April 7, 2017 Show with Greg Koukl on “The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How it Ends, & Everything Important that Happens in Between”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday.

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I'm sorry, Friday. Friday on the seventh day of April 2017, and I'm really discombobulated because I just returned from Indianapolis, Indiana for the three -day conference.

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I was at the Gospel Coalition Conference and was very blessed by a number of things.

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There were a number of very good messages there. There were a number of things said that disturbed me, to be perfectly honest with you.

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But there were also, first and foremost, some wonderful opportunities for fellowship that I had with listeners of Iron Sharpens Iron that I've never met or heard from before, and also to do some on -site interviews with new acquaintances and old friends and some guests on Iron Sharpens Iron that I have interviewed many times by phone, but who

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I had never met in person. So the entire event was a blessed event for me, when the positives outweigh the negatives.

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But the traveling aspect was certainly not one of my favorite things to do, and I'm still recuperating from that.

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Hence, the fact that I gave the wrong day in the beginning of the program here. Well, it is your first day back on the air, so it seemed like Monday.

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Yes, and in studio with me is my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor. It's great to have you back. Thank you. And today we have, returning to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, a guest who hasn't been with us for a while, but I'm so glad that he is back on the program,

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Greg Cockel. And Greg is a speaker on more than 70 college and university campuses, both in the

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United States and abroad. He's hosted his local call -in radio show for 27 years, advocating

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Christianity worth thinking about. He's a debater, including opponents such as Michael Shermer, who's an atheist, on national radio, and Deepak Chopra on national television on Lee Strobel's Faith Under Fire.

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He's an award -winning writer and best -selling author, including Tactics, a game plan for discussing young Christian convictions, and Relativism, feet firmly and planted in midair.

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Featured guest on Focus on the Family Radio, CBN, and BBC, an adjunct professor in Christian apologetics at Biola University, and founder and president of Stand to Reason.

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Greg is going to be speaking on Long Island, New York at a conference coming up that I'm looking forward to continue to promote.

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This is the New York Apologetics Conference, and we'll discuss more details about that very shortly during our interview.

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But today we are going to be talking about the story of reality, how the world began, how it ends, and everything important that happens in between.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trumpets Iron, Greg Cockel. Hey boys, it's good to be back with you.

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I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yes, and I appreciate you praying for me, Greg, because I could barely make it through the introduction.

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I'm feeling so worn out. I'm worn out just listening. No wonder

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I'm so tired. By the way, I was a moderator at a debate that Michael Shermer had with Frank Turek, who

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I know is one of the speakers at the upcoming conference with New York Apologetics.

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And some of our listeners may even remember the fact that Greg Cockel was the moderator between a debate that my dear friend

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Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries had with George Bryson of Calvary Chapel.

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Oh, that's right. And so I know that a lot of my listeners are also very enthusiastic followers of Dr.

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White's ministry, and they listen to his dividing line program and so on. But before we go into the book,

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The Story of Reality, and then before we go into some more details about the conference,

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I want you to tell our listeners something about you personally, what the religion of your upbringing was, if any, and how providentially our sovereign

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Lord drew you to himself and saved you. Well, you know, it's interesting you bring this up, because I was just talking, ironically, yesterday with my high school sweetheart, which and,

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I mean, that was a long time ago. That was 45 years ago, you know, and she was actually the first person that I led to the

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Lord after I became a Christian. I grew up in the Chicago area, but here was a key thing that came up that's relevant to your question.

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I was raised Roman Catholic, and just like a lot of people who are Roman Catholic, I was going to church every

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Sunday, Holy Day of Obligation, doing all the routine. And even kind of when people would ask me about it,

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I'd give the kind of party line why I thought Roman Catholicism was the true religion. It's back in the 60s, right?

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Well, it was my girlfriend's sister who asked me a question, kind of point blank to me when

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I was talking about Roman Catholicism, and the question she asked me was, do you really believe that?

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And it was something about the way she asked the question back in 1968, I think it was, that set me back a little bit.

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She wasn't challenging my views. She was asking how genuinely committed

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I was to them. And I realized that I didn't believe any of that stuff, that what

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I had been parroting was what I had been raised with, but now as a young adult, I wasn't behind that at all.

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And that was my turning point when I left Catholicism and, from my perspective,

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Christianity behind in the dust. And it wasn't until five years later, now I'm not in Illinois anymore, now

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I'm out on the west coast of California, and my younger brother, Mark, who was two years my junior, had become a

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Christian during the Jesus movement, and he started sharing the Lord with me all the time.

