Letters to the Churches Part 5

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Sunday school lesson working through the book of Revelation

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Letters to the Churches Part 6

Letters to the Churches Part 6

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Let's pray. Help us to grow in the knowledge of you, dear son, our
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Lord Jesus Christ and remain firm in the confession of his blessed word. Give us the love to be of one mind and to serve one another in Christ.
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Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable nor of the rage of the arsonist Satan whose torch is almost extinguished.
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Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith. Grant that our cross and our suffering may lead to a blessed and sure hope of the coming of our
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Savior Jesus Christ for whom we wait daily. Okay, we are going to We'll see if we're able to do this.
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I think we should. We're going to attempt to continue our walk through the book of Revelation.
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So if you have your Bible open up to Revelation 2, we'll do a little bit of review and and work that out.
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I'm trying to make the camera here a little bit more conducive for those of you who are joining us online.
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Stephen, you can hear me okay, right? Yeah, all right. Very good. All right. Let's take a look at questions first.
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We had a question come up in the chat window. Thank you for the sermon. What is the best way to witness to an unbeliever, especially if she,
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A, is a family member, B, refuses to subscribe to any kind of, quote, doctrine, and 3, is across the country.
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Thanks for your help. I'm going to make this as clear as possible.
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I cannot think of a surefire way to to witness to somebody that is guaranteed to not upset them.
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So you'll note that when it comes to family gatherings like at Christmas, and Christmas and Easter or Thanksgiving, that oftentimes the worst family conversations are the ones that steer into either religion or politics.
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So if I could make one suggestion, and that is avoid having those conversations at that time.
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And also she's, you know, what do you do if not only an unbeliever, what if they're a charismatic? That's a whole other issue.
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So with the unbeliever, I'm going to recommend that you take a couple of words to mind, or at least a passage to mind, in the book of Romans.
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And the passage that we take in mind is this,
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Romans 1, 16 and 17. I am not ashamed of the gospel.
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The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, the
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Jew first, and also to the Greek. For in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
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So the idea here is that we must recognize that God works through means, and that the gospel itself is the means by which
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God raises people from the dead. So that's kind of point number one. Point number two along these lines also comes from Romans chapter 10, and this frames a proper understanding of evangelism.
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We get these wonderful gospel promises, and consider what is written here in Romans chapter 10.
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I'll start at verse 9, which seems like an odd place to do it, but the context of what I want to get to is a little farther down in this passage.
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The text says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
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For with the heart one believes and is justified, with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.
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This is a great text, by the way, and one that provides comfort and assurance for all of us Christians.
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Do you believe in Christ? Well, then note then the promises that you will never be put to shame. So there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.
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For the same Lord, he is the Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the
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Lord will be saved. So Paul asks the question, how then will they call on him whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?
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And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?
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As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they have not all obeyed the gospel.
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For Isaiah says, Lord who has believed what he has heard from us. And then here's your important text.
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This one's the cross -reference to what we just read in Romans 1. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
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Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. So, I would, if we're going to talk about evangelism,
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I must kind of impress this upon you. And that is, it is not your job.
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It is not your job to convince anybody that that the gospel is true.
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It is not your job to convince anybody that they have to believe the claims of Christianity.
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You got to understand that when it comes to those things, that we as human beings, because of our sinful natures, are incapable on our own steam to believe these things.
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So God works through means. So the preaching of the gospel, the Holy Spirit then creates in us faith, or convicts us of our sins, and gives us faith.
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So, you know, I'm trained as a Christian apologist in defending the
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Christian faith, and I recognize that apologetic arguments do not have the power to convince somebody of Christianity being true.
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They just don't. So what is it that convinces somebody that Christianity is true?
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That what is the Holy Spirit, and he does it through the preaching of the gospel. So in that regard then, if I can give kind of a general idea regarding evangelism, regardless of whether or not they are family members or not, your goal is to preach the gospel to them.
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Your goal is to tell them that Christ has died for their sins, and that he has risen from the grave, and that in Christ there is full forgiveness and pardon before God.
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And here's the thing, everybody still has the law of God written on their hearts, and they know that they have fallen short.
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It's a lot easier to convince somebody that they've fallen short of God's glory than to convince them that God pardons freely.
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In fact, the gospel is something that is only believed by an action of the Holy Spirit. So your goal then is to have a conversation where you can clearly look somebody square in the eye and say, listen,
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Christ died for your sins. Repent of your wickedness and be forgiven.
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That's really the goal here, and that's what the gospel is. So you don't have to convince them that God exists, number one.
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Everybody knows that God exists, and I'll give you another text. Romans is a great passage in this regard.
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Romans 1, again, you know, talking about how everybody pretty much suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.
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Here's what it says as we continue in Romans 1. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness, they suppress the truth.
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This is what we do. Again, you don't believe me? Just try making some good biblical statements on Facebook, you know, and see how long before they put you in Facebook jail, okay?
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It's, you know, or the people that you are friends with take issue.
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And I don't mean just like, oh, I'm a little concerned for you, honey. No, they go to war with you, all right?
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You know, because of the things that you've said. So note that human beings, they suppress the truth in their unrighteousness, and the text then says what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that men are without excuse.
