Conducting Debate to the Glory of God

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Okay, now it's the event that we've been waiting for. I read his biography last night, and I think
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I'll do it again because it has been 24 hours and there might be another book on here. Dr.
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James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona.
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He is a professor, having taught Greek, systematic theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics.
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He has authored or contributed to more than 20 books, including The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies.
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He is an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than 100 moderated debates with leading proponents of Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormonism, as well as critics such as Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and John Shelby Spong.
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He is an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church and has been married to Kelly for more than 28 years and has two children,
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Joshua and Summer. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, Dr. James White. Well, it is an honor to be with you again this evening.
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I do not have a digital presentation, hence no lasers tonight to worry any of you, but we are going to be talking about an important subject to me, one that at least
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I can speak to you from a rather personal perspective in regards to debate for the glory of God.
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We certainly live in a day where that term has come to mean things that, well, it didn't mean only about 100 years ago.
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The things that we call debates today that take place every two years or so, and especially every four years, the presidential elections, have little to do with what real debate actually is.
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Political debate is very often marked by showmanship, and I'm sure that there are a number of people today who have their doctorates in having written dissertations on the analysis of what happened when
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Kennedy and Nixon debated back in the 1960s, as I recall, and the fact that people who were listening by radio had one interpretation and people who watched it on television had another interpretation.
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And one thing is for certain, I never follow the advice that those folks come up with as to what color ties to wear during debates.
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If you've ever seen any of the debates that I've done, I break all of those rules. I don't really concern myself too much on that level.
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In fact, I've taken to wearing bow ties, which most definitely breaks all of those rules.
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But the type of debate we're talking about this evening isn't that kind of debate, even though there might be some people who think that, well, the reason you would engage in debate would be to convince the largest number of people.
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That's not why I debate. That might surprise postmodernists, that might surprise some modern evangelicals, that my purpose in debating is not to get the majority of the people sitting in front of me to agree with me.
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Because if I wanted to elicit a particular emotional response from the audience,
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I would not debate the way that I do. And it's not, for example, as you would have in many, unfortunately, legal situations where you have a jury.
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There's an entire realm of study of how to influence a jury and how to present things in such a way that a jury will hear it in a particular way.
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I have one member of the jury of any debate that I'm in that is first and foremost important to me.
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As a Christian, my first and foremost priority is to honor
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God. My concern is what God thinks of what I have said about him and his truth at the end of the evening.
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And that's my first and foremost priority. And I would suggest that for any
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Christian, that has to be your first and foremost priority, whether you are in a debate formally, as I have the opportunity of doing them, or whether that debate is you and one other person, you always need to remember you really have an audience of one.
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I have a friend by the name of Steve Camp, and his ministry is called Audience One Ministries.
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Because when he sings, he has an audience of one. He wants to please God. When I debate, I have an audience of one.
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I want to please God. Now, I want to see God use the debate to the benefit of his people and the salvation of his people.
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All of those things are true. But first and foremost, what would separate Christian debate from any other style of debate is that we want to glorify
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God. We want to see his truth proclaimed. And sometimes, my friends, the proclamation of God's truth is extremely unpopular in certain venues.
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I have walked into situations where I knew I was in the small minority. I had the very excellent news given to me.
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I debated a young man by the name of Bassam Zawadi, an Islamic apologist in London just a few weeks ago in January.
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Was that January or February? February now. Whenever it was. It was just a few weeks ago. And I mentioned during the course of the debate,
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I said, you know, we've been doing these debates here in London now. We've done a number of them. But the one thing we haven't been able to work out is we keep having these debates in Christian churches.
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I want to have a debate in a mosque. And I think it's time for the
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Muslims to step up and let's schedule the next time we debate here in London, let's do it in a mosque.
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And by that evening, we had a number of people who came up to us and said, you're exactly right.
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We're planning April of 2012, as long as Harold Camping's wrong, which
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I really think he is. I have debated him as well.
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If you've not heard that one, it wasn't a formal debate in the sense of in a location, but we did it on my webcast and it was a debate, equal times and things like that.
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So if you're worried about May of this year, I would go listen to that and you'll feel a little bit better.
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But anyway, we had a number of Muslims who came up to me afterwards and they said, we will pretty much guarantee that in April of 2012 when you come back, we will have the next debate at the
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East London Mosque. Now, if any of you know what the East London Mosque is, that is the largest mosque in London at this time.
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They're trying to build a larger one, but right now it's the largest mosque in London. I've gone into situations and will go into situations where I know that I am in the small minority as far as the people in that audience are concerned.
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And when I walk in there, I have to ask myself the question, what do I want to do this evening?
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What is my purpose in being here? Is my purpose to pump myself up and to have a new debate to show people and, oh, this will be really cool and this will be really neat?
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Is my purpose to make the folks there like me? What is my reason for being there?
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I have to think these things through. And I'm jumping right into that, and I really want to put that off for a little bit later application.
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But we as Christians should have different reasons for why we engage in debate, especially in our day where debate is considered to be, well, it's possibly offensive, and the last thing we want to do is offend anybody.
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That is what our culture says. And there are a lot of people who would say to me, I just don't think we should debate at all.
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That's just, I see no evidence that Christians should engage in debate. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that every single
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Christian should be running around engaging in debate. There are great scholars who have a calling of scholarship in their lives who should never debate.
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The reason for that is there are certain skills you have to have. Some of them you can learn.
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Some of them are natural. You have to be a multitasker. And there are some people who cannot multitask.
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I mean, I have friends, and sometimes they try to multitask, and it is a disaster.
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They're just not designed to work that way. Fine, then they probably shouldn't be involved in debate either. It's something
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I grew up doing. I grew up, something like this, even though Lane keeps, hi,
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I'm Lane. These things are second nature to me. I grew up doing radio. From the time
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I was 16 onwards, I was live on the air. This was back in the days when I actually had something called, for those of you who are young, let me explain this.
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It was called a turntable, and we had these big discs of something called vinyl.
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My daughter, when she first saw that word, thought it was vinyl. And you would put them on there, and you'd put a needle on it, and it would play music.
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That's how old I am. It's really, really interesting how these would work. And literally, starting in my junior year of high school,
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I would spend hours on the air playing big band music and doing the weather and the news and all the rest of that stuff.
