July 7, 2017 Show with Charlie Liebert on “Answers for the Hope That is In You”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on the 7th day of July 2017 and I'm delighted to have in studio today someone who is trading roles today.

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He is normally an occasional visiting guest host or should

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I say guest co -host on Iron Sharpens Iron radio, typically when we are discussing things like the debate between young and old earth or between creation versus Darwinian evolution, etc.

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But today we have in the studio Charlie Liebert of sixdaycreation .com as our guest and we are going to be discussing answers for the hope that is in you and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, this time as a guest,

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Charlie Liebert. Thank you Chris, it's great to be here. And in studio with me also is our visiting co -host as well,

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Buzz Taylor, it's great to have you back in the studio. Like a co -co -host today. Yeah, well not really because we only have one.

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We have one guest and two. Okay, okay, let's listen before and after, there's nothing to split over, okay?

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Make me laugh. Oh, that is darker than anybody knows that joke anyway.

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And a reformed Presbyterian sitting in between them. That's right, and Charlie Liebert, before we get into the discussion at hand of answers for the hope that is in you, which is one of the books that you have written, tell us about sixdaycreation .com

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for our listeners who are discovering you for the first time. Yes, sixdaycreation .com is a website that's been active for almost 25 years that basically has information answering questions about creation versus evolution.

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There's probably 30 or 40 video segments on there answering questions and a lot of material that's printed on there.

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And that's, in a sense, that's the source of the book, but I'll get to that later on when I talk about how the book came to be written. Great, and well, tell us about, first of all,

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I know that you have a couple of books that you've written. Yes. We have already dealt with a previous book on this program.

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Tell us about that book and then enter into a description of your new book. Okay, let me begin with, about six years ago,

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I was teaching evangelism to a group of Christian businessmen in Greensboro, North Carolina, and one question kept coming up again and again that I'm getting ready to witness to somebody and they asked me a question, like where can you get his wife?

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And I'm stumped and I don't have an answer to that question. And I get off the track and I never get to witness it. So I was challenged by that, how do you handle that?

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And that's the source of the first book. The first book is basically, and I'll give you the title, is Always Be Ready to Give an

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Answer. And the subtitle is A Former Atheist Personal Christian Evangelism Plan. And I'll get to that atheism in a minute.

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So I was wrestled with how do we get past that? Look at what Jesus did. What Jesus did when he was asked a question, very often he went after, asked with another question.

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And he did that on purpose because he wanted the people he was talking to, to get to their presuppositions. When he deals with the

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Pharisees, particularly, he does that. They asked him about the baptism of John. And he says, he doesn't answer the question.

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He says, let me ask you a question. Where did it come from? And what he's doing is he's forcing them to go back and look at their presuppositions.

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Well, that's what I do in this book. I say, when you get to ask the question, follow with a question.

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A question like, why did you ask me that? If I answer that question, will it make any difference in your view of Christ?

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And you get to the presuppositions. I call that taking spiritual temperature, okay? And a person will be hot, cold, or lukewarm, one or the other, any one of them.

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And based on that, taking that temperature, then you go to a gospel presentation. But you always, before you get to the presentation of the gospel, you give your testimony.

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And I say, I spent a whole chapter on that here about giving testimony. And I give some examples of my own.

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You get a five -minute testimony, a 20 -minute testimony, and the testimony that goes on and on and on. And of those three, you decide what to do.

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Because before you answer the question, you're going to give your testimony. So they're going to get the seed planted. And I use an example in my book of a fellow

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I know, Frank. I was working on my MBA in Iona, New York, in college, in New Rochelle.

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And Frank was one of the people I graduated high school with. And I saw him one day on campus and said,

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Frank, I didn't know you were going to school. Well, he was there for a short time, of course. But he said, let's have dinner.

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So we had dinner one time just before class. And Frank sat across the table. Now, at this time in my life,

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I'm a hardcore atheist. I vote the goods on evolution. I believe everything about there can't be a God because.

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So Frank sits across the table from me, and he tells me the story of his life. He graduated high school, same year I did. Married his high school sweetheart.

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Had two children, a dog, house, and a successful business. And then one day his house burned down. His two children and his wife died in the fire.

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Wow. So from that, he said, he looked me across the table. He said, Charlie, that changed everything.

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He eventually became homeless. He lost his business. He lost his sanity. He became an alcoholic.

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And then I'm sitting there. Now, as an atheist, I get no answers to these questions, right? I mean, I get no real answers to that.

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Well, how do you deal with a person that's had this kind of tragedy in their life? I have no answers. And he looks across the table, points his finger at me, and says,

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Charlie, because of all that happened to me, I came to know

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Jesus. And that's the most important thing in my life. Praise God. Praise God. Now, this is 15 years before I would come to know

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Christ. But he planted a seed, and that seed would germinate. So that's one of the things

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I highlight in my book, first book here, as to planting seeds. Just give your short testimony.

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Just plant a seed. And the title of that book again? That's Always Be Ready to Give an Answer. And the subtitle is

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A Former Atheist's Personal Christian Evangelism Plan. Okay, so I'm working on this book.

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And I've got a friend I meet with about every two weeks, Bob Kelly in Greensboro. And Bob is kind of a spiritual mentor.

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We actually mentor each other. And Bob says to me, after I'm talking about the book a couple times, he says,

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Charlie, you can write in that book. That's fine. But he says, but how about the answers to the questions? I mean, you know, you've got a website.

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You answer questions all day long, and people sending questions into you on YouTube. On the internet. So that became the book that we're talking about today.

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Answers for the Hope That Is in You. It's 106 questions that people ask Christians that Christians may get stumped on.

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Some of the questions like, let's see, let's just get, open it up here and take a look. Some of the questions.

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While you're looking for it, I'm going to repeat our email address for anyone who'd like to join us on the air with a question for Charlie Liebert.

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It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N as in Nancy, Z as in Zebra, E -N as in Nancy at gmail .com.

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Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. I call these first, four questions I put in the very first section, and I call them chronic unbelievers challenge questions, because these are the questions that get asked by people who want to challenge us as Christians.

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I'll share a short story about one of them before I start. I was doing a secular radio show in Winston -Salem,

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North Carolina, probably 15 years ago. Typically when you do a secular show, you'll meet the host 15, 20 minutes before the show begins just to kind of get to know each other a little bit.

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We're sitting in the studio getting ready to go on the air, and the host says to me, what kind of questions are you going to ask, Charlie? I said, well,

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I know one I'm going to get asked is where'd Cain get his wife? He starts to laugh and thinks that's the funniest thing. He says, nobody's going to ask you that stupid question.

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Third caller asked the question, and he just literally cut his mic off and started cracking up because he couldn't believe

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I could put the answer. So that's the first question, where'd Cain get his wife? The second question that people like to challenge is, what happens to the native in the jungle that never heard the gospel?

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Does he go to hell? Third question, why do bad things happen to good people? And the fourth one is kind of an area where there's a whole lot of statements.

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I only believe in what I can see. Faith is for fools. The only reality is this material world. The materialist view of the world, that the only answers are material answers.

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That's the first four questions I addressed, and I addressed those in a chapter by itself in a good deal of depth.

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And then I go into the science, and the science is divided into different sciences, astronomy, biology, geology, questions about the

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Bible, evolution versus creation, history and culture, dinosaurs, and Noah's flood.

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That's the major topical areas. And there's 105 questions altogether in the book answered.

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So that's the purpose of this book, to answer those questions. I would put it in the hands of Christians to say, when you've got those questions, here's some answers.

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So if you take book one, which is the plan, and book two, which is the answers, you've got a package that allows you to become a good witness for Christ.

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And I'm assuming your answers are documented? Yes, they're all there. I tried to keep them simple, okay?

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Simple in the sense of not getting into complex science, but trying to explain things simply.

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For your average person who is going to be engaging in conversation with other average people who are not necessarily trained scientists.

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Doesn't mean that the answers are any less true. It just means that they're not more technical.

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Yeah, and I deal also in the first part of the book with the question of the two different models, creation versus evolution.

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And I just want to cover one thing here, because the two views are so directly opposed to each other.

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And I'm going to first read the one on biblical view, and then I'm going to read the one for secular or evolutionary view.

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I'm created in God's image, corrupted by sin, but redeemed by grace. I have a hopeful future, because I trust in Christ alone.

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If God is my creator, then the universe contains absolutes in both science and morality. My salvation and my future are secure by faith in Christ.

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Now, it goes on to quote some scripture. Let's go to the other side. Let's look at the evolutionary side. If I believe

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I came from dirt, and will go back to dirt when I die, then when life ends, it has no meaning.

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I have no hope in the future beyond the grave. If the universe is random, then it contains no moral absolutes, and all rules can be created by human opinion.

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People who believe in dirt to dirt often despair to death by committing suicide. I'll go on to cite the example of Ernst Hemingway.

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So those are two very opposite views, and they're basically covered in a sense in that book.

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Now, that brings me to the third book, which is still in process, okay? And that's when I went back to my friend

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Bob Kelly, Bob said again, Charlie, you've covered creation evolution a little bit in that book, but you need to really cover it in depth.