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In other words, God doesn't believe in atheists. God doesn't believe atheists exist.
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They don't. Everybody already knows God exists. So if you're dealing with an unbeliever who is an atheist and kind of obsessed with the concept, this is a person who is obsessed with basically suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
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I mean, I don't believe in Santa Claus. I haven't for a long... I know, just hold on there, Hank. There was an outcry.
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Dave, I thought you were past that, too. Anyway, but I haven't believed in Santa Claus in decades.
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And yet I do not have a blog dedicated to proving that Santa Claus does not exist. I don't have a
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YouTube channel that is obsessing with all the evidence that Santa Claus doesn't exist. The funny thing is, and this is the interesting thing, is that atheists are obsessed with denying that God exists and not just any
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God. You'll note they don't spend any time on Shiva or Vishnu.
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They don't spend any time on Allah. The God that they are obsessed with is the
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Christian God. Just think about that, okay? And yet when people invoke a deity when they're cursing, all right?
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You know, I'll point out that Bill Cosby used to have a stick that he did talking about when he was a kid, his father would let out profanities and would yell at him and say that his name was
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Jesus Christ and his brother's name was GD. I won't even say it. And one time the father mixed it up and accidentally called the one kid
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GD and he said, but dad, I'm Jesus Christ. You know, it's a hilarious stick and unfortunately
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Bill Cosby has proved out to be a pretty lousy person, you know, who've lost a good comic in that regard.
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But all that being said, when people are cussing and invoking a deity, they don't sit there and go, oh
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Buddha, you know, I don't know anybody who goes Allah curse you, you know, it's nothing like that.
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All right? It's always the Christian God who gets invoked in these regards and that's a fascinating thing.
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And so you'll note then if you recognize that everybody already knows that A, God exists, they're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and it's not a generic deity that they know exists.
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They actually know who the correct God is. This makes it super simple, super simple.
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So when I have conversations with atheists today and they request to talk to me from time to time, which is you know, just I guess it's one of the things that happens as a result of my
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YouTube channel and my podcast. My conversations with atheists are pretty short nowadays.
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I used to believe that I, you know, needed to be ready to defend, you know, the existence of God and all this kind of stuff and recognizing that the scripture makes it clear there are no atheists.
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Now when somebody says that they're an atheist and they want to play the game with me,
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I basically say, listen, I already know you know God exists. I don't need to prove it to you.
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So I have a message from God and I get right to the gospel. And basically
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I just tell them, listen, you're a sinner. I'm a sinner. I'm not saying that I'm any better than you are. You're a sinner and I'm a sinner.
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And here's the good news. Christ has died for your sin and God did, you know, sent his son because of his great love for you.
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He's had mercy on you in sending you Christ. And so the message from God is simple. Repent of your wickedness.
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Repent of all the games you're playing in unbelief and be forgiven and be reconciled to God and you have eternal life as a gift by God.
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And that's, and then I'll say message delivered. And you'll note the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
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Period. Full stop. The end, right? So when you deliver the message note that it is
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God who works faith in people. And I'll always remember back in the day when my son was young enough to be a
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Cub Scout. And you know, and we actually started, I started a Cub Scout pack in our neighborhood because in Southern California the suburbs pop up like mushrooms.
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And so we lived in a suburb that had, you know, only recently been built out. And so we didn't even have a
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Cub Scout pack in our area. So we started a Cub Scout pack and we went from zero
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Cub Scouts to 50 in like two weeks, you know. That's a lot of Cub Scouts. That's all
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I gotta say. That's a lot. That's a lot of Cub Scouts. That's a lot of insanity and a lot of that insanity took place in my house.
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Okay, so, you know, we took the, you know, we had a den mother and Barbara assisted with that.
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I was the pack leader. But so we had the den for my son's age meeting in our home.
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And this, we got to meet this woman from, you know, the neighborhood over from ours and she would bring her son and he was the same age as Josh.
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And always and again Barb and her would get into these conversations about just about anything. Cooking, you know, politics, whatever.
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And so one time she stayed afterwards because she liked to talk. Have you ever noticed about that?
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Some people they just like to talk and you can't shake them off. Okay, so this, you know, so this lady she liked to talk.
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And so all the other mothers had left and Josh was playing with her son. And, you know, and she steered the conversation into religion.
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And, you know, she goes, I see you guys are religious. What do you guys believe? And so I just preached the gospel to her.
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No joke. I mean it was this, it was, there was nothing profound about anything I said.
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It was kind of mostly along the lines of, well, we believe, number one, that we were created by God.
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And that humanity has fallen into sin and rebelled against God. But God in his great love and mercy has sent his son to bleed and to die for our sins.
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And he's calling us to repent and to be forgiven and we have eternal life as a gift. I mean it was pretty much that's it.
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And that's about how long I spent on laying out the gospel to her. she goes, she asked a couple of follow -up questions.
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And then she goes, you know what? I think I believe that. You do?
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It was like God just took a switch and just flipped it on. And I didn't even see that coming.
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You know, I was thinking she was going to go home and just kind of, you know, mull it over and then come back angry the next week.
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I don't know. I didn't know what to expect. But all I did was preach the gospel and, you know, and she wasn't even a religious person at all.