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And I thought I had heard all this before, but I had never heard the message of grace.

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And when I heard the message of grace, well, that really had an impact on me.

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No, it didn't have an impact overnight. It took me months and months of asking questions, pushing back, disregarding my brother, then coming back and asking more questions.

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And I'm an apologist now. I defend the faith. I give reasons why people ought to think the smart money's on Jesus.

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But the irony in my case, fellas, was that there was no apologetics that really were factored into my own conversion.

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I just progressively got the sense, deep in my heart, that this message about Jesus of Nazareth and the grace of God was actually true until September 28, 1973, when

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I made a commitment to follow Jesus myself. And that's when I trusted the

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Lord, and that young lady that I told you about that I talked to yesterday, two weeks later she became a

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Christian, too. Now, I never got the girl back, you know, but God got me in the process.

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But that was God's sovereign hand in my life, and he's been moving in my life ever since. Well, praise

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God. I was also raised Roman Catholic, and the Lord saved me, and I'm very delighted to proclaim to the world that I am a lover of the doctrines of sovereign grace and have been a

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Boringen believer since 1984, I believe it was, and have been in Reformed Baptist churches ever since.

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And the book that we are discussing today, it's interesting that this book is only about, let's see how many pages it is, it's just about 200 pages, and this book's title would lend you to believe it should be about 500 ,000 pages.

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The story of reality, how the world began, how it ends, and everything important that happens in between.

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Well, the original book that covers that material is actually 66 books long, you know, so yeah, it's a lot of stuff.

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The rescue for me is that word important. Everything important that happens in between.

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And so that allows me to trim it down to the really fundamental basics, the things we've got to know that really make an eternal difference, have eternal consequences, yes.

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And that's why we can use almost the same retort to our friends who mock and laugh at the doctrine of sola scriptura that we, who are

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Bible -believing Protestants, believe that the Bible alone is our sole inerrant and infallible source of authority.

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And they will say, oh, are you kidding me? You only use the Bible? There are a lot of things that Bibles don't address.

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But it's the only, it's only the important things that are salvific, things we need to know that are in the

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Bible. Yeah, you know, something I mentioned in the book, and this is worth saying, I think, because it goes, it dovetails with what you're saying.

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It isn't, Francis Schaeffer made this point a lot. He said that the Bible is not exhaustive truth, but it's true truth.

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In other words, that to which it speaks, it speaks accurately and without error, okay? And one of the things that I've always found helpful about making the case for Christianity is that if the

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Bible is true to the way the world is, there ought to be a match -up. That is, and that's the classical definition of truth, your ideas match the way the world is, which means if you pay attention to what's going on in the world, when you go to the

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Bible, you're going to see a kind of a, again, that match -up coming from the other direction. And I say in the beginning of the book, the story of reality,

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I say, you know, there's some things that we can figure out on our own by looking at the clues, all right?

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Just paying attention to the world, we can figure out some things on our own. We can know, for example, there's a problem of evil, everybody knows that.

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We know that human beings are special in some way, everybody knows that. We also know we're broken in some way. I mean, you don't need revelation to be able to know that.

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What revelation, God's revelation does is give you the whole picture, of course, and tells you the solution to the problem.

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And that's why I say in the book, some things the author has to tell you about the story.

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Some things you can figure out on your own, but some things the author has to tell you. And that's what

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I do at the book, The Story of Reality, trying to bring all of those critically important things together.

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But it strengthens our case when we can say, you know this thing that the Bible talks about? You already know it's true, even if you didn't read the

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Bible, you already know that. It's built in to human beings in the way the world is. Amen.

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Well, I'm going to give our email address for those of our listeners who want to contribute to the program with a question of their own.

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It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter, and we look forward to hearing from you with your questions.

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Well, you know, there is a very important thing that you address, how the world began, and there are some

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Christians who will actually say that isn't one of the important things. There are a lot of Christians who will say, as long as you love and lift up Jesus, that's all that matters, and they'll say these things like how the world began and all these other things, they're really just trivia.

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We really don't need to know them. But is it your view of how the world began affect a lot of other things that you believe in very radical ways?

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Well, you know, to me, for somebody to say, you know, that Jesus is the most important thing, you kind of truncate the message like that.

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Well, certainly I'm not going to disagree with that particular point about the significance, the importance of Jesus, but when they want to truncate the whole project like that, to me it's like saying, you know, the most important thing about a chair is the seat, you know, where you put your bottom.