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So the third book is going to have a non -biblical title. It's going to be called Without Three Miracles, Darwin's Dead. And the three miracles are something from nothing.

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I call that magic. Life from dead stuff, I call that Frankenstein. And uphill molasses, which is going uphill in a downhill world or entropy, if you know your physics.

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Well, one thing that before I get any listener questions, or should I say before I read any of the listener questions we already have, because I have a number of them already,

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I have a question of my own. Does our co -host, the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor, know that you use a photograph from his family photo album as an evolutionary chart in your book?

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Yeah, one of those ape man pictures. All right.

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Well, we do have some listeners already who have written into us.

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We have Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And Ted says,

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I watched a six minute video clip of yours titled What Happened After Noah's Flood?

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In it, you claim that there was a single ice age of approximately 250 years following the

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Great Deluge. One thing that's always puzzled me about that time period is that there was a very short time span between the flood and the construction of the

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Tower of Babel. Though we cannot deduce the precise length of this period solely from the biblical chronology, the longest estimate

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I have ever heard is 350 years. How is it possible to go from a population of eight persons after the flood to a population that could produce an engineering marvel such as the

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Tower of Babel in so short a time? According to Genesis 10 and 11,

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Babel was only one city among many. How could the population base of the entire planet, let alone of one city, be sufficient to produce the technology know -how required for such a project, not to mention the management and transportation of raw materials that would be needed, as well as skill and management of the labor force?

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The demographics and ergonomics just don't seem to add up. OK, let's hear that from a couple sides.

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First of all, the ice age doesn't affect the whole planet. It affects the northern and southern climatic areas,

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OK? The ice only comes down to mid -Europe and comes down to, in the North American continent, comes down to the

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Great Lakes. So although the ice is there, and the ice is taking water out of the oceans, that's an important aspect also.

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So the ice age doesn't affect an area like the Middle East, where the Tower of Babel is going to be constructed. How do you get that number of people?

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That's not hard. Yeah, there was no TV available. If you take, and I'll use 300 years to be a little more conservative, because you have 350, 300 years, if a generation is 20 years,

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OK, that's how long it takes to basically cycle through and have a next generation, next generation. A generation is 20 years, and you have people now that are propagating.

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They're not having one or two children. They're having a myriad of children. It's not hard to get to thousands and thousands and actually millions in that time period.

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Just take your Lotus spreadsheet, or not Lotus spreadsheet, take your Excel spreadsheet and just work it out.

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They're also getting married as young teenagers, typically. Yes, they are. That even was common going into the 17th century, really, and the 18th century.

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But you have to remember, life expectancy is 35 to 40 years old. As soon as a girl starts to have her medical cycle, you're going to start to be able to say, let's produce children.

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So they're going to get married as early as they can, because they're not going to live that long.

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Well, guess what, Ted? You have won a free copy of Charlie's book,

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Answers for the Hope That Is in You, Direct Simple Christian Answers to the

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World's Hard Questions. This is a beautiful hardback book, and we thank sixdaycreation .com

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for supplying these books today for our listeners. Chris, let me ask Charlie a question before we go on to our next listener.

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All right, Buzz Taylor has a question for Charlie. Could there also be a problem there of overestimating the nature of the

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Tower of Babel? Yes, it could be very well, very well, yes. I mean, the fact that they were building a tower to reach to heaven doesn't mean, one, they succeeded, two, that they were actually going to build a skyscraper.

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Right, it's not clear how tall it was, but from the mounds we have in that part of the world, you know, 30, 40 stories is probably maximum, maximum height.

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All right, we have another listener here that has a question for you. We have

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Jenny from Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. She actually has two questions. The two toughest questions

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I have been confronted with, though I have an answer to these questions, but in either case,

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I would like to know what would your response be to these questions.

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Okay. How is it possible that some native out of the Amazon jungle can be ever saved?

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They are isolated from the world and only known to worship objects. Isn't that an auto -condemnation from God?

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So where is that God of love? It seems that if there is a God, He is full of hate.

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What would be the best approach? I'll take that question first. Okay, let's approach that question.

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You have to begin with the state of man, and you have to understand that mankind is condemned by both his birth and his behavior, that that condemnation covers all of mankind, that no men get to heaven automatically.

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All men are condemned to hell, and God chooses to save some. How He does that and why

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He does that is a mystery to us. It says He did it before the foundation of the world, but we don't understand that.

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But we do know that God brings salvation to some. And I would say that the people that are isolated from the world and don't hear the gospel, they're condemned already.

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They don't have a chance in that sense. But let me give an example.

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There was a Hindu in India, his name was Sundar Singh. And Sundar Singh, for his life, searched for truth.

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And when he finally came to Christ and finally realized that Jesus was the answer, he said it was like finding an old friend.

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That I had looked for him and looked for him and looked for him, and now suddenly he was revealed to me. But understand that it begins with men being dead in their sin.

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They're dead. And the example of Lazarus is his body's decaying. They're rotting.

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They smell. And God has to come back and give that body life before it can walk out of the grave.

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That's the sequence of salvation. Dead men made alive by the Holy Spirit. Jesus talks about this all the time when he says, give them ears to hear.

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Who you has ears to hear, let him hear. He's talking to people that hear, because what? God has given them ears to hear.

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Men in themselves have no ability to come to God except God draw them first. Jesus says that a number of times, a number of different ways also.

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Okay, and one thing that, before I go on to that second question, I think this is perfect proof, actually, of the doctrine of unconditional election.

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The concept that there are a specific number of people that God, before the foundation of the world, chose to elect and chose to save, chose to give the gift of regeneration to, and chose to sanctify.

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And it's amazing. I'm not even going to bring in liberals into the equation, but Bible -believing fundamentalists and evangelicals that believe strongly in the inerrancy of Scripture will say, you have this

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God that is so hateful. And it really, in fact, Dave Hunt, the late

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Dave Hunt, wrote a book called What Love Is This, which was meant,

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I believe, in a mocking fashion toward Calvinists, because we believe that God only loves a portion of humanity in a parental and marital fashion.

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There are even different disagreements amongst Calvinists about the universal love of God towards all of humanity and how that love is really put into place, if you will, or what it really means.

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But we all agree that he does not love every human in a parental or spousal way as he does his church, as he does his elect.

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And so therefore, when people say that, and they also say that God is unfair in our system of salvation because God has to choose us.

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It's not up to us. So I bring them back to what Ginny has built into her question, the fact that, well, how is your understanding of God's salvation of sinners any more fair, quote, quote, and a human understanding of fairness if there have been millions of people that never even had the opportunity to hear the gospel?

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Obviously, God did not love those people as a parent or a spouse. Am I correct?

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Yeah, and from the beginning, God called out a people. Go back to Abraham and look at it. But there's something else here that's real important, is when you come to Christ and when you know you're saved, when you've got salvation, one of the things you ought to do, and I say this a lot to believers because Calvinists particularly tend to get off this track, say you ought to thank

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God every day for the fact that he called you out because that's a gracious gift that you did not deserve.

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If you understand that, then you come to a view of your salvation that says, wow, God, why'd you choose me?

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I mean, I'm a sinner and I know it. Even the fact that we were born in America and the place where we could have heard the gospel preached is a grace.

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Is a grace, yes. And even being born in America, you could be born in America without having parents that take care of you.

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You could have been given up for adoption or left on a doorstep. You could have parents that are wicked, evil people,

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Satanists. And being born in a family that loves God and nurtures their children in the faith is even an additional thing where you have children today being born in Muslim homes where coming to faith would mean possibly their execution.

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You know, also though, Chris, I would say when it comes down to the matter of the fairness of God, I think this is a good time to mention that the apostle

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Paul knew exactly how our minds worked in Romans 9.

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He knew that we would get down to the point of questioning the fairness of God. And his answer to that was simply, who are you,

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O man, to answer back to God? But I would also— Yes, how can God find fault for who can resist his will is the question.

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If your understanding of Romans 9 doesn't automatically have that reaction from the critic, then you have a wrong interpretation of Romans 9.

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Exactly. And I would also say to anybody who would be asking the question about the heathen in the foreign lands who've never heard the gospel, if you're that burden for them, go over and preach the gospel.

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Right. That's a good point. And the other thing I wanted to clarify from your statement or your story about the individual who had a false religion, who finally, when he came to Christ, how did you phrase it?

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Sun Tzu. He said he was like meeting a friend that I was looking for that I knew. Right. And we have to clarify that because there is a phenomenon called pluralism.

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There are Christians, including Billy Graham, who sadly believes that you do not need explicitly to have faith in Christ to be saved.

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He has a very well -known conversation with Robert Shuler that anybody can go to YouTube and watch and listen to, where Billy Graham discusses how he believes that Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and atheists are going to be saved, not because they explicitly have faith in Christ, but they are coming to Christ through the light that they have been given.

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And you have all kinds of Christians or professing Christians making claims like this because they don't have an answer.