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She started attending church with us, went to the catechism classes, was baptized. She's still a faithful member of a confessional
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Lutheran church in Lake Elsinore to this day. And all I did was tell her that Jesus loved her and bled and died for her.
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That's it, you know. You know, so nothing amazing as far as what
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I said, and that's the point when it comes to evangelism. You have good news to tell people.
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And the good news is the power of God into salvation. So faith comes by hearing, hearing through the word of Christ.
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So the idea then is this, is when it comes to evangelism, you do not have the power to convince anybody of nothing, all right?
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And you just, that power does not, it's not given to you. The power is in the preaching of the gospel.
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Trust what God's word says and deliver good news. And here's the best part, it actually is really good news.
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So it's pretty easy to talk about. It's really not that hard to say.
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Christ died for your sins. God loves you. He sent his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him wouldn't perish but have eternal life, including you.
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And, or one of my favorite ways, if you really want to boil it down, it says in scripture, Christ died for the ungodly and you qualify.
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So, you know, that's another fun way of putting it. But the point is, preach the gospel and you never know what
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God the Holy Spirit is going to do. So you get the idea then. So that works then with everybody.
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Now, when you are dealing with somebody who is in an erring church, same principle applies.
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And that is, is that you do not have the power to convince them that they are believing false doctrine.
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That's above your pay grade. It's above my pay grade. Only God the Holy Spirit can do that.
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And guess what? He does it through means. He does it through the word of God. So I say it over and over again, and I'm kind of, you know, it's like beating the same drum every week.
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But the idea is real simple, is that facilitate the collision between what God's word really says and what they're believing falsely, which is going to require you to do some research and be able to have an educated, dispassionate conversation with them.
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And be able to say, you know, you believe this, or you've been taught this, or your favorite teacher said that, but God's word says this.
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All right, and find that where those contradiction points are, and then ask a simple question.
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How do you explain contradiction? And then shut up.
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Okay. That's the, that's the hardest part. Shut up. Don't say anything else.
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Let them answer the question, and don't help them. Let them stumble over the word of God.
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You know, so you show the contradiction, read out the text, show that it's a contradiction, and ask them simply, how do you explain the contradiction?
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And you'd be amazed to see what God's word can do. And I've seen it work in my own life, because that's how
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God delivered my wife and I out of the, out of the latter rain movement. Using that same thing, it's the
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God's word. And by the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, there is no secret when it comes to fighting for the faith.
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It, all I'm doing is facilitating the collision between God's word and what some, and what today's popular preachers and teachers are teaching that's false.
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And I'm very selective in, in the segments that I cover, because I'm looking for an excuse to preach the word, because the power is in the word.
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Yeah, let's see. Let me find this text real quick, because I, I always find this to be helpful. Apollos.
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Hang on a second here. I'm going to do a hunt for him. Did I spell him wrong?
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There we go. All right, and I'm looking for him in the epistles really quick.
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All right. First Corinthians. All right, First Corinthians 1. I guess it's there. All right, 1, core.
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I'm going to actually go to First Corinthians 3. Here's what it says. First Corinthians 3.
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Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
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And by the way, that kind of divulges the fact that when it comes to Christianity, this is an important bit. There are people who are mature
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Christians, and there are people who are infant Christians. And infant Christians are a little challenging to deal with, and they wet themselves.
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So, you know, be ready to help clean up the mess, is the best way I can put it, if you're a mature Christian. He says, so I fed you with milk, not with solid food.
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You're not, you weren't ready for it. And even now you're not yet ready, for you're still of the flesh.
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For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
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For when one says, I follow Paul, another says, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human?
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So what then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants.
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Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted
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Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants, nor he who waters, is anything.
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But only God, who gives the growth. So you'll know this, this is a very helpful thing too.
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So the thing I like about when you let scripture kind of teach you this, is that if you've been in evangelicalism, there's a lot of pressure to do evangelism.
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And you're, you're oftentimes made to feel inferior, or given guilt trips, because who have you shared?
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Who, who have you led to the Lord this week? You know, and you know, it's like a sales meeting, you know, you're thinking, do
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I get a commission check if I've led two people to the Lord this week? You know, uh, but the thing, at the end of the day, here's the thing.
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You can't convince anybody that Jesus is Lord. God does that.
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And so all you have is a gospel to present, and God's going to do the work. And you'll know, one plants and another waters.
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And that's the, that's the other bit of this, is that, uh, that, that metaphor makes it very clear, that sometimes somebody hears the word of God, and it's like a seed that is planted, that needs watering.
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And you may not even be the person that waters it. Some other person may have preached the gospel to somebody that you know, and you might be given the opportunity to water that seed, by telling people more about Christ.
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But at the end of the day, neither he who plants or he who waters is anything. It is God who gives the growth.
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So all the pressure is taken off. It's like, I get to tell people about Jesus, and I don't need to worry about the results.
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Don't worry about closing the sale. Uh, and you know, it's not your job to close the sale.
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That's not how this works. In fact, there isn't a sale to be closed. God raises people from the dead.
