Pride Presupped w/Dr. James R. White

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and tonight's guest is

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Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. This, I don't remember how many times I've already had him on.

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He's been so kind to hop on here quite a few times, but here he is again.

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And Dr. White, many of you will be familiar with him. He has authored many books, some of which include

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The Potter's Freedom, What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Quran, The God Who Justifies, and of course, the book that's very relevant to our topic today,

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The Same -Sex Controversy. He is also a prolific debater. I think I've watched all of his debates.

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There might be one or two, maybe five, if I really think that have slipped through the cracks and I haven't seen, but for the most part,

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I do try to watch them all. But he's debated so many times, I've lost count. I'm sure he will update us on the number if he remembers in just a few moments.

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Well, next Wednesday also, I'll be having Dr. White on again with Jason Lyle, Dr.

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Lyle, who was on yesterday and will be doing a kind of live audience Q &A. And then tomorrow

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I have Keith Foskey of the Your Calvinist podcast coming on to talk about the topic of why young people are leaving the church.

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And then on Tuesday at 9 p .m. Eastern, I have Anthony Rogers and Jeremiah Nortier to talk about the biblical foundations of the doctrine of original sin.

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And so super excited for those upcoming shows. And before we kind of jump into this discussion for tonight,

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I just wanna remind people, I wanna mention, I mentioned this at the beginning of my program yesterday, that I started another

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YouTube channel called Revealed Apologetics Plus. And this basically features short videos on answering questions relating to theology, apologetics, and just general

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Bible questions. And so show some love and go over there and subscribe to Revealed Apologetics Plus, trying to have it as a resource where folks can just go and find quick answers to common questions.

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And lastly, I have a new course available. If you're looking to support Revealed Apologetics in any way, you can sign up for my course

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Presupp Applied, in which I cover presuppositionalism applied to atheism, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism, and the cults.

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And so you guys can check that out. Information is in the description of this video. All of those things out of the way, once again,

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I'd like to welcome Dr. White. Why don't you say hi real quick before we kind of jump into this discussion?

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Hi, real quick. That's what you told me to say. 189 on the debate moment.

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And it's all your fault. I just looked on Twitter. I put the link on Twitter and it said, and someone that uses the name

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Frederick the Wise, said, if anyone knows about pride, it's Mr. White clinging to Baptist heterodoxy.

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Okay. You gotta love Twitter. There's so many wonderful folks on Twitter.

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I have not. I post on Twitter, but I don't actually read a lot of the threads, but I've heard some legendary things coming from Twitter.

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There aren't too many places where I actually interact with people outside of Twitter, to be honest, because at least you don't have quite the same level of censorship that you have in comm boxes on YouTube or Facebook or whatever else.

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So, yeah, yeah. But no, you run into everything, including stuff like that.

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I mean, we're talking about something other than that kind of pride, but hey, you get every kind of comment.

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Yes, I'm sure. Well, are there anything, new things that you're working on?

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Are you writing anything? I mean, I was mentioning your books here. I have a couple of books here. It's been a long time.

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I have a project I'd like to be pursuing, but 2024 has been rough.

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I've spent more time in ERs and hospitals in 2024 than I had in preceding 60 years of my life.

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So, yeah, we're just trying to work through all that kind of stuff and stay on the road.

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I've got a trip coming up a month from now up into Colorado. And then

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I've got, we're trying to arrange some open theism debates for that. Not getting a whole lot of cooperation on that at the moment, but hopefully something will happen.

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And then I will be debating a former ordained PCA minister on the mass.

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He's become Roman Catholic. And we'll be debating in, I think it's Birmingham, somewhere back that direction in October.

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Lord willing, again, all that depends on the old body functioning well enough to get you to get to where you need to go.

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So, yeah, between that and the Southern Baptist Convention was this week.

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And so on Sunday, Jeff Durbin says, hey, I wasn't planning on this, but Brian Gunter called and he's gonna try to do this, that, and the other thing during the meetings.

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And so I'm gonna be flying out early tomorrow morning. And he didn't ask me, but I could just sort of tell.

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And so I went up to him a little bit later, said, so you need me to preach on Sunday, right? Oh man, that would really help a lot.

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Yeah, he led you in there. Yeah, so I'll be preaching Sunday. So yeah, I'm doing a lot with preaching and apologia and stuff like that.

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And hey, I'm slowing down as I'm getting older. I've got grandkids and -

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Slowing down, slowing down. You just came back not that long ago from a debate marathon.

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I'm slowing down. That's true. Yeah, I'm just so thankful I got through the debates before other stuff happened that has you riding in ambulances at 3 a .m.

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in the morning. So yeah, it's good. Well, hang in there. We hope you are healthy and everything works out.

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That's gotta be a little stressful, especially when you're wanting to get a lot of things done. So we hope all that works out.

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Well, let's jump into our discussion, Dr. White. I wanna let people know this is not clickbait, pride precept.

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I really, really wanted to talk about the topic of homosexuality and transgenderism and how important it is to think from the position of biblical authority in terms of how to interact with this topic.

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So can you kind of unpack for us, as you understand it, the importance of thinking presuppositionally when engaging conversations on this topic?

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And then we'll kind of get into more specificity with respect to how to interact and navigate certain talking points. You know, when

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I first, my first introduction to really dealing with this subject was only about 24 years ago.

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It's not that I didn't know that homosexuality existed. It's just that I was raised within a context where you just didn't talk about it.

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Independent fundamentalist Baptist, you know, we knew it was there, but you just never said anything about it.

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So we never thought about it biblically. We didn't, you know, if I were to look back and criticize my upbringing, and I've done that a number of times,

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I would have to say that we had no positive biblical doctrine of sexuality, marriage.

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The eschatology we had was you may have kids, but you'll never have grandkids, so you don't have to worry about it.

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We had no idea of the importance of the church in regards to its relationship to the state, family, marriage, children, any of that kind of stuff.

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It was just, that's bad stuff because of a couple of verses that I'll be honest with you, when

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I graduated from seminary, I could not have told you which, you know, they talk about the six clobber passages.

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There's actually more than that, but the six key texts that you look at,

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I wouldn't have known what they were off the top of my head. And I probably didn't know almost anybody in my life that would have known what they were either.

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So that's how behind the curve my generation was when the sexual revolution really kicked into high gear with the promotion of homosexuality.

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And hopefully all of us are old enough to remember that when Obergefell came down in June of 15, it was like a switch was flipped.

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And everything changed from homosexuality to transgenderism. And now in hindsight, it's the only way to think about this subject from a

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Christian perspective is presuppositionally. And people go, I don't get what you mean by presuppositionally there are foundational givens in the

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Christian worldview that are no longer a part of the societal conversation.

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And when Christians just go along with the abandonment of those foundational given truths, they're left arguing taste more than they are factuality, creation mandate, anything like that at all.

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And it's funny, I've never actually gone back and listened to the whole thing, but in 2016, man, that was a busy year.

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In 2016, I was teaching apologetics at Phoenix Seminary. And I was contacted by the producers of the

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Dr. Drew show. And at first I was on via Skype, bad move.

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Eight years ago, Skype was questionable at best.

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Things are better now. I mean, you and I are doing this online and it can be, but back then it was terrible.