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They realize that their scenario or their rhetoric or the rhetoric of Arminians that the

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Calvinist God is unfair in the way he saves men, they, some Arminians or non -Calvinists, recognize that the commonly held system of Arminianism is also not quite fair, because they say, well, they realize, yeah, there are people who never even heard the gospel.

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So then in order to defend in their minds the love of God, they develop a false understanding of salvation, that God could not possibly hold these people accountable who do not, who have not ever heard the gospel.

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But that is not true. The gospel, the acceptance of the gospel and the acceptance of the penalty of sin being paid for by Christ alone on Calvary's cross is a requirement of one entering into the kingdom of God, isn't it?

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Well, what they're saying there basically is the penalty for sin is not death, that you don't get the just penalty.

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And that's one of the things that's critical in our understanding, is that God's justice has to be satisfied.

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We are sinners, we're separated from him, and his justice has to be satisfied, either by us eternally perishing in hell or by Christ's atonement for us.

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Yes, and for some reason they would say that Christ's death will benefit those that never even claim to love or know him.

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But obviously that cannot be defended biblically. And I was going to say something that flew out of my head.

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Okay, that's okay. Let's get to a second question. Yes, we have

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Jenny. There's more questions from there. I'm reading Jenny's second question.

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When speaking to atheists, they claim to be neutral because they self -define atheism with automatically being neutral, though I refute to that definition.

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But then when asking questions about the existence and necessity of God, they want me to prove it without a

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Bible. I tell them that it is impossible to answer their questions without the

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Bible, and I also tell them that it shows that they lack neutrality when they demand that I don't use a

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Bible. I also tell them that they can't set the terms on how they want me to answer their questions.

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What is the best course of action? That's a very, very good question. Okay, that's a very good question. Let's talk about that for a second.

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Atheism in itself is a contradiction, because when a person says, definitively, there is no

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God, he's claiming omniscience. And that's a claim that a human being can't make.

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So just to start off, the presupposition is wrong. You can't say there is no God because you can't know that because you're not omniscient.

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Therefore, atheism in itself is inconsistent. It's inconsistent for another reason.

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It wants relativism, and it wants absolutes. The absolute is there is no God. It wants relativism when it comes to morality.

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That's also a complete contradiction. So I tell atheists, the first thing I tell them is, because of those two factors, you best you can be as an agnostic.

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You can't be an atheist. It's inconsistent with logic. It's inconsistent with a consistent worldview.

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In fact, it would be nonsensical to, as a

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Christian, believe that there is a God that exists that requires our faith in Christ, and his shed blood on Calvary, and his resurrection for us to receive eternal life.

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It would be foolish for us to believe that that God exists without his providing for us an inerrant, infallible source, meaning the scriptures, where we can discover these things.

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The book of Romans, in chapter 1, says that the only thing that nature does for man is that it leaves him without an excuse.

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But man needs more than the ordinary revelation of the earth, the trees, the birds, the animals, and the mountains, and so on.

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That just proves that God exists. But we need the special revelation of the scriptures to know what the gospel is, correct?

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Yeah, let me give another illustration. I know a missionary by the name of Bruce Olson, back in the 50s, walked in the jungles of Columbia, and lived with a people called the

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Motileon Indians for a while. They were Italian Indians? No, that was the name.

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He lived with them for a while, and he was looking for an opportunity to share the gospel, but just in the culture, he just couldn't find an opportunity.

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And then one day he was out walking with them in the jungle. They were going to another tribe to do some trading. And he noticed one of the

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Indians kept stopping, and looking in little holes in the ground, and calling into the hole. And he asked him, what are you doing?

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He said, well, I'm looking for the spirit. And there was the opportunity, okay? So all men seek to know, but because they're dead in their sin, they can't find

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God. They're dead. And well, thanks,

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Jenny, for your excellent questions. And you have also won a free copy of the book we're discussing today,

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Answers for the Hope That is in You, Direct Simple Christian Answers to the World's Hard Questions by our guest,

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Charlie Liebert. We're going to a break right now. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question for our guest, not

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Dr. Charlie Liebert, but Charlie Liebert. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

31:35

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. One excellent thing about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is by being a guest on this program, you very frequently will receive an automatic doctorate, whether you've earned one or not.

31:50

Okay, thank you. But if you have a question for us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

31:59

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages with Dr.

32:08

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38:06

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eastern time on A Visit to the Pastor's Study. That's WLIE540am .com

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to hear it globally via live streaming, or if you live in the Tri -State area and Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, at least parts of those other states, you can hear it at 540 on the

39:06

AM dial. We are now back to our program, our interview with Charlie Liebert of 6daycreation .com.

39:14

We are discussing answers for the hope that is in you. And I just remembered what

39:19

I was going to say when we were answering Jenny from Ben Salem, Pennsylvania's questions is that the

39:27

Church of Rome, I don't know if you're aware of this, Charlie, but they have a concept called invincible ignorance where people can have the opportunity of going to heaven, of course, after a detour through purgatory in their minds without having faith in Christ.

39:48

And invincible ignorance, I believe, has been distorted and stretched to be a much larger thing than even the

39:57

Church of Rome initially intended it to be, where now you have people who are considered, after Vatican II, the brothers and sisters of Roman Catholics, merely because,

40:10

I was saying before, they are living according to the light they have. And unless someone rejects outright the

40:17

Roman Catholic Church after being very thoroughly trained and discipled and taught where they know everything that needs to be known in regard to Roman Catholicism, if then they reject it after all that, then they're likely not going to heaven.

40:33

But it's really a ridiculous concept when you think about the things that your more conservative

40:38

Roman Catholics cling to as necessary dogma, like baptismal regeneration and things like that, like the sacrament of penance.

40:50

What do you mean that's necessary for salvation? Do you believe Muslims are going to heaven? You believe Buddhists and Hindus and atheists, not all of them, of course, but they believe that many of them are going to heaven.

41:02

And it was interesting when, years ago, I had Father Mitch Pacwa on my program.

41:07

He was on with Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries right before they debated each other. And Father Pacwa said that he agreed with the modern day

41:19

Roman Catholic catechism that Muslims and Catholics adore the same one true

41:24

God. And I said to him, do you evangelize Roman Catholics? And he said, of course

41:29

I do. They need to know Christ. And I said, why do they need to know Christ? Well, because that is our mission as Christians.

41:35

We are to evangelize the world. And I'm like, well, why would a Muslim, if they worship or adore the same

41:41

God as Christians, why would a Muslim go to hell? Well, if they knowingly reject the main tenets of Catholicism and the dogmas of Rome about the gospel, then they would likely not go to heaven.

41:54

I'm like, well, wouldn't it be safer not to evangelize them? Wouldn't it be safer to keep missionaries away from these people?

42:04

But he kept saying, I don't understand what you're saying. That doesn't make sense what you're saying. And obviously, I thought it made perfectly valid sense.

42:11

That doctrine's got a great name, Chris, because invincible, what was it? Invincible ignorance.

42:17

Invincible ignorance. It's ignorant of the scriptures for sure. Right. And we have

42:22

Joe in Slovenia. Thanks so much for having Brother Liebert as your guest today.

42:28

Atheists typically make the claim that we cannot make a moral judgment against rape or slavery using only scripture.

42:36

They say this because they claim that the Bible only addresses the issue of rape from a loss of property value perspective when it provides methods or restitution to the father of the raped woman for the damage to his property.

42:50

They also claim that because the Bible doesn't categorically denounce slavery of all kinds, we are hypocrites for asserting that we need

42:57

God and the Bible to make valid moral claims. How should we address this type of objection?

43:03

Thank you so very much for this very practical teaching for the body of Christ today. Very good question.

43:09

Okay. First of all, on the question of rape, I think they're wrong there.

43:14

I think the scripture does deal with that. Well, even if you... Yeah, and even the thou shalt not commit adultery is right there.

43:23

It's all right there, even in the first commandment. The other part of the question related to...

43:29

Help me a little bit. Related to the... Related to...

43:34

I'm looking back... Slavery, slavery. Yes. Okay, let's talk about slavery for a minute. Slavery in the context of the 19th and 20th century is not the same slavery we had in the biblical world.

43:44

In the biblical world, slavery was... Actually, you were part of a household and that household provided for you, but you were owned by the household.

43:55

And it's a very different context and concept than the modern slavery where we enslave people and force their labor and do not compensate them for their labor.

44:04

These people that were enslaved in the sense of being owned by an owner were compensated in the sense of they were provided everything they needed to live and they were rewarded by that.

44:15

In some cases, slavery was indentured for a period and then given up. But the question of whether slavery was banned,

44:23

I mean, if you look at the arguments made by the man in England, his name slips away from me now.

44:32

I'm sorry, what were you asking me? The man in England to campaign against slavery. The man who campaigned against...

44:40

Oh, Wilberforce? Wilberforce, yes. Well, if you look at Wilberforce's writings and stuff, you see some arguments against slavery that are based on scripture.

44:48

But more than that, he saw the toll it took on humankind. Go back to the

44:56

Frenchman that came to the US and wrote about it. One of the things he wrote about was he was in, I believe he was in Ohio and he went down to Kentucky.