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So you get the idea. Good questions. And, and so you'll then note back in our gospel text today,
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I made a big to -do in the sermon about the fact, that the, these scribes, these, these, these religious leaders, they had all the evidence in the world, that the
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Son of God himself was standing before them. The children got it, and were shouting out,
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Hosanna to the Son of David. I mean, you know, and they're doing this in the temple, and these, these people are indignant.
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Again, I'll come back to the, the phrase, because it was such a weird sentence. Hang on a second,
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Matthew 21. Um, let me scroll down here. All right.
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So, let's see. All right. This is the question.
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Let me back it up here, because this is, it was in the context.
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All right, here it is. Yeah, verse 15. When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that Jesus did.
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What a great sentence, right? Okay. They saw the wonderful things that Jesus did, and, uh,
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Thou Mooseah, and, uh, you know, wonderful, or amazing.
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This is a, a fact, this is a very strong word. Um, and the, and the children crying out,
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Hosanna to the Son of David. They were indignant. Indignant. Who on earth is indignant?
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When they see some fellow being brought into the temple, on a mat, who's lame.
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He can't walk, and Jesus heals him, and he's jumping for joy.
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I mean, people who are lame, who are given the ability to walk, are not stoic about it.
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They don't go, Thank you, Jesus. That was really kind of you to give me my ability to walk back.
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You know, I, I think I'm going to sit here and ponder the meaning of the universe now, for the next five minutes. No, somebody who's been lame their whole life, they've been given, they've been given, they've been given the ability to walk.
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They're going, I can walk, I can walk, and everyone's going, yeah, this is an amazing thing.
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But you're going to note, these religious leaders, they had all the evidence in the world.
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The Son of God was standing before them, and they were indignant at the wonderful things Jesus did. Stop doing wonderful things,
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Jesus. How dare you? That's the nature of unbelief. And you're going to note, in Jesus's response to them, in Jesus's response to them, regarding, regarding John the
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Baptist. He says, I'll ask you a question. The baptism of John, from where did it come from?
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From heaven or from man? Jesus is basically saying, listen guys, you haven't even gotten to square one yet.
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So we're gonna have to go all the way back to square one. Remember that guy who was yelling at you at the, at the River Jordan, telling you to repent?
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That guy? Was he sent from God, or was he from man? Which was it? And the issue is, is that they didn't believe he was from God.
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That's unbelief for you. So you can't reason with unbelief.
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Don't reason with unbelief. Now, where does apologetics then fit as, for Christianity?
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And that, I think that's a valid question here. Because you're going to note, that there are, there are unending attacks against Christianity, you know.
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You know, every generation of philosophers, you know, they, they take their turn and make
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Christianity and Jesus Christ into their whipping boys. And, and so you, you have to answer, you have to answer the, the philosophers and the atheists to some degree.
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But you're not answering them for the purpose of, of making it so that they'll believe.
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That's not the purpose. Purpose of apologetics is to take thoughts captive, and to basically throw down arguments that are exalting themselves over Christ.
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It's a function of the law. So, you know, when somebody comes along and says, there's no proof that God exists.
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You sit there and go, really? There's no proof that God exists. Number one, you already know God exists. But let me give you proof.
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Jesus Christ claimed to be God in human flesh. And he proved his claim by rising from the dead on the third day after he was crucified.
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That's proof. And the, and the eyewitnesses have written of their accounts of the, of handling the, the risen, touching and eating with the risen
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Jesus. And even his opponents recognized that the tomb was empty. All right, that's evidence.
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All right. So all the evidence comes back to Christ. But the thing is, is that you don't sit there and say, so there, now you have to believe.
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They're not going to do that. Evidence is, doesn't convince people. The Holy Spirit is the one who convinces people.
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So then you have to turn around and then you got to preach the gospel. So you, you, you give evidence for the purpose of defending the faith so that those who are
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Christians do not have their faith stolen from them. And also so that, that you can give a, you know, a reasonable answer to, you know, the people who are asking for the hope that lies within you.
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That's a biblical idea. But you have to preach the gospel if you expect somebody to believe, right?
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I think one of the, the saddest, saddest accounts in all of the annals of Christian apologetics is the, is the story of Anthony Flew.
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I don't know if you're familiar with this fellow. Anthony Flew was an avowed atheist. He was a very ardent and strident hater of Christianity and an atheist who, who spent a lot of time debating
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Christian theologians over the existence of God. And at some point the arguments for the existence of God rattled
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Anthony Flew and he went from being an atheist to a theist.
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Yay. There's a lot of theists in hell. Okay. There's a difference between believing that a
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God exists and believing that Jesus is God in human flesh who bled and died for your sins.
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So again, the goal is never to convince somebody that God exists. Everybody already knows that.
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The goal is to convince them that Jesus has bled and died for their sins and you can't convince anybody that the
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Holy Spirit does that through the preaching of the gospel. Okay. All right, so Lyra says exactly, many of the atheist agnostic friends embrace
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Islam and different forms of new age spirituality, etc. with open arms, but there's something about Christianity that triggers them.
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Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, because, because Jesus exists. That's the reason why.
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So it's fascinating how passionate they can be. You'd think that they'd have better ways to spend their time and energy if they truly believe the earthly time is all that they have.
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Yeah, how do they say it? YOLO, you only live once they, they claim, which is false by the way. So, Louis says that's a good point.