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And you just don't put yourself in a situation where you're taking on four or five different people and they can all just talk over you and you'll never be heard.

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That is correct. So I was on one episode and it was interesting, but it wasn't,

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I didn't think it was all that useful because of the way I was interacting. And what's amazing is they contacted me and I was sitting right in this chair, this studio, that's where I did it at.

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They contacted me a few days later and they said, we'd like to have you back on. And I was like, well,

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I'd like to, but I would want to be in studio. Well, we don't have money to do that. My wife works at the airlines,

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I can fly for free. Well, we couldn't put you up. We'll put me up. Well, if you can get here, then that would be fine.

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And so I flew to Southern California and walked into the gates of hell called the

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CNN building in Los Angeles and was in studio and someone reposted just last night a bunch of segments from that program.

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And like I said, I had never gone back to listen to it. And so it was fascinating. I do remember one of his sidekicks.

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So here you go. One of the sidekicks to Dr. Drew's arguments was, well, if you're a

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Christian and you believe in the Trinity and since Jesus existed as the father, the son, the

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Holy spirit, then you shouldn't have any problem with someone being both a male and a female. Oh boy. And I'm just like, oh boy, how do you?

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Cause the director of the program, producer, director, something like that came into the green room beforehand.

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And he said to us, we've done studies. And if one person talks for more than 15 seconds in a row, our audience will start tuning out.

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So please keep your answers short. Can you imagine 15 seconds?

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With the kinds of questions and talking points that that involves. I mean, you can't, it's very hard to answer very loaded questions in 15 seconds.

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Yeah. Yeah, so that's what we were up against. And so just watching those little clips from what

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I saw on Twitter yesterday, this morning, whatever it was, I was reminded of just how presuppositional this issue is.

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And that's why most Christians struggle with it because they have not been taught to think that way.

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I've told people that certainly in my apologetic ministry over 40 years now, the way my mind is wired and the way that I have been trained to think over the years,

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I can almost literally see an argument physically,

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I can see what the foundational assertions are that are being made in an argument, even if they're not being expressed.

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And in fact, that's the issue is I have the ability to very quickly identify, and you've said, you've listened to almost all the 189 debates and you know, during cross -examination, that's really my skill is to go in to the fundamental foundational assumptions where my opponent is making his mistakes.

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They may not have been expressed in his open statements. I've tried to bring them out in the rebuttal, cross -ex is where you really need to go at it.

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And there's just, that is the essence of what we're dealing with in a society today that is so, it's denying its own history.

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It's denying its own foundations, common law, everything went back to Christian assumptions about man and responsibilities of man and things like that.

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We're denying all of that. It's creating the mess that we see where we have not just two tiered justice, but many different tiers of justice where you're getting one decision from a judge over here and over here you have the exact opposite and there's a reason for all of that.

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And it goes back to those foundational level issues. And unfortunately, most churches do not teach their people to think, we can call it in a functional worldview method.

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We can say pride month precept, if you wanna do it the way we're doing it here. But the point is so many people struggle because they've already given in on some of the key foundational issues.

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And so the questions and the objections as they're thrown at us by the world leave us struggling to answer for that.

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Well, let's zero in on that. Can you, and I wanna get into some specific kind of points that some people bring up, but can you kind of identify maybe one or two examples of some of the pitfalls one could fall into when not approaching this topic from a presuppositional framework and appealing to neutral categories and things like this.

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What kind of pitfalls specifically do people tend to fall into when coming at it from a non -presuppositional approach?

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Well, I think just one of the more obvious ones that we see a lot of Christians getting into is basically trading scholarly studies.

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I read a study once that said this percentage this, this percentage that, as if you can address these foundational topics of what a woman is, what a man is, what marriage is, what human sexuality is supposed to be based upon trading studies.

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I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing scholarly studies. I would point out that today, the vast majority of academic journals are utterly corrupt.

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This has been demonstrated over and over again by the number of people that have submitted completely fake studies that have been published simply because they fit the narrative that that particular journal is seeking to promote.

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So we do have a problem along those lines where academia has been utterly corrupted by money and by narrative argumentation.

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And I've always really struggled when Christians would use a majority of scholars say argumentation to begin with because that's not an objective standard.

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It can change, it's subject to all sorts of different ways of interpretation.

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And yet a lot of people do buy into it. And when you listen to people on programs in the

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United States, over in Europe, things like that, trying to express somewhat of a Christian perspective, they fall into it all the time.

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Sure. Now, I should say just in passing that though I don't think it's where you necessarily wanna go, one of my real concerns is that it does seem to me that there were probably a number of people in the audience a few minutes ago when

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I admitted that I graduated from seminary without knowing what the key texts on homosexuality were, probably a number of people in the audience going, it would include me.

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And that's a problem. Certainly at Apologia, I have attempted, and of course on the dividing line, but then in the context of my church and my people, and before that at Phoenix Reform Baptist Church, I have done everything

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I can to make sure that if I'm in a position of being a pastor over a flock, the people in that flock are going to have a solid biblical understanding of the texts that address that issue.

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Sure. If we're talking about transgenderism, Matthew chapter 19, and that means even in sermons, as uncomfortable as this might be in a church context, dealing with the best the other side has to offer, and then sometimes some of the weird stuff that the other side has to offer, because sometimes you can shut down a conversation by just throwing some wild, wacky thing in there that no one's ever even thought of before.

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Boy, do they do it in this area. You know, the 1946 movie is,

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I would consider to be one of those wild, wacky, crazy, insane, utterly impossible to defend in debate, which is why they'll never debate us.

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I've been challenging them to do it ever since they started their project. But it's the type of thing that shuts down Christian conversation and a prophetic

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Christian witness, because no one's ever heard of this before. What do you mean homosexuality wasn't in the

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Bible until 1946, what are you talking about? It's absurd, but if you've never heard it before, it can end everything.

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So I would encourage everyone. Obviously, Jeff Neal and I dealt with this stuff in the same sex controversy.

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I have debated this subject. Ironically, the best debates

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I've done have been outside the United States. Two of them with Graham Codrington in South Africa. You can't find anybody in the

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U .S. The people in the U .S. recognize they have the media, they have the culture. Therefore, debating the subject is just a lose -lose for them.

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And so Matthew Vines had said that he would debate when I did a, what was that, five or six hours?

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I think it was five hours for him and six hours for Gushie. When I did response to his, the thing that sort of made him famous, initially he was like, oh yeah, when my book comes out, we'll debate.

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Soon as the book comes out, no debate. So it's not that the information isn't out there.

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I've spent hours and hours and hours on the dividing line on this, going through Sodom and Gomorrah.

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There's lots and lots of Christians who will say irrelevant, only had to do with hospitality, et cetera, et cetera.

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It's not true. Ask Jim. Well, I wanna get into that. I wanna get into that later because I want you to kind of expand that. I know you spoke on this in your book, the same -sex controversy.

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I remember reading it, listening to you expand on that. I'd like you to do that in just a bit.

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But I wanna shift the question to the importance of worldview in general. So when we talk about words like,

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I had Dr. Lyle on yesterday. We were talking about, is the Bible unscientific?