45:03

Kentucky was a slave state, Ohio was a free state. And he made some observations. And some of those observations were this basically, that when he saw the industry in Ohio, things were just thriving because people realized that they could get the fruit of their labors.

45:20

They would work and they would succeed and they would have a business or a merchant or whatever they were. And they would make profit and they would live well.

45:28

And he said, as soon as I crossed the line into the slave state, things changed because the slaves were not getting the fruit of their labor.

45:35

And as a result, everything was lackadaisical. Everything was not thriving. Everything was just kind of existing.

45:42

That portrayal of the society in Gone with the Wind is somewhat short in terms of the way things really were.

45:51

But that's the point is, yes, you can make arguments for morality from the scripture about slavery, but the

45:58

Bible slavery concept that's there when Paul talks in Philemon is not the same concept as slavery as we see in modern times.

46:06

It's very different. And we also have explicitly a command in Exodus 21 verse 16, he who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession shall surely be put to death.

46:24

And much of American slavery and slavery that existed in Great Britain and so on before it was finally abolished involved people kidnapping people from Africa and selling them.

46:39

Yes, that's right. And you also have clear prohibitions to marriage being a permanent relationship between a husband and wife.

46:54

And that you had on occasion, I'm not saying this was always occurring amongst slaveholders, but you clearly do have documented examples from history of slaveholders separating husbands from their wives and their children.

47:07

Yes, that's right. They were committing evil acts. And how can you love God who you have not seen if you do not love your brother who you have seen?

47:18

I mean, on and on and on, you have these through the thread of the scriptures. And of course, you even have the kind of slavery that existed in the days of the

47:31

New and Old Testaments. And you have people even agreeing to remain permanently as a slave because they believed that this was a better life for them.

47:43

And which proves that not all slavery involved people being treated brutally and being treated like animals.

47:51

That's correct. But excellent questions, Joe in Slovenia.

47:57

And thank you for giving us an American address because you have also won a free copy of the book that we are giving away.

48:06

Answers for the hope that is in you. Direct, simple, Christian answers to the world's hard questions.

48:12

And by the way, I don't want to lose track. How many books are we giving away today? Four. Four, okay. And that's the, was that the second or third question?

48:20

Oh, boy. That's the third. Okay, all right. That's the third. I'll keep you tracked. That's the third.

48:25

You got one more. All right. And we have

48:31

Jonathan from the Bronx, New York.

48:39

Jonathan from the Bronx, New York has a question and I have to enlarge the font because it's microscopic and I am going blind.

48:48

And Jonathan from the Bronx, New York says, my name is John from the

48:53

Bronx. This is a little bit of a sensitive issue. So if you could please, oh man, you have to tell me that you want to remain anonymous right in the beginning,

49:05

John. You can't tell me that in the middle of your question. So if you want to email me back and let me know whether or not you want me to read the question anyway, that will be fine.

49:16

I'm sorry about that, John. But you have to put that right in the subject line or right in the beginning of your question.

49:23

Please do not read my name and location. So anyway, we're going to go on to another listener.

49:34

Let's see. We have, let's see. We have

49:42

Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Shepherd's Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina.

49:48

I believe you know him, don't you? Yes, I know him very well. Yes. And he says, what inspired your first thoughts and then commitment to young earth creationism?

49:59

Okay, that's an interesting question, Sterling. Let's go back and say, I was converted at age 35.

50:07

And before that, I was a hardcore atheist. I bought the goods on evolution. So after I became a

50:14

Christian, one of the challenges I received from some of the people that were around me in terms of my new

50:21

Christian life, asked the question about, do you still believe in evolution? I said, I really don't know.

50:26

I read Genesis chapter one, and it certainly doesn't seem like there's any evolution there. So it took me about three years,

50:32

Chris. I had to go through some of the books by people like Gish and Parker and Ken Ham and Dr.

50:37

Henry Morris. I read a lot of those books first. And I actually evolved from an atheistic evolutionist to a young earth creationist.

50:47

And it took a while because the first thing was, I knew that God created.

50:52

So I had to give up the basically evolution atheism itself. But then

50:58

I said, well, maybe theistic. Maybe God did use evolution as a process. And I threw that one away because of the problem of death before sin.

51:07

You can't have evolution in the theistic way because to have death long before sin appears, we're an atom.

51:15

So I threw that one away. And then I looked at old earth, young earth. And I read stuff like Dr.

51:21

Hugh Ross, who's an old earther. And I read some of his stuff. And I read some of the stuff by the young earthers.

51:26

And it just gradually evolved that when you look at the linguistics in Genesis chapter one, when you look at the scientific history that comes through biology, geology, astronomy, you come to a young earth that you just have to arrive there because the science says it.

51:43

And the science is misinterpreted so much in the modern context. We were talking just before we came in today with Buzz and I and talking about some programs on public radio.

51:51

And they're just presuming evolution to be true. And that's a false assumption because science is always interpretive.

51:58

You're looking at what you have in the present and pushing it back into the past. And that's always an estimate.

52:03

That's always a guess. It's never for real. Because if we knew for real exactly what happened yesterday, we wouldn't need criminal trials.

52:11

We'd know what happened. And we'd know the guy was guilty or innocent. We don't do that. We take the evidence. We evaluate it. We look at it and come to a conclusion.

52:17

That's the way science works. And if you understand that, then you realize that science can never make a definitive statement about the past.

52:23

The past is gone. We can't make a definitive statement about the past. Maybe we have an eyewitness.

52:29

And that's what, as Christians, we'll claim. We have an eyewitness. God was there from the beginning. And he told us what happened.

52:35

Why should we doubt that authority? Because the authority of revelation is far greater than the authority of science.

52:41

Because science is interpretive. Revelation is not. Revelation makes a statement. And it makes a statement that's true. Uh, well, we're going to a break right now.

52:51

Thank you, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker in Greensboro, North Carolina. By the way, do you know if Sterling has your book already?

52:58

I'm not sure. Okay, well, we'll determine that during the station break that we're going to now.

53:06

Please let us know, Pastor Sterling, if you already have Charlie's book or not, since you know each other. I would like to give our friend in the

53:14

Bronx, New York, a copy, because I goofed up and started to read his identity before realizing he wanted to remain anonymous.

53:23

And by the way, John in the Bronx, let me know if you want to change your mind and have me read the question anyway.

53:30

If anybody else would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:36

If you have a question for Charlie Liebert, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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59:16

This is Chris Orns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

59:21

Charlie Liebert of sixdaycreation .com. We are addressing answers for the hope that is in you, which is

59:30

Charlie's latest book in print. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Charlie, our email address is chrisornsen at gmail .com,

59:41

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, gmail .com. Before I return to my discussion with Charlie, we have a couple events that we have to announce.

59:53

First of all, this August, from the 3rd through the 5th, the Fellowship Conference New England is being held at the

59:59

Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine. And the speakers at this event include

01:00:06

Pastor Don Curran of Don Curran Ministries, and he's also the Eastern European Coordinator with HeartCry Missionary Society, an organization founded by Paul Washer.

01:00:17

My friend, Pastor Mac Tomlinson, who is an elder at Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and the author of a number of books.

01:00:25

Pastor Jesse Barrington, who is the pastor of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, which is the sister church of Grace Life Church in Lake City, Florida, which has a radio station that airs

01:00:38

Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio every day in a pre -recorded form. And Pastor Nate Pikowitz, who is the pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the author of Reviving New England, which we interviewed

01:00:56

Pastor Nate on very recently on Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio. And if you'd like to join me there at the

01:01:04

Fellowship Conference New England, our email, I mean, their website is fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

01:01:14

fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. Then after that, from November 17th through the 18th in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, the

01:01:21

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

01:01:29

The theme is For Still Our Ancient Foe, which is a line from Martin Luther's classic hymn,

01:01:35

A Mighty Fortress, obviously referring to Satan. That is being held, as I said,

01:01:41

November 17th through the 18th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

01:01:47

Speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant. To register, go to alliancenet .org,

01:01:56

alliancenet .org, and then click on Events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

01:02:05

And then in January, from the 17th through the 20th, 2018,

01:02:11

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia. On the 17th, it is exclusively a

01:02:17

Spanish -speaking edition of the G3 Conference. And the 18th through the 20th is the

01:02:22

English Conference, featuring Paul Washer, Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, H .B. Charles Jr.,

01:02:27

Tim Chalies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, and Martha Peace.

01:02:37

I will have, God willing, an exhibitor's booth there. I look forward to meeting many of you for the first time.

01:02:44

I also look forward to seeing old friends or new friends that I just made this past January at the first G3 Conference that I attended and where I manned an exhibitor's booth for Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:02:59

That certainly proved to be a wonderful time and a blessed time for me. And I hope that as many of you listening as possible can join me there.

01:03:08

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com to register for the

01:03:15

G3 Conference 2018. And now I am forced to do the uncomfortable aspect of this program, and that's ask you for money because of the fact that those who are already my advertisers and keep this program on the air have urged me to make public appeals for donations.

01:03:37

So if you are financially capable of blessing Iron Trip and Zion Radio with a gift of any amount, as long as you are not siphoning money out of your regular giving to your local church where you're a member.

