Apologetics and Debate Introduction

Welcome back to Passing the Torch. We had a slight hiatus between Andrews, I mean teachers.

I'm your host Randy Adkins and today your teacher is Andrew Rappaport for Striving for Eternity and he will be teaching us apologetics and debate.

How are you brother? Better than I deserve. Glad to be here. Amen. Well brother, the floor is yours.

All right, well thanks everyone for joining this class on apologetics and debate.

Today what we're gonna do is just an intro. We've got an eight -week class ahead of us. I want to give it a overview of what we're gonna be covering.

I do admit that I planned to have a nice syllabus for everybody but having just literally got back yesterday from the

Philippines after three weeks of ministry, I didn't have it done in time. Sorry, but we'll try to get that together and maybe have that for for future students.

So let's go over quickly an overview of what we're gonna do in the course, what we're gonna cover, what is gonna be your assignments as far as students, what outside reading we're gonna provide, or you're gonna have to do

I should say, and you're not gonna have to be forced to do the outside reading but I will say that if you do the outside reading you will get the most benefit from it.

So let me just show you real quickly some, if you could put up the presentation there that I just threw, just a slide there.

So the first book, I have three books I want you guys to get. They're all available on Amazon.

So first is going to be, and although this one happens to be the audio version that I read, but you can get the actual book.

The first book I want you all to get a copy of is called Tactics by Greg Coco. Okay, he subtitles it,

A Game Plan for Discussing Christian Convictions. This is going to be very essential when we talk about apologetics and just how to navigate conversations and so I find this to be a very very good book, very easy to read.

All the books I'm going to give you are easy to read. So this book is just going to help in how to conduct yourself, how to behave, how to have conversations.

This is essential when we're going to talk about apologetics. A second book that I want you guys to get for this class is called

The Ultimate Proof of Creation. I should have said the first book is by Tactics is by Greg Coco.

So Tactics by Greg Coco. The next book is, let's see if I can share that tab, there we go, is

The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle. Now some of you may say, well

I don't really, I'm not here to talk creation, is creation really part of apologetics? Actually that's not so much what this book is going to cover.

It's going to really cover a very basic understanding of logic. To give you a basic of how to how to recognize logical statements what he provides in here which is really really good, just at the back of it he provides some examples of when he worked at Answers in Genesis, actual emails that he got and how he responded to them.

So that's going to be the second book you'll be required to read. Hopefully get them all done within the eight weeks.

They're actually pretty easy reading. The third one is called How to Think Clearly, A Guide to Critical Thinking.

This is a very easy to read as well. This is going to deal with the topic of logic.

So where the previous book, Jason Lyle's book on Ultimate Proof of Creation, is going to deal with really what we would call presuppositional apologetics, but it's also going to cover logic.

How to Think Critically by Doug Erlandson is going to go into more detail on that, providing more detail on logic itself and how it works.

So if you read those in the order I provided, tactics, ultimate proof of creation, how to think logically, that would be the order in which

I suggest that you get these books, read these books. You say, well you want me to finish three books within eight weeks.

Yes, of course. No. I realize eight weeks is pretty short, but I'm not assigning lots of papers, so you could do reading instead of writing papers.

And the other assignments are going to take a little bit of prep, and we're going to do them outside of the eight weeks.

So the first that we will have during class is you will be graded, and you're going to be graded on three things.

Well, class participation may be harder since this is online, but you can feel free to email me if you want.

And to email, just email info at striving4eternity .com.

Info at striving4eternity .com. That will get to me. Well, it'll get rooted to me,

I should say. But then I'll respond from there. So we have the book work, the reading that you have to do.

There will be a quiz. We're going to have this, basically there's three main sections that we're going to cover in class.

We're going to have the introduction. After that, we're going to talk about the character that we should display in doing apologetics and debate.

We are going to focus a lot of time on hermeneutics, and then the next major section will be on logic.

And the reason those two sections is because as I do my apologetics live show, if you're not familiar with that, it's a live stream every

Thursday nights, eight to 10 Eastern time, you just go to apologeticslive .com, anybody can come in.

And we often have people who come into that live stream. And when they come in, they are prepared to debate me and I do not know

I'm having a debate that day, because I don't know anyone's coming in. It makes it fun. I enjoy that.

And so that happens. And when that happens, people often ask me, how do I prepare for a show where someone's prepared to debate me, they've studied a topic, and I didn't even know what debates happening.

And I've always said for years that there's only two areas that I focus on hermeneutics and logic.

And that's what you need to do apologetics and debate, at least Christian debate.

So what is hermeneutics? It is the art and science of interpretation, logic, we're going to get into and what makes things logically valid or sound.

So we're going to spend some time discussing that. So we're going to talk about the character that we should have.

And after that, I'm going to provide a quiz on that section, we're going to have a midterm that won't be exactly in the middle of the term, but it's going to cover mostly the hermeneutics section.

And then you'll have a final exam that will cover logic. Now those may the hermeneutics midterm may include some of the information on the character.

And the one on the final exam may include hermeneutics and character as well as logic, but it'll focus on that.

So those are going to be the three things that we're going to be grading you on. And then there is going to be a final assignment for students.

And I'm going to leave this up to haps to get everybody who's taking the class to make sure that we get at least two people paired up together.

And for a final assignment, each of you will be debating one another, that will be an actual class assignment.

Now if you're going well, I don't want to I'm going to drop class now because I don't want to do that. Well, then haps is going to give me your address,

I'm coming to your house, and I'm going to force you to debate, I'm going to come with a camera and you're going to debate unexpectedly at your front door if need be.

But you will be debating one where that no, it's really good to do. And we're going to provide those debates where those who are going to feel more comfortable will we could provide those stream those on Apologetics Live or on here.