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And the thing that was coming across my mind was words like scientific, historical, factual, all of these words exist within a context, a worldview, a paradigm that dictates how we understand those things.

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Why is it important to understand the role of worldviews when understanding everything but this specific topic?

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If you can answer that question in a general sense and then in a strategic sense, why is it helpful to speak about these topics within a worldview context?

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Well, it's absolutely necessary because what we're facing, the reason we are seeing these massive shifts in our culture in views of things.

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So in 25 years, you've gone from a tiny percentage of people who would support the redefinition of marriage and that kind of thing to the majority, large majority.

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Why? Because as Votie Balcombe likes to say, as has been saying for years, if we keep sending our children off to Caesar's training, we shouldn't be surprised when they come back as Romans.

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And the - Who said that again? He says it better than I did, but it's something along the lines of, if we keep sending our children to be trained by Caesar, we should not be surprised when they come back as Romans.

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And it's obviously the case. The quote -unquote educational system in the

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United States is not an educational system. It's an indoctrinational system. And that has become just so patently obvious.

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Now, I was public school educated, but that was in the 1960s and 70s.

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And even then I was influenced. Now, I don't, you look at California or someplace like that, oh my goodness, my grandchildren are being homeschooled and I'll do everything

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I can to help with that process continuing on for that very reason. But the point is people today are not taught to think critically.

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They are taught in the public indoctrination system a narrow set of definitions of terms, and they're never challenged to go beyond that.

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So the terms you were talking about, scientific, that is not understood in a meaningful fashion by the vast majority of young people today.

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They've been given a completely false definition of it. They don't know what science is.

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They don't know what the process of science is. And so language itself has been hijacked and it's not just, oh yeah,

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Wells got it right in 1984, new speak and everything, all of that's true, but there are levels beneath that that Christians should understand if they recognize the all pervasiveness of the

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Christian worldview. Unfortunately, most people are brought into the church with an evangelical methodology that does not challenge the secular worldview that they then come into the church with.

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And I think that's one of the major problems that we face in the church is that we have so many people sitting in the pews that were brought in without a challenge to the non -functional secular worldview that they already had.

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And so they're sitting there with a massive contradiction between believing that Jesus Christ created all things and therefore he defines all things and therefore all things have a connectivity to one another as far as meaning and purpose and intentionality versus the utterly atomistic secularism of our age which denies all of that.

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And if you deny all of that, we're not gonna be able to have a meaningful conversation because you're just gonna keep redefining words to maintain your narrative.

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And Christians should be the first ones to recognize that, but unfortunately, that's not always the case.

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And in fact, it's very rarely the case that, and you know this, you're going,

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I follow you on Twitter and you go and you're speaking on Christian worldview issues and stuff like that in various Christian schools and stuff like that.

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You're doing what you can to help people understand these things. And certainly in the churches that I've been a part of, that's always been a part of my ministry and my outreach was to seek to inculcate a functional

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Christian worldview. Even when that means that your sermons are not necessarily going to get five -star ratings on YouTube, you know, because you realize how vitally important that is.

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It's absolutely necessary to do that. So yeah, that's where we're coming from.

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And so we're sending people out into the community, into the culture, and they're crippled.

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They're using a walking stick, they're on crutches because they're not excited about the consistency of the

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Christian worldview and how that answers so many of the questions that we have concerning where man comes from, what our purposes are.

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You know, Dr. Drew asked me, I just happened to see this this morning, so that's why it's fresh in my mind. Dr. Drew asked me, why should we care what somebody does in the privacy of their bedroom?

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You could leap on that one and give examples in which that he would care very much.

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Well, yeah, these days, but fundamentally my response was because we're made in the image of God.

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God made us in a certain way. He's revealed what that is, how that, you know, ultimately we are to glorify him.

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From their perspective, it's all about us. That's right. That's the answer that he just gave there.

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And I think that that's great. It shows the fundamental distinction between your worldviews. From your worldview, we are made in the image of God.

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From his worldview, we're not. And so, yeah, it makes sense from within his worldview to ask the question rhetorically, why should we care?

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Yeah, because why should we care about anything? We're nothing but fizzing bags of chemicals.

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So it all comes back down to that. There should be no reason to care about anything at all.

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But especially here, it all comes down to, well, did God make us this way or not?

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And hopefully most everybody by now has seen the utter destruction of the human self that the especially transgender movement is creating.

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I mean, the stuff that I will see online, and look, we have to be careful what we see online.

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Some of it might be fake. I mean, leaving that aside, it seems that there's so much of it, that there are many young people today that their entire view of themselves has been so utterly destroyed and so utterly turned upside down that they cannot possibly even think about having any type of transcendent meaning in their lives, let alone a judgment after this life.

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There's no meaning in what they do every day. There's no meaning in their life completely.

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Why even go on? And you can see it in their faces. The transgender school shooter, her writings were finally released,

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I think day before yesterday, maybe the day before that. And I don't know if you've seen that, but remember, they were suppressed after the shooting.

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And they finally been released. And her utter detestation of her

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Christian parents, of Christianity, of religion in general, but Christianity specifically. And hence the result was her utter detestation of herself that then resulted in the death of six people.

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There's a reason for this. And the world cannot answer what the reason is.

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They can read what she wrote, the vile, hateful things that she wrote.

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They can read that, but their worldview does not provide them with any kind of objective foundation upon which to go, well, there's your reason.

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There is no reason in a secular world. It's all chaos and it's all going to end in heat death.

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So coming up, any intermediate discussion we might have of meaning and things like that is actually in the long run a joke from that perspective.

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So how do we navigate that then? I mean, how do we, cause I was going to ask a question. Let me ask this question first, and then

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I want to piggyback on what you just said by asking a question on how to bridge that gap. So my second question that's coming after this one

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I'm about to ask is going to talk, is going to ask you in terms of how do we bridge the gap coming from a Christian perspective?

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We have objective meaning and purpose. We have an understanding of that. How do we begin to talk to people who don't see the world from that perspective?

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That's my second question. My first question, however, though, is that, as you know, these topics are filled with emotion.

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They can be very difficult to navigate. In line with 1 Peter 3, 15, always being ready to give a reason or an answer for the hope that's within us, yet doing so with gentleness and respect, which is part of a biblical apologetic.

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How do we navigate these sorts of conversations with gentleness and respect, but without compromise?

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And then after that, we'll kind of shift into, well, then how do we bridge that worldview gap in discussion?

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Well, I would assume over the years you've heard my sermons on 1

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Peter 3, 15 and the fact that I believe most apologists twist the text and misuse the text.

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I think the key to that text is the fact that it's a quotation by Isaiah. And when you see that it's a quotation by Isaiah 8, you see that when it says, and there's a textual variant there, but it's a minor one, that we are to treat

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Christ as Yahweh, and we are to set him apart.

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We're gonna treat him as holy, as Yahweh in our hearts. And without taking too much time to go into all of that, the point is that recognizing that the creator himself has entered into his own creation.

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Hence the incarnation, death, burial, resurrection, enthronement, ascension and enthronement of Jesus Christ.

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Peter is writing to just regular Christians. He's not writing to highbrow intellectuals or anything like that.

