Apologetics & Debate: The Character in Debate

All right, we're live, uh, no, you know, passing the torch intro.

Uh, Haps should be back in here after he gets, gets the streaming on, on his.

Uh, so none of the cool music and whatnot, uh, we're doing it on the Striving Fraternity

stream yard because Haps couldn't get it set up in time, uh, on

his.

So he's going to try to stream it to his, don't ask me what he's doing, but I'm sure he's got it figured out.

So we're going to start with our class.

We'll pick up where we were from last week.

So again, this class is on apologetics and debate.

This is the second session where we're going to look at the character of debate.

We're going to still pick up a little bit where we left off as far as the introduction.

And so if you guys are watching this, you haven't seen, uh, the previous,

uh, the previous court class that we did.

Uh, well, I guess you can watch this one live and you can go back and watch last week's class.

Uh, so this is an eight week class.

We're going to be covering, uh, basically we said, we're going to cover the character of debate.

We're going to talk about, uh, hermeneutics.

We're going to talk about logic.

Uh, for those who are part of passing the torch, if you're not part of it, then you can go on Facebook and,

and join from there and learn more about passing the torch.

But it is where a ministry where some of the older, and I really don't like the fact that I'm

in the older category.

I think that's just wrong.

Uh, but where some of us older evangelists, uh, try to pass on.

Uh, maybe I think, I think I was invited in so I could pass on mistakes made and so that people don't

make the same mistakes I made and learn from my blunders.

I think that, I think that's what I'm here for.

But, uh, the goal of this is to be able to pass on from an older generation, uh, to a younger

generation, different things, skills as far as, uh, apologetics.

And so the course we're in right now, apologetics and debate, it is that because, well,

a lot of apologetics is going to require some of the same skill sets as debate.

And so we're going through this and I, I think the way this class

came about actually was I do a live stream on Thursday nights called apologetics live.

Uh, if you want to join or ask questions there or watch it, just go to apologeticslive .com.

But in that, uh, what I do is I, because that show is open to

anybody, what ends up happening is anyone can come in when they're prepared for a debate and I am not,

which is really fun.

I actually kind of like that sometimes.

Oh, there's Haps.

So we'll bring Mr. Haps in and there goes Haps.

He just that quick that he is a technology wizard and he was

able to, I mean, that was maybe one second of Haps.

And that was all that he could, you know, handle.

Uh, he'll figure out how to get back in.

I'm sure somehow.

Uh, and if not, we're just going to make fun of Haps until he does come in.

Um, but, uh, one of the things that happens, what people ask me all the time with apologetics live is how,

how do I prepare a show when I might get a black Hebrew Israelite or an Orthodox rabbi

or a Muslim that they come in or an atheist?

Uh, we had last week and that guy didn't stay very long, stayed longer than Haps right there, but,

uh, he didn't stay very long.

Uh, he came in, claimed he was an atheist.

Uh, he wanted me to prove to him, uh, he said, which, which God do I believe in?

I said, the God that exists.

And he said, well, no, but Muslims, they have a different God from the, from, you know, from

what you believe, you know, how do you know that your belief is right?

What makes you, you know, how do you, what's your belief in God?

How do you come to that belief?

I said, the same way you do.

He goes, what, I'm an atheist.

I said, no, you're not.

I said, you're suppressing the truth on unrighteousness.

Romans chapter one.

He said, well, how do you know that your belief in God is the right one?

And I basically said the same way you do, you deny it in unrighteousness, but you know, he exists.

So he, he, you know, wanted to try to reason his way out of that, but that right there was a problem.

And he, I said to him, where do you get an immaterial ability to reason if everything's just a material

world?

And that is when we, we, we are not sure, but his, his internet started to flake out.

And he said he was going to drop out and come back in.

And he never came back in.

Our theory was one of the listeners theory was my, my bandwidth is acting up, meaning

I have to run away from this conversation because I can't handle it.

So what happened there?

And this is one of the things now in that exchange, it was a short exchange.

I never resorted to insulting him, but I also never resorted to denying

the God that exists or scripture.

One of the things I did that, you know, he was struggling with in it was the fact that

I know what God has told me about him.

God has told me in Romans chapter one, that every single person knows God exists.

So what his tactic was to try to get me to pit the God of the Bible

versus the God of Islam.

Now he probably is not a Muslim.

In fact, he said he's an atheist, so he's not a Muslim.

So does he care what the God of Islam teaches?

No.

He's looking to try to make a debate.

And this is what happens in apologetics.

When we're doing apologetics, this happens.

And so part of this course is going to help you to recognize what people are

really doing sometimes when they're asking questions.

Was this gentleman that I just, in the example I gave, was his purpose to really learn about the God of

Christianity or the God of Islam?

No, his purpose was to ridicule the God of the Bible by

making us to try to make some comparison between the God of the Bible and the God of Islam and try to

say, well, it's just your subjective opinion.

But see, that's not what the Bible says, that it's our subjective opinion.

My belief in God doesn't make him real.

And this atheist's lack of belief in God doesn't make him not real.

He is real, and in fact, to even reason that there is or is not a God

requires God.

So right from the get -go, I know he's, in my worldview, denying his own worldview.

And what I do in this, and I mentioned this last week, but what you want to do is to be looking

at the premise of an argument because that is going to tell you what you're really arguing against.

I was not arguing with him over the existence of God as much as

the differences between the God of Islam, which doesn't exist, and the God of the Bible, which does exist.

And so I just bypass that and get to the real issue, that he knows God exists,

the real God.

And we'll see if he shows up in the show next week and gets better internet.

If he doesn't, then he probably did come in and realize, oops, this is a Christian that's not

letting me get away with my tactics that work on others.

I'm going to run.

Not uncommon.

So last week where we were, if you have your Bible open, we were in Titus, and

Titus chapter 1.

And we were looking at the purpose of apologetics.