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So my sister believes in a higher power that we're all connected to. Thank you so much, Pastor.
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And by the way, I never believed in Santa Claus either. I can't say that. I actually did.
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I was kind of bummed when I kind of put two and two together. Yeah, I, one of my favorite paintings of Norman Rockwell is the one that he has of the kid who discovers the
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Santa Claus suit in his dad's wardrobe. You know, oh no.
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Anyway, Sylvester says, You don't need any answers.
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That's the best part. I mean a kid, you know, a ten -year -old kid who knows the gospel could actually preach the gospel to an atheist philosopher.
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And that's the thing. The power is in the gospel. So, Lyra says it's really reassuring to hear that it's enough to share the gospel and that's, and that it's all in God's hands.
32:26
It can be frustrating trying to give good rational arguments for believing in Christianity when it doesn't seem to get through.
32:33
Luis, my brother, is into Zen Buddhism now, and I've been worried about him.
32:38
This teaching really helped me. And understand this also then, is that your prayers are vital in this regard.
32:45
Continue to pray for them. I made the point a few weeks ago, and I'll re -emphasize the point along these lines, is that when you read texts in scripture that say that if you pray anything according to the will of God, he hears you.
33:00
Or you pray anything according to the will of God, you know, that he'll grant that. You sit there, you know, back in the day when
33:07
I read passages like that in the gospels. Oh, really? If I pray anything according to the will of God, let's find out if it's
33:12
God's will if I own a, you know, an Aston Martin, which by the way is an extremely beautiful vehicle.
33:18
It's like art on wheels, but really cool art, like James Bond kind of art, you know.
33:25
I can see myself like James Bond, can't you guys? No. Don't be so indignant,
33:34
Dave. But the idea is,
33:39
I used to, you know, Lord, won't you buy me an Aston Martin, you know, something like, and of course it never showed up at my door.
33:46
You know, it's terrible. I was expecting it just to manifest or whatever. So, yeah, so it is.
33:54
I drive a 13, 14 year old vehicle. Yay! But hey, it works.
34:00
But the point is, is that in scripture, it clearly says it is not
34:05
God's will that any should perish. It is his will that people repent and come to a knowledge of the truth and they're forgiven.
34:15
So there's so few passages that explicitly say this is God's will that you should take that to mind and to heart.
34:23
And so one of my favorite prayers for people that I care for who are unbelievers or are wandering from the faith, one of my favorite prayers is
34:34
I'll sit there and go, well God, you say if I pray anything according to your will, well, it says it's not your will that any should perish.
34:39
I'm praying for this person. You better show up because your name is at stake here, God. Yeah, sometimes
34:46
I pray like that. It's true, you know, it's like you said, okay, you said these things, so you better do something about it because you say you never lie, so you better get to it, you know.
34:59
And it's kind of like the way my kids would say, well, Dad, you promised to take us to Disneyland this week. Well, I guess
35:04
I did, didn't I? We better go. Oh, bummer for me. I hate Disneyland, you know.
35:10
I don't hate Disneyland. I really enjoy the place, but it's been a long time since I've been there. All right, so then the idea then, you know, let's keep reading here.
35:21
Okay, lots of guilt trips in Charismania. Yes, there are. Are you performing enough signs and wonders?
35:27
Are you being intentional? Have you activated your healing anointing yet? Do you speak in tongues enough?
35:33
Do you pray in tongues enough? It's just all this nonsense, right? So, MJ, if you don't bring X amount of people to the
35:39
Lord, then you don't have enough fire. Fire. Okay.
35:46
Yeah, I guess you can never have enough fire, can you? Or too much of that stuff. Wow, okay.
35:52
Yes, MJ, I was so depressed in that movement. Okay, Elizabeth says, MJ says to Elizabeth, you and I, both sister, my faith was shipwrecked, but praise the
36:01
Lord for his immeasurable mercy to open our eyes and pull us out in his great faithfulness.
36:06
Indeed. Okay. Yes, Stephen Ellis says, the annual tax bill will manifest with the
36:12
Aston Martin. I Just You know,
36:20
I had a little bit of a confession. I saw the preview for the upcoming James Bond movie and I just went, yes.
36:28
So it looks really good. So anyway, my apologies. Okay, Larry says, last
36:33
Thursday, I was at a lesson on the evidence for the resurrection. We were introduced to a book on the
36:39
Turin Shroud. The author had originally tried to prove that it's a fraud and that the resurrection is not true, but the process had, after all, led him to become convinced by his authenticity and he became a
36:52
Christian. So there's the, the Shroud of Turin is an interesting artifact. And I put it into the category of probable, probably actually legit.
37:04
And as a Christian apologist, I actually spent probably two or three years studying scientifically, you know, whether or not the
37:13
Shroud of Turin was a fake. I had several conversations with people who actually were working with the
37:18
Turin Project here in the United States and actually had a very multiple conversations with a fellow who was responsible for a
37:28
History Channel documentary on the Shroud of Turin. And this is the fellow who, you know, after figuring out how the the image got impressed into the
37:40
Shroud of Turin, was able to take the data from it and recreate a model of the face of Christ.