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That's really important. I said, well, yeah, that is pretty important, but if you don't have any legs underneath that seat, you're going to be sitting on the floor, you know?

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And so this is, I think, a lot of Christians' understanding of the world is truncated like that.

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They have little pieces of it, they have a chunk of it. I talk about pieces of a puzzle and missing puzzle pieces, so they can't put the whole picture together.

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And if they don't put the picture together, it's hard for them to make sense out of the whole program, for one.

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And secondly, it's going to be really hard for them to defend the whole program, okay? Because when you have

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Jesus, all right, what's the significance of Jesus? Well, He saves us.

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Well, He saves us from what? Well, you could say He saves us from sin, but He's also saving us from the

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Father because of sin. Well, where did that sin come from? Well, notice how when you start asking questions, even about something as important as the work of the cross, the person and the work of Christ, you end up having to go backwards in time.

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Not conceptually, theologically, you have to go backwards in time, because our view of reality, our

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Christian worldview, our theology, is all tied to history. It isn't just a fancy story that makes us feel good.

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If there was no fall in history, as recorded in Genesis chapter chapter 3, then there's no problem that Jesus solves.

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I mean, I don't know how it could be more obvious. Here's the way I put it in the book. If a boy looks at his dad, his dad's got a scar on his face, and the boy looks at his dad and says,

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Papa, how did you get that scar on your face? And his dad starts out saying, well, once upon a time, son.

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Well, that boy now knows he's not going to get an answer to his question, because he doesn't want a fairytale, right?

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He wants to know how that real scar got on his dad's face, all right?

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And so we have a scar in the human race, we get a wound, all right?

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It's a real wound. How did we get that wound? That is what a story tells us.

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And if the Genesis stuff is not telling us about what really happened, then it's not telling us about anything.

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There is no foundation for the story. Francis Schaeffer made this point. If we have always been this way, then there is no hope for the future, for change.

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However, if we were one way, if the world was right at one time, and then it got broken, well, that means it could get fixed.

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And if humans were right at one time, and then it got broken, then it can get fixed. And see, all of these things are reasons why we must take those early chapters of Genesis very seriously, because without them, there are no answers, as Francis Schaeffer used to say.

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Now, there is a debate even amongst Bible -believing

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Christians, sometimes even amongst brothers in Christ in the same pew, let alone the same congregation or denomination, over the age of the earth.

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I have friends on both sides of that debate. I probably have more friends that are young earth creationists, that's what

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I am. But I do have old earth friends on the program even. I've recently interviewed my friend

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Ken Samples, formerly of the Christian Research Institute, who is with Reasons to Believe. He's a good man.

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Yes. How do we really determine when that disagreement becomes very dangerous?

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Well, I think it depends. It's not theologically dangerous for the young earth people.

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It is theologically dangerous. I don't mean it's debilitating, because I'm an old earther too, like Ken.

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But it's dangerous depending on the reasons that you are old earth, or at least what comes along with the package.

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So, and here's what I mean. If the reason that a person is old earth is because they are committed to Darwinism, I mean the big package, all right?

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If they're committed to the Darwinian model of the origin of life and all that other stuff, well see, now you've got a real serious problem with the fall of man,

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Adam and Eve, okay? I actually don't think it matters how old the universe is, of course, with regards to basic theology.

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If you get the fall right, if you get a real Adam and Eve who have, in space and time, violated

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God's law, initiated a rebellion that infected the rest of the human race, and we are all fallen now in Adam, and we are all under condemnation because there was a real wound that happened in the human race, well then

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I think you're okay. I think you can move theologically along in an orthodox fashion with regards to the work of the cross and all the other things that really matter.

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But if your commitment, and there are quite an increasingly number of those who are old earth, and the old earth doctrine is tied, or their convictions is tied to a commitment to Darwinian naturalistic development of life, well now you've got a problem with Adam and Eve.

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Where do they come from? Well, they're not in the picture. I mean, I've talked to these people. Well, there was no Adam and Eve. Well, what about the fall from innocence?

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Well, that's not really that important. Oh, wait a minute. Now you just stepped off the reservation, as far as I'm concerned, because now that is critically important.

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And so that's the thing I think that old earthers have to watch out for. You know, it's one thing to say the universe is old, okay?

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It's another thing to say that Adam and Eve are fictitious characters, or they are just some kind of mythical or analogical individuals to express the fall of man in some generalized way.