Now we were in Titus 1 verse 10, this is where 10 and 11, this is where we picked up last week.

So let me read that so that we have that, and you can read along in your copy of

God's word.

But Titus 1, 10, and 11 says this, for there are many rebellious men, empty talkers,

and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced, because they are

upsetting whole families, teaching things that they should not for the sake of sordid gains.

So we looked at last week in the class that the purpose of apologetics is not to

win a debate, not to show these great arguments you have, it's not to

get everyone to pat you on the back and say that was brilliant.

The purpose of apologetics is to shut the mouth of the ignorant, to silence those

who are upsetting whole families.

That's what he's arguing is the purpose of apologetics.

We should be using the apologetic for the purpose of shutting the mouth of the ignorant

so that we can get to the gospel.

The purpose of apologetics is to share the gospel, not to have a debate.

And so that's really important, because especially if you study

evidential apologetics, when we do a lot of evidential apologetics, what I see a lot of

people do when they're evangelizing is they get into the apologetics and they

never get to the gospel.

And so you'll see this with guys that do open air, that have a lot of knowledge

on different topics.

And the mistake that we all can make, I'm including myself for a very good reason, I've made the

mistake plenty of times.

In fact, our evangelism team, we use hand signals to communicate to the person who's doing street

ministry, who's up on the box at the time.

And we would have hand signals, like you lift your hand in the air, and that means, hey, raise your voice.

Or we lower the hand down to say, hey, you're too loud for the crowd, save your voice.

And then we'd have one where you take your pinky and your thumb and you shake, you stick that out.

If anyone that does surfing, they know what it is, that's a hang 10.

That's to say, get back to the 10 commandments.

You've been doing too much apologetics.

Get through the gospel.

And yes, my team, even though I taught them that, they would use that one on me quite often.

Because I would get into these discussions with people, or maybe we're talking about fossil evidence, or maybe we're talking about

whatever it is, and we're staying too long on answering

questions and not getting to the gospel.

And so we have to remember that the purpose of the apologetics is to get to the gospel.

So it's to shut the mouth of the ignorant.

And so another thing we want to see is, if we go down a few verses, actually just one

verse, and read Titus 1 .12 -2 .2, is

the second point.

So the first point, the purpose of the apologetics is to share the gospel and shut the mouth of the

ignorant.

A second is to defend the faith.

Now, let me be really clear with this, by the way.

There is a difference between defending the faith in Christianity, or at least there better be, and

defending the faith in other religions such as Islam or Mormonism or others.

That being, in Islam, it is acceptable to

lie to protect the faith.

Now, as Christians, we would say, well, if you're lying, then you're not really protecting the faith because

it's presenting a falsehood instead of presenting God.

Now, the idea there, by the way, if you ever hear of it, it's called taqiyya.

And I actually had a debate with an imam at Montclair State University, and

a question was asked of me, and I turned to the

imam, and I said, are you practicing taqiyya right now?

And he stopped, and he looked at me, he turned to the Muslim audience and said,

he understands Islam.

And he dropped his question because he got called out, right?

So, taqiyya is a practice where you can lie to defend the faith.

You have other religions that do this as well, where they're going to say, well, we're not going to let you in on the full secrets.

In Mormonism, they don't let you in on the full secrets until you convert and you're in the temple.

Now, we can tell you the full story.

So, what you end up having there is a basis where they're not telling the full truth.

Well, we as Christians can't do that.

We cannot lie to protect the faith because then that's not a faith worth protecting.

The true faith is going to be one that's based in truth.

And so, if we don't have answers to something, be honest and say, I don't know.

That's better than coming up with something that's wrong just so you feel like, well, I gave an answer.

That's what others do.

That's not what Christians should do.

So, let's take a look at Titus chapter 1.

We're just continuing through Titus with this, but Titus says this in 1 verse 12, and I'm going to

read down to 2 verse 2.

He says,

Let's just stop there and say, for those who say that Paul was always this very polite guy,

he's quoting one of their own, and that's one of their own saying this of the Cretans that are there that he's

writing to Titus where Titus was pastoring at the time.

Verse 13, he says,.

Both their mind and their consciousness are defiled.

They profess to know God, but in their deeds, they deny him being

detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.

But as for you, speak these things which are fitting for sound doctrine.

Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in the

faith, in love, in perseverance.

He's going to go on to say older women likewise.

And so what he's going to do is lay out an apologetic pattern of discipleship, older men to

younger men, older women to younger women.

But what does he say here?

He's saying that this is a goal of apologetics is it's not just to

shut the mouth of the ignorant, but it is also to defend the faith even from those

who claim to be brothers or sisters in Christ.

He's talking about these people and he's saying these people are liars.

And he's saying for this reason, he's telling Titus that Titus needs to reprove,

and that's a command in the Greek, an imperative, he is there to reprove them severely.

So when people say, well, you shouldn't judge another brother, that's not what Paul is saying here.

This is part of an apologetic ministry is to correct false teaching.

Why?

Well, he says in verse 13, so that we could be sound in the faith.

That's what apologetics should do.

It defends the faith, it protects the faith.

So we have to recognize that when it comes to apologetics, we

need to know first and foremost, what the faith is to be able to defend it.

Because he's speaking here to people who think they have the faith, but their faith is got

this Jewish myths in there.

So you have a Jewish traditions being worked into Christianity, and he's

seeing that as something that needs to be corrected.

And so he lays out for Titus an importance that Titus should

argue or defend for the faith.

Now, if we drop down to chapter two, verse six of Titus, he continues with this

six from two, six to eight says, likewise, I urge young men to be sensible

in all things, show themselves to be an example of good deeds, with

purity and doctrine, dignified, sound and speech, which is beyond reproach,

so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing to do with the truth.

Nothing to say about us.