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So I was always having to multitask. I always had microphones in front of me. I don't get nervous when
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I speak in front of audiences, whether it's 10 people or 3 ,000 people. And that means that when we engage in debate, then
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I'm sort of in my element. There are other folks so much smarter than I am, so far beyond me in their fields, and they get up in front of a microphone, and they have to try to keep track of notes and try to, you know, responses over here, and they have to be listening to the other person and thinking about what they're going to say, and they are left utterly lost.
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And that's fine. I'm not saying every person is supposed to be engaged in this type of thing, but I do believe that there is a place, biblically, for the public presentation and disputation in regards to the issue of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Now clearly, historically, this took place in the history of the church. And I don't have time to go through the history of the church, but just simply to remind you, as most of you probably would know, in the history of the
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Reformation, debates were extremely important in the promulgation, the propagation of the
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Reformed faith. You may be well aware of the fact that Ulrich Zwingli, in bringing the
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Reformation to the Swiss cantons, especially to Zurich, engaged in debate with his opponents, and it was via the means of debate based upon the word of God.
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Zwingli would stand there, and he would have three podiums in front of him, and on one he would have the Greek, and on one he would have the
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Hebrew, and on one he would have the Latin. And he would debate from the original language text, demonstrating what the gospel of Jesus Christ really was over against the traditions of men.
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And this was greatly used in spreading the Reformation at that time.
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The first written debate of the Reformation was that tremendous written debate between Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther on the nature of the will.
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And here you had written form of debate and much more in -depth form of debate in that type of context that was taking place.
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These things have been used by God in the past to the blessing of his people. Now obviously there are people who engage in debates who shouldn't, and as a result
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I have listened to many debates where Christians got creamed, where it was embarrassing to be a
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Christian in that audience that day, and I recognize that that takes place. At the same time,
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I recognize that there have been situations where the Christian side was incredibly victorious in a certain debate, and there were still people there that night who were influenced toward error.
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Any presentation of God's truth will have a response.
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It will have a reaction. And there are times when there are hypocrites, there are people who hold to a false faith, they do not truly believe in the
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Christian faith, but they claim to, and there are going to be times when the truth is spoken clearly and forcefully where people are going to move away from the truth because of the clarity with which it has been proclaimed.
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I realize that's going to happen. And so obviously I need to have a biblical foundation for doing what
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I do. What I want to do briefly is look at just a few texts and try to establish the fact that we need to be able to engage in these things, that God has used this as a means of the promulgation of his truth, not the only means, but a valuable means, and then make application to how we can do this to God's glory, even in a westernized culture where today the greatest sin is offense, and hence anyone who would say, well,
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I'm offended by what you said, well, then you shouldn't ever say anything ever again. That's where our society is going.
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We need to be able to see through that kind of thinking and to give a meaningful response. So turn with me, please, in the
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New Testament to Acts chapter 17. I want to just look at a few incidents in the life of the early church to establish the fact that it has been the apostolic example, the apostolic model to be open in the proclamation of the truth of God, even when that involves opposition speaking out against us, resulting in dialogue, in give and take.
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That's what debate is, specifically the types of debates that I do. You have to have equal time.
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You need to have a structure. You need to have a subject so that you can be focused. These are all things that I insist upon, and they're not just simply rules.
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It's not like the, some of you may have seen some of the collegiate debates where people stand up there and they just talk as fast as they can, they're trying to get as many things as they can, and that's not what
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I'm talking about in any way, shape, or form. What I am talking about is a structured discussion that has a specific subject that allows the people in the audience, and today, the amazing thing about this today is that very frequently it's not just the people sitting in the pews.
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For the first time, when we were in London, we managed to hook up with a server system over there, and even though it was a little bit sketchy, it's getting better and better, we had people watching this from all over the world while it was taking place.
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And of course, through the medium of YouTube, now I do a debate and you're going to have people, well, in fact, the thing that really excites me is that once I started using
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YouTube, we started watching the hits on our website, and all of a sudden,
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Indonesia exploded. Now why would that be relevant? Well, Indonesia is the largest majority Muslim nation in the world.
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I hope you realize that only about 19%, between 16 % and 20 % of the world's
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Muslims are Arabic. The large majority are in the
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Southeastern Asia area, and we started putting this stuff up on YouTube, and all of a sudden, people where I could never get to them in any other way are accessing this information.
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And so it's the audience, the whole reason you have rules and debate and you have a format and you have it organized is for the benefit of the audience.
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And when you see someone in a debate trying to drag the subject away from where it should be and introducing all sorts of extraneous things and not following the rules of debate, they are showing disrespect for the audience.
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I'm very, I'm really focused upon that, as you might be able to tell. But anyways, Acts chapter 17.
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Now, when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the
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Jews. And according to Paul's custom, he went to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the
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Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead and saying, this
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Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined
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Paul and Silas. So what is Paul doing? Paul is wise. He recognizes that he needs to start his work in any new area where there is already a foundation upon which he can build.
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And so he goes into the synagogue. But Paul is being followed around by Jews that are opposing his work.
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He already knows by this point in time. He's already, we've already had the experiences in Acts chapter 13, where Paul has gone into the synagogue and he's used that as the base of his operations and he's proclaimed the gospel and he's proclaimed who
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Jesus is. And he knows what is eventually going to happen. He knows there is going to be opposition.
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And you'll notice it says that on these three Sabbaths, he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the
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Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead. So he is actually engaging in dialogue and there is give and take and he's answering questions.
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Now, this wouldn't be a formal debate situation, but it is a situation where he is setting forth the claims of Christ, not just in a lecture type thing and saying, now, if you have any questions, please go to our website and fill out the question form and we might get around to eventually a type of situation like that.
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No, the questions would have been right there at that time. There would have been give and take. There would have been an appeal to a common source of information, the scriptures.
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And he was going to the scriptures demonstrating the key elements of the Christian faith, specifically that the
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Messiah, sometimes we get so used to the word Christ as a name in essence that we don't realize that what's actually being said here was the evidence that the
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Messiah had to suffer and rise again from the dead, saying, this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is, not was, but is the
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Messiah. So he is proclaiming the Messiahship of Jesus Christ to the Jews in the synagogue from the scriptures and he is seeking to persuade.