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He's writing to regular Christians. And what that text is really saying is if we live every day in light of what our profession of faith is, and that is

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Jesus was truly the incarnation of the second person of the

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Trinity. The creator entered into his creation, provided perfect salvation for us.

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And our calling is to serve him and to be conformed to his image.

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The result of that, and the thing that was always before I came to understand this text, you know, it would say, be ready to give an answer to those who ask a reason for the hope that's within you.

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And most of the people I was talking to didn't ask me. You know, you're going up to Salt Lake City and you're tripping the

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Mormons as they come out the gate and they're not asking you. I was sort of forcing it on them.

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The point is that what Peter is saying is when you start with who

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Christ is and all the ramifications that come from that, as Paul puts it in 1

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Corinthians, why do we find in Christ the wisdom and power of God?

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Whereas someone else finds foolishness and a scandal. Why is that?

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What is it about him? What is it about our changed nature in regeneration and salvation?

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What is that all about? And what Peter is saying is when we live in light of that, we are going to respond to adversity.

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We're gonna respond to the world around us in a way that will make us stand out. And hence people will see our changed priorities and they will ask us, why do you have hope while the rest of us do not?

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And that's when we can, with gentleness and reverence, give an answer.

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Now that gentleness and that reverence, that's not saying that we are to revere and respect falsehood.

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We are to revere and respect the image of God in other people and the fact that we are proclaiming his truth.

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So it's a reverence for God, it's reverence for his truth, it's reverence for his creatures, but it's not a reverence for falsehood.

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And we are being told in our society today that we must revere transgender swimmers who are setting all the records because they're males and they're defeating females.

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I don't respect someone who does that. Sure. But we're being told, you have to.

37:25

And there are many people in my own church, they work in jobs where they know that they are not going to get advancement and they could lose their position because they're being put under pressure to, especially in June, celebrate what we cannot celebrate.

37:45

And so I think with gentleness and reverence needs to be understood within the context of what

37:55

Isaiah was saying that Paul is quoting and not translated into the

38:02

Westernized willingness to show respect for that which is fundamentally opposed to God's truth.

38:13

So that's - So 1 Peter 3, verse 15, that last part there is not a verse that says, we just need to be nice to unbelievers.

38:23

It's not a, hey, don't, what was that? There's a lot more to it than that. Okay, good.

38:29

I just wanted, because I know a lot of people would quote that passage like because Christians can come off. And I guess this is, we should be mindful of this too, the way we come off, the way we communicate, right?

38:39

That's gonna be an important aspect. Because a lot of times - It is, but let me, and people will say, well, you're hard -nosed and you're one of the worst people, this, like that.

38:49

Look, obviously I'm not a Steven Anderson type guy or anything like that.

38:55

I've spoken on this subject many, many times before, but I do think we need to try to help train

39:05

Christians to recognize that the world is redefining, we were already talking about language, scientific, whatever else.

39:13

The world redefines love, gentleness, and respect as well. And in a way that my great -grandparents could never have understood.

39:24

They could never have understood how we're even using that language today. And so when people say, well, you're not being loving,

39:34

I feel like if I have the time to do it, to read some of Jesus' parables and bring my enemies before me and execute them and say, would you consider that loving?

39:53

And that's Jesus talking about himself. And that would help,

40:00

I think, people to understand that from a biblical perspective, a Christian worldview perspective, love is self -sacrificing and it assumes that there is a truth about what mankind is.

40:12

And we're dealing with a situation where the culture of death in our society has become so strong and so bold that for us to maintain a prophetic witness, and that's what

40:24

I think we're being called to do, by the way, a lot of this will have to do with your eschatology as to your long -term view of what it is we're being called to do.

40:36

Sure. But even, I'm a post -millennialist, and even as a post -millennialist,

40:42

I recognize - I'm a Puerto Rican, but that's a different eschatology. I'm sorry? I'm a Puerto Rican, that's not an eschatology, it's a different category.

40:50

I'm post -millennial too, by the way, so. Well, and certain other people you've been interviewing recently are too, but we can't talk about that.

40:58

Anyway, the idea that that means everything's just getting better and better and better and better is not what

41:08

I understand of post -millennialism. There are nations and cultures that go through judgment, and that judgment is vitally important for the building of Christ's kingdom.

41:20

And if we are in a situation where we are in a culture that has had so much light and is now coming under severe judgment, then our calling is to be faithful to the proclamation of the truth within that judgment.

41:36

That may not mean, that may end us up behind bars or worse, but that doesn't change the eschatological understanding of where we're supposed to be going.

41:49

So I know one of the things I think about just in passing is my grandkids and my great -grandkids don't have them yet, but my oldest grandchild is gonna be 15 later this year.

42:01

So that means she's not that far away from maybe making me a great -grandfather somewhere down the road.

42:06

Not trying to put any pressure on you, honey. You need to find the right guy first. That's right. But I'm thinking for them, what

42:18

I do in regards to the LGBTQ stuff, my opposition to this sexual revolution really a lot of it is for her.

42:30

And if I were to be willing to go to prison for standing firm on this, the primary reason

42:38

I would do it is because I would be doing it for them. I think that's vitally important along those lines.

42:47

So I sought to inculcate a Christian worldview as best

42:53

I could. And I will admit, looking back, I was missing some important aspects of it, but I tried to inculcate a

43:05

Christian worldview with my children. And they will tell you that. They will tell you that we would drive around in our beat -up used cars and I bought them little whiteboards and I would give them quizzes and they would be writing with their little dry erase markers in the backseat about Christian worldview issues and God being our creator and the image of God and the true biblical ground of science.

43:32

And Jason would have been very proud of all that stuff back then. Was it as full -orbed as I would do now?

43:40

Was it as full -orbed as my grandchildren are getting? No, it wasn't.

43:47

But I did seek to do that. And I think that's what all of us, as best we can, are called to do within our families and then to proclaim that to those that we have opportunity to interact with in our society.

44:03

And so if I talk to a transgender person, which I did on the

44:09

Dr. Drew show, if I'm talking to someone who makes that claim, and this is the second part of your question, this is the second question,

44:19

I am talking to a person made in the image of God. And as you know, that is the contact point.

44:28

It's not a neutral ground that we can both jump onto and say, hey, let's just reason together.

44:38

There can't be a neutral ground if what we say is true. What I mean by that is if Colossians chapter one is true, for by him were all things made, heaven and earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him, for him, he is before all things, and in him all things soonest again, they hold together.

44:58

If those words are true, then every fact that is a fact was created by Jesus.

45:06

And so it can't be neutral. So there is no neutral ground. So a lot of people go, well, if you really believe that, then how can you ever have a point of contact, the point of contact is the person

45:19

I'm speaking to is made in the image of God. Now, they may have spent the last 30 years of their life, or if we look at someone like a

45:26

Bruce Jenner, 60 years of their life, suppressing that truth, but it's still there.

45:34

And that's what I'm going to be aiming at, seeking to graciously in recognizing here is a person made in the image of God, that image is being marred by falsehood in their thinking, falsehood in their worldview.

45:50

If I care for them, I need to seek in whatever amount of time

45:55

I have to speak to them, to communicate what the spirit of God can then use to bring them out of this situation, to redeem them and to save them, not just in the sense of just individual salvation, but to save them from the destruction of their personhood, which is ongoing.