37:49
And so I am one of these people who I say, I have to say it consciously,
37:55
I think there is a better than 90 % chance that thing's legit. That's the only way
38:00
I can put it. And I've looked for lots of ways to shoot that thing down because I'm no fan of Roman Catholic relics.
38:09
You know, as Luther says, there's you know, running around in Germany, there are so many splinters from the authentic cross that you could actually rebuild the
38:19
Ark with them. So, you know, that's a great quote from Luther, by the way. But yeah, so I am no fan of Roman Catholic relics.
38:28
But there are three items that I believe are legitimate today, archaeologically, and you can actually back it up.
38:37
One is the Shroud of Turin. The other is the face mask that goes with the
38:42
Shroud of Turin. And the third is an object called the titulus. I don't know if you've ever heard of the titulus.
38:49
That's a Latin word. And the titulus is it's the plaque that hung over Christ while he was being crucified, written in three languages.
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And so if you were to Google titulus, cross of Christ, you can see photographs of this thing.
39:11
And I think all three of those objects, that there is a better than 90 % chance that they're legit.
39:17
And the basis for the titulus is not only on the carbon dating, but also on the way it's written, the actual grammar.
39:26
It uses an idiomatic phrase that that fell out of vogue in Judea very shortly after the first century.
39:36
So if it was a forgery, somebody trying to forge the titulus would have written it differently than the way it was written.
39:45
And so that particular idiom shows its authenticity. So I'm glad that you brought that up.
39:50
But I will say this, Lyris, and that is is that there is a long -running phenomenon, especially over the past few hundred years, of men who have set out to disprove
40:05
Christianity who've ended up becoming Christians. One of them in particular is a fellow by the name of Simon Greenleaf.
40:14
He was an attorney who specialized in evidences, and he thought he can disprove the claims of the resurrection of Christ using evidence and all the science of evidence, and became one of the most ardent defenders of Christianity.
40:30
And one of my mentors, Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, actually created an apologetics and law school named after Simon Greenleaf that was a thoroughgoing thing for quite a while in Southern California.
40:44
It isn't anymore. It's called the Simon Greenleaf School of Law and Apologetics. And there's some notable men who've graduated from that.
40:52
James, yes. Okay, so what exactly is the
40:58
Shroud of Turin? All right. Let me see if I can pull up a web browser and take a crack at answering the question, what is the
41:07
Shroud of Turin? Okay. So, yes. Okay, so let's just do a quick quick look at the
41:22
Shroud of Turin. In fact, I really want to do a bigger search on this because there's certain photographs that I'm looking for, but this will probably do.
41:35
Okay, the TV is not working? Well, we can fix that. Let's see. All right, let's get this up and running.
41:45
Hang on a second here. Yeah, we do. 4k? 4k,
41:52
I don't know. I think we can work this out. Let's see here. HDMI. Let's see here.
42:01
Input. MI1. Let me make sure
42:12
I'm connected. Hold on a second here, folks. What is that doing?
42:21
My computer has misbehaved terribly. All right, this is weird.
42:38
Yeah, I've got an issue and that is that my computer has decided to go green.
42:47
Hold on. What I'm going to do here, hopefully
42:54
I can solve the problem this way. I'm going to stop sharing.
43:00
Hold on. Okay, let me cancel this real quick.
43:10
Technology. Yeah, I know. Tricky stuff. Stay with us, folks. Troubleshooting a technical issue here.
43:19
See if this works. All right.
43:33
Let's see here. Input. You got it?
43:42
All right. Hold on a second here. Okay, we're cooking with gas. Hang on a second here.
43:49
Let me see if I can share this now. Share. Okay. It was the holy grail.
43:58
Yeah, it was the holy grail. So the Shroud of Turin, this is a photograph of it. This thing, the history of it goes way back.
44:12
You're going to note that there's an image of a face on here with a beard.
44:19
Nail marks, not in the hands, but in the wrists. There's also blood stains down here.
44:28
This image itself, no one knows exactly how it was made. Reproducing it using modern artistic techniques or even ancient artistic techniques, it don't work.
44:41
In fact, the image itself is on the fibers of this fabric at one micron thick.
44:50
It's barely dusted on there at all. And this is the front end of it. The back end of it, this is upside down.
44:57
Whoever this is an image of, and that's human blood by the way, they have verified that, that guy got the tar beat out of him.
45:07
He was scourged terribly. Yeah, and then crucified. Scourged and then crucified.
45:14
Yeah, so the Shroud of Turin is one of these things where, and you'll note that it's been in a fire, but it was rescued.
45:27
And the image itself, let me see if I can do this. Hang on a second here.
45:35
Here's the other issue about it. I'm going to save image as, hang on a second here, desktop.
45:44
Here we go. Shroud of Turin, JPEG. Hang on a second here. And I'm going to open up Photoshop and I'm going to see if I can demonstrate this for you.
45:53
Here's the issue. The image is not a positive. It's a negative. It's a negative.
46:02
That's the weird part about it. And I'll show you this. I'm going to invert the image and you'll see it. Right. The colors are opposite.
46:14
Right. So, I mean, have you ever used a film camera? No, but I know what you're talking about.
46:19
Okay, when you use a film camera, when you used to take it to Walmart or wherever and get your film processed, they would give you the prints.