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But the fall is no longer a historical event in the past. Then you're off the reservation. We have

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Casey, who's originally from the Philippines, but now living in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

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He has two questions. The first is, how does your theology affect your apologetic methodology when defending the

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Bible and sharing the gospel with unbelievers? Well, I think the lurking behind that question is the question about presupposition.

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I'm assuming that. I presume that. So I realize

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I'm treading into dangerous territory here. I don't know your own convictions, but I'm not a presuppositionalist.

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And let me just give, without getting into a big debate about that kind of thing, which probably would not be productive, let me just offer my own, just a simple way of approaching this for me.

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What I try to do is I try to approach the issue of apologetics functionally, the way

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I engage other people. And you know I have a commitment to sovereign grace and all that, so this is the background theology to my whole approach.

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You know, I trust in the Lord for everything, okay, on this one. However, what I try to do functionally, the way my apologetics play out, is

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I try to mimic the behavior of both Jesus and the Apostles, and actually the Hebrew prophets, insofar as they spoke in evidential terms regarding the truth.

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That is, they gave reasons and rationale for the truth. I see this happening with Jesus. I see all through the

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Book of Acts, the number one piece of evidence that is offered as compelling evidence to put one's trust in Christ is the resurrection of Jesus.

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And this is all through the 13 different times that the Gospel is actually preached in the

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Book of Acts, whether to individuals or groups. And so when people see me doing apologetics, however it happens to be,

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I want it to not be dissimilar to what Jesus did or what the

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Apostles did. I want to sound like those guys. So regardless of kind of my philosophical, theological approach, all of that, if what

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I'm actually doing is the behavior of the disciples and Jesus in the way that I communicate, and I'm actually trusting in the

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Spirit of God to make the difference in a person's life, then I think I'm probably on safe ground. Call that what you like.

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Amen. Yes, I happen to be more bent towards the presuppositional apologetic, but I can say that some of my heroes of the

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Christian faith were and are evidentialists, like Dr. R .C. Sproul's an evidentialist, and the late

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Dr. John Gerstner was an evidentialist. In fact, they even contributed together on a book critiquing presuppositionalism.

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Right. So obviously, I'm not going to ban all friends and acquaintances who are evidentialists.

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But Casey in Kannapolis, North Carolina, thank you very much for the questions. Oh, he has one more question.

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I'm sorry. Do you consider yourself to be a Calvinist, or is this topic you'd like to avoid?

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Oh, I'm sorry. It says, or is this a topic you'd like to do more study on? Well, this is just maybe a little technical distinction, but I don't call myself

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Calvinist, because a Calvinist, like a Lutheran, is someone who theologically follows an individual's theology.

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So you could be Reformed and not be a Calvinist. Calvinism is a subset of Reformed theology, okay?

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And so I don't want to call myself a Calvinist, because there may be things that I disagree with Calvin on.

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I'm not really studied in that area, but this is just to be fair about the language here.

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I refer to myself as Reformed, and what I mean by that is that I believe in sovereign grace, I'm Reformed in my soteriology,

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I'm not fully confessional when it comes to covenant theology and pedo -baptism and that kind of stuff.

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But to me, the big issue here with regards to Reformed theology is the issue of sovereign grace, and this is one that I'm happy to talk with people about.

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In fact, Friday morning at 6 30 in the morning, I'm going to be visiting a men's Bible study in my own community, and this is one thing they're struggling about.

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They want my two cents on it, so I'm going to come in and do that. I'm happy to talk about those things. But sometimes that gets a little bit rowdy, and once it gets rowdy, that's when

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I'm willing to back off and say, all right, I'll just offer some thoughts, just chew it on your own, you know. So I'm glad to talk about those things.

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The other reason I don't identify myself as a Calvinist is because there's a little bit of a pejorative sense to that word in some people's minds.

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So, you know, I just refer to myself as Reformed, and most people who are knowledgeable of the discussion, know what that means, you know, that I'm really talking about sovereign grace here.

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Yeah, I think that we will find difficulty with nearly any kind of label we can put on ourselves.

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Even calling yourself a Bible -believing Christian can be too innocuous in a day and age when people who are in cults will say that they're

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Bible -believing Christians, and I use the Calvinist nickname, although I do not believe in everything that Calvin believed or taught.

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I am a Baptist, a Reformed Baptist, but I don't have any problem with my brethren in Christ that choose not to use that label.

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I even know sovereign grace -believing brothers in Christ that don't want to use the label

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Reformed either. So it really depends on how specific you want to be and how willing you are to make explanation when people misunderstand the label you're using.