Now, so he wants the older men who are sensible to teach these younger men to be sensible in such a way

that people will have nothing they could say against the truth.

Now, why does he say for this to be to the younger men?

And this is the idea behind passing the truth here.

It's the older men training younger men.

Why?

Because, well, when we're younger men, those of you who are younger, you may experience this.

But those of us who are older and hopefully got wiser have passed on from this.

But when we're younger, we just want to fight with everybody.

Everybody's wrong.

We're right on everything.

I mean, I entered seminary thinking I had all the answers.

And I left seminary going, I got nothing but questions.

And that's what seminary is good for, is to help students realize, yeah, you think you have a little bit of

knowledge and you think you know everything, but there's a whole lot more you just haven't thought about yet.

And that's what Paul's telling Titus to train the older men to do.

These older men are to train up these younger men to be sensible.

And I just love how he puts it where he says that the goal is that the speech,

that our speech is sound, beyond reproach.

But the purpose of that speech is that opponents, those who are in opposition to

the truth of God's word would be put to shame, having nothing they could say about us.

Now, you know who I think of with that?

I think of Daniel.

I mean, you remember the account with Daniel where the leaders were kind of jealous of

Daniel and they're sitting there.

How do we get rid of Daniel?

They knew they could not do anything.

Daniel was not going to do anything wrong.

He was a man of such integrity.

So they had to actually create a law against Daniel's practices of his

worship to God so that they can make a law that would make Daniel be in the wrong.

Because they knew Daniel's integrity, that he was not going to be able to

do, he wasn't going to do anything that would be against his God.

And therefore, what do they end up doing?

They have to try to create a way because they knew he had such integrity.

Yet their mouths were actually stopped in the end.

They were put to a shame as they were tossed into a lion's den and fed

to the lions.

So, as we see, the goal of the

apologetics is going to be to defend the faith.

And a lot of it is in how we speak.

Paul says this to the older men, to the younger men, but drop down in Titus 2, down to verse

15, it says this,

So, the apologetics that we do is in our

speech.

Which means, I'm sorry, but if you say, share the gospel and sometimes

use words, if you think that means that your lifestyle is sharing the gospel,

Paul disagrees.

You can't do apologetics by behavior.

Now, your behavior, and this is what's the idea behind that quote from,

I guess it's not original, I don't believe, with Francis Assisi's, but that's where many people know it from,

but that idea behind the quote is that your actions must match your words.

And so that is what's being discussed at this point, is that Paul is saying to Titus, train up men so

that your actions and words are in sync.

But you must use words.

You cannot do apologetics without words.

Now, so far we've talked about the purpose of the apologetics.

One, was to share the gospel, shut the mouth of the ignorant.

Two, is to defend the faith from those outside the church and even those inside the

church that would be teaching falsehood.

Now, the third is, and this is in Titus chapter 3, if you look there in verses 10

and 11, Titus 3, 10 and 11, and this is sort of the method, okay?

And this is something we have to remember when we're doing apologetics.

He says, Paul says to Titus, reject a fractious man

after the first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning,

being self -condemned.

In other words, if you're sharing the gospel with someone and they are being, just being

divisive, trying to cause fraction, well then, just

after you warn them once, warn them twice, and then move on.

This is one of the things when we think about apologetics,

there's different methods of apologetics, right?

We touched on it very briefly last week, but you have evidential apologetics, classical

apologetics, and presuppositional apologetics.

Now, I've already said I do presuppositional apologetics.

So, I start with the position that God exists, He has spoken.

Those are two things I'm not going to try to prove.

I don't need to prove them because God says that the person I'm speaking to already knows these things.

God has made the knowledge of Himself known to all men, and He has written.

So, I'm not going to sit here and say, let me try to prove God without using the Bible.

Let me defend the faith and put the Bible on the side.

There are some apologists who do that.

They're usually in the evidential camp.

Now, do I think evidential apologetics is a sin?

No.

Do I think it's wrong?

No.

I think it has a purpose.

I think evidential apologetics is something that is very good to do within the body of Christ, to

encourage us in the truths of God's Word and in recognizing

what God's Word says so that we would be sound in our doctrine.

That's a good thing.

But when we look at the apologetics and we examine this—and

classical, by the way, is kind of a mix between the two.

So, I really think the extremes are kind of the pure presupp

and pure evidential.

Classical tries to kind of use a little of both.

So, I mean, some might accuse me with that definition of being classical, but

I don't think that—I haven't really seen a good example where classical is not

evidential that uses the Bible as well.

But you'll see classical apologists that are willing to give up that God exists.

They'll be willing to try to make arguments to prove God exists.

God's existence is the axiom, because if God doesn't exist, you

don't have an ability to reason because that's immaterial.

You can't have truth.

You can't have laws of logic, morality, knowledge.

All these things are immaterial and need an immaterial source.

So, when we have these people argue from the position they know God exists, they suppress that in

unrighteousness.

That's what Romans 1 says.

So, when we look at these different positions, based on which one you hold to may end up

influencing how you go about the debate.

Because if I have a fractious individual, someone who's just being divisive, and I've warned them—I'm going to warn

them once, I'm going to warn them twice—and then I'm just going to say, Hey, thanks.

Have a good day.

Because I'm trusting in God's sovereignty.

If God wants to bring that person to repentance, he doesn't actually need me to do it.

But if I'm more of an evidential apologist, and I think I have to convince someone into the kingdom,

well, it's going to be very different.

I'm going to be arguing and arguing and arguing and arguing until they see

things my way.

And that can be very offensive to the person.

So, we always have to remember, let the gospel be the offense, not us.

The gospel is offensive, and we have to remember that.

But we have to remember that we want that to be the only offense.

We should not be the offense.

And that's going to lead us now into the character.

When we look at the character of debate.

I've already touched on it a bit, because the way we conduct ourselves is going to affect

how we view things.

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul tells Timothy that he

is to be an ambassador for Christ.