46:19

And let's be honest, it's ongoing with everybody. Sure, sure. I think what you're saying there too, because that ties into, because you get a lot of people who ask these questions, hey,

46:29

Dr. White or Eli or whoever, how do I get my gay family member or transgender brother or whatever, how do

46:38

I get them to see the truth of what I'm saying? And we forget that there is an element of that, a core element of that, that that is actually impossible on a human level.

46:49

So we're basically asking, how do we do the work of the Holy Spirit? And the answer of course is we don't, right?

46:56

We're the faithful instrument, knowing that along with our words, the spirit is working as well.

47:02

And so I think that's important because I think a lot of these questions are coming from a place that's actually predicated on a false presupposition, namely that we play the role of the convincing.

47:12

So I think there's a balanced approach there. One of the glorious things about, there's negative things, we were talking about the medical stuff that I've started to run into as I'm aging, but one of the glorious things about getting older,

47:28

Alpha Omega had its 40th anniversary, this is our 40th anniversary year, but we had a celebration back in October.

47:35

And one of the neat things about that is meeting people who will come up to me out of just out of nowhere.

47:45

And they'll say, I was delivered out of this group by, and sometimes it's,

47:56

I had somebody actually Sunday night was saying, yeah, your ministry was what got me out of this.

48:03

And the funny thing was, that's not an area we necessarily dealt with, but it was the biblical teaching about the authority of scripture, the reliability of scripture, whatever it might be, that was then used by the spirit of God to deliver them from something like that.

48:17

Right there, Dr. White, I'm gonna interrupt you there because that's so funny because that's my same compliment from this side of the screen to yours.

48:26

It's the biblical teaching and your teaching on exegesis and consistency that brought me out of Molinism.

48:34

And I tell people this, cause it sounds odd that I was a Molinist and then I became a

48:39

Calvinist after watching a debate you had with Leighton Flowers, which wasn't even on the topic of Molinism, but it was -

48:47

That's true. It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't even about it. It was just the issue of consistency when you asked him the question, do you use the same kind of exegesis in your position that you would defending the deity of Christ?

49:00

And I realized in myself, I almost felt convicted that when I was talking to my friends and trying to quote unquote, convince them of Molinism, I wasn't using the same approach that I would use to defend the

49:11

Trinity or the deity of Christ. And that convicted me. And so a lot of the teaching that comes out of your ministry and Apologia kind of just bringing me back to the importance of the consistent hermeneutics and exegesis of scripture.

49:26

I think that helps in all those other areas without you actually speaking directly to those other areas, which you also do, which is helpful as well.

49:35

Yeah, I do. But yeah, that's been the core, our core purpose all along.

49:40

And the wonderful thing is being able to trust the spirit of God to use the word of God.

49:48

And as a church historian, I know that the Reformation, that was one of the key issues was the word of God and the spirit of God together is the church's sufficiency.

50:02

That's right. And I don't hear a lot of emphasis upon that today, but I certainly try to make that.

50:08

And that's what gives you the confidence to press on, even when, right now the culture around us is not favoring our perspective.

50:20

Sure. And wants to silence us. And a lot of people can just become very discouraged.

50:30

And people will ask me, well, you've been at this for 40 years and you've seen a lot of degradation in our society in 40 years.

50:39

Don't you just wanna give up? Don't you just wanna give in? And my response is, first of all,

50:46

I'm Reformed. And so my response is, God has called me to minister at this time in this place.

50:58

And so that didn't surprise him. And would it have been easier for me to minister at a previous time?

51:07

Well, I often think about my great -grandfather, absolutely poverty stricken minister.

51:17

Had nothing. He didn't have a YouTube channel and a traveling schedule.

51:23

Nothing, man. I mean, he ministered in tiny little churches, working by the sweat of his brow.

51:30

Died when my dad was 14 from a botched appendectomy right after World War II.

51:40

And yet that's where he was called to be faithful. And so have

51:46

I had just massively greater opportunities than he has? Oh yeah. Do I still remember the homeschool family that walked up to me after a debate that I had with Yusuf Ismail at Northwest University in Pachasum, South Africa about 12 years ago?

52:10

And all the kids knew me like I was a part of the family? Well, you've lived in my car for quite some time.

52:19

By the way, I need to talk to you about that. We have a rule. There's stuff under the back seat, bro, that really needs to be dealt with.

52:26

We have a rule that when we draw, now it's not a rule. By default, my wife lets me listen to whatever I wanna listen to when

52:32

I'm driving. But in the earlier years, if I was driving for the road trip, I got to listen to whatever

52:38

I wanted. And so it was always debates, debates, debates, debates. So you practically lived in our car for quite some time.

52:47

Last year, I had a family come up to me. I don't remember where it was. Right now, as you know,

52:52

I don't fly anymore. So I'm traveling by RV. And so I get to go into a lot of smaller churches and meet more people as a result that way.

53:00

And this family comes up to me and there is a... I remember when Summer was 13, 14 years of age.

53:07

There's sort of a period of time there where young girls, especially, just stop smiling. I'm not sure what it is, but this teenage girl, this family, homeschooled family, and the dad's all excited to meet me and all this kind of stuff.

53:23

And the girl just has this deadpan look. And because I remember Summer in 2004, manning one of our tables in Los Angeles.

53:33

And she came up to me after everything was closed down and she goes, dad, you attract some really weird people.

53:42

And it was that deadpan 13, 14 year old look like, wow, you've got some weird fans and stuff like that.

53:49

It was the same look on her face. And she says, I've grown up listening to you talking my entire life.

53:59

Did she say it like that as well? Just this look. And I think it's great.

54:07

I think it's absolutely awesome. I hope that when I'm dead and gone and she's got kids that she'll say, and man,

54:16

I'm glad that my parents did that to me because I've used that with my kids. And I'm already hearing that.

54:22

That's the wonderful aspect of all of this stuff. So how do we get onto this? I have no idea.

54:27

I have no idea. I'm actually really distracted because earlier on you said that you were a post -millennialist and I said that I was a

54:34

Puerto Rican. And of course, because this is the internet, you say the combination of certain words and someone will do something and put something together.

54:42

I think we've just invented, someone has just invented a new eschatological position known as Puerto Millennialism.

54:49

Puerto Millennialism. I'm gonna go with that. I'll let you define that one.

54:55

I won't touch that one. I'm an optimistic Puerto Rican. There you go. That's awesome.

55:02

Well, let's get back on topic. Okay. I have a couple of cliche points that I'd like you to interact with.

55:09

And as folks know, I do teach middle school in a Christian private school.

55:15

I teach seventh grade Old Testament and eighth grade logic and debate. And so I do refer my students to some of my videos and I would like to refer them to this aspect of the video where I'm gonna ask some common things that they hear and maybe you can kind of help them along the way in terms of how to approach common cliches that we hear coming from the homosexual community, transgender community, these sorts of things.

55:42

So here's a very popular one, Dr. White. I know you're familiar with this. Love is love. Love is love.

55:49

What is wrong with that statement? How can we walk us through the thinking process?

55:54

You're talking to a middle schooler who's probably has TikTok or Instagram and hears someone say, hey, love is love.