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Right. No, you're right about that. And I mean, sooner or later, you got to use a label just to, because that helps to organize things, but sometimes the clarification is necessary, right?

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Well, thank you, Casey, for your questions. And Greg, before I even asked your question about the age of the earth, he already answered that one.

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So give me your full mailing address so we can have a copy of The Story of Reality by Greg Kochel shipped out to you as our gift to you.

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Compliments not only of our friends at Greg Kochel's ministry stand to reason, but also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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That's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com. CVBBS .com.

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We'll be shipping that out to you free of charge to you and also free of charge to Iron Trump and Zarn Radio. Thank you very much,

27:36

Casey, and keep spreading the word in North Carolina and beyond. I'll tell you what,

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I will read a question to you before we go on a break, and then you can answer it when you return from the break.

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And I understand that you have to change phone lines when we go to the break. Okay. Well, here is the question from, let's see, who is

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Scott from Bryan, Ohio, says, please ask your guest how he suggests

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Christians can discuss eschatology with skeptics who argue that even we believers cannot agree about the end times.

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And they'll say that about a lot of different subjects, not just the end times. They'll say that we have disagreements about a lot of things.

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But anyway, you could answer that when we return from the break, and I will also disconnect you so that you can call back on a different phone line.

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Okay. Yeah, sounds good. I look forward to answering that question. All right, great. And for those of you who would also like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

28:47

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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33:03

631 -929 -3512 or check out their website at wrbc .us.

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That's wrbc .us. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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34:02

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

34:08

Greg Kokel who is founder and president of Stand to Reason. We are discussing the story of reality, how the world began, how it ends, and everything important that happens in between.

34:20

We're also going to be discussing the 2017 New York Apologetics Conference in Smithtown, Long Island, New York where Greg is going to be one of the featured speakers.

34:32

Before the break, we had a question that we read to you from Scott in Bryan, Ohio.

34:41

Please ask your guest how he suggests Christians can discuss eschatology with skeptics who argue that even we believers cannot agree about the end times.

34:50

Basically, you could say that about anything. How do you address a skeptic who says you Christians can't agree on anything?

34:57

You can't agree on baptism. You can't agree on presuppositionalism versus evidentialism.

35:02

You can't agree on Calvinism versus Arminianism. You can't agree on tongues versus cessationism and all kinds of things.

35:10

Yeah, well, there's two things going on here. First, it's a practical concern. Nobody should be talking about eschatology with skeptics.

35:19

I think that's a big mistake. You want a major in the majors and eschatology, in my view, is not a major.

35:28

You want my eschatology, here it is. In the end, a whole bunch of people get hurt and we win.

35:38

That's my answer. There it is. I could dial it down a little bit more for you, but largely this is what matters,

35:45

I think, for me. Jesus is coming back. It's not going to be a pretty picture. Jesus is coming back and he's mad.

35:54

That's the good news, bad news thing. Good news, Jesus is coming back. Bad news, he's mad. And God is going to set things right, all right?

36:05

And that's going to be bad news for a lot of people, and that's going to be good news for a lot of people, the church, the body of Christ, okay?

36:11

So that's all I need to know, frankly, for me to keep moving forward productively.

36:17

I got my marching orders, I want to be busy, my hand on the plow, doing the job steady at the helm, being faithful in what

36:27

God has given me as a follower of Christ to do so that whenever he comes back, however he comes back, he finds me hard at work, faithful.

36:37

And that's what matters as far as I'm concerned, okay? There's more that people go into it, fine, but that's also an in -house debate.

36:44

So why are we messing around with a thing as controversial, and I think as, in a certain sense, esoteric?

36:53

In other words, these are issues that could go a lot of different directions depending on a number of things.

37:00

Why go into all of that with a skeptic, for goodness sake? You know, let's just imagine the majors here, talk about the existence of God, the reality of Jesus as a man of history, his life, death, and resurrection,

37:17

God's rescue plan, God becoming a man in the person of Jesus, and then rescuing us in the trade that he accomplished on the cross.

37:27

And let's talk about that with the skeptic. It's not to keep us busy there, you know.

37:33

Right. I'm certain you would agree one eschatological thing that we should address with every skeptic is the fact that he or she is going to die and be facing either a

37:43

Savior or a judge. Right. Now, in that particular point of eschatology, in the largest sense,

37:50

I agree entirely, and in fact, it's the last portion of the book of the story of reality where I talk about perfect justice and perfect mercy.