Now, think about what that word means.

When you are an ambassador for Christ, you represent the king or the ruler that

you're there to speak for.

And so, if you're an ambassador for the United States, then when you're speaking, you're speaking on behalf of

the country of the United States, the president of the United States.

And so, he sends you there to speak on his behalf.

And so, this is what we end up seeing we are to be.

Now, I often share this story that I have a friend of mine who, when he goes to

the country of Jordan, he has to be very careful.

When he goes, he goes and visits some of his—he's got friends he went to seminary with who are there as missionaries, and

it's illegal to be a missionary.

And he goes and visits them.

He's got to be very careful when he's in their home.

When he walks the streets, he knows that though nobody knows who he is, everybody

is watching him.

And he's got to be very careful with everything he does.

He has to know that if he does something, people are watching him, and he

may do something even innocently, and yet it could be a great offense within the nation of Jordan.

Why is that?

Because when my friend is in Jordan, and he travels throughout the

country, he is traveling with the guard from the king.

When he is in Jordan, he stays in the palace of the king because

he is a friend of the king of Jordan.

So he knows that when he is walking around the streets, and he's talking to these missionaries,

even though nobody knows who he is, because they see the royal guard with him,

they know that he represents the king of Jordan.

And so he has to be careful with everything he does because he could accidentally

create problems politically for the king of Jordan.

Now, a side note of that is this.

A real interesting story is that this friend of mine, who happens to know the king of Jordan,

happened to read in Voice of the Martyrs of three Jordanian

Christians that were imprisoned because they were Christian.

And because they were Christian, they had been put into jail.

Their livelihoods were lost, their families lost their homes, and they were destitute.

And the king of Jordan was coming to the states for an event that both of

them were going to be at.

And think about this.

Some guy in New Jersey, of all states, this is

where God would say, what good could come out of New Jersey?

Well, actually, everything good comes out of New Jersey.

The things that stay are a real problem, just saying.

But I lived in Jersey most of my life, okay?

But you look at this and go, what happened?

He wrote a letter to the king of Jordan.

The king of Jordan read that letter on his flight over to the United States.

And where everyone was lining up to shake hands with the king, the king turns to my friend and says,

I read your letter on the way over here.

I will be taking care of that as soon as I get home.

The next time my friend was able to go to Jordan, he got to meet with some of the families

who were restored both financially and their livelihood and out of prison.

Because some ambassador for Christ in New Jersey knows the

king.

You and I know the king.

And when we go around and we do apologetics and we do evangelism, everything we do reflects back to the king.

So we have to have a good testimony.

We have to be careful because if we act like a jerk on the streets evangelizing, people think our God

is a jerk.

When we act like an idiot, that's going to reflect back to our king.

But if we're respectful, do we believe as Christians that God is respectful?

Is he hard?

Obviously, Jesus said some hard things to the false teachers and the religious

leaders.

But he didn't say that to those who were needy.

So he knew when to be hard and when to be soft.

And so we see that with Jesus, we could see that God

is going to be hard at times.

But we don't want God to—we don't have a picture of God being disrespectful to people, talking down to

people, belittling people.

Is that the way that we would want God to be displayed?

The answer is no.

And therefore, we have to recognize when we look at this that God, when

we're being his representative, his ambassador, as it says in 2 Corinthians

5, verse 20, it says, Therefore, we are ambassadors

for Christ, as though God were making an appeal

through us.

We beg you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, and it's as if God is making his appeal

through you and I to the unbelievers.

So we have to be a good representative of Christ.

An ambassador represents the person he is acting on behalf of.

You and I act on behalf of Christ.

We're his ambassador.

So when we're out on the street, we have to reflect Christ well.

And that's something we have to remember.

Now, a passage, we can't talk apologetics without turning to the passage where

everybody turns to, and that is 1 Peter 3, verse 15.

Why does everybody turn to this passage?

Well, simply put, because this has the word apologia, or

apologia, however some want to pronounce it.

And this is the word we get for apologetics.

So 1 Peter 3, verse 15.

Now, I'm going to read the whole verse, but I'm going to stop at the part where everyone

usually stops.

And there's a reason people stop there, and there's a reason you should not stop there.

So let's look.

It says, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

Always be ready to give a defense.

That word for defense, apologia.

This is a defense, an argument,

an explanation.

That's the idea of this.

So he says, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

Always being ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you to give an

account for the hope that is in you.

And people stop right there.

And people say we have to be ready in season, out of season.

We've got to be ready when someone just challenges us.

We have to be ready to give an apologetic, a defense for the faith to anyone who asks.

And that is true.

But keep reading.

How do we do it?

Yet with gentleness and reverence.

You see why so many people forget the next part.

Because many that are out there trying to defend the faith are not doing it with gentleness

and reverence.

And the idea of reverence is actually fear.

Now we have a negative view of fear.

So let me explain fear for a moment because it might be helpful to you.

When we talk about fear, the fear of the Lord is beginning wisdom.

We know that passage.

You can go and do a search on the fear of the Lord and see that we should be having a fear of the Lord.

Peter is going to talk about it throughout 1 Peter.

But when we think about that, the question is why?

What is fear?

Because we think of fear as a negative thing.

And the best way I could do this is to give an illustration.

Now I think Anthony was asking there for an illustration of this.

I think that's what he was trying to say.

He was muted.

But he was asking that.

And so I'm going to answer his question.

Because you guys are here and you're just being too quiet.

So what is a way of explaining or illustrating fear that would help us?

So here's Anthony.

He's walking down the streets of New York City.

And, you know, Anthony, give me a thumbs up.

Are you married?

Okay, he's married.

Good.

So you and your wife are walking down New York City.

Have you ever been in New York?

Yes.

You have.

Okay, so you know you shouldn't be scared.

Especially with my Red Sox hat on.

Yeah.

