even with a fallen world and communicable viruses.

01:23:44

And again, that's not to say, because you have a balanced perspective. It's not to say there would never, ever, ever, ever be a case where you would tell everybody, hey, for the week, everyone's gotta stay inside.

01:23:55

We've got something that is killing 79 % of the population. It doesn't matter if you're a baby or you're an old person, everybody stay inside for one week.

01:24:03

You would say, that's prudent. That's probably wise, right? In a situation where you've got a viral infection that it's a 99 % recovery rate and you know the most affected persons, you don't decimate the global economy and kill people.

01:24:19

Remember this. There is more than one way to kill people because of coronavirus. It's not just coronavirus.

01:24:27

Poverty kills a lot of people. Locking people into their homes, Luke brought up the fact that in Kauai, you've got now more people died of suicide as a result of coronavirus decisions than have died of coronavirus.

01:24:38

You get it? There's more than one way to kill people. There's more than one way to do it. And a lot of this,

01:24:45

I wanna say this, there's gonna be a day, a day of judgment in history.

01:24:51

A day where the righteous judge of all the earth who will always do right, judges these governing authorities for the decisions they made to hurt people because they're gonna be responsible for it.

01:25:01

They will be responsible. When you have tyrannical local governments who are decimating families, destroying them, plunging people into poverty, they will be held accountable.

01:25:12

We need to consider that. You'll be held accountable for it. You will be held accountable for how you treat people and how you destroy families.

01:25:18

You will be. Amen. I think part of the root of the problem is how Christians for the last century have, when we've been asked the question, where is

01:25:28

Christ not king? And we've said here and here. And he's not king here.

01:25:33

Christ is not king right here. And so doing that for the last century, God has judged us.

01:25:40

I don't really feel like this is a judgment because the church has allowed that kind of thing. Christ is king everywhere.

01:25:47

Exactly. And he's especially king in the public realm, in the government. Christ is king.

01:25:53

If you're listening and you don't think he is in that area, he is, so. Amen. Amen, amen.

01:25:58

All right, guys, so just a reminder, you guys can go. You guys can go to apologiastudios .com,

01:26:05

partner with us in ministry. Big stuff on the horizon for us. We're not on break. We're not on vacation.

01:26:12

We're busy trying to spread the gospel, communicate biblical truth to our culture. If you haven't seen it, go check out the sermon that we gave to the governor of the state of Arizona.

01:26:22

I hope that's a blessing to you and encouragement to you all. Check it out right here in the feed. It's somewhere beneath this video, sermon to the governor of Arizona.

01:26:29

Hopefully it lays out in greater detail the biblical concerns and principles that we're trying to point to in all of this.

01:26:36

So go check it out. Pray for us. Send it for all access. We have big plans for the future. Be in prayer for the all access stuff that we're up to right now.

01:26:44

It's big. It's real big. Very exciting. So be in prayer for that. Thank you guys all for your love. Huge.

01:26:50

Huge. It's great. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be the best ever. Beautiful. It's gonna be the biggest thing we've ever seen. It'll be the biggest all access, bigger than anybody else's.

01:26:58

It's gonna be everything. It's gonna be all. The access will be yours. All right, guys.

01:27:04

We love you all. Thank you all for your love. We're blessed by your encouragement, praying for you. Go preach the gospel to someone today.

01:27:12

Go tell someone about Jesus. That's the most important thing to do right now in this context. Tell people about Jesus. Tell them about the life and the forgiveness they can have in him.

01:27:20

That's Luke the Bear. Peace out. That's Wade right there. What up? I'm Jeff, the Culminator Ninja. We'll catch you next week, right here on Apology Radio.