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Some of them were persuaded. Notice not all of them were. Not all of them were.
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I never go into a debate thinking that I am going to convince everybody in the room that I'm right.
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Anybody who thinks they're going to do that I think is just downright arrogant. Now, do I believe that God could do something miraculous in a situation like that?
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Of course, I would pray that he would. But you see, when I go into the room,
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I already recognize that the audience is divided up along certain lines.
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For those of you who don't know me, I've done about 108 moderated public debates so far starting in 1990.
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Not far from here. How far are we from Long Beach? Not too far? A few miles?
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Okay. At a Roman Catholic church in Long Beach in August of 1990 was where I did my first formal moderated public debate with Jerry Matitix, who was then with Catholic Answers out of San Diego, and we debated sola scriptura.
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Well, I debated sola scriptura. Jerry told his story and did other things. But that was the first of 13 debates that I've done with Jerry Matitix over the years since that period in time.
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And in the course of those debates, I've learned to figure out my audiences. And the numbers, the percentages will change, but I always have this in mind.
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There are certain people in the audience who are on my side, and they are not going to hear anything the other guy has to say.
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They have come there to hear me. They have come there. They are not open -minded on the subject.
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And it really doesn't matter what he says. They're not going to listen to what he says. And, of course,
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I realize there is a group on the other side, that it would not matter what
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I say. I could sit down with them and try to reason with them for hours. I could look right at them in the front pew, you right there.
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I could do whatever. They're not going to listen to me. Now, if I were to be upset about that, then
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I would never do a debate again because I'd be upset after every single debate. I just recognize there are people on both ends of the spectrum that are not going to hear anything that the other side has to say that night.
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Okay, that's a given. Then we have a group of people that are very strongly biased one way or the other.
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They might hear what the other guy has to say, but they have a very, very strong bias. They might be influenced if it's an extremely one -sided debate.
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And I've engaged in extremely one -sided debate. I've had some debates where the poor guy who was debating should never have gotten out of bed that morning.
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It was just that bad. And I've heard debates that went the other way. Thankfully, I don't think that's ever been my experience, but there has been times when
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I've heard debates where I remember one debate from Denver in 1993 where it was so bad.
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It was a Catholic fundamentalist Baptist debate, and the Baptists were so badly beaten that the
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Catholics had an altar call in the parking lot after the debate for people who were former
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Catholics to come back to the Catholic faith. Almost split the church. It was that bad. So I've seen both of them.
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And when you have a complete smackdown, there might be some people in the heavily biased area that might be influenced by that.
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But I realize still we're only looking at a small sliver in the middle where you have people on both sides that are really going to listen and weigh what the other side is saying.
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From my perspective, that's always going to be work of the Spirit of God. And that means there are going to be
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Christians in the audience who need to be edified that night. Can you imagine what it was like to be
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Barnabas and listen to Paul explaining the Messiahship of Jesus? Don't you think that would build you up in your faith just a little bit?
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I think it would. Can you imagine what it would be like to be one of these traveling companions, to be Timothy, young Timothy, when he first meets
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Paul? And to hear those long presentations he gave where he opened up the
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Scriptures? Oh, would I love to hear those presentations. How I would be encouraged in those things.
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And there's always those people in the debate that maybe they're wavering. Maybe they've been looking into these things.
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I've been contacted by many people over the years that said, I came to your debate and I was that close to joining whatever that religious group was, or I was that close to losing my faith.
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And I was edified. I was strengthened. I was reaffirmed in the faith by what took place in that debate.
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At the same time, there's that all -important group on the other side where the Spirit of God has been active in that person's life and they need to hear a clear and forceful presentation of the
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Gospel of Jesus Christ. And one thing I always try to do, I will not dishonor the person
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I'm debating or the audience by artificially doing this.
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But if I can do so in an appropriate fashion, I will always bring the
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Gospel of Jesus Christ to bear, especially in my closing statements. And so there are those in that sliver on this side.
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They might be a little bit biased against me, but they're there to hear. And they're there because the
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Holy Spirit of God has them there. And this is part of the means that he uses to bring the
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Gospel to bear. They need to hear both sides. That is what is so special about debate, is that anybody can make a good presentation for even the silliest belief.
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I mean, doesn't the Internet and YouTube and cable television prove that to you?
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How many of you have seen some of those amazing presentations about these amazing products that you just can't live without?
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And oh, the people are excited and look what this can do. How many of you have a ShamWow? Hmm? Hmm? How many of you will admit, it sounded so good, but you know what?
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It's like every other cloth you've ever had. Okay? But it sounded so good when there was just one side being presented.
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And anybody can do that. I mean, sometimes, you know, let me use an example. Mormonism. The Mormon doctrine of God.
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God is an exalted man named Elohim. He lives on a planet that circles a star named
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Kolob, and his first begotten spirit child, one of his many wives, was Jehovah, who's a separate god from Elohim.
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And Satan's his spirit brother. And they took a vote as to how the earth would be organized and whether you'd have free will or not free will.
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And the Calvinist was Satan and the Arminian was Jesus. And, you know,
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I mean, when you put the whole thing together, it's just this weirdest, wildest theology you'd ever come up with.
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But you know what? There are Mormons who can make it sound downright believable, as long as you only have one side being presented.
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And that's why I learned a long, long time ago, cross -examination is the heart of debate.
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When I first started debating, I had no idea what in the world I was doing. I really didn't. I mean, I had never taken a class in debate.
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I had never been trained in debate. I had never read a book on debate. The closest
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I had come, and the dean might find this interesting. I, in fact,
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I have the video of this. Lane, I'm going to have to get you the video of this. We'll have to put this on YouTube sometime. I have the video from 1981.
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1981, I was the prosecuting attorney in the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald at the
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Independence High School in Glendale, Arizona. There you go. Thank you.
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Thank you very much. I've never gotten applause for that, but thank you very much. We did a senior project in government class.
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Remember government? Is government required out here in California, too? You had to take a government class. You had to pass it in high school.
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That meant that it really had to be dumbed down because the teachers didn't want some of the people there the next year. It was a really boring class.
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I know. I was class valedictorian. I was the guy you love to hate. It was the way it was, but I didn't need extra credit.