That's a sports joke.

I get that.

I get that it's a sports joke.

That's about as far as I get.

So the issue is that what would happen?

You're sitting there.

Maybe let's give a scenario, Anthony.

You and your bride are sitting there and you're having, well, maybe it's a heated debate or a

lightly heated debate over what color to paint a room.

Maybe you're going to have a baby.

And, you know, you don't want to know if it's a boy or girl.

You're trying to be surprised.

And your wife wants to paint it pink in hopefulness of a girl.

And you want to paint it blue in hopefulness of a boy rather than just waiting or doing some neutral color.

And you're having a big discussion over this.

And it's getting heated.

And all of a sudden, some guy sticks a gun in your belly and says, give me your wallet.

Anthony, I have a question for you.

Do you care any longer what color to paint the bedroom?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

Why not?

Because there's a bigger issue going on.

Because there's a gun in your belly, right?

We've got bigger problems.

You have fear.

Okay.

So what does that fear do for Anthony?

It captures his 100 % attention.

He's no longer worried about what color to paint the room.

He's not worried about how his 401K is doing.

He's not worried about if it's going to rain tomorrow.

Because what fear does is capture our full attention.

That's the purpose of fear.

So when we see in the Bible that we should have a fear of the Lord, that means that it should

captivate our full attention.

So here when it says that we should be ready in season, out of season, to defend the faith to anyone who

asks, in gentleness and reverence, a gentleness and a fear, then

we should, that idea of that fear is that the fear is to captivate our attention.

Do we have to have a gentleness?

We have to be knowingly, because here's the thing, folks.

Think about this.

When you're not prepared, when Anthony's not prepared for that gun to be stuck in his belly and be threatened with

his wallet, if he's not ready for it, he doesn't know how he's going to actually

respond, right?

And so if he's trained himself for gentleness, that surprise reaction will be gentleness.

But if he hasn't trained himself for that, maybe anger would come out.

If he's trained in self -defense, maybe that would be the first response, because what we

train ourselves with is what we fall back to when surprised.

And so when he's saying here that we should be ready to give an account to anyone who asks, it's the idea how are you

going to respond when someone just, they jump at you.

Now, here's the reality.

I tell this story when I do evangelism training.

But basically, I was in Freehold, New Jersey.

I was standing on a ledge, and a guy comes up, and he says, you know, Christians are stupid.

And I said, can you prove that?

And he said, sure.

He asked me, how many chromosomes are there in a human being?

And I said, 46.

He's like, how many from the mother?

23.

How many from the father?

23.

He goes, see, that's how stupid Christians are.

You can't divide 23 by 2.

And my immediate response then was, you're an idiot.

That was the response of someone who is not trained to be ready in the defense.

I fell back to what was normal for me as a young believer was,

you're insulting me as a Christian.

I'm just insulting you right back.

That was not a good behavior.

Now, I did exactly what Anthony would do because I've known Anthony for a total here of about

40 minutes, and so being that we've just met.

But I know Anthony well enough.

Anthony would have done what I did.

I would follow what Anthony did.

I immediately realized I was wrong.

I repented, and I asked the Lord for a second chance to talk to him.

And God is gracious because in came this guy right from my left side, and he walks up.

And this is where Anthony and I differ because Anthony would have conducted himself much better because he's

part of this passing the torch, and he's going to learn from the ignorance and the mistakes of an older

idiot.

And so as the guy comes in and he looks at me and says, are you still stupid?

And without any hesitation, I looked at him and said, are you still an idiot?

And he kept walking.

Well, some of you learn quicker than me.

So I asked the Lord for a third time.

And yes, the guy came a third time from my right side, and I realized him, but I was ready this time

because if I saw him again, I knew what to do.

And so now that I was prepared, he comes up.

And as he comes up, I jumped off the ledge.

I walked over and said, sir, the way that I spoke to you was rude, and it was wrong, and I ask

your forgiveness.

And he said, well, you're still stupid, and he walked off.

But I learned a valuable lesson that day about how to conduct myself and how careful I have to

be, and I had to train myself and be ready for that person that's going to hit you when you're not

expecting it, say something that you're not ready for, maybe make fun of you, maybe they

learn something about you, and they're going to try to embarrass you in front of people.

I've had all those things happen since that time that I mentioned in Freehold, and I've

learned to get better with those because I've learned that I have to deal with gentleness and fear, and that

fear has to capture me.

It has to capture my full attention so that I'm always ready at any moment to give an answer,

but it takes training.

You've got to train yourself for that.

You have to train yourself so that you are prepared.

But, you know, when we talk about the character, I want you to turn to

Philippians 3, verse 18, and this is a passage I find very

important, especially for people who are going to do apologetics.

Anybody, anybody that is going to do

what they call discernment ministries, if you claim that you're doing discernment ministries, this

is a verse you must memorize, okay?

Because this tells us what so many that do discernment ministries are doing wrong

these days.

A lot of people do discernment ministries, they're exposing people and they're doing it because they're getting attention, they're getting popularity, they're

building a platform online.

There's countless examples.

You can look at, you know, Julie Roys, you can look at Service Christy, you could look at

a myriad, multitude of different people out there that

are trying to build a platform on going after other people.

And a lot of times you have, they'll do it right once in a while, but then they start taking shortcuts

and eventually outright lying to try to expose people, and it's for

attention.

But look at what it says in Philippians 3 .18.

For many walk of whom I have often told you and now

tell you even weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.

The character of the apologist is someone who will be weeping for the enemies of the cross,

not rejoicing.

There are those that do discernment ministries that when they see someone that doesn't, ooh, I got them, I got a

video I'm going to do on them.

I got a podcast I'm going to go expose this.

And often they don't even take the time to do the basic research to see if they're right.

And when people correct them, they're not going to listen because you're just trying to defend.

And you have that all the time.

But are they weeping?