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01:04:06

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Just send me an email at chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:05:02

And I would love to speak with you about advertising as soon as possible. Well, we are now reentering our discussion with Charlie Liebert of sixdaycreation .com.

01:05:13

We are addressing answers for the hope that is in you, Charlie's latest book. And Charlie, you wanted to make sure our listeners knew how to get a hold of this book if they can't win one today.

01:05:23

Yes, if they don't win one today, there are two options. The book is available on Amazon, but actually, if you go to my website, it actually will be a little bit cheaper for you.

01:05:31

The books are discounted on the website. And if you buy both books, it's only $25.

01:05:37

And the total would be, if you bought them at the list price, it'd be $35.

01:05:42

So it's $10 off. The website is your, Y -O -U -R, christiananswers .com,

01:05:49

yourchristiananswers .com, okay? I've got three websites, the sixdaycreation .com, which is my primary website, which answers the questions.

01:05:56

The books are offered on yourchristiananswers .com. And then the third one, which is W3M, Darwin's Dead, which is the third book, which is still working in publication.

01:06:06

And I would just encourage the listeners, if you really want to become an effective evangelist for Christ, take the package of the two books, and you'll have both an evangelism strategy and answers to 105 questions.

01:06:19

Great. And of course, even if you want a book, want to purchase one or two more, or even more than that, to share with your friends and loved ones.

01:06:29

And we have, Sterling Vanderwerker has another question for you.

01:06:35

That's Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of the Shepherds Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina.

01:06:44

He asks, how did Charlie become a presuppositional apologist?

01:06:50

Perhaps it would be good, Charlie, for you to define what that means before you explain how you became one.

01:06:55

Let me explain that a little bit, okay? To be an apologist means to give an answer for the hope that's in you, basically.

01:07:03

To be able to answer for what your faith is and why you have the faith you have. And there are two approaches to that.

01:07:10

One is called evidential, one is called presuppositional, okay? Evidential goes on the basis of, if the evidence is sufficiently presented to a person, they hear it, then they may believe.

01:07:22

Presuppositional says you've got to get to the presuppositions of the person directly. What they believe at the beginning to be able to address changing that belief.

01:07:31

And being an atheist, I was a presuppositional atheist, I mean, I believed that atheism was true, and then later on I would be confronted with that.

01:07:39

How did I get there? Well, I was converted to Christ at 35. My conversion was very dramatic, okay?

01:07:46

I was an atheist one day and a Christian the next. It was a very, very rapid transformation. I don't have time to do that testimony now, but it was very abrupt.

01:07:55

In fact, the people that worked me used to joke about old Charlie, new Charlie, because the change was so significant.

01:08:02

But when I came to that, then I was kind of in the middle, because I believed that in the beginning, well, you know,

01:08:07

I understand a lot of evidence. It took me three years to come to the creation of the evolutionary thing, and I said, yeah, the evidence is important, and it is important.

01:08:16

But I realized later that presuppositions were more important, and I realized that simply by, you're going to laugh at this, by going to work for Ken Ham.

01:08:24

I worked for the Ancestors and Genesis Ministry for two and a half years. And during that time, I realized that the approach to understanding would be to do what

01:08:33

I do in the book, is to get the presuppositions. What does a person really believe, and why do they believe it?

01:08:39

And that's the place that they are not vulnerable so much as just getting to the real questions, getting to the real answers.

01:08:47

People want real answers to why am I here. And you get there by going to the presuppositions.

01:08:52

Do you help? How do you explain how you're here? My most pressing question right now is that I've been interviewing you for over an hour now, and I just realized that you're wearing lederhosen.

01:09:08

No, it's not lederhosen. Actually, it's

01:09:13

Tommy Copperknees. Oh, okay. Tommy Copperknees. Those are therapeutic, in case you wondered. Yes, they are.

01:09:22

But I mean, I could wear lederhosen because I am German by origin. In fact, I don't want the

01:09:27

FBI starting to investigate this house. In fact, let me make this point.

01:09:34

My grandfather on my father's side was a German Jew. His three uncles all died in the

01:09:40

Holocaust, along with their 13 children. And I was curious about how real that was.

01:09:46

Well, I did this spit -in -the -tube DNA analysis. 26 % Western European Jew. So that stuff works.

01:09:53

Yeah, you told me some pretty fascinating stuff. That deserves a topic all on its own for a future visit.

01:10:00

Sure, that'd be great. I mean, really remarkable stuff about surviving the Holocaust. Yes, my aunt.

01:10:07

That story is actually on Kindle. It's called Rosemary Kristallnacht Transformation, that story about her survival.

01:10:16

And it's very dramatic. We have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who has two questions.

01:10:24

Do you think reluctance to share the gospel stems more from a lack of biblical knowledge or a lack of confidence in its sufficiency and power?

01:10:34

That's excellent. Obviously, that would probably be different from person to person. Yeah, that's going to vary. Give it to me again.

01:10:41

The biblical knowledge. And what was the second part? Or the lack of confidence in its sufficiency and power.

01:10:47

OK, let's talk about that. Type A personalities probably don't have a lot of problem with confidence, OK? It'll depend upon your personality type, whether you have confidence or not to believe.

01:10:57

But the point is, is it sufficient, the evidence sufficient? And I would say biblical knowledge today in the

01:11:06

Church of Jesus Christ is greatly lacking. There's hundreds, probably thousands of believers, even in 50 miles of where we are sitting today, that claim

01:11:18

Christ, that don't have a clue about the basic fundamentals of the faith. So how can you share

01:11:24

Christ if you don't understand? And the Bible admonishes us again and again to teach.

01:11:30

Teach our children. Teach our children. Talks about that all the time. Well, not only our children, but our new children when people come to Christ as an adult.

01:11:37

You've got to teach them. You've got to give them, be able to do that, be able to give that answer for the hope that's in you.

01:11:44

And the Bible tells us clearly that that's required of us. The Great Commission is not an invitation.

01:11:50

It's a command. It's a direct command. Go into the world and preach the gospel. And if you're going to do that, you've got to be able to understand the gospel and how you communicate the gospel to other people.

01:12:02

And that requires a solid biblical foundation. I mean, when I was converted, I was a new believer.

01:12:09

God took us to Greenville, South Carolina almost immediately, my wife and I, and put us in a Presbyterian church.

01:12:15

And that church apparently saw some potential in me because they trained me as a deacon and elder within two years.

01:12:24

Because they wanted to do submission work. But more than that, they saw that thirst. And I would say to people listening here, if you don't have a thirst for God's word and a thirst to know more about your relationship with Christ, you have a problem.

01:12:38

And the problem may be that either you don't really believe or your believing is so weak that you don't have any desire.

01:12:45

Because the desire should be to know Christ and to know him more day by day. And we have...

01:12:55

Oh, by the way, just before I go on to Gordy's second question, since I think it kind of ties in with the differences between presuppositionalism and evidentialism, there are some people who are genuinely trying as best as they can, although I don't know if anybody really tries as best as they can, but there are people who are really trying to understand the scriptures who are new in the faith and they do feel intimidated to share the gospel because they don't want to mislead people.

01:13:25

They don't want to give people incorrect information. They don't want to look like an idiot. They don't want to bring reproach upon Christianity because they did a horrible job explaining it.

01:13:36

But isn't there sometimes a tendency amongst evidentialists? And I'm not broad brushing. Please don't think that I am speaking to you if you know this does not apply to you.

01:13:46

But when I've been to conferences run by evidentialists, I sometimes get the feeling that these speakers think that we need to be experts in everything to be adequately able to share the faith of Christianity and the gospel.

01:14:06

In other words, we have to become experts in young earth creationism or creationism in general.

01:14:12

We have to become experts on fossil records and on dismissing Darwinian evolution and on cosmetology and all kinds of things where that's not true at all.

01:14:25

I mean, a presuppositionalist knows that we do not have to prove everything.

01:14:31

In fact, that man already in his heart of hearts knows that he is in rebellion to the truth, but he is suppressing that knowledge.

01:14:40

Yeah, understand the gospel is really very simple in its basics.

01:14:45

It says you're a sinner, you're separated from God, you're lost, and you have no hope.

01:14:51

That's the first statement of the gospel. The second statement is God will rescue you if you believe that Christ paid the penalty for your sin, that your death will not be the death of eternal condemnation, but your death will be passing into a transition where you eventually get to be with the

01:15:09

Lord in heaven. It's very simple in its basic form, but then people want to make it complicated by throwing in all the science and all the other stuff.

01:15:20

All that is important, but it is superficial. And Gordy's second question is, how does the

01:15:28

Holy Spirit guide us in our sharing of the gospel? How does the Holy Spirit guide you in your sharing of the gospel?

01:15:34

Well, he guides you by a couple of different ways.

01:15:40

Number one is you can actually have direct guidance. Sometimes you get in a situation where you don't know what to do, and you pray, and the answer comes to you.

01:15:49

That's one way, but that's not typically common. Typically common, the Holy Spirit guides you by expanding your knowledge so that you're able to give an answer, by guiding you to study, to learn the word, to understand the apologetics that are required to answer the question.