56:02

You shouldn't be telling us who we're able to fall in love with. Why is that not a good summary of the issues?

56:11

Well, that one's tough for me simply because up until literally 15 years ago, no one would have had any idea what that was even supposed to mean.

56:23

It is a classical definition of a tautology. Yes. And hence allows you to smuggle in a mountain of error under this banal statement.

56:42

Love is not love. None of us live that way. None of us even think that way.

56:50

I would hope that most people would recognize that the love that I'm supposed to have for my wife is different than the love

57:00

I'm gonna have for my neighbor's wife. That my love for my children is gonna be different than the love for my pets.

57:10

Why that one these days is starting to get a little bit confused in a lot of people's minds, sadly. That's true, yeah.

57:17

So that there is a hierarchy of love that is necessary and proper.

57:23

If I say I love a sports team, hopefully we can see that there are people who have completely lost their minds on that level and have hurt the people they're supposed to love by betting and things like that that ends up damaging relationships.

57:47

Thankfully, we have a revelation of what love really is found in scripture.

57:55

And love is self -sacrificing. Love is defined on the basis of what is best for someone else.

58:04

And you have to know what their nature is. You have to have revelation from God concerning his law along those lines.

58:11

There are just so many things that where if you accept the world's use of love is love, you will never be able to even begin to define love, let alone defend love from perversion and destruction and being used as a means of enslaving others.

58:32

So when someone says to me, love is love, my response is love is defined by God.

58:40

And if you don't believe that, you'll never love properly. So love is worldview dependent, basically the presuppositional application.

58:50

Love, when someone dangles the word love in front of you, you always just kind of for people listening, you always wanna take that word within a context.

58:58

They're saying it from a context that's not grounded on God. We're understanding that within a particular context and it is appropriate.

59:04

I know this is the cliche, Dr. White, but the question by what standard is a great question to ask.

59:10

Love is love, well, what is your standard of love? Let's get to the foundation there. So yeah, very much appreciate that.

59:18

Love has an object, we can love evil things. So the object is going to be very related to the goodness or lack thereof of the love that we're expressing.

59:29

So how about this one, Dr. White? I was born this way, God made me this way. And I know a lot of people who struggle with same -sex attraction, things like this.

59:40

This is something they struggle with. I feel attracted to other men or I feel attracted to other girls or other women.

59:47

This is the way God made me or if God doesn't want me to live this way, why did he make me this way?

59:53

How can we navigate that from kind of a counseling perspective? I know there are people who genuinely, at least in my experience, working with teenagers who grapple with some of these things.

01:00:01

They're like, hey, I wanna serve the Lord, but like, why do I feel this way? How can we kind of speak to situations like that?

01:00:07

Well, first off, there's a difference between saying God made me this way and it's just the way that I am.

01:00:15

Because the secularist who says this is the way that I am is importing an entire concept of denial that there can be a standard to which we can be compared.

01:00:30

So by what standard again comes in, but the secular understanding of that kind of a statement is based upon a rejection of the idea that there is a proper orientation for a male, orientation for a female, their proper roles that God created anyone.

01:00:54

Now, when someone tries to say, well, God made me this way, let's assume that you're talking about a

01:01:02

Christian. Now you're getting into a whole other area that you have to ask questions about what this person means by what they're saying.

01:01:15

So I think it was, was it last year? I think it was September of last year. I did a debate with a side

01:01:22

B advocate who would say, he would say,

01:01:28

I've never known anything other than same sex attraction. I'm not acting on it.

01:01:35

I don't believe it would be appropriate to do so, but I'm just simply saying, this is how

01:01:43

God made me. And if God were to offer me, if someone were to offer me a pill that would change me

01:01:54

I would rather take a Tylenol than take that pill. That's the exact terminology he used.

01:01:59

I'm not sure if you've seen that debate from last year. Well, I might have actually. No, that's one of the ones

01:02:05

I did watch. Okay, yeah. And he actually made that specific assertion. And so at that point we're dealing with, if the person claims to be a

01:02:16

Christian, now we're dealing with biblical parameters. Now we're dealing with 1 Corinthians 6, 9 -11 and Howard understands such were some of you, but you were washed, you were redeemed.

01:02:29

What is washing and redeeming mean? What do you do with people who come into the church and who say,

01:02:38

I accept biblical authority. I accept that this is a sin. I ask that God would change my heart.

01:02:49

And then they say, but I still have those desires because there are people who come into the church and say,

01:02:55

God has changed me and God has changed my desires. And there are a lot of people who just, no, it could never happen.

01:03:03

I really struggle with people who would say that that's impossible, it can't happen.

01:03:10

But there are people who take that exact position and it's in a lot of books that are being published today.

01:03:17

How do you deal with that? How do you deal with the side B folks who are saying, we should be allowed to, even though we have these desires and these attractions, we should be allowed to take roles of ministry in the church.

01:03:33

And if you listened to that debate, my argument in that was that when

01:03:40

Paul lists the things he lists to the Corinthians, one of the things that he lists is covetousness.

01:03:48

Covetousness is not an act, it's a set of desires. And he said, do not be deceived.

01:03:58

If that's what you were, then that's in the past. And the gentleman

01:04:04

I was debating, a fine young man, very intelligent, great speaker, but he didn't touch that with a 10 foot pole because that simply exposed the narrative that he was seeking to present.

01:04:22

So that is an area that a lot of, I think even seminary graduates struggle with.

01:04:29

Because again, if you can graduate seminary and you don't even know what

01:04:35

Genesis 18, 19, Leviticus 18 and 20,

01:04:43

Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, if you don't even know where they are and haven't done a whole lot of work on them,

01:04:50

I can see why someone would struggle to then deal with a very thought through, but I think dangerous side

01:04:59

B argumentation, which is basically what I was taking your argument to be.

01:05:05

God made me this way, I experienced these desires. And if God made me this way, then how can these desires be inappropriate?

01:05:14

Because the side B view is acting on them is what's inappropriate, not having them.

01:05:23

And there are people, Bob Gagnon, for example, who has written tremendous material on homosexuality.

01:05:29

He would not agree with me on that point. Sure, so there's a distinction there. So some people say that there's a difference between feeling same -sex attraction versus acting upon it.

01:05:38

Would you say both are sinful? Both are disordered and are fundamentally opposed to God's purposes.

01:05:50

So yes, I believe that there is a difference between having a natural desire and having an unnatural desire.

01:05:59

Okay. And you need to recognize that that unnatural desire is, it's one thing to have a natural desire and want to engage in it outside of God's parameters.

01:06:11

It's something different to have a completely unnatural desire and to say

01:06:17

God made me to experience these unnatural desires. And that's where the struggle is for a lot of people.

01:06:26

Sure. And interestingly enough, this distinction is starting to break down, but what people have said in the past is, well, how about pedophilia?

01:06:38

How about bestiality? And the response to those types of things up until recently has been, oh, come on.

01:06:46

That's, you're being ridiculous. And now we're seeing in the same literature and from the same perspectives, people saying those are orientations too.

01:06:59

Right. You can't pick and choose. You didn't choose those for yourself and therefore how do you deal with it from there?

01:07:07

Right. Wow. Okay. Thank you for that. Do you have a few more minutes to take some questions or would you like to wrap things up?