Let me give you some examples of men that I know personally.

So I know these men in private and know that they are acting out what

Paul is saying here in Philippians.

Men like Justin Peters, Matt Slick, Todd Friel.

These are men who I know that in private, they pray for the people that

they would call out publicly.

You have somebody who is looking forward to winning an argument

in apologetics or doing discernment and they're looking forward to exposing

somebody.

That's someone that's not following the behavior of Paul.

Paul was a great apologist.

But if he's sitting there and just not caring about

these people, he's just going to, hey, I warned you about these people and they're enemies of Christ and he's going to tear them down.

Was that the right character?

Is that a good ambassador?

You see, Paul in his apologetic is a man who not only warns

against the enemies of the cross of Christ, but he weeps for them.

He's warning the people who might be led astray and he cares for them and he's weeping for them.

But he's also weeping for those who are destined to a lake of fire.

Ray Comfort would be another example.

And Ray Comfort will always say that your voice should show your

passion for them.

Your voice should have such a compassion for the lost that they know your passion.

They know you care about them.

I have seen in my own life, in the life of Ray Comfort, in the life of Justin Peters, I've been

out evangelizing with these men.

I have seen them share the gospel where people will come up to them and say,

I know you really care about me.

Because the way they share the gospel, the way they handle their character

in apologetics.

I've always said the reason I do open air evangelism is two reasons.

One, to share the gospel in an unadulterated, unwatered down gospel message so that it's

presented rightly, correctly, truthfully, not leaving anything out.

But I have a second purpose for doing open air evangelism.

It is to get one professing atheist to tell another professing atheist to shut up.

That's right.

I want to get someone who hates the message of the gospel to tell someone who

agrees with them to shut up.

Why?

Why would they do that?

They do that when they're looking at someone who is a professing atheist like them and

they're seeing my character and their character and it's bothering them

that this person is being rude to me.

I've had this happen often.

I always tell the story of a guy we just call cowboy dude because he didn't want to share his name.

But I was outside of NYU, New York University, in Washington Square, talking with one of

the professors and he was a Buddhist and we're arguing, you know, he's arguing.

Well, we're both arguing.

Argument is not a bad thing.

We're going to get to that when we talk about logic.

But we're arguing and discussing and doing apologetics and he's trying to argue that

Christianity is wrong.

He thinks Buddhism is right.

He thinks that we don't die and have an immediate, you know, that it's point on the man wants to die and then a judgment.

He thinks we just go on and on and on.

So he's explaining all this and we're going back and forth.

But the way he's speaking and the way I was speaking was very different.

And so what ended up happening was at some point, cowboy dude, and just picture

this guy, he's probably 250 or 275 pounds of pure muscle.

He's shirtless, but wearing a cowboy hat.

That's why we call him cowboy dude.

And cowboy dude walked up, was so offended by this guy

who doesn't agree with Christianity that he got in between me and the

professor.

And he turned to the professor and said, look, you're out of line.

I have fought for this man's right for freedom of speech.

If you don't like what he's saying, you need to just leave.

And the professor pokes cowboy dude in the chest and says, I don't got a problem with you, buddy.

And all of a sudden, cowboy dude stuck his finger in the professor's face and said, touch me again, buddy, and you are going to have a problem

with me.

And he marched the professor right out of the crowd.

Now, me being the very experienced evangelist that I am, I sat there and watched this

exchange.

And I'm like looking going, I think a fight's going to break out right in front of me.

And in the back of this crowd, there's about 200 people, people even behind me all around.

And in the back is my friend, Michael Stockwell, a great open air evangelist.

And Michael Stockwell's back there realizing, hey, you're being an idiot.

You're forgetting what you're here for.

So he's in the back and I'm hearing him scream, preach the gospel.

And I'm like, oh, right, that's what I'm here for.

So I immediately go from what we just saw to preaching the gospel.

And so an interesting thing that happened that day was earlier before we did the open air, I was speaking

to a Muslim who immediately judged me because I said I was Christian.

And he started condemning me, saying that I was forcing my beliefs upon him.

When all I actually asked him is, can you explain what your understanding of Islam is?

Well, this guy comes up to me after that scene and he walks over to me and says, I need to

apologize to you.

I said, really?

He says, yeah.

You know, I accused you of forcing your religion on me and all you did was ask me

what my religion was.

And I just immediately jumped to a conclusion.

But watching how you handled that Buddhist guy, I realized I was wrong with you.

Now, let me ask you something.

When you do apologetics, are you expecting to have that response?

I am.

That's the reason I go out and do that.

Because I'm looking for a way to display my character

in such a way that that is the normal response.

I want that to be the normal response.

Now, we might say, well, hey, you know, Andrew, this is maybe a one -time thing where

Paul did this later in life.

Okay.

Well, if you wouldn't mind turning to Acts chapter 20, and what I'd like to

do is read Acts 20, 18, down to 21.

And this is Paul.

Now, granted, he is later in life here, but he's still before his time in jail.

And so, you know, what we end up seeing is here's him

giving a warning to people.

And so let's look at the character of Paul that he has here for the Ephesian elders.

Acts 20, verse 18, down to 21.

He says, and when they had come to him, he said to them, you yourselves know

from the first day I first set foot in Asia, how I was with

you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with

tears and with trials, which come upon me through the plots of the Jews.

How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable

and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying

to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith

in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what is he appealing to?

He's saying, guys, you knew from the beginning, I mean, from the first time I came to Asia, you

knew that I was acting in all

humility, but all humility in what situation?

Look at the situation he describes.

He was in humility and with tears because there were trials.

Well, what were some of those trials?

Well, he says he had plots from the Jews and in the book of Acts, it records some of the plots.

I mean, men who took a vow of hunger

to kill him.

Now, when you go out and evangelize and you're defending the faith, how many of you have someone who is

basically taking a vow, a hunger strike for

your death?