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I had 106 % of the points possible. I didn't really care. Some people wanted to do the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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One day, I was sitting around. I was reading a book or doing something. I realized the next nine people on the honor roll, 2 through 10, were all on the defense of Lee Harvey Oswald.
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I thought, this is going to be boring. All of a sudden, an idea hit me. I've got senioritis.
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I'm bored. This would be fun. I signed up for the prosecution. I lived the
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Kennedy assassination for the rest of my senior year. I went out to ASU, and I got the
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Warren Commission report. I got all my witnesses lined up. The dean would love this. You got a mock trial coming up,
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Lane? We had a mock trial. We had a judge. We had the jury. The jury, unfortunately, turned out to be drawn from our fellow classmates and included, for example, the girlfriend of one of the defense attorneys, which is why it was 11 to 1 for conviction.
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It wasn't exactly how you wanted to pick your jury pool. Every one of my witnesses,
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I had a binder with their Warren Commission report, their testimony for each one.
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We got together, and I drilled them on their... I mean, I went nuts on this. I loved doing that particular event.
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Believe it or not, thick, full hair, huge 1981 glasses.
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Remember glasses? Why did we wear windshields in the 1980s? I'm not really sure why that is. We had these big, huge glasses and bell -bottom pants.
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Oh, it was great. I've got to show you that video. It's pretty awesome. That was the only thing
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I had done before I walked into a debate. My thought was, I need to get as much stuff out as I can.
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I had these opening statements, and I read them, and I read them real fast, and I was getting all this information out.
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Then it came time for the cross -examination, and I just sort of stumbled into it. It was sort of like, well, you said this, and what about this?
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It took me a year or two of doing this to realize, you know what? There's this excellent text in Proverbs 18, and it says,
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The first one to present his argument seems right until his neighbor comes along and examines him.
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And I started realizing, anybody can get up and give a presentation. Anybody can get up and make statements.
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It's when you have to answer the other guy's questions and demonstrate the consistency of your position.
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That is what debate allows that our society desperately needs.
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How many people are running around, and they're, you know, today, they go to YouTube. The first coverage
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I saw of the Japan quake was on YouTube. And that's where people go now.
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And people will come up to me and say, well, I saw this guy on YouTube, and he said this. And I saw this girl on YouTube, and she said that.
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And now I'm confused. It's when you see those positions brought together, and examination takes place.
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That is the absolutely invaluable element of debate that you just can't get anywhere else.
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And, in fact, that's why we have a hard time getting certain people to debate, because they know their position could never stand up to cross -examination.
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They know that their position is completely dependent upon a monologue, not a dialogue.
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And so there are a number of people, and I could name names, big names, that have long -standing challenges to engage in public debate on key and important issues.
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They will never do it, because they know what would happen if they did. They know that they have to bank upon having an audience that only hears one side at a time, because they know if you come and you listen to this guy, and then you go and you listen to that guy, and then you go back and listen to this guy, well, he might be able to answer some of the things that that guy says in a certain way, but then you go back to this guy.
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You see, there's always that ambiguity. Oh, if I could just hear them debate, hear them have to answer each other's questions directly.
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That's the value. And this is not something that's new. Folks, I didn't bring it with me, but I remember years ago
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I was reading a book that Soledad Gloria put out, and it was about the education of ministers.
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Well, it wasn't about that, but it was mentioning the education of ministers in the 17th century in England.
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And in the high end of education back then, a person who would just be being trained to be a pastor at a place like Oxford or Cambridge or things like that, to go out and pastor in a small church in a rural area, which most of England still is a rural area, by the time they were a junior in their studies, and of course it's not quite directly related to our years of education today, but by the time they were a junior in their study, you know what they had to be able to do?
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You might say, well, I bet you they had to be able to read stuff in Greek. Yeah, they did, but that wasn't all.
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By the time they were a junior, they had to be able to debate in Greek.
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Now, I've taught Greek for years. I cannot debate in Greek. But by the time they were a junior, they had to debate in Greek, in the original languages.
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That was what was expected of people. You wonder why people, you pick up books like by John Owen and go, wow, that's deep.
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Is it really that that's so deep? Or should we hold up a mirror to ourselves and go, wow, that's so shallow.
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I mean, seriously, they were not nearly as distracted from the deep things of theology as we are.
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They were able to do that kind of thing. Hearing both sides presented allows you to weigh the real evidence and search for the most important thing, and that is one word, consistency.
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Consistency. You cannot define the word truth without using the word consistency.
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And debate allows you to demonstrate that your opponent is inconsistent.
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Some of you have heard a phrase that I invented. I think
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I invented it. I've never heard anybody else, well, I've heard other people using it now, but I used it,
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I don't know, three or four times in a debate that took place, not far from here, in May of 2006 at Biola University.
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And that was a debate with Islamic apologist Shabbir Ali. Now, how many of you were,
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I asked last night, how many of you were at that debate in 2006? Okay.
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Really? Bo, you were there? Oh, that's right, you were right down front, you had security on your back. Yeah, okay,
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I remember. How many of you have been blessed by the debate with Shabbir Ali from 2006? Well, the man right back there,
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Bo, you need to say thanks to him, he's the one that arranged all of it. So, anyway, in that debate,
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I used a line that I have used many times since then, and that is, inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.
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Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument. Shabbir Ali is a great speaker, and he's a very intelligent man, but he uses one standard for Christianity, and he uses another standard for Islam.
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Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument. And we have, as Christians, to learn, we have to learn to recognize inconsistencies, and the only way to bring them out is via cross -examination.
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I know that's where the debate takes place now, and because Paul allowed for that conversation to take place.
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We know that the Jews mightily opposed him, but according to his custom, he still did this.
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Now, continue on down to the end of the chapter. You know what happens at Berea, and you know that those at Berea were more noble -minded, they checked out the things that Paul was saying by the
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Scriptures. Paul goes to the Areopagus, and you remember what happens there, and they start mocking him.
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And yet, even after Paul's presentation of the resurrection, notice in verse 33, so Paul went out of their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were
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Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. And so Paul is still going out, and he's even going to the unbelievers there, and he's presenting to people a message he knew, he knew, he knew would cause them to mock.
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But he would not compromise. He still presented the resurrection, even though he knew that they would laugh at this.