01:16:07

Let me give one example, okay? I was doing jail ministry in Greenville, South Carolina, a relatively new

01:16:14

Christian. I was working with the Gideons. And I was in jail, and I was outside a cell, and I was talking to a man, and the man basically declared to me that he was basically a

01:16:26

Satanist, and he would have no part of the gospel. In fact, he spoke with another voice that I believe is probably a demon, but the point simply was

01:16:35

I backed against the wall opposite that cell, and I prayed in my mind, God, what do you want me to do?

01:16:40

And it just came on me as a flash to say, bring the condemnation.

01:16:46

You're going to hell. Okay, that condemnation is coming to you. You deserve it, and you have no hope outside of Christ.

01:16:55

Of course, that greatly angered him, but that's what the Holy Spirit seemed to prompt me to do. Now, I wouldn't do that to somebody

01:17:01

I walked up on the street, okay, or somebody I was talking to as a friend, but I believe that was the

01:17:06

Holy Spirit prompting me to say, do that. Let him know where he is. And doesn't the

01:17:12

Holy Spirit also guide us in sharing the gospel by giving us zeal, and giving us conviction, and giving us courage, and removing cowardice from us, and so on?

01:17:27

Yes, the Holy Spirit emboldens us to go out and share the gospel, definitely.

01:17:33

Well, thank you, Gordie, in McKennaxburg, Pennsylvania. And by the way, you know what

01:17:38

I think I'm going to do is, providentially, I am meeting this brother for the very first time tonight.

01:17:46

We're going to share a meal together. He lives very close by, and I was never aware of his existence until just a few days ago.

01:17:55

He loves this radio show. I will buy Gordie a copy of your book and bring it to him.

01:18:02

Okay, okay. I'll give you the only copy I've got with me. That's fine. Okay. And so we'll see you later on,

01:18:09

Gordie, God willing, after the show. And I'm looking forward to getting to know you and forming a friendship,

01:18:16

God willing. And thanks for submitting an excellent question once again. We have our friend,

01:18:25

Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, revisiting us here. He wants to ask you, he just says, cosmetology.

01:18:33

Oh, cosmology. Oh, I guess he was correcting me. He was correcting me.

01:18:38

I make up words all the time on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio. Cosmetology really is a word, but I just don't believe you would use it.

01:18:45

Right. Yeah, right. Cosmology. Boy, I'm really embarrassed right now. Cosmetology.

01:18:51

Does that have anything to do with makeup? Yeah, that's makeup. That's makeup. That's eyeshadow and lipstick.

01:18:58

You know, all those things under your bathroom sink there, yeah. Oh, I'm glad Buzz Taylor's microphone was muted.

01:19:09

Right. One of the things that I wanted to ask you myself, before I go on to any other listener question, is

01:19:27

I have heard this question posed to me by brothers in Christ, brothers and sisters in Christ, when do you give up on someone?

01:19:36

There are Christians who think you never give up, evangelizing someone. You continue until they have breath in their lungs to give them the gospel, regardless of how often they reject it and how adamantly they reject it.

01:19:53

Then you have the others who say that, well, if the scriptures tell us that we're to kick the dust off our sandals and leave people who reject the gospel, that we should imitate them.

01:20:06

And there are certain people that we meet that we should not burden ourselves with their eternal state any longer.

01:20:15

And we should just cease from involving in spiritual interaction with them.

01:20:21

We should just leave them in the hands of God for him to either bring someone else in their path who will evangelize them or for them to be condemned.

01:20:31

And of course, they would even receive an increased condemnation for rejecting the gospel.

01:20:40

But what is your response to that? Okay, my response to that is I'm going to do it back to my first book.

01:20:47

Take a spiritual temperature. A person is going to be cold, okay? They're going to say, I got no interest in the gospel.

01:20:52

I'm not interested in hearing anything about this. I've given my testimony and I've even given them the gospel, okay?

01:20:58

I've gone through what I call in the book closure, okay? I've gone through and actually described the gospel to them. And they have rejected it.

01:21:05

Sometimes very vehemently, other times just rejected it. But they've rejected it. At that point,

01:21:11

I will leave them to themselves. But every once in a while, if I encounter them, and I had this with a fellow

01:21:18

I'd worked with for years, I'll ask him a question that'll be a spiritual question.

01:21:25

And see their response. See if anything's changed. So I've got their spiritual temperature.

01:21:31

I know they're cold. I know they're not interested in the gospel. But things change as time goes on. I had a humanist

01:21:37

I worked with for a long time. His name was Ed. And Ed and I interacted a lot over the lunch table.

01:21:45

We ate lunch together with a bunch of other guys. And of course, my Christianity became pretty obvious from the rest of the group.

01:21:51

In fact, I had one other Christian in the group that used to ask questions intentionally to set me off. But in dealing with Ed, I knew he wasn't interested.

01:22:00

Because he was a humanist. He said he was a humanist. He went to the meetings that the counselors held and stuff.

01:22:07

And one day, I went into his office. His father had died. And I gave him sincere condolences for his father's death.

01:22:16

And then two days later, we were at a lunch table. Two or three days later, we're at a lunch table.

01:22:21

And Mike Halverson, the other Christian, asked a question. And the question provoked me to give a little short testimony.

01:22:28

And Ed called me back to his office after we left. And he said, Charlie, if you ever talk like that again in my presence,

01:22:36

I'm going to punch your lights out. Well, I knew at that point, I knew at that point that he was so cold that there was nothing further to do.

01:22:45

Now, later on, I would find out his wife would come to Christ.

01:22:52

But I don't believe he ever did. But as far as the direct question about, should we give up on people when they continually and repeatedly refuse to give an ear to the gospel?

01:23:13

I think Jesus addressed that. He said, shake the dust off your feet and go on. So shake the dust off your feet and go on. I guess the problem is that we, not being omniscient, don't really know sometimes who are those people that we are to react that way toward?

01:23:30

And who are those that we are to persist? I guess a lot of it would have to do with if they are just being apathetic or indifferent as opposed to being hostile toward us.

01:23:39

Now, when I talked about Frank before, when Frank and I left,

01:23:45

I was very antagonistic to the gospel. And later on, I would come to Christ. But Frank never knew that.

01:23:50

He died of cancer about three years after I had that dinner with him.

01:23:56

So he would never know that his gospel seed took root. But it's God that's going to call you.

01:24:02

It's not men's evidence, okay? Evidence is not going to convince anyone. It's God's got to give you the ears to hear.

01:24:08

Jesus talked about that all the time, ears to hear. You know, I think the answer to that question is about as diverse as the number of kinds of relationships that exist.

01:24:17

If it's your children that you're trying to reach, even though they're adults, you're obviously going to strive a lot longer with them than you would other people.

01:24:26

And there are some people who wrestle with the issue of, well, it might be their own spouse, if they're a believer.

01:24:33

And even the apostle Paul addresses that. Like, how do you know you're going to save them? You don't. But, you know, as long as you have opportunity, you're going to continue to try, you know.

01:24:42

But others, I mean, well, you know, any seed that you've planted, of course, is already planted.

01:24:47

But, you know, I don't think there is a single answer to that question. And unfortunately, I even know folks with adult children who have been ordered by their adult children that they are to cease and desist from talking about the gospel to their children.

01:25:06

In other words, to the Christian's grandchildren or grandchild. If they do not cease and desist, they will no longer be allowed to have contact.

01:25:16

And this is such a sad scenario when you have things like that. By the way, Sterling in Greensboro, North Carolina, says, don't be embarrassed.

01:25:27

He's talking to me. Don't be embarrassed. You have a lot to do to keep Buzz and Charlie from taking over.

01:25:36

Yeah, that's true. Well, there is an alarm.

01:25:41

There is an alarm system. There is not a chance that that will ever happen.

01:25:48

I can assure you. I'm, you control the microphone. I'm convinced. You have the buttons there in front of you to turn us on.

01:25:56

We can't argue with that. We're going to our final break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air with an email with a question of your own, please do it now because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:26:10

Our email address is ChrisOrensen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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01:26:26

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01:26:35

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01:33:12

This is Chris Arnsin. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Charlie Liebert.

01:33:19

He is founder of sixdaycreation .com, and we are discussing his book,

01:33:24

Answers for the Hope That Is in You. And in studio with us also is the Reverend Buzz Taylor, our co -host.

01:33:31

If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, we're running out of time rapidly, so please email us at chrisarnsin at gmail .com.

01:33:40

chrisarnsin at gmail .com. One of the things that going back to defending the faith and apologetics from a presuppositional perspective does not presuppositionalism help to avoid rabbit trails that the critic or the theological or religious opponent that you are speaking to will typically, almost every time, if you're having a lively conversation with somebody who is not a

01:34:16

Christian or a member of a cult or something, they will very often take you on rabbit trails. And there are certain things that a

01:34:23

Christian cannot prove beyond any shadow of a doubt without the miraculous work of the

01:34:31

Holy Spirit in the person's heart. You cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the

01:34:38

Bible is the word of God. You can only disprove many of the claims against the

01:34:43

Bible that the non -believer makes. Am I not right? Yes, that's correct. And again, asking those superfluous questions and taking you off track is part of what

01:34:53

I want to address in the book. You've got to go back and say, why did you ask me that? What do

01:35:00

I gain by answering that question? See, you don't have to know everything to share the gospel.