But if not, we'll do that in a private stream where just those who may not be an actual stream, but we're a private meeting where you guys will get a chance to actually put into practice some of the things you're going to learn.

It is very important to know how to actually debate, not just watch them and think you can handle it.

But to actually be graded on how to do debate, how did you do?

So that is going to be the class assignments. So I hope that is is crystal clear.

And we're going to we're going to start everyone off with an A except for Haps Addison.

He starts off with an F. He's got to work up and earn an A where the other students just have to fail to get down to Haps's level.

Did I say that wrong? I'm sorry, Haps. Okay, started.

We have a little wrong. Well, you know, like I always say at the conferences,

I never graduated high school. Oh, I didn't know you speak at the conferences. I'm usually sleeping.

I'm sorry. Oh, my goodness. Cruel, cruel.

I thought I was a big brother. You know, see, I was there and I was awake for perhaps this sermon.

So it was pretty good. Yeah, I was I was in the other room taking a nap. All right, so I want to start row.

That is true. Yeah. I didn't think you noticed.

All right. So I want to start with two things to trigger folks before we get into looking at some of the issues of of the purpose of apologetics.

I want to use two things as an example. And I think that they'll sufficiently trigger people into wanting to respond.

I want to make sure we get feedback. Remember, all your hate emails go to Haps. Just email him and he'll forward them to me.

But no, but I do want I do want to be having the interaction. So those who know how to get in touch with me either on Twitter, Twitter, I'm just handle

Andrew underscore SFE. That stands for striving for eternity. But Andrew underscore SFE Facebook, Andrew Rappaport.

If you want to email info at striving for eternity dot com. Those are the ways to get a hold of me.

So and as we go through the course, especially we get into logic, we're going to look at some of these examples that I'm going to give right now that are going to trigger some folks and then we can get into it.

Now, the first one I wasn't actually planning to. And unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to download the clip of this.

But I do have it on my Twitter. If you go to Twitter, Andrew underscore SFE, you'll see there that I have a clip somewhere down of John MacArthur at a

Q &A. And John MacArthur in that Q &A had made the statement that PSTD, PTSD and ADD don't exist.

And then he went on to explain the the experiences of PSTD and ADD.

Specifically, PSTD. Now, I posted that clip. And there was a ton I you know, I've never really had too many things that I tweet out or I don't know what it is.

And now it's called x i x out. Would that make sense? I don't know. If someone asked Elon Musk, perhaps

I know you got his his contact information. Ask him what we're supposed to call it. Um, but I put out on x that thing.

And granted, I will admit I put it out before going to bed while in the Philippines. So when

I went to bed, it was morning time here in the States. And I woke up to 1000 comments.

That doesn't happen often on my on my ex or tweets or whatever we call them.

So here's one. Huh? What do you say Randy? There's one on the screen.

There's disagree with MacArthur on it. Yeah, there we go. And so everyone was disagreeing with MacArthur because they experienced

PSTD. So just for clarification, you're you're meaning

PTSD, right? PTSD? What do I what do I keep saying? PSTD? I you know, at least I'm consistent if I get it.

Right? Yes. So the the thing though, is that, okay, is it logical to say that MacArthur didn't

MacArthur say he dis he doesn't think PTSD exists? Yes, he said that.

Did he say that the experience doesn't exist? No. And so people are reacting.

And I had to point out they're reacting in an illogical way. Because MacArthur is not disagreeing with what they've experienced.

He's a disagreeing with the psychological definition, the psychological nomenclature, the titling of it.

And what he was providing was more biblical ways of explaining the experience that people have.

So was he denying that people have that experience? No. But that's how people were saying it. They were saying, MacArthur doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's never been in war. Well, that is true. He's never been in war. But was he denying the experience?

Actually, he wasn't. He was denying the label. And so this is something when we get into debate when we get into how to handle debates, how to do apologetics, one of the things we have to be able to do is separate our emotions from our thinking.

We live in a culture and this is going to be very important. This is something that if I was teaching this class, say 20 years ago, would be very different.

Because 20 years ago, I would have taught and focused very much on our thinking. But we are not dealing with a thinking generation anymore.

We're dealing with a feeling generation. And that is a major difference when we do apologetics because the younger generation no longer thinks, they feel.

And their feelings is what is right, not their thinking. Now, that doesn't actually make it right. We get that.

But we have to work with them where they're at to get them from a feeling based truth to a thinking based truth to get to the actual truth.

That's going to be the goal in apologetics or debate. And so as we look at this, when we look at MacArthur's comments, we have to say, okay, let's take our emotion aside.

Anyone who has suffered damages, you know, emotional damages in warfare, they understand what

PSTD is. Did I say it right that time? PTSD. You said

PTSD again. PTSD. That's what actually what I got in my notes. But all right, I will look at my note every time

I say it. You know, I actually did this in a sermon. When I get something stuck in my head,

I get it wrong. And I stay consistent. I actually replaced Zachariah or Ezekiel.

No. Now I can't even think of his name. The guy, the sweet little guy in the tree.

I hate when I do this. Zacchaeus. I replaced the Zacchaeus with Zachariah seven times in a sermon.

Every single time I did it, I was consistent. So it's frustrating.

So when we look at this argument, we have to look at what's actually being said when people are saying

MacArthur denies that people can suffer from PTSD.

Well, he's not talking about the experience. He's he admits because he goes right on afterwards to say it.

So first off, we have to separate our emotions from our thinking. When it comes to apologetics and debate, it is a thinking based skill, not a feeling based skill.

So when you have in this, this is would be another example, not one that I planned.

But, you know, I saw recently this week, they were having a hunger strike. I think this one was

I forget which university they're doing this. I think it was like an up in New York. And Randy, you'll appreciate this one.

This will crack you up if you haven't heard it. But they have a bunch of people having hunger strikes in protest for Palestine, the

Palestinians and the folks in Gaza. And then they're complaining, because it's not fair because they're hungry.

There's a very simple solution. If you're hungry, eat. That's what you do.

Right. But they're somehow claiming it's unfair because they're hungry. And and they they shouldn't have to be on a hunger strike.

No one's forcing them to be on a hunger strike. And what they what they call a hunger strike, most of us just call fasting.

So it's just called skipping a meal like they had one hunger strike where they went without lunch. Ooh, big struggle.

But this is the generation we're dealing with. We're dealing with people who who just are in have an entitlement mentality in America.

They have a feeling based system. They don't think through things. And so the first thing that people reacted to with MacArthur's clip is emotion.

Now, I'm not denying the experience that people suffer. I'm not denying that people have

ADD. The question is, what's the cause of it? Now, I would say most people with ADD have a perfectly fine attention span.

When they're sitting and watching binge watching some movie, or playing a video game, they can do that for hours.

Right? It's the other things that they don't want to actually do that they seem to that lack the attention.

I actually noticed when I was younger, the attention span was 12 and a half minutes, by the way, if anyone knows what 12 and a half minutes is, it is the time periods between commercials.

So what was what is it that you're being trained to have a slow attention? And now it's like eight seconds.

Why is that? Because we have phones and we just skim through really quickly. The reality is, is that MacArthur wasn't denying the experiences, he's denying the labeling of it.

And so people were arguing against the experience. But that wasn't the actual point.

So when we are going to go through this course, one of the things we're going to learn to do is identify what the premise of an argument is.

And it is faulty in doing apologetics and debate to attack a false premise.

Anytime you're attacking something that is not the actual argument someone is making. That's what we call a straw man argument.

You're attacking something that isn't the real argument, a straw man that's easily to knock over.

So if we were to if I was to sit and try to argue that, you know, against haps being this, you know, that haps claims he's this highly intellectual individual, anyone who knows haps knows he doesn't make that claim, and we call foul on me right away.

And so they should. Because that wouldn't be the actual argument he would make.

So this is going to be some of the stuff we're going to do. Let me give you another example. It's going to trigger folks even more.

I would ask if there's anyone that is Presbyterian, but I know most of the students are watching this after the stream.

So but I'm going to use this as an example, because well, I want to trigger someone so because I want to make sure we get some good debate.

And this may be a really great topic of debate for folks who want to do this debate.

So I'm going to suggest this if we have any Baptists and Presbyterians that someone would take this on infant baptism.

Let's let's look at that. Let me give an I'm not going to go into this in detail. Well, maybe throughout the class,

I may use this as an example. But so I'm going to put this out now and ask some questions that if if I was to debate someone on infant baptism, what would

I expect to hear from someone? Well, those who are going to argue for infant baptism are going to use a couple of things.

One, they're going to say that, well, children are always part of the covenant. Every time that they would argue that every time we see a covenant in the

Old Testament, it was the children were involved, and therefore the new covenant should be the same.

Now, were children involved in the old covenant of Abraham, which was the sign was circumcision?

Yeah, but not all children, just the men, by the way. So that was a sign.

But what other covenants are covenants where children are involved? I would ask that question in cross -examination.

The other thing is that the sign of a covenant is always external. And so these are two essentials to an argument for infant baptism.

Now, when we get to hermeneutics, I'm going to argue that infant baptism is consistent within a covenant theology way of doing hermeneutics.

So, am I saying it's wrong? Well, of course, I'm a Baptist. No, I would be saying it this way.

It's consistent within the hermeneutical system. I would have a different hermeneutical system than a

Presbyterian would. However, I would look, when it comes to hermeneutics, for consistency.

That's going to be very important. Now, as a Baptist, I would look at these two arguments, and let me ask this question and throw it out to you.

We're not going to answer it here. Well, I'll give you my answer shortly. But when we look at the fact that the claims, are all children part of the covenant relationships?

Well, even if that was true in the Old Testament, it's an assumption for the

New Testament, unless the New Testament clearly says it. So, I would press upon people to say, is there any

New Testament evidence for a covenant, the new covenant being with the children?

Second is, the sign of the covenant is external. I would challenge that and say that too is an assumption.

Now, what am I doing? I'm looking at this logically and just saying, it is an assumption.

Now, where do they get that assumption? Is the assumption based upon good evidence? Well, it would be a consistent way of interpreting, based on the covenantal way of interpreting.

And so, a Reformed hermeneutic is going to come, or could come, to a position of infant baptism and be consistent.

With that, the point that we get to is, I'm going to take it and say these are assumptions.

I could look at Jeremiah 31, sorry,

Jeremiah 29 and Ezekiel 36 and say, look, this is the new covenant.

What's the sign of the new covenant? The Holy Spirit indwelling you. That's what the Old Testament says will be the sign of the new covenant.

Is that something external? No. Is that something that is for children? No. And so, if I'm debating that,

I'm giving help for any of those on Baptist side who want to debate the Presbyterian on this, that would be the issue

I would address. But in the debate, what I would be doing is looking at that and saying, these are assumptions based on a hermeneutical system, and it would, the burden of proof would be on the

Presbyterian to defend infant baptism from the New Testament, not from the assumption of a system.

Okay, hopefully I have sufficiently triggered some folks that they want to respond. Info at strivingforeternity .com

or just reach out to Haps, because, well, he gets all the hate mail. And if you do send me hate mail,

I'll just send it to Haps and have him, no, because he walked away from class. So, I was saying that I would, but Randy, you were there.

Did I actually walk away from Haps' talk? No, but look, he just ditched class. The dean of the school here walked out on class, just saying.

So, and Randy keeps freezing anyway, so he probably has to go back and listen to all the things we say about him.

All right, so what is the purpose of hermeneutics? Well, Randy, I am really glad that you asked that question, because I would like to answer it.

And what I'd like to do is answer it with, well, the place we should go, Scripture.

So, what we want to first do is address, is look at what the purpose is of apologetics.

Now, what you view the purpose is becomes extremely important in how you are going to conduct yourself with apologetics or or debate, because how you view the purpose is going to basically reach out to the whole way you're going to handle yourself.

So, the purpose, I'm going to argue, for apologetics, for Christian apologetics, is the gospel.

It is not to win a debate. This is a very important distinction.

When we look at the way a lot of people view, the way a lot of people end up viewing apologetics is, especially if they're on the street, you get some guys doing open -air evangelism, many of them are, they do it because they like to debate, they want to argue, they want to have the microphone.

The nice thing about being an open -air evangelist is you have a microphone, or you have a voice that's louder, and therefore you get to win, because you silence the other person by speaking over them.

And so, there's guys who do that, and they like to talk down to people, they like to argue, they like to win debates.

And so, what they're really out there for is their own ego, to show how smart they are, to show their ability to fight and argue.

And so, this is the thing that we end up seeing, okay? And, by the way,

I just noticed on YouTube, people are responding, so I'm going back and looking at comments now.

So, I see the one that you put up earlier. For some reason in here, Randy, I was just looking at the private chat, so now

I'm looking back at lots of comments that maybe we could get to. I will multitask and look at both.

So, when we're debating on the street, the goal is not to win a debate.

In fact, I would argue that that is not the thing to be focused on.

If you're on the street, you're there, hopefully, to display

Christ. You should be an ambassador for Christ.

And so, when we do this, we have to have the right mindset.

If your goal is to win a debate, then you're gonna sit there, and you're going to be fighting with people.

You're not going to be looking to give great arguments. You're gonna give arguments that help you win. And you're gonna hear opponents that are debating.

You do the same thing, especially on the street. There's a pride that can affect things, and we're gonna talk about this in the character when we get to discussing character.

But we have to recognize that the purpose of Christian apologetics is to share the gospel.

Let me ask you to turn to Titus chapter 1. In Titus chapter 1,

Paul is going to provide for us what he explains to Titus with this.

He's going to tell Titus in Titus 1, 10, and 11, he says, "...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 they should not teach for the sake of assorted gain."

So right off the bat, he refers to that there are people there, he refers them as rebellious men.

They're rebellious. I love the fact he refers them as empty talkers. When you especially are on the street, and you're doing apologetics, you're going to see many empty talkers.

Perhaps you do open air. You're nodding your head yes. Often, this is what we get, right?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I remember one specific guy, I was down on the

Jersey Shore boardwalk. We're on the boardwalk, and this guy is going off. He's literally, no joke, for 20 minutes, trying to explain the original religion was founded in the

Celtic Druidic paganism, and that was where all religion formed.

He's going off for 20 minutes. For 20 minutes, I'm listening to this guy going, what am

I even going to say? I knew nothing about what he's talking about. I hadn't studied the Celtic Druids.

I didn't study Celtic paganism and this stuff.

I'm like, you know, in my mind, I'm listening to him going, okay, I'm learning some things maybe, but what in the world am I going to say?

Now, I'm going to tell you two things. One thing I did learn, one thing that is now always my go -to when people say the most crazy, the empty talkers say the most crazy things.

Here's what I ended up saying to him. When he got done, I went, okay, that's all great, but how's that going to help you on judgment day?

That's always my go -to in apologetics. They can say whatever they want. They get into a whole bunch of things.

They start talking about science and they start talking about things that are just way over my head.

That's okay, because I can always turn and say, that's fine. How does that help you on judgment day?

And the answer is, it doesn't. The only thing that helps them on judgment day is, what did you do with Jesus Christ?

Did you receive him or reject him? That's it. Judgment day is based just on that decision, whether someone received

Christ or rejected Christ. That's it. So whatever they want to do, argue whatever, you no longer have to worry about the fear of some guy that's going to have a whole bunch of information that's just over your head and you don't get it because you can just say, hey, that's great and all, but how's that help you on judgment day?

All right. So that's one thing just out of today's class, at least that gives you one thing you can take away with and know that you have an answer for any crazy talk you get on the street.

But this guy was going off literally for 20 minutes. And I ended up asking,

I just said, I just got to ask you, like, are you just making this up as you go along?

And the guy literally just laughed and went, yeah, I am. That's an empty talker.

He literally was just making up stuff on the fly to make himself sound smart, make himself sound good.

And he admitted to it. And that's when I just said, okay, how's all that help you on judgment day then? Right?

So you have these guys who are rebellious. You're going to have people who are attacking you.

Well, not really. They're attacking Christ. They're attacking what you're saying because of the fact that they hate

Christ. They're rebellious people. The other way that Paul explains them is empty talkers.

And I said, they're just going to make things up as they go along, but he doesn't stop there.

He doesn't just say they're rebellious and empty talkers. It's not that just that they're what they say is useless.

I mean, they're going to talk about, you know, things like, oh, well, let's talk about Peltdown man and Lucy and, you know, all this.

And really, when you dig into all those and you'll dig into the possible evidence, you realize, oops, they're making all that up as they go along.

It's all based on a perception of their evidence.

And so what we end up seeing is that Paul says that they're not just empty talkers, but they're deceivers.

This is the thing we have to recognize with many of the people as Christians that we're going to be doing apologetics with is there are people who are out there and they are deceiving.

Okay. That is their goal. He even makes it clear who he's speaking of, especially those of the circumcision.

Well, who might that be? Well, that's probably going to be what we would refer to as Judaizers.

Those who came from a Jewish background who would be circumcised part of the Abrahamic covenant. And they're forcing those who are not under the

Abrahamic covenant to get into like saying, well, you have to be circumcised.

You have to follow the law. Okay. So Paul wants Timothy, or sorry,

Titus to use some apologetics. What does he say is the purpose of the apologetics?

Verse 11, who must be silenced. The goal of apologetics is not to win a debate, but to silence ignorant men so that you can share the gospel.

That's the purpose. You are to silence them because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach.

And he says, these specific people do it for sordid gain. They want financial gain out of it. Now, some people today do it for financial gain.

Some do it for popularity with the advent of social media.

There's people who build platforms on things that they know are false, but Hey, it gets me a platform.

That's a sordid gain. You have, you have people that create whole ministries.

If you want to call it that or YouTube channels, you know, like soteriology one -on -one now

I'm calling him out, but this is a friend of mine, someone I know personally, but his arguments are not good.

They're not following good. Harmonic print, harmonical principles. They're not logical, but it gains an audience.

Am I saying he's doing it for sordid gain? Well, I'm not sure I'm getting closer, but that's nothing

I haven't said to him personally. Okay. Even at the last open air theology conference, when he showed up, we talked about it and I've told him,

I think he should get out of that and stick to evangelism. It's what he's good at, but you know, the, there's a difference now between apologetics that we would do and share in defending the faith against an unbeliever.

And what we would call, maybe you could call it apologetics against a believer, just debating over views that we have of differences in theology.

So, um, and I'm just seeing that Melissa's giving a thumbs down to Soteriology 101.

So I wonder if I can, I can't put that up, but you can, if you want it ready. But so we see that the, the purpose that Paul gives

Titus is the fact that when we do apologetics, it should be to silence these rebellious men, these empty talkers who are deceiving people, upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not for their own personal gain.

Okay. That is what we're going to do and learn here in this course over the next, well, eight weeks.

And so we're going to look to, to learn how to silence those that are false, providing false teaching.

How do we silence them? What is a good way of doing it? Oh, you can make arguments to shut someone down.

You can insult them. Is that, is that good? I would say no.

Remember, I'm talking about Christian apologetics in this course. Therefore, if we're doing

Christian apologetics as Christians, we are ambassadors for Jesus Christ, second

Corinthians five. And therefore everything we do when we do apologetics is reflecting back on our

King. We are his ambassador. Therefore, everything that we do must be in a

Christ like manner. And that is why the first topic we're going to cover of the three topics in this course will be the character in debate.

Because if you do not have the right character, you should not be debating. It is the very reason that Paul goes into explain to Titus in great lengths, his, the character issues that should be there.

The fact that as a pastor, he's going to provide in that first chapter of Titus, all of these things that as a pastor, you should be qualified to do.

He lays that out in the verses just before the one we read in verses six to nine, he lays out these character issues because the character is going to be important before silencing the ignorant men.

Why? Because if you don't approach this with the right character, you are not going to have the right outcome.

If your goal is to win a debate, if your goal is to show someone you're smarter than them, if your goal is to shut them up by making them feel embarrassed, then you are not doing what is

Christian apologetics. Christian apologetics, now does that mean, let me answer the objective some may have here.

Does that mean that we have to be these meek people who are just being able to be walked over?

No, there are times that we see with John the Baptist, we see even more so with Jesus Christ, they said hard things.

But I want you to notice when they said hard things and when they said soft things, Jesus reserved hard words for those who were false teachers, just as Paul is telling

Titus to do. These people know the truth and are teaching opposite. And so that is the difference.

When you have people who know the truth and deny it or teach falsely, that is where there should be hard words.

That is where I will be stricter. If you get someone who's just honestly just ignorant on these things, they don't know any better.

So let me give an example. Matt Slick and I did a debate together with two guys that were believing in basically it's oneness

Pentecostalism or a form of it called monarchyism. And they in that debate, if you want to see, that's a good debate you can watch of mine.

In that debate, what you end up seeing is Matt and I pointed out that we believe in one

God and they denied what we believe. They told us, no, we believe in three gods. At that point, the debate's over because they're not arguing against what we actually believe.

And so at the end, I was a little bit stronger with them. Why? Because they knew the truth, but denied it.

Very different than someone who comes to me and doesn't understand the Trinity at all. In fact, my background, I grew up Jewish. I knew nothing of the

Trinity. I got saved. I still knew nothing of the Trinity. I was saved for two years before I even heard of the

Trinity, but I was ignorant to it. And when someone explained the

Trinity, they explained it to me, but they were explaining it in a loving way because I wasn't resistant to it.

I wasn't knowledgeable on it and denying it. So you have to have an attitude of care for those who are ignorant on subjects.

And as we have them being ignorant, we're looking to educate. But to those who are knowledgeable, those who know the truth and deny it, that is where we see

Christ having strong words. He preached hard to the false teachers, but he preached softly to those who are ignorant and needed to be taught.

And so we have to keep that in mind. There are times to have hard words. There's time to have soft words.

If you look at my debate with R .A. Fuentes on Calvinism, that you can find at the

Striving Fraternity YouTube channel. We did that on Apollo Jax Live some years ago.

In that, this is a guy who claims to be a pastor. This is a guy who in the debate actually believes in Calvinism.

Because when I went through in the cross examination, and that's a good one to watch where I did, what did I do in the cross examination?

I gave him the five points of Calvinism by giving their definitions and not the labels.

And everyone was recognizing what I ended up finding, where he basically admitted to all five points he was in agreement with.

And I said, congratulations, you're a Calvinist. And everyone in the chat's like going, boom, gotcha, checkmate, because they knew what

I was doing, but he, not having proper definitions, could not see what I was doing. Yeah.

Second round of cross examination, I asked him to define each of the labels and he defined every one of them as wrong.

And so what we end up seeing in that is the fact that that was someone who

I was very hard with for two reasons. One, I said in my conclusion, he should not be debating.

The reason he shouldn't be debating, well, she shouldn't be debating Calvinism is because he doesn't understand the topic.

He's actually believes in Calvinism, but he doesn't understand that because he doesn't have right definitions.

That's going to be essential when we do apologetics and debate is having right definitions. If you don't have right definitions, then you got problems.

Okay. So the other thing that we have to recognize is when we do this is the fact that we have to, in debate, we have to recognize,

I should actually, I should say one other thing with Ari Fuentes, because I didn't, I started to mention it, but I want to wrap that up, is this is a guy who claims to be a pastor.

This is a guy who was just back in the Philippines for three weeks. His name came up quite often because people saw that debate and felt very ashamed that he was a

Filipino. And I told people he wasn't an embarrassment to Filipinos. He was an embarrassment to Ari Fuentes.

But the Filipino people were more active in the comments, calling him out as well. So the reality is, is that in that debate, after the debate was over,

I called him out on the fact that he left a church to avoid church discipline.

And he just called himself an online pastor. And even today, many years later, he still says he's a pastor of an online church.

Well, even in the Philippines, they haven't, they don't have the lockdowns anymore. There's no reason for online church.

And so what it is, is it's people who, you know, that he's calling himself a pastor when no one has recognized him as being qualified as a pastor.

And so as someone who's claiming to be a pastor and claiming to have a hundred debates under his belt and having a knowledge of these topics, that's the reason he should not be debating.

He's disqualified. Okay. And so this is going to be some of the issues we're going to be covering in the course.

So I want to just, you know, in the seven minutes, we're going to pick some of this up next week in the course, we're going to finish up on the purpose of apologetics as part of the introduction before we get to character.

I want to go through and just take a look, see some of the comments that we have, see if there's any that we want to respond to really quickly.

I know that A .W. Pink Panther, I know I triggered him, sorry, but I wanted to,

I admit it because I wanted to, I want us to think about this.

Here's the thing. Growing up in a Jewish family gave me a certain,

I think a certain skill set for debate. And I think many

Jewish people have this because Jewish families are trained to debate. Around a Jewish dinner table, the father would often have two of the siblings debate a topic.

No prep, no time to, you know, to prepare, no thinking. And you may even have to argue against the position that you hold to.

So, you know, I had to defend slavery. Can you defend slavery? Can you make an argument for slavery?

Well, I quickly found ways to do that. I ended up defending slavery, which actually became very helpful today because when

I go to abortion clinics, I actually make the same arguments for slavery today. I go to abortion clinics and I argue that's for slavery because most of the abortion clinics will be filled with people that are, you know, well,

African American. And so they're very much against the slave trade. So what do I do? I talk about the slave trade.

Why? Because once at some point they're going to argue with me and say it is wrong to say that you can own another human being.

And I will keep arguing for slavery until they get to that point. Why? Because there is absolutely no difference between this is my property and this is my body.

Abortion is based in a ownership issue. You own the human being in your body no different than you own the human being that you paid for.

It is an ownership issue. And so what makes slavery wrong is the very thing that makes abortion wrong.

But slavery is actually better than abortion because slavery did not always end in death.

It didn't always end in torture or meanness. In fact, go read the book Twelve Years a

Slave. And Solomon in that book says if the first person who was kidnapped and made into a slave, he said his first owner, if he lived his whole life under that man, he wouldn't have thought slavery was bad because his master was a

Christian who treated him well. So slavery, we only hear the worst of it.

But abortion, if it's successful, always ends in death. So we end up seeing there that Jewish people are trained to debate even if it's not something you have.

Now, that's why I think so many Jewish people become lawyers. It's the only debate where you get paid to debate.

Looking at the comments, Anthony Nicarado is commenting. You could go back to Apologetics Live.

We did a show where he wanted to talk about gay Christianity or affirming Christianity. He had eight pages that he claims is eight pages of detailed notes.

I looked at those. They were double spaced, large font. It's what I would put into about three pages of notes.

He cried and complained because he never got to it. We previously wanted a discussion. He wants a formal debate.

I'm willing to do that, happy to do it. But in the comments here, he says, yeah, like you did with the lust argument.

That's a great example because if you go and watch that discussion, that was apologetics, not debate.

What did we do? We got to the core issue. What is it that makes all sexual sin essentially wrong, all sex outside of marriage?

It is based on lust. The desire itself for someone outside who is not your spouse, that's the sin issue.

What makes it sin is the thinking there. What he wants to do in the debate, and we're going to have a debate,

I'll predict it now, when we do that debate, you're going to watch him go, oh, let's not talk about the main issue.

It's like talking about the origin of the species, which if you go read that book and you'll notice, you know what

Charles Darwin never addressed? The origin of the species. He starts with the conclusion that species exist.

You know, this is what you end up seeing in debates. People want to start with their conclusion and say, you have to accept my conclusion and now let's have the debate.

Well, the purpose of debate is to get to, as I said earlier in this course, in this class, is to get to the premise.

When I was in that discussion with him, we started discussing the issue of lust because that is the premise of the argument.

You can't have the argument. You can't have the discussion without discussing the issue of lust because they want to say, well, just because I lust after someone of the same sex, that makes it okay.

Really? Because God says lusting for someone who's not your spouse is not okay. And by the way, the state doesn't get to define who a spouse is.

The Bible does because marriage is a religious enterprise. So for those who believe in a separation of church and state, this is what

I did in New Jersey when they had an open discussion on whether to accept same -sex marriage.

By the way, it wasn't homosexual marriage. Homosexuals have been getting married for centuries.

They've been marrying people of the opposite sex, but this is same -sex marriage. Now notice what I just did there.

That's important. You're going to see us throughout the course. I define the term specifically. I get to the precision.

This is what we're going to train you to do in this course, okay, to recognize not the labels people use, but get to the core issues, break down and be precise in our language.

It is same -sex marriage. And so I asked every one of the congressmen, the senators, the legislators that were going to be voting on same -sex marriage in New Jersey.

I asked each one of them, do you believe in a separation of church and state? Every one of them said, yes. And then

I appealed to every one of them and said, then every one of you should vote no on this issue because marriage is a church issue and not a state issue.

So by your own admission, you need to stay out of this and not accept same -sex marriage, right?

That is an appeal to a logical argument for them. Once they say that they believe in a separation of church and state, they're actually compelled, if they're going to be logical, to say no to that.

Of course they didn't, but oh well. So what we're going to cover next week is we will continue with the introduction.

We're going to continue looking at the purpose of apologetics. We are going to start looking at the character that we should have when we do debate.

We're going to look at many passages of scripture. We're going to pick up next week in First Timothy, sorry, in Titus 1 again.

We're going to spend several weeks on hermeneutics, how to interpret. I figure we're probably going to spend three of the weeks on that, and then we're going to probably spend the next three weeks on logic.

So that will cover the courses, what we're going to cover in this course. So again, the materials for students to get, get the book

Tactics from Greg Koukl, get the Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle, get

How to Think Critically by Doug Erlison.

Then we're going to have the three quizzes and tests. You're going to get a quiz after next week.

I'll send that out to you. We're not taking class time to do that, but I will have that and Haps will find a way to get it to all the students.

So if you're just watching this and you want to take the course for credit, and you know, credit,

I mean, I think that's is Haps gives you a nice piece of paper or something, or maybe he just comes over to your house and tortures you with bad humor.

Whatever it is he's going to do. But if you want to do that, make sure you get a hold of him.

You can, you know, the Facebook group, I've got a lawnmower going behind him to mute themselves.

So it was probably Haps. We blame everything on him. Haps probably doesn't even know how to hit the mute button.

So we understand that. It's technology stuff. It's too much for him. So we're going to give a quiz that I'll send out to you after we cover hermeneutics, and then we'll do a final exam when we cover the topic of logic.

So those will be given out. And then I do want you guys to get in touch with Haps or myself again, if you want.

Oh, Melissa is asking, is Haps bringing Bigfoot? He's been brought.

You know, I think that would be a great debate topic if someone wants. Look, I'll just say you can have, if you want a really good example of practicing good debate skills on completely frivolous topics, you can go watch

Keith Foskey did a debate on whether, what was the film?

Whether it's a Christmas movie or not. Oh, Die Hard? Die Hard. Okay. He did.

And when you watch that, that was taken serious. They actually did an actual debate.

It was meant for humor, but I would challenge you to go and watch that debate because even though the topic was completely frivolous, they made good arguments, logical arguments on either side.

Actually convinced me going back and forth, whether I thought it was real or not, whether it was, whether it could be, they had some really good arguments on both sides.

That was a great example of debate, even though the topic may be something as meaningless as Bigfoot. And so I do want folks to do a debate.

Now that debate may be just two of you that get together and I act as moderator and you get a grade for that.

But for those who are going to take this for credit, you're going to have to do that for the credit. And Haps and I will be watching that and providing feedback.

Why would it be good? Even if there's no one really watching, if you don't do it on a live stream, it's good because it will help you to get the pointers.

You're not going to improve in debate unless someone is there to say, hey, here's something you need to do better. Did you recognize that you made an illogical argument here?

You have to be able to do that. And so that's the purpose of it. It's not really to challenge you as much as to learn how to sharpen your skills.

That's why Jewish parents, Jewish fathers have their children do debates. It's to sharpen the thinking.

That's the purpose of it. It's so that you sharpen your thinking, that you learn to make better arguments, and so that your thinking skills, your critical thinking skills are better repaired.

That helps you in every aspect in life, by the way. You want to go in and for your job, maybe you have to negotiate things.

That's debate. That's using debate skills. Are you prepared to do that? Are you ready to identify bad arguments that someone makes?

Are you ready to be able to expose when someone makes a bad argument? You go in to make a presentation at your work.

Maybe you're doing sales and you're making a presentation. Someone is trying to undercut it because maybe the person you're trying to do a pitch to, they have someone else that is talking in their ear, and the person really wants to go with someone else instead of your company, and they make statements.

Are you going to be ready to pick out when they make invalid arguments that maybe someone provided from, oh, those arguments sound good, and you are going to hear very good sounding arguments, a lot of times emotional arguments.

Watch politics, and you're going to see people who do debate. They're trying to win you over often with emotions is why, unfortunately, now most of the

State of the Union speeches are nothing more than shows. They have people in the audience, and those people in the audience are there for emotional heart tugs.

Oh, look, we got so -and -so in the audience, and look, their family member died in this situation, and all to get you emotional so that you think, oh, this person must be really good.

And so what we have to do is avoid emotional arguments and provide logical arguments.

Would you be able to put up this last comment from A .W. Pink, and we'll close with this. He said here, the best way to engage someone is with an opposing view, which is to tell the truth in love and have faith in Christ.

That's exactly right. You're going to hear a lot of emotional appeals, but the best way to oppose those views is to tell the truth, but we got to do it in love.

So that is this week's class. Next week, we'll pick up again. Like I said, we're going to pick up on the purpose of apologetics and maybe start getting into the character of debate, or the character in debate.

So I will hand it over to our dean here, Paps, and Randy, and see if there's anything else, any questions we need to answer that they had.

Well, you know, this is such a blessing to have you here and the other teachers here.

We had Claude Ramsey who went through the art of prophecy, I mean, prophesying,

William, was it William Perks, right? What a great dean. He knows all of his professors, like the back of his hand.

Yeah, he's been picking on me all day, but I remember guys picking you on you all day because we've only spent the last hour together, maybe the half hour before just to do testing, but you came in late for that.

And then you called me when I was walking with my bride, but that was only 17 minutes. So to argue that I've been doing this all day, you call an exaggeration.

Here we go. I just have to be precise. You're being truthful.

You're doing it in love. No, guys, we just wanted to reach out to all of you out there that want to grow in the knowledge of the

Lord and be a student of humility and learn from the generation that has gone before us and get this wisdom that comes from above.

And it's a blessing to have in everything. And remember the passage for this course actually comes from 2

Timothy chapter one, and I just read it real fast and we can close. It says, follow the pattern and the sound words that you have heard from me and the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus by the

Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

And so this is the passing of the torch from one generation to the next, building up the next set of apologists and pastors and teachers and evangelists to go out and do the work of evangelism or teaching or whatnot.

And so if you would like to be a part of this class and these classes, because we have many other teachers coming on, please get ahold of me or Randy.

Um, uh, so the guys that are really, uh, the, the, the structure, the backbone of passing the torch is, um, first and foremost,

Christ, um, that he is our cornerstone, uh, that in, in it's

Claude Ramsey, it's Andrew Rappaport, it's, uh, Andrew Schumacher and myself.

So none of us get all the credit or whatever we want to give all the credit to Christ and, uh, him crucified.

So he gets all the glory. And what we do is we keep each other accountable. We get the right curriculum, um, and go forth.

And so, uh, again, if any of you guys want to join, please let us know.

Uh, and if you're looking for a church, please let us know. We can also help you find a church.

It's not a problem unless you live out in the middle of the desert, but anyways, all right, we are done.

Hey, Hannes. Hi. Poor Randy got, uh, he got, uh, all right, we're done guys.

Well, if Randy's out, who's going to stop the live stream? Yeah, Randy. How are you going to stop? Still live.

It's still live. Randy, Randy, Randy. Someone better go tell

Randy. Yeah. Because we know that Haps, you know, doesn't know how to do that sort of stuff.

He's a technology wizard. I mean, he's working on it.

So I guess, you know, while he's, while he's working on that, I should, I, I should just mention, uh, you know, if anyone is in Vail, Arizona, we're going to be having a conference coming

August, uh, 10th to, I think it's 10th to the 12th, 10th to the 11th. Uh, let's see.

I'm going to go look up the dates. Uh, let's see.

It is the 8th, August 8th to the 11th in Vail, Arizona. It is, uh, going to be called the

Christian Responsibility in Un -Christian World. So if you go search for Christian Responsibility in an

Un -Christian World on Eventbrite, you'll find the information. You can go to strivingfraternity .org

at the back. There's a banner up there for the conference, uh, so that you could register for that.

Some, some excellent speakers, great lineup of speakers. And you may go, Hey, I don't know all those speakers. Um, but it's going to be, uh,

Jay Miller, who's the pastor there at Vail Baptist Church. Yet, uh, he's going to be talking on, uh, from Ezekiel three on Watchman on the

Dan Kraft, who is the seven foot apologist. Uh, great guy does really good with apologetics.

Uh, he's going to be started off with apologetics is not what you think. John Sampson, if you don't know he is, he's a pastor out there in Arizona.

Great guy. He's going to talk about the gospel hope of the nations, basically dealing with false converts.

Uh, Aaron Brewster, who's one of our speakers at Striving Fraternity, uh, is going to talk about true worship.

I'm going to cover a warning on about social justice, pastor Dominic Grimaldi.

He's a pastor in Arizona as well. What he's got a podcast on the Christian podcast community, uh, called

Street Talk Theology. He's going to deal with spiritual, uh, uh, spiritual adultery from Hosea. Uh, and then we got, uh,

Aaron Brewster is going to do a topic on your response, my responsibility in your worship, dealing with high places from first and second

Kings. Dan Kraft will cover the issue of abortion. Kevin Hay. I know you know who

Kevin is. He was at one of the speakers at the, uh, at the open air theology conference, a great brother.

He's our GQ. He's the guy that should be a model. Uh, people invite him just to have a nice face for the, for the brochures, right?

He's going to talk about, you are a slave from Romans chapter six. And then my last topic will be on getting ready for persecution out of first Peter.

So again, that is the Christian responsibility in an un -Christian world in Val, Arizona.

You can go to Eventbrite and just search for, uh, Christian responsibility in an un -Christian world and get the details to sign up and, and be able to, uh, you know, to, um, register for that.

So please do that now. That's, that's all. And, uh, two, two more announcements. Um, uh, everybody we're, we're just now starting to get ready for our next conference, the open air theology conference that will be in, uh, we're, we're debating, uh, uh,

Tullahoma or Nashville. It's looking more like Nashville, maybe. Uh, it'll be next February.

Uh, uh, big lineup. This last conference was awesome. Um, this will be on sanctification and it's entitled war hook.

Good God. Good. But, and, uh, also, uh, look, uh, there's going to be a documentary made on, um, uh, evangelism.

Uh, now, uh, Tom Shepherd, uh, one of the hosts here, I mean, uh, open air theology, uh, wanted to start a show on evangelism.

Uh, and so, uh, we went with, uh, even if none, and that is, you know, of course, you know, comes from Jeremiah, but it's on the book by Ryan Denton on biblical evangelism.

And it's called even if none reclaiming biblical evangelism. So it's a new show that's getting ready to start and so that we can, um, bless all of you guys out there.

So anyways, we're done. It looks like he went off again. Randy, Randy has left the building again.

Yeah. Uh, Melissa says, Andrew or haps, could you make a Facebook post so we can share all of the information with others?

Haps is going to work on that. Oh, I am. I'm happy to volunteer you to volunteer me.

Uh, I'm happy to volunteer you. Okay. We're ready. Randy. Okay.

I have returned. I must live stream so the internet doesn't go down again. Um, and a blessing brother,

Andrew Rappaport, uh, apps and, uh, God bless y 'all.