01:07:14

That's up to you. I'll let you make that call. How about we go to about 20 after? How does that sound? Okay.

01:07:19

Sounds great. I did the dividing line before this and I took live calls. So, and when you do that on the dividing line, you get every topic under the sun.

01:07:30

So I found myself actually having to give an off the top of my, and you'll appreciate this since you do some history stuff, off the top of my head discussion of the

01:07:44

Alexandrian versus Antioch schools of interpretation and Christology being applied in a church about millennial views.

01:07:57

You can't prepare yourself for that. Okay. Here we go.

01:08:03

Yeah. I spoke at a church in Florida. It was a Jamaican church.

01:08:08

And that was the first time I speak at different, you know, cultural churches. I speak at a Filipino kind of event in the summer.

01:08:16

This was a Jamaican church. Because you're a Puerto millennialist. What was that? You're a Puerto millennialist.

01:08:21

That's right. I'm in high demand because people want to know the Latino eschatology. You know what I'm saying? The only one

01:08:28

I know. So yeah, I'll let people know if that's what they're looking for. That's right. Well, when

01:08:33

I was at this church, someone, I mean, I hear questions all the time from teenagers. A student asked me about Rastafarianism.

01:08:39

I'm like, what the heck? I've never even seen a Rastafarian before. I was like, for the first time ever.

01:08:45

I'm like, beats me. I have, but I couldn't outline what they believe for you. No, I couldn't. Yeah, no. I looked into it, but I don't remember it.

01:08:51

I mean, when I was there just a few months ago, and I was driving around with Carmen, and we passed by so many places, like Scientology places, like I haven't seen as many cults all in close proximity.

01:09:07

It's like, you guys got all of them. Go to Utah if you really want to see the

01:09:12

Wild Wild West. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. All right, well, let's jump into some of the questions here.

01:09:18

The Al Coon Project. Thank you so much for your $10 Super Chat. A question for Dr. White. Dr. White, since seminaries are becoming so expensive and woke, are there alternatives for young men to study to become truly confessional elders and deacons?

01:09:35

Well, yeah, there are. And one of the nice things right now is so many of the seminaries are putting so much of their material online where students can actually participate in the classes without necessarily being on campus.

01:09:54

There are some classes that's really hard to do. So for example, when people ask me, how do you learn Greek? I know of only a handful of guys who've actually survived doing that on their own.

01:10:06

It almost always takes a class where you've got a quiz coming up on such and such a day, so you've just got to do it type of situation.

01:10:15

But yeah, there are a lot of seminaries that are getting away from the, let's in -debt everybody to $100 ,000 and let's actually get people educated and prepared for ministry.

01:10:32

There is a fight going on there because the big box seminaries that have millions and millions and millions of dollars invested in libraries and buildings and staff and stuff like that, have to try to find some way of paying those bills.

01:10:49

And so I always tell people, look, what do you want to do? If you're in a denomination that's gonna require a certain kind of degree and accreditation, then you've got to play their game.

01:11:05

And there's not much you can do about it. If you want to be thoroughly equipped to function properly today in the church, that can be done without you leaving your church.

01:11:18

And that's the way it should be. I mean, it is sort of really, and I've got a whole sermon on this that I'm not gonna go into right now, but it is really weird that for years and years and years, what we would do is we would take our best and brightest young men and we'd ship them off someplace else.

01:11:34

And 99 % of the time, they never came back to us. That's right. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

01:11:42

And so doing theological education in such a way as to keep people in the church and to build up your leadership from within the fellowship, that's the way to do it.

01:11:53

And I appreciate that I'm professor of church history and apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and that's what we're committed to.

01:12:01

We're committed to the local churches. We don't want our people coming out of their churches.

01:12:06

We want them being in their churches and doing so much of the training there in that context.

01:12:12

So yeah, there's a number of places trying to do that kind of thing. I think the beauty of just our modern context is technology.

01:12:20

There are a lot of free resources that people can work through in a systematic way as well. So you don't have to spend all the money.

01:12:26

A lot of people have no, my background, you know, you see my degree. And I remember you poked fun at the, when

01:12:32

I first had you on, I was like, oh, did Ergen Kanner sign here? Oh, yes, oh, yes, yes.

01:12:38

Well, I never - You know, we love our Liberty grads. We sort of pat them on the head and go, we love them.

01:12:48

But all of my apologetics, like training and study, I learned,

01:12:54

I took one semester of apologetics in seminary. That was it. The rest,

01:13:00

I was able to learn through watching videos, listening to lectures, reading books. I mean, I just -

01:13:05

And that wasn't with Ergen Kanner, right? It wasn't. I took, actually, with Ergen Kanner, he wasn't my professor, but I had to listen to his

01:13:11

History of Baptists lecture series. But there are lots of resources out there.

01:13:19

Was it in Arabic? That's - Sorry, sorry.

01:13:26

There are some people watching going, what, what? Believe me, there's a whole big backstory to all this.

01:13:32

Look up James White and Ergen Kanner. The lecture you gave exposing him was brutal.

01:13:39

It was brutal. You know where that was recorded at, right? Where? Tom Buck's church. Why does that name sound familiar?

01:13:46

Oh, Tom's in Lindale, Texas, and it was at the church there. Tom, he's been doing a lot of teaching on exegesis and preaching for G3 and stuff like that.

01:13:59

So yeah, he's a good friend of mine. He's a great brother. Yeah. Well, all that to say, to kind of finish this question here, there are lots of resources out there if you want to learn apologetics.

01:14:08

Of course, what's helped me is listening to a lot of Dr. White's debates. One of the things I appreciate about your debates is that they're diverse.

01:14:15

And I don't mean that in the woke sense. They're diverse and brave and not - Sometimes I'm a

01:14:21

Puerto Rican and sometimes I'm a Scotsman and sometimes, yeah, sure. Oh boy.

01:14:26

Let's, okay, let's move on to the next question for, okay, there we go. All right. Question from Jason.

01:14:33

Does Romans 1 .26 imply that all those that trade God's truth for a lie will be given over to homosexuality as a punishment?

01:14:41

No, no. Homosexuality is used in 1 .26 and 1 .27 as an illustration of the fact that sin touches all of man, even the most definitional aspects of man.

01:14:57

Our sexuality is basic to how the entire species is meant to continue.

01:15:06

And a lot of people today don't even seem to care about that. But what Paul is saying is that even that which is definitional of us on that level is impacted by sin.

01:15:18

It's not that everyone who exchanges truth of God for a lie is gonna practice homosexuality.

01:15:25

There's all sorts of other things. There's all sorts of other forms of idolatry that he's already mentioned and then is gonna mention more of them toward the end of the chapter.

01:15:35

So no, that's just the point is he's using that as an illustration of how deep the twistedness of sin goes in man, so much so that even their women,

01:15:47

I think that's how, I think that's what Paul, I think if we could have heard Paul dictating that part, he would have said, even their women.

01:15:55

Sure. Because the maternal desire is so strong. So to deny that and to suppress that means that sin truly goes deep.

01:16:06

All right, thank you for that. Scott Terry asks, what sin exactly is being committed during a homosexual marriage ceremony?