01:35:08

What you've got to be able to do is to take them to their presuppositions. And you've got to do that by doing what

01:35:14

Jesus did to the Pharisees. Ask them a question. And he drove them right because they realized their dilemma.

01:35:21

They couldn't answer the question that Jesus asked them. So when you say to someone, why did you ask me that question?

01:35:27

Or why should I give you an answer to that? Well, what's the purpose of the question? Then you get some response that'll take you back to off the rabbit trail.

01:35:40

And one of the things that is a primary thing that we have to keep remembering goes back to Romans 1, that no matter what these people are claiming, they are suppressing a truth that is already embedded in their hearts.

01:35:59

Yes. I give an example when I do seminars and workshops, particularly when I work with youth, talking about basically the command, do thou shalt not steal.

01:36:10

And I say, look, there's a man that lives in Southern France, has a big mansion, and his profession is to steal artwork, steal and sell artwork.

01:36:17

That's what he does. That's his whole thing. He's a multi -billionaire. And the question comes to,

01:36:23

I'm going to steal his wallet. What's he going to say? Hey, that's wrong. You can't do that. Oh, wait a minute.

01:36:30

You can't have it both ways. You can't have morality and have to have immorality at the same time. And that's an inconsistency that points to the fact that every human being has a conscience and that conscience knows

01:36:41

God. You have to suppress it. Yes, in fact, I know that I've repeated this a couple of times, if not more than that, on my show.

01:36:51

But when I arranged a live public moderated debate between Dr. James Earl White of Alpha Omega Ministries and David Silverman, who's a world -renowned atheist, and he is the current president of the atheistic organization that was founded by Madeleine Murray O 'Hare,

01:37:10

American atheist. His task in his debate with Dr.

01:37:17

White was to prove that the New Testament was evil. And then Dr. White logically backed

01:37:26

Mr. Silverman into a corner by asking him how on earth he could have any concept of what evil is without borrowing from a

01:37:34

Christian worldview or a biblical worldview. And Mr.

01:37:39

Silverman said that miraculously, is determined by what any majority of people in any particular geographic region during any particular era of history believe.

01:37:51

If that's true, then the Holocaust is legitimate. Well, in fact, Dr. White said to him, and keep in mind, this is a

01:38:00

Jewish atheist, ethnically Jewish atheist. Dr. White said to him, so if you were being marched through the gates of a death camp, a

01:38:07

Nazi death camp, the most you could possibly say in protest is, I find this personally offensive.

01:38:14

You could not say this is wrong. This is an abomination. This is evil. And he said, you're right. This is amazing.

01:38:20

It was utterly breathtaking. An amazing admission, yeah. An amazing admission.

01:38:26

And so therefore, I think that that's something that we have to keep in mind constantly in regard to not allowing the unbeliever to keep us tongue -tied by escaping from the main issue is that they are sinners in need of salvation.

01:38:45

The only way they can attain that is through embracing Jesus Christ, the second person of the

01:38:53

Trinity who died for the sins of men and rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures and that his shed blood is the only way that anybody can have protection from the wrath of God and be prevented from being cast into hell is the only ways that the gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:39:13

Yes, that's correct. And one of the things that Christians will often, they will be plagued with the anguish over the death of loved ones that who did not embrace the gospel.

01:39:39

Isn't it at least a comfort to know that the ultimate eternal destiny of individuals is not in our hands?

01:39:48

This brings us back to the doctrines of grace. Yes, it's not in our hands. Don't you think that it is illogical really that any

01:39:56

Arminian or non -Calvinist can have a peaceful restful sleep knowing that people that they know and love will be in hell?

01:40:03

Because if their system of salvation were true, then they would be very much responsible for everyone they know and love who dies without Christ.

01:40:13

If you thought you could save a person, then your guilt is ultimate.

01:40:19

Your guilt is beyond because when they die unsaved, then you're responsible. Well, that's a huge burden and that's a completely unbiblical concept.

01:40:29

Right. And so therefore the Arminians who do for the most part rest peacefully and know that things were out of their hands, they are acting in contradiction to their own theology and they're really unconsciously embracing at least in those areas, the doctrines of grace, aren't they?

01:40:49

I had a confrontation one time with an Arminian pastor and this was in the context of doing ministry in a church.

01:40:56

Then he came from another church to listen to what I was doing and I had a confrontation with him.

01:41:03

Ultimately, the issue came up as to who's responsible and his answer was, well, men are responsible to everyone they contact that they meet, that they're responsible to give them the gospel and if they don't, then their blood is on their head.

01:41:21

And I said, wow. I said, are you sure about that? He said, well, and he began to equivocate a little bit and I said, you're starting to talk like a

01:41:30

Calvinist and boy, did that make him mad. That made him real mad. Yeah, what makes me feel real uneasy is when

01:41:40

I'm having a conversation with somebody who is not theologically reformed. I can remember specifically years ago when an

01:41:51

Arminian church came to use our baptistry at the church where I was a member, which was a reformed

01:41:58

Baptist church. We allowed them to use our baptistry and one of the brothers there and the church waiting for the service to begin,

01:42:09

I happened to be in the building at the time, we started a conversation and a third person said, now what's different about what your church believes and what our church believes?

01:42:22

And I said, well, the primary difference is that our church believes in what is known as the doctrines of sovereign grace and basically if you wanna sum that up, that is that God alone saves sinners because sinners cannot even help save themselves.

01:42:41

And the other person who was an acquaintance of mine said, the differences that we have are really meaningless and are not important at all.

01:42:53

And I said, well, I wouldn't go that far with that. I said that the differences that we have would not require that we have no fellowship, they would not require that we do not have loving interaction as brothers in Christ, but they're important issues.

01:43:12

And he goes, no, they're not. And he kept saying that over and over again. And when I kept insisting that the elements of our faith that are in opposition to one another are important.

01:43:25

And I basically laid out the understanding of unconditional election to him. He said, a rage brewed up in him and he revealed that he did not really believe that our differences were meaningless because he said, let me tell you something, if God is like that,

01:43:43

I want no part of him. And I said to him, you really gotta rethink that with fear and trembling because you have just blasphemed

01:43:54

God. And this is a very, it's a problematic issue because don't we need to have a balance on the one hand of being diligent to maintain purity in theology and doctrine, but at the same time, we cannot be so arrogant that we think that we are the only ones who have truth and wind up denying brethren in Christ who

01:44:24

Christ actually died for. Now, when I deal with Arminians, I have a couple of approaches that I use directly.

01:44:33

I first talk about the point of, are men dead in their sin? And then I asked the question, can dead men hear?

01:44:40

No dead men can't hear. Well, then if men are dead in their sin, they can't hear the gospel. And that's a showstopper for them because they believe men can hear the gospel and can respond to it.

01:44:52

So again, using questions rather than direct confrontation is an effective way to get them to look at their presuppositions.

01:44:59

Because you either believe God saves sovereignly or you believe that men can engineer their own salvation.

01:45:09

It's a simple choice. It's one or the other. It can't be both. So it's one or the other. In fact, when

01:45:16

I lived in Greenville, South Carolina, talking about Bob Jones University, I had one of the people that graduated from there tell me that the way the election works is this.

01:45:25

God casts a vote, Satan casts a vote, and you get the deciding vote. And boy, I said, that smacks of all kinds of heresy because God says he chose us before the foundation of the world.

01:45:37

How can he choose you if you're not chosen?

01:45:42

I mean, it's just radically inconsistent. Let's see here.

01:45:48

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says that Christians claim to be pro -life but very often don't act as if babies are truly being murdered because they're not very zealous in protest against this behavior.

01:46:05

What is your opinion on this? Okay, when it comes to pro -life, we take a position, but the culture around us is so pro -death, it's hard to vocalize that in some way.

01:46:21

And we have to evaluate our priorities as to what we're going to accomplish because we can't do everything.

01:46:28

So we've got to decide what to do, okay? I've chosen in my work to go to the work of an author.

01:46:34

I've chosen that intentionally, okay? I also do some evangelism. I work with youth some.

01:46:40

In fact, let me just take a little side diversion on that. One of the things I do is called a youth talkback where basically we usually have pizza and we'll do work with the youth of high school and middle school students.

01:46:53

And we'll start with a simple, I do about 15 or 20 minute presentation on the question of origins, opening the can of worms and not really answering the question, just opening the can of worms, saying, you know, what do you believe about where you came from and talk about things like that.

01:47:08

And then I'll stop and I'll ask them to ask questions. It usually takes about 20 minutes to get started. But once it gets started and youth realize that Christians really do have real answers to those hard questions, it overflows.

01:47:20

In fact, the second time I did it, I did it in a church near Atlanta, Georgia. And we started at 6 .30.