I mean, so when we think about persecution, there's a little bit of a difference between what we call persecution and

what Paul actually suffered.

There are people around the world, Christians around the world, that do actually suffer that way.

But for many of us in America, that's not us.

But in light of those kind of trials, he says that he didn't shrink away

from doing apologetics.

He didn't shrink away from declaring what is profitable, teaching whether it's in public or going house to

house, doing it so that the Jews and the Greeks would come to repentance,

right?

Both Jews and Greeks have repentance toward God.

And it's interesting because he says he did this in all humility.

Now, when we get people, I've seen this on the streets with people who are, well, they

end up doing open -air evangelism, you get someone, they start getting

aggressive, they start getting in your face, and you're struggling, and what ends up happening?

People end up in that, they start going,.

Well, you know,.

They start returning that aggression.

Paul says in all of his trials, how did he behave?

Humility and tears.

One of the biggest issues I see with apologetics or apologists, I

should say, is that there are not enough tears in their apology.

They don't have the apologetics that leads them to tears.

Some do.

Good apologists will because they're going to recognize not only are they an ambassador for Christ,

but they're going to recognize also that, look, apart from God doing a work in my life, the

worst person I might meet on the street probably could have been worse than them.

So the only thing that I can boast about is not me and anything I could do, but I boast about

Christ and what he has done.

And that's the difference.

And so when you have that mindset, you're not caring about winning the debate,

you're caring that they hear the gospel.

You see this in Paul's, in these passages we see from Paul.

Paul's concern is sharing the gospel.

And when he has to confront people who are enemies of the cross, he does so with

tears and what he says in Acts, humility.

So we should be defending the faith with a gentleness and fear.

We should be doing it in all humility, but we should be weeping, weeping for

those who are being deceived by falsehood, weeping for those who are unbelievers, weeping for

those who are enemies of the gospel and are coming up and wanting to attack the gospel or

even so attack you for believing in the gospel.

Paul says we have to stand strong.

We have to stand up.

We can't just shy away from this.

We can't shrink away.

No, in light of that, he stood up and granted in America, persecution is coming.

Okay, I think we're probably only five, maybe at most 10 years away from our own government saying

Christians, it's illegal to believe in Christianity.

Okay, we'll see what happens in the next election.

But I think I believe Christianity is on trial because if it goes a certain

way, they've already made it clear that they think Christians are domestic terrorists.

Well, if that's what you're thinking is and that's what you're saying to get elected, well, you got to keep that going.

So what's going to happen?

They're going to have to outlaw Christianity and put everyone in jail and that keeps their votes the way they want them to go anyway,

right?

Keep the people that vote against them out of the voting pool.

But the thing is this, as we start facing more and more persecution, as

those that deny the truth of God's word become louder and louder voices,

the question is, how are we going to respond?

Are we going to train ourselves to respond in gentleness

and fear and reverence, to respond in all humility with tears?

Are we going to be ready to answer anyone that asks for us

an answer?

Are we?

Well, these are the things that we have to practice for.

And if you are not out there doing apologetics, you're not practicing.

You're not training yourself.

You could train all day in the mirror.

You can sit and take your mirror and give yourself really good arguments against Christianity and

answer those arguments and I got news for you.

In your head, you win every debate.

I mean, there's no question.

You always win the debate because in your head, you're never going to think of an argument that you never thought of

before.

So you're only going to answer arguments that you have thought of.

And people do this all the time and they get in their head and think of preparing for how, well, how might this person

respond to this?

What would be a response to this?

How do I do?

And people think through how to do the debate in their own head.

And as they sit there and try to figure out how to answer this or how to answer that, they do these

things.

But while they're doing it, they're never actually training.

That training takes going out with people who are not in your head, asking you things you weren't ready

to answer, to get asked something you don't know the answer to so that you go, you know what, let me go, I

got to go and research that.

I don't know.

Hey, that's a question I never thought of before.

Got to be ready to do that.

And if you are not out there doing apologetics, you're not really training.

So how do you know how well you're doing in your character in apologetics?

Well, you're going to know based upon the very simple fact of it's going to be

based upon how you respond to those that you meet on the

street that catch you off guard.

All right?

And so that is the character that we have to have in

apologetics.

Now, next week, we're going to start looking into, we're going to spend three weeks looking into hermeneutics.

And also what I will be doing is I will be putting together a quiz that HAPS will send out

to those in the Passing the Torch ministry.

So if you're part of that group on Facebook, you'll be able to get that.

I will put away, I'm probably going to do it in a Google document and I'll put that up next

week so that you guys could see.

But just a short quiz to see how, well, basically how much you've been paying attention.

And so, but it's really for this reason.

Why give the quiz?

Part of it is really for your own knowledge to test yourself.

So don't go and like take the quiz and then go back and listen to the audio.

And it's the idea of it is really so that you could see, it'll be short and easy.

The quiz is going to be more multiple choice type things.

The tests are going to be more usually like essay where you have to actually think through things.

But it's really to test yourself to see how much you're learning, how much you're getting out of it.

And so as with everything, the more we put in, the more we're going to get out.

And so I don't, I haven't seen too many questions in the live chat where, which is where most of

the people are.

But for the students that have joined, do either of you guys have some questions?

Okay.

I saw a head nod of no.

So, so next week, same for those who

know me, you're going to really get shocked at this.

Oh, you do have a question.

Yes, sir. With the tactics.

Yes.

So I know sometimes teachers and professors don't always subscribe whole

completely with everything like that required text is.

And so I was, and I've watched your debates and stuff against, you know, viciously defending Calvinism.

And I loved it.

I saw where you let them down the tulip without.

And so my question is, you know, respectfully is the first two

chapters of the book.

The author is talking about essentially being gardeners, not so much

harvesters.

And yes.

So any leaving a stone in someone's shoe?