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And then in chapter 18, we encounter Priscilla and Aquila, Aquila and his wife
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Priscilla. And you'll notice that verse 4 says he was reasoning in the synagogue every
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Sabbath, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. Once again, there was this effort on his part.
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But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the Word, solemnly testifying to the
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Jews that Jesus was the Christ. But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them,
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Your blood be on your heads, I am clean, from now on I will go to the Gentiles. Then he left there and went to the house of a man named
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Titius Justus, a worshiper of God, whose house was next to the synagogue. Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the
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Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians, when they heard, were believing, were baptized. And he now begins this ministry there, where he is devoting himself to the ministry of the
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Word, and now explaining these things to the Gentiles. There does come a time when you have to shake out your clothes, in essence.
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I do not believe in doing debate simply for the sake of debate. I do debate because I see an opportunity for a meaningful dialogue.
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There are some people I won't debate anymore. I've debated some people. And once was enough.
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It's plain, obvious, and clear to me. Not only are they not listening, but they are not capable of presenting their side with sufficient clarity or insight, or even engaging the subject well enough for it to be useful to the audience.
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So I recognize there are certain of my debates that have been very, very useful, and certain that have been less useful, and most of that has been dependent upon the person
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I was debating. Sometimes I know the person is going to be a real challenge, because they're very experienced, and they've done lots of debates, they've written lots of books.
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Great. Those are the debates I actually enjoy the most, because I can prepare the best for them. But there are other times.
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I did a debate a few years ago. The seminary that I've taught for since 1995 called me up and said,
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Hey, we were just contacted by a secular college across the bay.
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This is Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. And they want to have a debate on gay marriage.
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And nobody up here wants to do it, but we thought of you. Which I sort of chuckled about. And we'll fly you up, and we'll put you up at the seminary there in Mill Valley, and rent you a car, and we'll send you off to do it.
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So I said, Hey, that would be great. And so you can actually watch this debate. It's on YouTube, the entirety of it there.
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It's fairly short. But I did a debate at the secular university very close to Berkeley.
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And, you know, it was mildly interesting, but my opponent just wasn't able to engage a lot of the subjects to make it really biblically interesting.
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And then there are other people that I've debated that just simply rant and rave. And there's just no reason,
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I have found, to continue engaging those particular folks. So you have to make some decisions.
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I don't want to... I was falsely accused by a rather well -known individual back in January of 2010 of engaging in...
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My debates were like the Jerry Springer Show. Now, this is a fellow who has stood in a chapel at Liberty University and allowed himself to be tased.
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So I'm not really sure who is in the Jerry Springer Show thing or what, that particular mode. But I just contrasted the cross -examination period with Shabir Ali from Biola, with what this man himself does.
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The Jerry Springer Show isn't something that I want. There have been some very pointed debates. There have been some times when some folks...
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I did a debate on the Mass with Robert Syngenis in 1999 on Long Island.
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He got a little on the ornery side. Now, some of you have seen some of the last debates
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I did with Robert. Can't even remember, realize it's the same guy. But I even had a 14 -year -old come up to me the next day after the debate and go,
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Why did that man hate you so much? I mean, he was just... He was really, really, really angry.
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And the audience can see that. They can tell that. And by the way, people ask me, How do you handle that when people get so angry with you?
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I don't know why. But from the very first debate that I did, when
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Jerry Madetik started getting rather animated because I wasn't getting flustered by his approach,
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I don't know why this is. It's just the way that I am. But when I'm in a debate and the other guy is getting flustered,
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I get all the more calm. I figure, Rope, you want more rope? Here, here's more rope.
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Want some more? Sure. I'm not sure how to tie the noose. I'll leave that to you. You know. I don't know why it is, but when people get angry and upset and stuff like that,
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I just become more focused. It's just the way God made me. I don't know why it is. It's just how it works.
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That's why some other people... My fellow elder at my church attended one of my debates, one of the early, early, early ones, back in 1990, 1991, somewhere around there.
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And he told me honestly after the debate, he said, I am not called to debate because if someone talked to me the way that that man talked to you,
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I would walk over to him and punch him in the nose. So, it's good that you probably don't debate.
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That's a good thing. We don't want to be starting a bail fund deacon fund for the pastors.
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So, you know. But that's just the way that I am. And it's not just some tactic
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I have. It's just the way I respond to that type of thing. I become very focused and much more calm about that.
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I'm not sure if that's exactly how Paul did it, especially when he says the things that he said here.
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But he encountered that kind of opposition. But notice what happens at the end of this chapter, end of chapter 18.
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Look at starting at verse 24. Now, a Jew named
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Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man. That means
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God had given him the capacity to speak. Came to Ephesus, and he was mighty in the scriptures.
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Now, the only scriptures he could have been mighty in at this time were, of course, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Ketuvim, the Old Testament. This man had been instructed in the way of the
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Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John.
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Now, how does that work? I guess he may have been one of those. There seems to have been sort of a
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John group. Remember Acts chapter 19, the very next chapter, Paul's going to run into a group of disciples of John, and all they knew is the baptism of John.
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They had evidently run into his prophetic ministry, and they went out, and maybe they knew something about how
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John had testified that Jesus was the Lamb of God, but they didn't know about the crucifixion. We don't know the exact level of his knowledge, but we know he knows the scriptures, and he had been instructed at least partially in the way of the
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Lord. He was only acquainted with the baptism of John, and even with that, think about it for a moment.
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Even with that, he began to speak out boldly in the synagogue. Wow, how could you do that?
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I mean, we have so much more than he did, and most of us would be scared to death to try to prove from the
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Old Testament that Jesus was the Messiah. And all he has is that, and he speaks out boldly in the synagogue.
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But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.
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Now, I understand that some of you earlier this week were at the Shepherds Conference here in the
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LA area. You already know all there is to know about Apollos because Al Mohler spoke on this text, so if you'd like to go outside, there might be some refreshments or something.
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I'll be done with this text in a few minutes, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.
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And when he wanted to go across to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him, and when he had arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace, for he powerfully refuted the
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Jews in public, demonstrating by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. Now, a couple things.
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It is wonderful that Apollos was willing to learn.
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It is wonderful that when Priscilla and Aquila, who evidently were not nearly as good a speaker as Apollos was, but you see, he wasn't enamored with his speaking ability.
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He listened, he learned, he was a mathetes, a disciple, a follower.
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He was willing to be instructed. In 1993, the
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Pope came to Denver, Colorado for World Youth Day, and my little ministry, me and Rich Pierce, we drove up to Colorado to pass out tracts to the hundreds of thousands of young people that had arrived there.
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I could tell you some fascinating stories about passing out tracts, the pilgrims going to the
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Mass, and how we came up with the... They were walking a long ways, they were tired and stuff, and so we came up with special ways, special lightweight tracts to take on your way, you know, stuff like that, and people liked that and they took it.
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We had all sorts of really interesting conversations at that time. But while we were up there, I did two debates with Jerry Matitix, one at Denver Seminary and then one at a
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Presbyterian church there in Denver, most famously known as being the location of John Denver's funeral, so I'm not really sure what the connection there is.
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But anyway, we did like seven and a half hours of debate at that particular point in time.
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The first night was at Denver Seminary, and I had my presentation and I had timed it out.
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Man, I'd sit there in my office and, you know, remember, I grew up doing radio, so I knew how to time things and I could speak very quickly and stuff like that.
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After the debate was over, a man came up to me and he said,
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I really appreciated the debate. It was very interesting and all. May I suggest something to you? A lot of people like to come up and they want to have suggestions.
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And sometimes, you know, you wonder a little bit, but sure. He said, you know, you got a lot into your opening statement, but you didn't really establish a relationship with your audience.
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Might I suggest it might be better to start off a little more slowly, establish a relationship rather than worrying about getting quite so much crammed in that opening statement.
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Now, there's a part of you that wants to go, oh, yeah, well, how many debates have you done?
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There's a part of you that wants to go, why should I listen to you? But when
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I heard that, I thought, you know, he might be onto something there. And so the very next night, the very next night, when
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I started off, even though I did have an opening statement,
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I had aimed it for about a minute less. So I would have the time to not necessarily have an artificial, hey,
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I'm your chummy, chummy, chummy type opening, but I just happened to look up and we were at the
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Presbyterian Church now and there was a stained glass window up in one corner. And so I said,
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I very much appreciate you being here this evening. I want to apologize to Jerry. I said, it seems
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I have a real advantage here this evening because, as you will notice, right up there in the stained glass window is
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Alpha and Omega, and I'm the head of Alpha and Omega Ministries. And so I realize we're in a position here where I have the advantage, you know, and everybody sort of chuckled, you know, and it sort of broke the ice.
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And I really sensed the audience was listening more to what I had to say once I got into the stuff because they realized that I was actually a human being, that I could observe the world around me.
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I wasn't just one of those guys who's just, oh, here's my notes, I'm going to read what my notes were. Did any of you see the debate that I did live on Revelation TV from London just a few weeks ago?
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A couple of you might have seen that. My opponent, it was on King James Onlyism, my opponent was the first one to go.
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He had a 20 -minute opening statement typed out and he sat there. Now, this is television, folks, a live audience, live studio audience and television, and he read a 20 -minute opening statement.
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Okay, what did I do? I didn't have an opening statement. I couldn't stand up.
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I would have been more comfortable, you know, being a little peripatetic and walking around a little bit and things like that. Normally, I'm doing this number, but since we have a camera down there and I don't think
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Sue or Elaine wants to be going, trying to keep me in the picture. I've been sort of staying in one spot.
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But we were sitting down and I just turned to the audience and I started talking to them and explained to them why
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I didn't agree with what my opponent had said and explained to them why I didn't feel it was consistent and I established that connection.
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And so I was willing to learn and it has been extremely helpful over the years since then.
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Now, that doesn't mean that everybody who comes up to me, well, I would suggest that you wear all pink ties. Well, okay,
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I'm not really sure I'm going there, but, you know, not all suggestions are equal. But Apollos was willing to learn.
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Even though he could have easily said, well, you're not near the speaker I am. He didn't do that.
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Notice what happens. He learns. He wants to go across to Achaia.
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When he arrives, what does he do? He greatly helped.
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He aided those who had believed through grace. They had believed through grace.
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But, you see, grace uses means. I'm a Reformed Baptist and we use the term the means of grace.
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God has given us gracious means by which he grows us.
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The church, the proclamation of the word, the ministry of the word in our home and our lives, the ordinances of the church, these are means of grace that God uses to edify his people.
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And one of the ways that these people were greatly helped was what?
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It was public debate. He powerfully refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating by the scriptures that Jesus was the
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Christ. He used the God -given gifts that were his, which before he hadn't had all the equipment, he hadn't had all the knowledge.
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But once he was given the knowledge, he was willing to use that knowledge to edify the saints.
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He powerfully refuted the Jews, not in private, but in public.
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Now, I can guarantee you the Jews did not sit there quietly and allow him to do so. There was give and take.
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In fact, I would imagine there was loud argumentation. But he did so demonstrating by the scriptures that Jesus was the
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Messiah. There you have, I think, a very clear example of new believers who needed to see the faith established in debate.
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Now, if I had more time, and I see the clock moving fairly quickly, and if I had more time,
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I would focus upon some of the other applications that we can make. Today, I was speaking with some of the brethren at the law school concerning the classical passage, 1
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Peter 3, verse 15, which tells us to always be ready to give a defense, prosopologion, a defense, a reasoned answer for the hope that's within us, yet with gentleness and reverence.
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And how that text starts off with the command to sanctify or set apart as holy the
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Messiah as Lord in our hearts. That's what's required of the person who is going to engage in apologetics.
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That is certainly what is required of the person who is going to stand before an audience and represent the Christian faith.
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Christ must be set aside as Lord. We must do so under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
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And we should never be afraid to proclaim that Lordship, no matter what that might mean in the popular viewing of the debate.
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Now, let me explain what I just said there. You need to hear what I'm saying. I know what people would find to be convincing in debate given the nature of postmodern
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Western culture in the United States. And there are times that I have people contact me and say, why didn't you use this argument?
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Why didn't you say that? Why didn't you point out this fact or that fact? And sometimes it's because, look, the toughest thing about doing debate is you make your opening statement.
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He makes his opening statement. Now he starts, while he's making his opening statement, you're taking notes.
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Where is he going? How is he interacting with what I've said? Or if you're the second person going, you have to be listening to his opening statement and going, how is he in any way undercutting the presentation
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I was intending to make? How can I make changes to mine that will make it better fit in regards to what he has said?
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Then you're listening to the rebuttals. You're taking notes. And you have about five seconds after he gets done to stand up.
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And in that five seconds, well, obviously, you're doing it during his entire rebuttal. But you have to be sitting there prioritizing, what am
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I going to address? Because you ever notice something about debates? My rebuttal time is about half of his presentation time.
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There is no way you can respond to everything. It's not possible. You have to prioritize what is most important in light of what you want to accomplish in that debate.
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And some people will make different decisions than I will as to what they're going to respond to.
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And I have to, look, after every single debate, you sit back and you go, well, you know, I guess I might have been able to say that.
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Maybe I should have said this. You can pick yourself to death if you want to. But you have to, in that brief period of time, decide what your priorities are.
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And if you don't have a clear idea going into the debate what you want to accomplish, it can be very difficult to do that.
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But if you have a clear idea, then you have guidelines in your mind already and you go, okay, he's going off on this direction.
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That's irrelevant. We cut that off. We stay focused upon this. So you have to make these decisions.
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But there are times, honestly, I well know, oh, boy, if I brought this up, there would be a lot of people in this audience that would go, oh, boy, he got him there.
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Oh. There are times there are really clear gotcha lines.
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Now, sometimes there have been gotcha lines that I didn't even see coming. Some of you know, some of you have seen a lot of my debates.
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There was a situation where I was debating Jerry Matitix. And it was the first of the big debates we used to do on Long Island, on Roman Catholicism.
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And it was on the doctrines of Mary. It was a long debate. We did like five segments to it. And it was really, really long.
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It was a difficult debate. And I was pushing Jerry. He kept saying, well, the early church believed these things.
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Jerry, give us some examples. And finally he said, well, Mr. White, not every early church father needs to talk about this.
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And I said, Jerry, I'll take just one. And the whole audience broke out in applause and laughter, because they were just as frustrated as I was at that point, because they kept hearing him dodging the same questions over and over again.
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It was a gotcha that I didn't see coming. In the same series, I was debating Father Peter Stravinskas.
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And it was on the subject of purgatory. It ended up being one of the clearest debates we've ever done on the nature of justification.
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Really, really useful. And during cross -examination, once again, it was going to the text of Scripture.
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We were in 1 Corinthians 3. And I just walked through. The use of that text in defense of purgatory is just itself indefensible.
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And I walked through it and I said, well, if this is this and this is this, then how do you answer this question?
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And he was completely flummoxed. And you could just hear the audience. There was just silence and then some laughter from some people.
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And it was one of those gotcha situations. But there are other times when, for example, debating the subject of the
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Roman Catholic priesthood with Mitchell Pacwa, there would have been some gotcha moments if I had been willing to throw out stuff about what was going on in certain scandals at that time, had no interest in doing it, and didn't do it.
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There are a lot of people who would have. How do you make the decision as to what you're going to say and what you're not going to say?
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You have to make decisions as to why you're doing the debate in the first place. What is the final conclusion that you want to have to that debate?
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And I'll have to admit, as I have gotten older, and, you know, the old videos of my first debates with my thinning hair and my dark goatee and the documentation of how
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I was really skinny in the 1990s because I was riding a bike, and then I became a weightlifter and then a Jesse Ventura debater.
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And now I'm back down to a bike rider debater. And, you know, it's sort of fun to watch that transition over time and stuff like that.
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But through all of that, I've started to realize, as I've gotten older, what
01:00:01
I want to do in debate is I want to produce a body of work that will actually have relevance to edifying the people of God after I'm gone.
01:00:14
I've been greatly edified by great men of God who lived before I was born.
01:00:22
And when I think about the things they wrote and the things they did, I've had to ask myself the question, why is that still relevant to me now?
01:00:31
Why has that been so useful to me now? Oh, yeah, there are great men of God alive today that have been of great assistance to me, no question about it.
01:00:41
But why is it that when I read the first book of the Institutes, the Christian religion, it feels like the ink is going to smudge?
01:00:48
How can you write something that is still going to have so much relevance 400 and 500 years after you're dead?
01:00:56
That's something special. And especially since about 2005, 2006, something that just consumes me is all of those believers that live in lands like Indonesia or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Pakistan, and they don't have the freedom to come to a place like this and be instructed.
01:01:21
They have almost no meaningful books of theology in their language, but many of them have a computer and many of them can understand
01:01:31
English. Many people outside the United States learn that as a second language, unlike most of us that only have one language or don't do very well with that one.
01:01:41
And there's now a way where I can assist them, and it's so exciting for me to get contact from people outside the
01:01:50
United States. I was in Brisbane, Australia in 2009, going back down there in October, and I was in Brisbane and this man came up to me and he said,
01:02:02
I was converted a few years ago and ended up in an Aryan Baptist church.
01:02:11
There's all kinds of Baptists, aren't there? An Aryan Baptist church.
01:02:16
They denied the deity of Christ and he said, you know, I just knew there was something. I was truly converted.
01:02:22
I knew there was something wrong with this, but I didn't know how to demonstrate it. And so I went on to YouTube.
01:02:28
Now that can be a dangerous thing to do, okay? You'll run into that lame chaplain guy on YouTube and that's really scary.
01:02:34
And oh man, you know, you never know what you're going to run into there. But he put in the deity of Christ and guess who he stumbled across, but a silly looking guy of Scottish extraction, bald dude from Phoenix.
01:02:46
And he said, your videos explain to me why
01:02:52
I believe what I believed about the deity of Christ. And now I'm in a solid church. I got out of that. When I hear things like that,
01:02:59
I go, that's what I want to continue investing my life in. We have so many fellow believers that live under the heel of Islamic repression, and they don't have the opportunity of going to learn about all the backgrounds and all the things that demonstrate the deity of Christ and the crucifixion, the
01:03:19
Trinity, and all the reliability, the texts of the new Testament and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But I can try to get that out to them.
01:03:30
Now I can do it like we did last night. We didn't have a debate last night. We just did a presentation, but you know what?
01:03:38
You can sit and watch a presentation. That's one thing. But what sticks in the minds of most people is when they see something like a debate with a
01:03:47
Bart Ehrman or a John Dominic Crossan, people that the world says are the greatest critics of Orthodox Christianity.