01:47:27

I finished my introduction by seven and we eat. And then we did introduction about seven, seven, 10 or so.

01:47:33

And then they started to ask questions. The parents made a stop at 11 .30 because the kids had so many questions because when they realized there are credible

01:47:41

Christian answers to those hard questions that the world has been telling and the Christians can answer.

01:47:47

And we suddenly have answers that are credible. They get kind of overwhelmed and just go on and on.

01:47:52

I mean, we went everywhere in that session. We went into all the sciences. We went into human sexuality, went everywhere because they wanted to know what does the

01:48:00

Bible really say? What do you really believe? And when you have answers to that, youth will respond and they respond very, very, very, very, very well.

01:48:12

And well, thank you, CJ. One of the things that just popped into my own head is a frequent accusation that I hear, especially in light of Christians protesting the abominations and atrocities of Muslim terrorists,

01:48:34

Islamic extremists who are butchering and torturing and murdering and slaughtering men, women, and little children and babies.

01:48:44

And the thing that we will hear, not only from Muslims, but perhaps even from liberals, when we protest this, well, who are you to talk?

01:48:55

I mean, I have some cursory knowledge of the Bible and the Old Testament especially is filled with gruesome stories, even of the

01:49:03

Israelites being commanded of God to kill men, women, and children. How do you respond to that? Let me get to that one because that's one that's very current and very, very important that we understand.

01:49:14

When God called out a people, he called out a people on purpose. He called out a particular people and he said to them, when you go into that land, the people that are there are so evil, they must be destroyed.

01:49:26

That's the Canaanites. Islam today is the new Canaanites. The only way that evil can be wiped out is to wipe it out.

01:49:34

And it sounds very harsh and difficult, but that was God's way. He chose a people. He called them out.

01:49:40

And then he said, now when you go to that land, those people are so evil. They're what doing? They're doing human sacrifice.

01:49:46

They're doing sacrifice of their children, abortion, for example, in our country. They're doing all these evil things and they don't, they're not redeemable.

01:49:55

So they've got to be wiped out. That's, if you will look at it, the political solution to Islam.

01:50:02

It has to be wiped out. And that's huge to say. I mean, I'm not sure if you could say that again.

01:50:07

Well, I mean, obviously, I mean, I don't think that you are condoning that we have concentration camps.

01:50:13

Not at all. We've put to death Muslims. I mean, what exactly are you talking about? Isn't the way we wipe out

01:50:18

Islam is through preaching the gospel and that it'll just like what we do to conquer evil is not through the sword, but through the preaching of the gospel.

01:50:29

Through the preaching of the gospel. That's correct. And the grace of God. But there comes a time when people are so evil that judgment has to come on them.

01:50:37

Right. And obviously that would be ISIS, for example. Well, that's you're talking about military conflict.

01:50:43

Yes. I'm talking about military conflict. Right. And because we don't have the advantage of the

01:50:52

Old Testament relationship with God, even though God is the same God in the old and new covenants.

01:50:58

He spoke to prophets. Yes. In that day, he does not speak divinely in an extra biblical fashion to his people today.

01:51:10

And the church of Christ, ever since it was established, there was no call to arms to the new covenant believers to take the sword against enemies of the gospel and kill them.

01:51:24

No, understand that the war is a spiritual war and it's fought in that realm.

01:51:32

So you fight it by presenting the gospel. You fight it also by calling out evil, calling it what it is.

01:51:40

I mean, one of the big issues that's been in this country has been calling it what it is,

01:51:45

Islam, not Islam. ISIS is a terrorist organization and they have one purpose to destroy us.

01:51:52

So we have to react militarily by saying, we're not gonna let you do that. But more than that, we have to go and say, here's the gospel.

01:52:00

This is the truth. Believe this or judgment will come upon you.

01:52:08

And obviously we have to be careful because one of God's commandments in the

01:52:14

Decalogue is not to bear false witness. We cannot be obedient Christians and slander people who may be

01:52:25

Muslim, but who do not believe in the violence toward or execution of non -believers in Islam.

01:52:38

We have to be careful that we are not attributing to them personally the same ideology of ISIS because in essence, we will be bearing false witness against these people and they are going to know that and they are going to reject anything that we have to say because they will deem us as liars.

01:52:55

That's right. That's correct. I agree. Let me address that question also because I know it's easy, very easy.

01:53:03

So I'm certainly not putting blame on anybody here, our questioner specifically, but to say that Christians aren't doing anything about the problem of abortion,

01:53:15

I just have a little bit of trouble accepting that because first of all, all over the

01:53:22

Christian media, there is speaking against abortion. We also, though, do not believe in vigilantism.

01:53:31

We do not believe that it is our right biblically or our duty biblically to go shoot abortionists or anything like that, but I think by and large, we do take our convictions as Christians.

01:53:43

Now, there's going to be some exceptions, of course, but we do take our convictions to the voting booth and when we know that there's a candidate running for president who has no problem with putting a pair of scissors in the back of a newborn baby's head, we vote against that.

01:53:58

That is what we, we have the civil magistrates and there is the proper means to go about these various battles and that is through the powers that be and we just happen to have the advantage in America of having a representative government where we can vote our representatives who agree with us and I think that the evangelicals have made a major difference in the turnout already, even just in this past election as to the abortion issue.

01:54:29

So, I can't say that we're not doing anything because we're doing what we can do according to God's word.

01:54:36

What we cannot do is take the law into our own hands. I agree with that. Right. We can't just say we're going to be vigilantes and then take the law into our own hands.

01:54:47

We've got to let the law succeed. Yeah, even in the old covenant, vigilantism was not supported.

01:54:56

People had to do things within the confines of the nation of Israel and the religious leaders and so on.

01:55:02

You couldn't just take it upon yourself to kill someone as a private act.

01:55:08

And well, we're running out of time here. I want to make sure that you wrap up with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today in about two minutes time and then we'll make sure that we give our listeners all your contact information.

01:55:24

Okay. Let me say that the first and most important thing is that as a

01:55:29

Christian, as a believer, I encourage you greatly to witness for Christ in the context of wherever you are.

01:55:36

You may be in a foreign country. You may not be in the U .S. at all. But wherever you are to bear testimony and bear testimony in a way that God can use.

01:55:45

And what I'm going to say there is take the advice I've given in that book. And then understand it that you want to sense people's presuppositions.

01:55:54

You want to sense their position. Where are they in relation to Christ? I mean, some people may be ready to hear the gospel.

01:56:01

Others may reject it outright. But remember those that reject it outright may come later.

01:56:07

I mean, I'm a classic example of that. Frank, 15 years B .C. Frank came and gave me a testimony. And when

01:56:13

I knelt in Asheville, when I came to Christ, that was one of the things God brought back into my mind was

01:56:19

Frank sitting across table pointing his finger at me, saying that Jesus was his answer. So I'm going to encourage you, first of all, to work on your effective witness.

01:56:27

You don't have to be able to answer all the questions. Go to the presuppositions. Get the people to ask the questions themselves.

01:56:34

Let them think about it. I've found the gospel is propagated better by what

01:56:40

I call truth grenades, which is just asking questions and walking away, than it is by grabbing a person by the collar and shouting the gospel in their face.

01:56:48

Because God's got to work in the heart, and he's got to give them ears to hear. And only God can do that.

01:56:53

So you do two things. You witness, in terms of your testimony, what God did for you.

01:57:00

And you go and you allow them to basically stew on it.

01:57:07

Because God will use that. He'll give them ears to hear. And the most important thing is to pray that God would do that.

01:57:15

My son is not a believer. And he knows that. He wouldn't argue with me here.

01:57:21

And yet I continue to pray that God would give me ears to hear. He knows intellectually everything he needs to know about the gospel.

01:57:28

He went to Christian school. He's heard the gospel from his parents. He's heard it from other people. And he knows it in detail, but he doesn't believe it.

01:57:37

And that's the difference. God's got to soften. I'll give you a new heart, like it says in Ezekiel. Give you ears to hear.

01:57:43

And then you hear the gospel. And what? Like Lazarus, you get up off the cold stone and walk out of the grave. That's man's responsibility.

01:57:49

Man has responsibility to the gospel. It's not God alone. Man's responsibility. Get up out of the cold stone and walk out of the grave.

01:57:56

And we are out of time, Charlie. And I know that your website, your primary website is sixdaycreation .com.

01:58:01

What other? Let me give the other two. The other one is yourchristiananswers .com.

01:58:07

That's where you can get the two books I've talked about today. And the other one, which the book is not available yet, but it will be, will be

01:58:12

W3M, Without Three Miracles, Darwin's Dead. And that'll be the definitive book that basically has a subtitle that says,

01:58:22

Science Proves Atheistic Evolution is Impossible. And that ought to be a real provoker. All right.

01:58:27

Well, I look forward to you returning as either a guest or a co -host in the near future. Thank you,

01:58:32

Reverend Buzz Taylor, for being in the studio with me. My pleasure. I want you all to have a safe, blessed and joyful weekend and a truly blessed time worshiping our

01:58:44

Lord, God and Savior and King, Jesus Christ, this Lord's Day. But I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater