The Necessity of God in Apologetics

So, I just want to start, thank you, I appreciate you guys helping me with what might be a bit of a language barrier. When I say culture, thank you, Jonna, when I say culture, engage the culture, Henry Vantil I think has a very helpful quote on what culture is.

And he says, culture is religion externalized, okay? Culture is religion externalized. So what you see around you, in the world view around you, the things people are saying, the things people are doing, the things people believe, what happens around you, what gets flesh on it is the religion of the people.

So whatever the religion is, whatever the faith is, whatever the fundamental beliefs are, of any people, it gets externalized, okay? The best way I can put this, I think is most helpful, is think about Ireland with a basic commitment to Jesus' lordship, okay?

Now think about a culture of Ireland where essentially, not everybody is saved, we understand that there are people who profess to believe and are not real believers, right? We can have a Christian culture around you where not everybody is truly saved, right?

But it's in the atmosphere, it's part of what everyone understands and believes. Picture Ireland where there's essential commitments to Christ's lordship, and to God's word. And even in your laws, there is an acknowledgment of Christ's lordship, right?

They're pointing to it. Now think of Ireland today. Are there differences?

Yeah.

In my country, it's the same way, right? We have a rich, rich, rich Christian heritage. Not everybody was Christian, it wasn't a utopia. But there's a rich Christian heritage, very rich. Now look at America today, in the 21st century.

So here's the question, ready? If you took a basic Christian community in Ireland from a while back, and you took a community now in Ireland, do they look different?

Yeah.

Okay.

In what ways do they look different? Tell me some ways they look different.

Alcohol.

Okay.

Alcohol abuse.

Okay.

Say what?

And you said people don't know each other.

The Social Effects of a Christian Culture

Yeah.

Okay, so there's not a lot of like maybe love and intimacy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Don't have.

So that would relate. That's actually pretty powerful. That's like a, that's a down to earth example. People had a basic trust of one another's morality. Ah, very good. Yes. So you had, you have to lock your doors at night.

Okay.

That's actually pretty powerful. A Christian culture versus a non-Christian culture. In a Christian culture, you don't have to lock your doors at night.

Okay.

Dress differently. You said?

About 30 years ago, every shop used to shut on a Sunday, and then they changed the law to Ireland.

So you have even basic Christian understanding in terms of work and rest and worship in a.

Culture.

So when I say culture, I'm talking about the religion of a people that's externalized.

Okay.

So when I say engage your culture, I'm not talking about just style of dress and the differences between Roman Catholic culture and Protestant culture in Ireland. I'm talking about what is the expression of the fundamental beliefs of that society, right?

Their morality, right? What they ultimately believe, what their ultimate standards are, those sorts of things. That's what I'm saying. Engage the culture. You have to engage the gods of the culture. Their ultimate commitments.

And so that's what I mean by engage in the culture. I was told there's a little bit of a language barrier possibly, so I want to make sure you understand what I was getting at there. So now just some things to think about moving forward.

God as the Foundation of Knowledge

My argument is this, is that without Christ, you can't know anything at all, truly know it, right? You can have so-called knowledge like Paul says, but you can't justify knowledge apart from Jesus Christ.

Colossians chapter two, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. Proverbs 1 .7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. You need God to justify knowledge. You need God to make knowledge claims meaningful and coherent and cogent.

Without Jesus Christ, everything is meaningless. Without Jesus Christ, no knowledge is truly possible. Deuteronomy 29 .29, it says the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but what is revealed belongs to us and to our children.

We believe that God has disclosed himself. We believe that God has stepped into history and he's made himself known.

We believe that.

We believe that God reveals himself. We have, you know this, you're Reformed folks, there are two kinds of revelation. There's what, general revelation and special revelation. God's revealed himself in general revelation according to Romans 1 to such a degree that the unbeliever who suppresses the truth about him and switches him for an idol, it's been a long week, okay, who switches God for an idol, it says he is without excuse.

The word, it's powerful, the word in the Greek is he is unapologetus. He is without an apologetic. Isn't it crazy? Think about it. 1 Peter 3 .15, God says for Christians, you be ready with an apologia.

And he says about the unbeliever, he doesn't have one. That's awesome, right?

Powerful.

He knows God so well that he does not have a defense. He has no excuse, none. And moving forward, when you think about what God has done, God has revealed himself in that general revelation to such a degree that the unbeliever really knows the true God, but sin prevents him from submitting or admitting to the truth.

But we also have special revelation where God has condescended and come into history and he has revealed himself to us.

He's touched us. He's walked with us.

He's communicated to us. So I can have certainty because God has spoken. You know, you nailed it. That's Sunday school level stuff. It's revelational epistemology. I asked you, is it moral to just go around and murder people at will?

Are you allowed to do that? You said, no, instantly. And I said, how come? How do you know that? And you all said, because God says, you shall not murder. You stood on the word of God and that's how you know.

Now, of course, are there peripheral things you could talk about surrounding that? Yes. But foundationally, how do you know you're not to go around murdering people? Because God says, because Jesus says, right?

The unbeliever doesn't have that. All they have is themselves, their own personal preferences. All they've got is society and societal convention, whatever society says at the time. That's all they have.

By the way, there's only so much we can do in one day. If you go to YouTube and you type in Apologia Studios, go on there and just go through the hundreds of videos, I think, that are up there. There's videos of us engaging with atheists, actual conversations with atheists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses.

There's public debates.

There's all kinds of engagement. Hopefully you can just listen to and hopefully it's a blessing to you and you can learn from. So I finished a public debate in California after the Bonson Conference and I thought I was done for the day, kind of tired, and so I'm going through the hotel lobby where there's a bar and I'm waiting for somebody to come and then this atheist plops down in front of me.

I had no idea who he was. He wasn't there for the conference. He was just an atheist staying at the hotel. And so he was like just chatting with me, he said, oh, what are you doing here? I was, you know, oh, I'm a pastor and he, oh, what, really, what are you doing here?

I was like, oh, I was here to do a public debate.

He's like, oh, on what?

I said, atheism. And so we're off and running, right? So he starts engaging and so I turned on my phone, like just hit the record button so the conversation was recorded. And what's interesting is I'm engaging this guy and I show him he has no foundation.

He can't appeal to science. He can't appeal to logic with his atheism. And so I bring up morality and he's like, I can't have morality without God. I said, no, you're a bag of protoplasm, you're stardust.

He's like, well, I know. I'm like, well, then there are no ultimate standards in your worldview. He's like, well, I know.

And he's like, but no, right?

And so I brought something up. I said, in your perspective, it's not immoral to go around and kill people and eat them. And he said, well, no, I can say that it's wrong. I said, on what basis? And this was his answer as an atheist.

He really thought about it. He was like, hmm, why don't I go around killing people and eating them? He said, it wouldn't taste good. There's not a lot of options. You really think about it. You know, we laugh about it, but there's not a lot of options.

Now watch this. Do I really believe that this man who's made the image of God actually believes that and.

Lives that way?

I know that he knows God. God has communicated to him in such a way, he knows he's an image of God, he knows you're an image of God, he knows I'm an image of God, and the reason he doesn't go around eating people is because deep down, he knows his Creator's voice, he knows his law, and he suppresses it, and he tries to construct very complex systems of morality, but there's so much exercises in futility because he doesn't have God.

Induction, Science, and the Uniformity of Nature

So engaging unbelieving thought. I talked to you about science. The basis of science is induction. Don't let this go over your heads, and please, as a Christian, don't think, that just seems too tough for me.

I don't really want to think about it. But listen, this right here is the death nail to atheism, one of many, but this is the death nail to atheism. If you don't have induction, if you don't have the uniformity in nature, science is impossible, laws of logic are not necessary, induction is necessary for everything.

Watch, I'll prove it to you. You're depending on it right now, and you just did it again, and you did it again, and you're doing it now, and you're doing it right now, and you're doing it right now, and you're doing it right now.

Is it kind of important, you think? You're doing it now, and you're doing it now, and you're doing it right now. I'll explain it to you. You're all depending upon the uniformity in nature as we speak.

You know how I know? Because not a single one of you is holding on to the bottom of your chair, thinking you won't float away to the ceiling. You didn't even think about it, did you? You got out of bed today, you didn't even think about it.

You got out of bed, you woke up, pulled your covers aside, put your feet on the ground,.

You stood up.

And I'm willing to bet, not one of you thought, when you woke up, like you might float to the ceiling. You weren't afraid of that. I don't know what you did for St. Patrick's Day, but I'm sure you didn't do that, okay?

You all got up, you started walking to the bathroom, and you didn't think for a moment, when you walk into the bathroom, that somehow like gravity today was going to operate differently. And you went to the bathroom, hopefully, because you recognize based on past experience, if you don't use the bathroom, there'll be problems later, right?

You know how this world works. And hopefully, you guys grabbed your toothpaste tube today, and you brush your teeth. And isn't it amazing that today, when you did that, you squeezed the toothpaste tube, and isn't it awesome?

Toothpaste squirt out of the tube, onto your toothbrush. Isn't that amazing?

Like you did yesterday.

Now, watch. If you had squeezed the tube, and nothing came out, would your response be, the laws of physics in the universe have all changed today, right? What would you do if you squeezed that tube, and nothing came out?

You'd investigate.

You'd say, well, something plugged in the hole, or it's empty, right? You wouldn't think that the laws of the universe went crazy, because you know you live in a uniform universe, where tomorrow will be like today.

The next five seconds will be like the last five seconds, right? Induction. The future will be like the past.

Listen.

When the unbeliever lives his life, he lives his life as an image-bearer of God, in God's world, depending upon God to govern the universe. He depends upon the uniformity in nature every moment of his life.

But here's the problem, watch. As a Christian, you can justify, you can provide a rational foundation for your belief that the future will be like the past. What is that? God has spoken, he's revealed himself and condescended, he has promised that he will carry the universe along to its intended destination, he has told us that he personally orders and governs the universe, and that's why you believe science is possible.

But the unbeliever has to use induction his entire life. He has to believe the universe is uniform. He can't do science without it. Ask the question, how does he have a right to that? How does she have a right to that?

Because what is their universe? Time and chance acting on matter, ungoverned, not personally ordered. You know what's amazing? Lawrence Krauss, that physicist I told you about at ASU, he came and did an event with Richard Dawkins, famous atheist at ASU, where I'm at, and he said in his talk with Dawkins, he actually said it as a physics professor.

He said this, he said the physical constants in the universe, the laws, gravity, somebody mentioned calculating the distance between planet to planet, right? Like the stuff we do all the time in the universe, right?

He said the physical constants in the universe came about by sheer accident.

Guess what?

If they came about by sheer accident, it means you can't depend upon them in the next five seconds. I have a question. Do you think that Lawrence Krauss teaches his physics classes like that? Like he teaches on the board?

You're like, well, here's the laws currently, but we don't know, right?

Maybe, right?

Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. The point is, is the unbelievers have to live like image bearers of God in God's universe. They know he's there. They know he governs the universe, but they suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness and they borrow from God in order to do everything they're doing.

It's not to say that unbelievers aren't scientists. It's not to say that they're not pilots. It's not to say that they're not accountants. It's to say they can't justify any of those things that they're doing with their atheism.

They borrow from God at every turn of their life, and my job as a Christian in engaging with them is not to go where they go and pretend neutrality, not to stand on what they stand.

On.

My job is to expose the borrowed capital. My job is to expose the sinful suppression. My job is to point out when they're borrowing from God in order to argue against God. I see your hand. I'm going to, one more thing.

Van Til said it this way. I think it's fantastic. It's an easy way to remember it. He said that the unbelievers, like the small child who smacks his father in the face, he's dependent upon his father to hold him in his lap, otherwise he couldn't reach.

So the atheist who rails against God and swats at God's face is dependent upon God to hold him up because without God, he doesn't get science. Without God, he doesn't get logic. Without God, he doesn't get ethical standards.

Atheism presupposes theism, or it doesn't work.

Faith, Evidence, and the Problem of Neutrality

Yes?

I have a question that's still, you know, very simple to take.

Yeah.

So at that point, they live by, you'll see, by the way, that gets to a good point. Atheists will say, well, you just live by faith. My answer is, well, everybody does. You see, this isn't a question between those who live by faith and those who don't.

Now follow me on this. It's not a question between those who live by faith and those who don't. Like Christians live by faith and atheists don't. Actually, everybody has faith commitments. Everybody, the atheist and the Christian.

There's a difference though. The atheist lives by blind faith, what he accuses the Christian of all the time. He actually lives by blind faith. The Christian lives by faith, yes, trust, but it's trust in an objective standard.

It's trust in a God who has demonstrated who he is. It's trust in objective truth and certainty. Whereas the unbeliever, the atheist, I'll show you his faith.

Here's his faith.

Pay close attention.

This is a big one.

I was in a public debate with two atheists, two of the popular atheists in Arizona. These guys are not just atheists on the side. These are guys that have atheist organizations. They go out on the streets and they try to proselytize for their atheism.

Yes, they do.

They actually try to get people to convert to atheism. We're in the cross-examination period. I brought up the problem of induction, that the future will be like the past. The future will be like the past.

I challenged this atheist to justify, provide the preconditions for intelligibility for induction, that the future will be like the past. Everything depends upon it, all science, this debate depends upon it.

I said, give me a justification with your atheism, not with my Christianity, with your atheism, that the future will be like the past. You want to know his answer? He said, well, it always has been that way in the past.

And I said, okay. I said, but you're arguing in a vicious circle. I said, I didn't ask you what the past was, right? I'm asking you, how do I know that the future will be like the past? And if you say, well, it always was, that's not a justification for future uniformity.

Because what was the case, may not necessarily be the case moving forward. Things can change. So how do I know the future will be like the past with your atheism? And he said, well, in the 30 years that I've been here, it always has been.

So I said, so you live by faith. And the audience immediately caught it. All he has is faith.

But guess what it is?

Blind. Isn't that what they're always accusing Christians of? Blind faith. It is pure blind faith. And so those are faith commitments. He has faith. I have faith. But one is a blind faith. One is not.

So my goal in speaking to the unbeliever is to engage him in such a way as to communicate the gospel. So sometimes Christians will have an apologetic methodology where they try to say, let's get all the evidence as we can.

Let's build up a ladder and get to God, right? Let's get every evidence. Because the problem is they just say they don't believe and they don't have enough evidence. But the Bible says it's not light or evidence that's the problem.

It's what?

Sin. Right?

And so what we don't want to do is start saying, let's just stack the evidence up and see where it takes us, because that's not the problem. Like we don't want to just get a general theism. Let's just get to some kind of God.

And if we can get him there, maybe we'll get him to Jesus one day. Like I'll give you an example. Sometimes people will say, if we could just prove that DNA, like there's a language of life in DNA. And by the way, yes, there is, right?

The advancements we've discovered today with DNA is incredible, right? There is actual word, words at the bottom of life. You get into the smallest part of the body and it's actual language. It's almost like someone spoke us into existence.

Isn't it amazing? All these scientific advancements and they get done. Let's get to the bottom of the cell.

Let's see what's there.

Oh, look, it's language. Like someone spoke us into existence. It's amazing, right? All these advancements. So people say, well, look, if you can just demonstrate that, look, there's information in the cell that actually spells words.

It's a blueprint for life at the bottom. The technology down there is so compelling and amazing. We can't even do what this does with our computers. It's that sophisticated of technology. And they go, if you could just show someone that that is information at the bottom and it's irreducibly complex, remove a couple letters and it is no longer possible to have life with just a few letters removed.

And there is just like millions of letters long. Take a couple out, doesn't work. And the unbeliever goes, wow, you're right. There is information. Maybe it's deism.

Do you get the point?

You see, if you're not arguing from a Christian perspective, standing on Christ, pointing to him the whole time, you can bring up all these evidences. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the Christian God.

Doesn't mean it's Jesus. That's why you must stand on the word of God the entire time. The entire time. Now, the point is the call to repentance and faith. The point is the gospel. Not to separate the gospel from apologetics, but to blend them together, to keep them together.

Engaging Religions That Ape Christianity

Let's talk for a moment now about religions that ape Christianity. I brought up a great example.

It's perfect. It's so perfect.

I brought up a great example today. When I said at the beginning, I said I'm going to go home and tell everyone that I had great crack in Ireland. You guys understand? Okay, good. All right. Well, in America, when I say, that's some good crack, everyone raises an eyebrow.

They'll go, right?

Like, what?

I thought you were a pastor. Why are you smoking crack? Because that's what it sounds like. That's some good crack. They're like, immediately, the word into my mind as an American, I go, the drug problem, all that stuff, right?

Because that's how I define that word. But over here, it doesn't mean that. It means what? Fun.

There you go.

Some people think the same thing over there, I guess, and they're wrong. So the same problem exists with cults and religions that ape Christianity. They borrow our terminology. They are using our language.

Christians have what some might call Christianese, right? We speak the Christian language, especially reform folks, right? We know. Like, I can say things to you, and this part of our reformed ghetto, we know.

It's our slang, right? We talk all the time, we talk about Doctrines of Grace, Sola Deo Gloria, Solus Scriptura, we talk about Solus Christus, you talk about the five pillars of the Reformation, right?

You know what I'm talking about already, right? Or when I say limited atonement, you're like, yes. Jesus actually died, and it meant something, right? You know what I'm saying. Perseverance of the saints, total depravity, unconditional election, superlapsarianism.

But you know what the word is, right? Paedo-baptism. Oh, some of you guys were like, you weren't smiling the whole time, and all of a sudden you were like, okay. You know, when I say 1646, y 'all, see?

Look, if I said that anywhere else, people would be like, I have a clue, 1646, right? Or if I say 1689, some of you guys, yeah, there you go. Yeah, some of you guys are like, plagiarism.

You see what you just did?

You're laughing at total nerd theology jokes, right? Because you are in the Christian ghetto, and you know the language, and you understand what those things mean, but here's the problem. The cults, they have adopted our language, right?

They borrow, just like the atheist does. They borrow from our worldview, but they do something a little different, right? They don't deny God's existence. They actually say they know the same God, but then they pour entirely different meanings.

Into the words.

So, for example, let's use as a case example Mormonism. The problem is learning to scale the language barrier. Dr. Walter Martin said in his book, Kingdom of the Cults, if you don't have it in your library, sell your shirt and shoes and buy it, Kingdom of the Cults, he said that the biggest struggle at the beginning is learning to scale the language barrier with the cults.

You have to understand that when you use Christian, Christianese, they are pouring entirely different meanings into those words. So, when you say God to a Mormon, as a Christian, you're thinking about the one true God, eternally existent as three co-equal, co-eternal persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

When I say Jesus to you in this room as Christians, you're thinking about Christ, second person of the Trinity, eternal God. No beginning, no ending. The same yesterday, today, forever, perfect in every way, took on real flesh, lives a substitutionary life of atonement, died, rose again.

You're thinking about salvation through faith alone in Him, which brings us to peace with God. See, you guys know. You guys are following me, too.

You're like, okay, yes.

You're waiting for the heresy to drop. You're like, okay, good. So you know what I mean. You're filtering through Scripture the whole time. But when you say God to a Mormon, they think immediately, Elohim, one God among many gods.

He had a father and mother before Him, and they had fathers and mothers before them. It's an infinite regression of gods, and Heavenly Father, Elohim, was with His goddess wives. They produced Jesus and Lucifer through physical relations in the preexistence, and so Lucifer and Jesus are spiritual brothers, and you and I are of the same offspring, and the ultimate goal is not reconciliation with God.

It's not peace with God. The ultimate goal in Mormonism is exaltation. It is through faith in Jesus plus obedience to the laws and principles of the gospel, temple work, tithing, missions work, whatever it might be, working through those things, having enough righteousness of your own to become a god and goddess of your own planet one day, like the god of this earth did.

Does that sound like Christianity to you? No. But when you speak to a Mormon, great example, we have people oftentimes that are new believers at Apologia that come to Christ. In my area that I live in, we have lots of Mormons.

I mean, they're everywhere. I think it's the second highest Mormon population in the world the last time I checked, and people will come to Christ at our church, and they'll know we have a ministry to Mormons, and so they'll say, Pastor Jeff, I ran into two missionaries down my street this week.

I talked to them for two hours, and I'm like, awesome. And they'll say, I'm confused. And I'll know immediately what's going on. I'll say, okay, why? And they'll say, because they sounded just like you.

Right?

They talked about Jesus, and they said that he died for sins, and they said they have faith in him, and that because he died and rose again, that they're forgiven, and all these things. They're using your terminology.

And what you have to learn to do is scale the language barrier. Get past all the gobbledygook and get right down to the bedrock, right down to the bottom. When someone says Jesus to you, you need to ask direct questions.

You need to say things like, which one?

Which Jesus?

And the Mormon will say, well, there's only one Jesus. You say, that's exactly right. The Bible says there is only one Jesus who is the only way to the Father, but which Jesus.

Do you believe in?

Well, I don't know.

What do you mean by that? Well, do you believe in Jesus, who is Michael the archangel, the first and greatest creation of Jehovah God?

Huh?

Oh, that's the Jesus of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Or do you believe in Jesus Christ, who is not the divine Son of God, who didn't die for sins on the cross, and didn't rise from the dead, who is just a great prophet?

Huh?

Who's that? That's the God of Islam. Or do you believe in the Jesus of the Rosicrucians, the Jesus of the Christian scientists? Which Jesus do you have? And they'll say, well, the Jesus in the Bible. Okay, do you believe that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers?

Are Jesus and Satan brothers? And what would the Mormon say?

Yes.

That's not the Jesus of Scripture. So what I do is I want to take their position, their worldview, and the biblical worldview, and let them collide. By taking the Word of God, going to say a passage like John 1, verses 1 -3, and say to the Mormon, is Jesus, or are Jesus and Lucifer brothers?

They'll say, yes. Say, how do you reconcile, then, John 1, where it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And it says, all things were created by Jesus, and without Him, nothing came into being that's come into being.

Jesus created everything, according to John 1, including Satan. Colossians 1, verses 16 and on, it says that Jesus Christ, for by Him were all things created in the heavens and on the earth, visible or invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created by Jesus, including Satan.

Let the Mormon struggle with that, with the Word of God, with the text itself. Get beyond the surface-level discussion of Jesus, resurrection, Bible, Heavenly Father, salvation, and start asking the question, what do you mean by that?

So, two points I want to point you to here, just quickly. One, when talking to anybody of any religion that apes Christianity, you need to deal with, one, God, and two, the gospel. There are always going to be peripheral issues, right?

Like, for example, with Mormons, what's an issue that Christians love to leap on? Don't. Tell me about your funny underwear, right? What do Mormons wear? Temple garments, right? And they call it their Mormon underwear, and it's like the first thing some Christians want to go for.

Tell me about that really strange underwear you wear, right? Here's the thing. There are maybe some Christians that have some very strange underwear on.

I don't want to talk about that, right?

Also, that's not an issue that's central, right? You need to talk about what matters, God and the gospel, because if they have the wrong God, they have a God that can't save them. If they have a wrong gospel, it's a gospel that doesn't bring them to peace with God.

God and the gospel. So, when I'm talking to a Mormon, I want to leave aside many of the things that we could.

Talk about.

I could talk about Joseph Smith as a con artist in his area. I could talk about how he was arrested in 1826 in Bainbridge, New York, for crystal ball gazing. I could talk about the affidavit that over 60 of his neighbors signed saying that his family and he were known con artists in his area.

We could talk about his strange occultic practices, the fact that he was involved in the Masonic Lodge. We could talk about the fact that he was engaged in an intimate sexual relationship with another woman before he got the revelation of polygamy from God.

We could talk about his many wives. We could talk about so many things. But those are things that ultimately pale in comparison to the central issues of God and the gospel. I'm not saying they're not important.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get to those things. But when you're doing evangelism, and you're on the street with somebody, and you're like, hey, can I talk to you? Like, let's chat. We've got some Mormon missionaries that come by on their bicycles.

Does that happen here, by the way? Okay, missionaries come by.

Hey, guys!

Like, stop them, right?

Right?

We call it missionary hunting. We go find them, and we say, hey, you know why? Because they're out spreading a false gospel door to door, and they want to talk to people. So why can't we engage them? So you walk up to them and say, hey, guys, can I chat with you guys for a second?

Sure.

Do you guys believe you're going to become a god one day? Right to the point, right? Right to the point. Because if you say things like this, do you guys believe in Jesus? What do you think they'll say?