01:03:58
And when the Orthodox believing, inerrancy believing, inspiration believing, yeah, downright fundamentalist guy can stand toe to toe with that critic.
01:04:10
There are a lot of people that are encouraged to dive in and learn more themselves to do that same thing.
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Apollos helped those who had believed through grace. Public debate can be a means of grace, a means that God uses to edify his people and to call sinners to Jesus Christ.
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But please recognize something. Whenever the gospel is proclaimed, if it is proclaimed with clarity, if you are not left with a neutral ground to hide in, and if the gospel is proclaimed clearly, it won't leave you a neutral ground.
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If you really know who Jesus is, there is no neutral ground about who he is. You can't just go, well, I'm undecided.
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No, he's either Lord or you're rejecting his lordship. If he is your creator, you cannot be neutral about him.
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If it's presented in that way, there's going to be one of two reactions. One depends upon the grace of God.
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The other is very natural. I expect my debates to create apostates.
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That's called a pause for effect. You're supposed to be thinking about what
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I just said, not about your stomach or anything else. Did you hear what I said?
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I expect my debates to create apostates. I preached a sermon a few months ago at PRBC.
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It's still on the YouTube website. The blessings of apostasy. Blessings of apostasy, what do you mean?
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Remember that text in 1 John? They went out from us so that it might be demonstrated they were not truly of us, for if they had truly been of us, they would have remained with us.
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But they went out so it might be demonstrated they really weren't of us. There are people in our midst for various reasons, family reasons, cultural reasons, whatever it might be.
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They profess faith in Christ, but they do not know him. And when the word of God is brought to bear upon them, it bothers them.
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It chafes against them. And if they are truly not regenerate, then they are going to be attracted to the things of the world.
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And the religions of men, false religion, what is the very essence of false religion? It is attractive to whom?
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The unregenerate man. Isn't that what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1? The preaching of the cross is to them who are what?
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Perishing what? Foolishness. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
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Same message, different reactions. Paul knew, he understood that the message of a crucified
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Messiah would be a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but that's the very message
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God uses in his own wisdom to save his people. And so I recognize that if I debate properly, if I remain focused upon the glory of God, the clarity of the proclamation of his message, my debating will provide opportunities for false professors to finally demonstrate they really are.
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If it's clear, if the issues are brought out that clearly, there will be people who say they're on my side, but they're really not, who's going to hear the other side and go,
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I like that, I think I'll follow that now. I know that's going to happen. And you see, most of the opposition that I get to debating is from people who just don't want to rock the boat.
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We don't want to find out. They don't want to really deal with the reality that there are false professors in the church.
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So let's just not rock the boat. Let's just all sing our nice hymns and stay in our little conclaves and let's not engage the world.
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Well, I just don't think you can do that. You know, it used to be. Really?
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Wow. Yeah, it's still running. I'll try to wrap up here and then we'll take some questions.
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It used to be Jehovah's Witnesses were able to very tightly control the information that went to their people.
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You know, the Jehovah's Witnesses have some pretty embarrassing history. 1914, 1915, 1918, 1925, 1943, 1975 to be specific.
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And so it would be, now you can throw Harold Campion for the fun of it, 2011, but it's not a
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Jehovah's Witness. Anyhow, it might become one on May 22nd of 2011, but you never know.
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They could control their people because you were never allowed to talk to apostates, you couldn't talk to a disfellowshipped
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Jehovah's Witness, and they could control the information so they could edit their books, take out false prophecies, all sorts of stuff like that.
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You know what? They can't do that anymore. You know why? It's not just cable television. It's that thing that's accessible on your smartphone.
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They can't control the internet and all the information their people are going to be exposed to.
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And that has fundamentally changed the way that they do their theology. The cultural situation they find themselves in has changed the reality of how the
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Watchtower Society does false teaching. And just as it is the case that the
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Watchtower has to be aware of that, we as believers, we cannot any longer think that we can just simply try to protect our people from those nasty, terrible atheists out there.
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I cannot tell you how many times we send our young people off to local community college, the local university, and we send them naked and unarmed because we haven't talked about the key issues within the church, and they've never seen their faith actually defended successfully against the silly arguments that that first -year philosophy professor is going to be throwing at them when they're a freshman at the university.
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We can't live in a conclave anymore. This is where God has put us.
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This is the time that God has put us in. And we're either going to be silent or we're going to join the
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Mennonites or the Amish and hide from the world. And as they have found out, that doesn't work.
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Or we're going to start talking about these things, and we're going to engage the world. I don't know why there are not more people who do what
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I do because there are a lot of people who are a lot smarter than I am, and they're better speakers than I am.
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I am encouraged in seeing some young folks coming up. There needs to be the next generation.
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And I don't know what the generation after that is going to be facing in our land. I don't know how much longer we're going to have the freedom to do this.
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I'll have to admit that when I go to some places like the United Kingdom and Canada, the thought crosses my mind,
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I wonder if I can debate on every subject in that place anymore. Could I debate homosexuality and gay marriage in the
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UK and Canada with the freedom I once did? I don't know. I've heard a lot of stories about people getting sued and hate crimes laws.
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And there are people standing trial in Europe right now for saying things about Mohammed that I have said from pulpits.
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The thought crosses your mind. And you and I both know that there are people in our government today that would like to see people like myself have their freedom of speech restricted in certain areas.
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And what if I do stand up and say Mohammed was a false prophet? It seems like in Western culture you can say
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Jesus was wrong about his return and you can have tax money spent to blaspheme Jesus, but don't you dare say a word about Mohammed.
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Even if I can prove it, even if I can go into the Quran and say, well, here's what he said and here's the reality, how long will
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I have the freedom to say those things? I don't know. But as long as we have the freedom, we need to be taking advantage of it.
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And that's why I believe we can debate to the glory of God, but it needs to be focused upon that.
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Not upon the gotcha moments, not upon trying to play upon people's emotional heartstrings, but it needs first and foremost to be honoring to God, and then when it's honoring to God, he will use his spirit to accomplish his purposes.
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We can leave that to him. That is my great confidence in engaging in this work. Now, Lane, there might be some questions.
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There may not. Let's see what we have. Everyone, let's thank