46:28
The prints were the positive and then they would give you the negatives. And so if I take this and I invert it, the image itself is a negative.
46:42
And that's the part of this that don't make sense. But here's the other thing is that I spent time talking with the fellow who was in charge of the project to actually see if they can extract data from this thing.
46:58
And so he came up with a working theory that the image itself was made kind of the same way that you would make an image if you put your face on a scanner.
47:09
Okay. Boy, do you guys remember when Xerox machines first came out and people thought it was hilarious to actually
47:17
Xerox their butts? Okay. I'm, sorry. You can't unsee it once you've seen it.
47:26
Okay, but the thing is is that this looks like if they took
47:31
Jesus and put him on top of a Xerox machine and hit the copy button, that's what it would print like.
47:38
Okay. And so he basically worked from the theory that, number one, this was a legitimate image, not a forgery, and that it went on there, that however the image got there, it used the same technique where light scanned across the body of Christ and made the image on the shroud, which means if that were the case, he could make a model from this if he understood how the proportions worked and he worked it out perfectly and it worked exactly as it should have.
48:11
And so that's the thing about the Shroud of Turin, is that it's odd in that sense.
48:20
And then you get pools of blood in the places you would expect them. And so you're going to note here, if I were to zoom in, you can see here the light area over here, in this area, that's where the nail marks were in Christ.
48:35
And you can see post -mortem blood kind of trickling down there. But there's other things that are in this image that the closer you examine it, the more interesting it gets.
48:46
So I'm one of these people who, having kind of looked at all the scientific work about it and talked with the people working on the
48:53
Turin Project and also the guy who modeled the face of Christ from this image,
48:59
I think there's a good possibility it's legit. So, again, three things.
49:07
Shroud of Turin, the titulus, and then the face mask that goes along with this. All right.
49:13
So, all right, let's, let me come back then to, hold on a second here, let me go back to my bible and let me check my chat window real quick.
49:26
Because there were more chats coming in. Oh, okay.
49:39
Okay, so, Elizabeth says, not to mention the question looks from the church, bottom line, the shroud doesn't matter.
49:48
I don't want my faith to be based on an artifact. That's a good point, Elizabeth. Here's the thing, is that our faith isn't based on an artifact.
49:56
Our faith is based on the resurrection of Christ, which is a historical event. And if there are historical, if there are actual archaeological artifacts that go along with that event, all that does is bolster the claim that Christ historically bled, died for our sins and rose from the dead.
50:15
But you're going to note the Christians, again, you know, this all this, it falls into a category, this kind of stuff falls into a category of historical oddity.
50:27
And so you have to say there's a probability that it is and leave enough probability that it isn't, but your faith, if they were to find out, you know, that the true origin of the shroud of Turin is that Elvis brought it back from the mothership, you know, and gave it to humanity by traveling back in time in the
50:48
TARDIS, that doesn't overthrow Christianity. What does overthrow
50:54
Christianity is any real archaeological evidence that destroys the historicity of the resurrection of Christ.
51:04
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, then your faith is in vain, and it's futile, and that we are to be pitied, all right, among people, and that we're liars about God.
51:15
So keep that in mind, you know, so it stands in an odd space. Although I like the overwhelming proof of dirt diggers that prove the
51:25
Bible to be historically correct, always and again, I love the archaeological evidence that backs up Christianity.
51:34
Illyris says, indeed, it doesn't matter if the artifact is real or not, but it is interesting how Christianity is backed up by lots of historical evidence, too, and the shroud might be one more among many, many others.
51:46
I never hold it up, never hold up the shroud or the titulus or the face mask of Christ for the purpose of proving that the claims of Christianity are true.
51:57
I have no problem discussing it among Christians to basically say, listen, there's good evidence to back this up, and this bolsters our faith, but our faith is in Christ.
52:10
By the way, good book along these lines. Let me do this real quick. Amazon. We're going to go to Amazon for a moment.
52:19
And if you have never read the book, let's see, what was the name of that book?
52:28
Hang on. It's a novel. A Skeleton in God's Closet. A Skeleton in God's Closet.
52:37
All right. This is a well -written book, and it's a the one you want.
52:44
It's by Paul Meyer, and an archaeological thriller, if you would, a little bit of a fun little romantic subplot in it.
52:53
But this is a book that, as a novel, it takes the idea, what if they found archaeological evidence that Jesus didn't rise from the dead?
53:05
Instead, what if they actually found the bones of Christ somewhere in Judea? What would be the impact of that on Christianity?
53:14
Because everything, and I mean everything, hinges on the resurrection. Let me show you this from 1
53:20
Corinthians 15, so you don't think I'm just out of my mind. I may be that, but not for this reason.
53:28
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, 12, Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
53:37
And notice where these people were saying this, in church, in the church of Corinth, man. This was a screwed up church.
53:44
Okay, people actually say, there's no resurrection of the dead. Dude, are you a Christian or not? All right.
53:50
Paul says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.
54:00
And we are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom
54:06
He did not raise, if the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even
54:11
Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.
54:17
You're still in your sins. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ, they have perished. And if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people to be most pitied.
54:27
So you'll note that everything hinges on the resurrection. So I remember years ago, when
54:34
I was doing research on the emergent church movement, I had a conversation with Nadia Bowles -Weber of the
54:40
ELCA, the woman who wrote the book called Pastrix. Which, by the way,
54:47
Pastrix is a term I coined. She basically named her book
54:55
Pastrix, to give me the middle finger. But, you know, so we have a great relationship, just saying.
55:02
But, you know, I was asking her questions, and I asked, and she actually said this, she asked me straight up.
55:08
So, Chris, would you still be a Christian if they found the bones of Jesus Christ? I said, absolutely not. There's just no way.
55:16
I said, Christianity is not true if Christ's bones are found. And I've got better things to do on a
55:23
Sunday than to, you know, to be worshiping the Easter Bunny, which would, that's what Jesus would become if he didn't rise from the dead.
55:30
And she said to me, well, I would still be a Christian. I got a cough after she said that.
55:39
I would still be a Christian, but I would just, I would just understand that when it says that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, that bodily means something different than what
55:48
I think it means. Bodily means bodily. Yeah, so, yeah, but the scriptures are clear.
55:55
If he hasn't risen from the dead, then Christianity isn't true. David. Well, as I understand it, faith, you read it, and then you have faith that it did have it.
56:09
Okay, enough. Okay. And I guess we're gonna have to wait and see to the end of the world to see if the the second coming will raise everybody else from the dead.
56:23
Yeah, and that's that's the way it goes, and I'm okay with that. Yeah. I'll just wait, and for those who have fallen before us or fallen before the second coming, they will understand at that point in time, because if it says it in the
56:42
Bible, have you ever experienced that ever not to be true? No, we have not.
56:48
Right, and the idea is that faith in Christ doesn't ask you to believe contrary to evidence.
56:56
It doesn't ask you to believe anything contrary to reality either. That's the claim that a lot of people make, that they'll say that, you know, that dead bodies don't rise, so you're believing against the evidence.
57:08
Well, no, actually, you know, that's not it at all. You have eyewitnesses, 500 are mentioned in scripture, you know, who at one time saw the risen
57:18
Christ, and the Gospels themselves are eyewitness testimony, and the eyewitnesses claim that they saw the risen
57:24
Jesus after he was crucified, and that they ate with him, and that he had them handle his body and look at his scar, you know, the marks in his hands and his feet and his side.
57:37
So Christianity doesn't ask you to believe contrary to the evidence. For instance, a religion, and it's not
57:44
Christianity, that actually has you believe contrary to evidence is Mormonism. Mormonism teaches that, you know, that Jesus went to the
57:54
Americas, preached to the Indian tribes who are apparently Jews in the
58:00
Americas, and that the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus. And here's the thing, that you can't, when you read the
58:08
Book of Mormon, there's no map to go along. Where in the Americas is the city of Lehi, and Nehi, and Nephi, and all this nonsense, and where did these people live and die, and all this kind of stuff?
58:20
All the archaeological evidence runs against it, I mean, completely against it. So how does the
58:25
Mormon get away from that? The Mormon says, well, the way you would learn that the Book of Mormon is true is you ask
58:31
God, you pray to Heavenly Father to give you a burning in your bosom, and the burning in your bosom will be the witness and the testimony that the
58:39
Book of Mormon is true. You know, and last time my bosom burned, I took a Pepsi, and it went away.
58:45
So, you know, this is no way to learn truth. So you'll note that Christianity never has you believe contrary to the evidence.
58:55
But at the same time, the evidence that is there, still, at the end of the day, you believe that Christ rose from the dead by faith.
59:04
Because all the preponderance of the evidence can do is say that it is not irrational to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
59:12
That it is not contrary to the evidence to believe that he did. But the evidence doesn't demand that you believe it.
59:18
That's the best way I can put it. and so when we talk about the book,
59:25
The Skeleton in God's Closet, which by the way, if you haven't read, it's just a fun read, the world goes crazy, and then the church goes nuts in kind of predictable and unpredictable ways.
59:37
You know, with the alleged discovery of the bones of Jesus Christ. But I won't spoil the ending for you, but it's well worth the read if you haven't read it.
59:46
Okay. Let's see here. Okay, so Elizabeth.
59:55
Indeed, it doesn't matter. Okay, could it, could be, have not an in -depth documentation that I could take serious.
01:00:01
But I read that the Mount of Moses in Saudi Arabia is very convincing. Yeah, that's the other thing.
01:00:07
I also believe that Mount Sinai is in Saudi Arabia. Actually, Paul says it's in Arabia in the book of Ephesians.
01:00:14
It's not in Egypt. I don't know why people just keep saying that it's in the Sinai book.
01:00:20
The Sinai, that it's not. Yeah, it's not. You know, where St. Catherine's Monastery is, is not where Mount Sinai is.
01:00:28
I'm just saying. Okay, there is one done by a lawyer called The Star of Bethlehem.
01:00:33
Now, that is awesome. I'd have to watch it every Christmas. Okay, The Star of Bethlehem focused on astronomy, science of the stars.
01:00:40
Okay, I think you get the idea. All right, we're going to leave off there. Today we ended up a little all over the map, but there were good questions and good, you know,
01:00:48
I like doing these kinds of studies from time to time just because it's fun to kind of see where people's questions are and then to answer accordingly.