01:16:15

Seems like some sort of aggregate nationwide sin rather than at an individual level.

01:16:21

Well, the sin being committed is a rejection of God's right to define marriage.

01:16:29

It's a rejection of the Lordship of Christ. It's a rejection of God as creator who made us as male and female.

01:16:36

And so it is a fundamental rebellion against what

01:16:42

God has made so plain and so clear. I mean, look, kids, until they're perverted by the people around them, know what a boy and a girl are and what the differences are.

01:16:54

And for us to, as adults, pervert that goodness into a narcissistic relationship, because that's what it is.

01:17:06

A same -sex marriage is narcissistic. You're marrying a mirror image. It's not et cetera connecto,

01:17:14

Genesis one, a helpmate that corresponds to you. It is your mirror image.

01:17:21

And that's narcissistic. And that's why it's fundamentally destructive. Okay, thank you for that.

01:17:29

Earth, not the planet, the person here, Earth. The Bible also talks about love of self when it says to love others as you love yourself.

01:17:39

Can you talk more about that since today's self -love is so misunderstood? Well, I think -

01:17:46

In other words, let me summarize. How can we hold in balance, Dr. White, the love of oneself in a biblical way and loving others as we love ourselves?

01:17:55

Yeah, when I think of self -love, I don't think of that in the sense that I love others.

01:18:04

It's that we are going to preserve ourselves. We are going to preserve life.

01:18:11

And therefore, we are to extend to others the preservation of their life, service to others, things along those lines.

01:18:20

Most of what I hear about self -love today is not born out of a

01:18:25

Christian worldview. A Christian worldview is going to see us as creatures of God and as image bearers of God, yes, but as fallen.

01:18:36

And therefore, in need of God's grace and in need of the law of God to reveal to us the limitations that we are to have.

01:18:49

When I see people spending absurd amounts of money on what they're calling self -love, which is actually nothing more than self -indulgence, it's not biblical love.

01:19:06

Biblical love would have us looking outside of ourselves to our husband, our wife, our children, our family, our parents, our extended community, the church, whatever it might be.

01:19:17

And it's not what we're defining today within a secular context where there is no transcendent meaning to our life.

01:19:27

Self -love would be how do I live in such a way that in eternity

01:19:33

I will have shown that I fulfilled God's purpose in me, the gifts that he gave to me, the opportunities he gave to me.

01:19:43

That's totally different than the three -week spa treatment type of thing.

01:19:49

Now, the last question here, apparently this is the person's first time ever coming onto this channel, so we'll end with this one, okay.

01:19:59

What exactly is precept? And by the way, I'm not laughing at the questioner because that's a fine question.

01:20:09

Yes, well, it says pride precept, so yeah, I get it. That's right, that's right. Yeah, so all we're trying to say is presuppositional apologetics is a method of defending the

01:20:22

Christian faith and presenting the Christian faith that recognizes that in light of God's creative order, there are certain presuppositional foundational issues that must be dealt with first, that secularism and all of human religion tends to either twist or ignore.

01:20:42

And so the whole point of the title for the video is let's talk about the pride.

01:20:48

It's June, Pride Month, and let's talk about it from a functional Christian perspective, a Christian worldview perspective, that recognizes that sadly, a lot of Christians are sucked into conversations on this topic, and they end up standing on the wrong foundation.

01:21:06

And when you stand on the wrong foundation, it's gonna collapse. That's right. I love Steve, I think his name is

01:21:11

Steve West. He wrote a book on apologetic methodology. I don't remember the title, but he defined presuppositional apologetics really well.

01:21:19

He said that presuppositional apologetics is an attempt to bring every thought captive to itself to the obedience of Christ, even the thought of the unbeliever.

01:21:28

I like that. It is a way of defending the faith that is a top -down approach. So if you take like other methods of defense, they often use a bottom -up approach.

01:21:37

They work their way up to the conclusion that God exists. Presuppositional apologetics, just for this person asking the question, starts with the presupposition that God exists and his revelation is true, and that unless you start from that foundation, you can't make sense out of anything.

01:21:52

And the method is more than just simply claiming that. We try to argue for that by showing, okay, remove the biblical

01:22:00

Christian foundation, and what do you have left standing there? You really have no foundation at all, a foundation built upon sand.

01:22:07

What does that look like? You can check out the videos on this channel. You can definitely check out specifically

01:22:13

Dr. White's debates with atheists. I think he exemplifies a presuppositional approach excellently in those debates.

01:22:19

I hope that's a little helpful there. Well, Dr. White, we are at the one minute and 22, one hour and 22 minute mark.

01:22:26

I really want to express my gratitude for you making time out of your busy schedule to come on and to agree to come on next week with Dr.

01:22:35

Lyle. So he just confirmed with me a few minutes ago, next Wednesday at 6 p .m.

01:22:40

Eastern. Myself, Dr. White, and Dr. Lyle will be on to do a Q &A, and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun, hopefully.

01:22:47

Well, yeah, I love Jason. Whenever I tell folks, Jason Lyle is the smartest man

01:22:56

I've ever met. There just isn't any question about it. His IQ is absolutely off the charts.

01:23:03

And what's wonderful about him is for someone who is such a massive brainiac, he is so humble.

01:23:12

Yes. He's so much fun to talk to. And hopefully, I'm not sure if he'll be able to pull it off.

01:23:20

Hopefully, he and I will not start talking about Star Trek because we are both ridiculous

01:23:28

Trekkies, and what we enjoy doing is coming up with little minutia about Star Trek to see if we can trip the other one up.

01:23:37

See, I'm not a Star Trek fan, but being a Star Wars fan is like being a Catholic today.

01:23:43

It's just not a good time to be a Star Wars fan. Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're exactly right.

01:23:49

That's a very good illustration. Francis is like the head of Disney. So, yeah, you're right.

01:23:57

So, no, but I'm looking forward to that. I learned so much listening to Jason, and he got me into stargazing a number of years ago.

01:24:09

And this next trip, when I'm going up to Colorado, I've upgraded my photography equipment.

01:24:16

So, you may be seeing some galaxy photography that I'm gonna be trying to do and stuff like that.

01:24:24

And so, yeah, it should be a lot of fun. Awesome, well, looking forward to it. Once again, thank you. And guys, thank you so much for being so nice in the comments.

01:24:31

I have to really give it to you guys. Very rarely do we have anything crazy and loony going on in the comments, and I really do appreciate that.

01:24:38

But be sure to kind of tune in tomorrow at 1 p .m. We'll be talking with Keith Foskey on why young people are leaving the church.

01:24:47

I think that's gonna be a fun conversation, an important one. So, hopefully you guys will join me then. I knew Keith long before you did.

01:24:53

I'm sorry? I knew Keith long before you did. Oh, well, I just started seeing his videos and I love his content.

01:24:59

So, I decided to - Oh, man, I've known, I think, Keith can tell you when it was, but I think

01:25:05

Keith had me into his church probably 18 years ago, maybe, somewhere around there.

01:25:12

So, I've known Keith for a long, long time, and he's one of the funniest guys around, but most people didn't know that until just recently.

01:25:20

Well, I'm looking forward to it. So, guys, thank you guys. Until next time, take care and God bless.