Yes, sir.

And so my question is to you, because I really want to know.

He, he,.

He said it multiple times that in conversation, if it's, if spiritual matters aren't on the table that

you don't always have to get to the cross, you don't always have to share the full gospel.

And,.

And I was like, that's interesting.

So I want to know what your thoughts were.

It's, it's a great example.

So Greg, Greg is a friend of mine.

Okay.

He stayed in my home.

I've stayed in his home.

I know him personally.

We've discussed this as well.

And,.

And some of the way we've gone out on the street and go to a restaurant shows our differences.

Greg's model is, and the reason for the book, Greg is an evidential apologist.

Okay.

I'm a presuppositional apologist.

So when I talked about how those differences play out, this is how it plays out.

So for example, Greg, we go to a restaurant, Greg style.

And I think I'll talk about it in the book.

And,.

And the purpose, the reason I think that book is so good and reason I assigned it is because it helps you to learn how to navigate

conversations.

Okay.

Here's the thing.

Greg and I go to a restaurant.

Greg will always go to a restaurant and he will always ask the waiter or waitress his names

because he wants to make that conversation as personable as, and he will look to make conversations.

Okay.

He's always looking to make conversations and he's looking to figure what he could just drop as a nugget of truth to leave with

someone.

But where Greg will ask the waiter or waitress their names, and look for things he could

spark conversation with.

I go to a restaurant and I go beyond that.

See,.

I'll ask the waiter or waitress, their name.

And I'll say, we're Christians.

If we're all Christian, if not,.

I'll say,.

I'm a Christian here at the table.

I say,.

You know,.

We're Christians at this table.

And in a moment, we're going to be praying for our meal.

And we would like to specifically pray for you is when you come back with the food,

can you please give us something that we can pray for you for?

Now you notice the difference in those two Greg.

And here's the thing, Greg and I go out.

We've,.

We've been out together where times where what will happen is I, I will get right into a gospel message.

I mean,.

I will, we'll walk down the boardwalk.

I see a couple of guys.

I immediately start a conversation.

I'm more used to that.

Greg is great.

When the conversation gets spiritual, I'm more comfortable.

I'm trained myself to transition from the natural to spiritual.

You can go, go on YouTube, look for striving for attorneys, YouTube channel.

There's a playlist called the spiritual transition game.

I made a game out of transitioning from the natural world to spiritual world.

We have several, a couple dozen videos of me practicing that game, explaining the game, practicing it.

So you can see how it's done.

And that's me training myself.

Well,.

I start conversations.

I remember one time that for, for young kids,.

I mean,.

They were maybe high school, senior high schools, maybe young college.

And, uh,.

We,.

I just started from a shirt they were wearing,.

Boom,.

Jumped right into the gospel.

And then what I did was they asked the question.

I just said, what do you think about that,.

Greg?

And then he had that conversation.

I walked off.

Right.

And so the difference is, is I'm, I'm more, even when I've been on the radio,.

He,.

There was a comment once that he made to me because I was,.

You know,.

In studio with him on the radio.

He had a guy call in and ask a question.

And it was very interesting because during the break, Greg didn't pick up that.

The guy said he was an atheist, but I did.

And Greg looked at me and said, it's because you're more of the evangelist.

You pick up on those things where I'm listening for the question.

But you're just going right to,.

Hey,.

The gospel.

And so there is that difference that you're going to see with, with the two of us.

Right.

I agree that I'm not.

So do I agree with everything he said?

I think everything he said in that book is,.

Is,.

Is right.

I just, as I think that we got to go beyond just putting a stone in someone's shoe,.

Right.

He wants to leave them with a nugget to think about.

I want to leave them with the gospel.

And so, so I just go a bit beyond him.

So in that sense, it's not that I disagree with them.

I just go beyond them.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

And so,.

And,.

So,.

Put this comment up.

Fatima says, that's really help.

Really useful difference to know.

So thank you for that.

And this person is from the Philippines because they were at the Baha conference.

So that means that it is nine AM there.

For them watching.

So yeah.

So what I started to say is when we,

I'm trying to remember how we were closing out there.

Cause I was going to insult myself.

Cause there was something I was going to say that I did wrong, which is not unusual.

I do lots of things wrong.

One of the things I'm really good at,.

You know,.

You guys are not as good at messing up as I am, but then,.

Hey,.

You have all these things you can learn from my mistakes.

So there's that advantage.

So,.

So we'll, we'll pick up next week.

We'll,.

We'll look at hermeneutics.

I'll have a quiz for you.

It should be an easy quiz.

It may, it may be, I may not do just multiple choice.

We'll see.

But I think I'll have easy questions for that.

So that'll be next week.

Oh,.

I remember what I was going to do.

I was going to make fun of myself this way for people who know me.

And, or listen to my Andrew rap reports, rap report podcast, or watch Apollo jacks live.

You guys will get a kick out of this.

Cause I was going to end by saying we'll be on,.

You know,.

Same bat channel, same bat time.

Now for folks who don't get why that's for some folks, you get the reference that is from Batman

from like,.

You know,.

The seventies.

And the reason that's such a shocker to my audience, my regular audience is because I'm pop culture illiterate.

So many people are going,.

Wow,.

He knows who Batman is.

I did actually watch that Batman where, when he'd punch someone,.

You know,.

They'd just go pow because they can't actually show someone having, getting punched in the face.

Yeah.

Just like TV today.

Right.

No,.

No.

So let's see.

Yeah.

So,.

So my friend Andrew from down under,.

He says,.

Andrew is good at being wrong.

He he's not wrong there.

Fatima says, I know several people who don't know how to approach their evangelism.

So those two methods actually help.

So,.

Well,.

You're welcome.

And so with that,.

Folks,.

We'll see you next week, Monday night, eight Eastern time, where we'll start looking into how to

interpret the Bible.

Thanks all.