37:59

Those are separate chapters, and I talk about what those look like. So that, yes. How that all plays out, how the history unfolds to get us to that final judgment place, that's the thing that's kind of up for grabs,

38:12

I think. We insist on the final judgment, the final resurrection, and the final judgment to reward or to punishment.

38:21

That we insist on. Okay. The details, you know, we don't have to get into those with the skeptic.

38:27

But now to the particular question, though, is how do we deal with a skeptic who says, well, you guys can't agree on anything?

38:35

Well, two thoughts here. If Christians couldn't agree on anything, there wouldn't be anything called a

38:41

Christian. All right? Let me just say that again. I want to sink in. If Christians couldn't agree on anything, there wouldn't be anything that could be classified as a

38:54

Christian. Amen. Amen. The word Christian is a label that captures a group of people who have a certain fixed theology that qualifies them as a

39:07

Christian, as opposed to Muslim or Mormon or Hindu or, you know, whatever,

39:15

Buddhist. It's that fixed theology that identifies them as a group, the foundational things, and if you deny one of those foundational things, then you're simply not a

39:27

Christian by simple definition. If you're off the reservation, you may be some other great religion, you might be a really nice person.

39:36

In fact, your other religion might even be true for the sake of discussion right now. All I'm saying is, if you deviate from foundational concerns, then you're not a

39:47

Christian anymore. Christians hold certain things to be true in both doctrine and in behavior, okay?

39:55

And so these things have been pretty well -hammered out over 2 ,000 years, and those are the foundational, kind of theological core truths, the confessional details that make

40:09

Christianity what it is. Now, within that, that secondary issues, and when

40:14

I say secondary, I don't mean they're not that important. There could be secondary issues that are really important, but they are not defining features of Christianity, and in that regard,

40:25

Christians do disagree. So my first part of my response to the skeptic who's challenging me on this regard is to say, well, we do agree on a core set of beliefs, or else we wouldn't be called

40:41

Christian, okay? Here's the second point you can make. So you're a skeptic, right?

40:48

Yeah, I'm a skeptic, and I'm complaining about your Christians who don't agree on things. What kind of skeptic are you? There's more than one kind of skeptic.

40:59

You know, and, oh, no, I'm an atheist. Really? What kind of atheist are you? Oh, I'm a

41:05

Darwinist. Oh, really? What kind of Darwinist are you? Do you realize that in all of the things, in a certain sense, on their side of the theological spectrum, there are a host of details that those in -house debaters, then, disagree on?

41:25

Whether atheists, not all atheists are materialists, for example. You could have atheists that are not materialists.

41:31

Most of them are, but not all of them are. You could have Darwinists who are fundamentalists, like Richard Dawkins.

41:39

You could have, you know, P .E. guys who have punctuated, I think they're called punkique, you know, the short words.

41:45

They punctuated equilibrium, like, you know,

41:52

Rock of Ages guy from Harvard. I can't remember his name right off the bat. But, you know, there are lots and lots of variation in the field, and when those guys are not presenting at a united front, going after creationists or ID guys, they're all fighting among themselves.

42:10

So does the fact that people differ about details mean that nobody can be right?

42:16

Right. It's also a sign that the Bible is true, that he who says he is without sin is a liar, and since we are all, even in the

42:25

Christian faith, guilty of sin, and we are fallible, and we are finite, we don't know all truth, we are not perfected until we are in heaven, then obviously there's going to be disagreements.

42:37

Absolutely, and this isn't just within Christian circles. This is a human problem, not a Christian problem.

42:43

And so when I was in my debate with Michael Shermer, a three -hour national radio debate, Mike and I sit side by side,

42:50

Mike raised the same issue. He said, you Christians can't even agree among yourselves. And I said,

42:56

Mike, that's a good argument against science. There's a one -liner for you.

43:03

Absolutely. Just because you can't agree on particulars doesn't mean that you can't be justified in belief in the broader issues, or even in the particular things.

43:14

The fact of disagreement tells you absolutely nothing about the truth of any proposition.

43:21

Right, right. In fact, I arranged a debate years ago that took place between my friend

43:27

Dr. James R. White and David Silverman, the current president of American Atheists, the organization founded by Madeleine Murray O 'Hare.

43:38

And at the end of that debate, David Silverman said that he wanted to debate

43:43

James White on the fact, according to his views, that Jesus really is nothing but a product of mythical religion.

43:56

And when I tried to schedule that debate with Mr. Silverman, he was in Europe and could not participate.

44:04

I was calling other atheists, very well -known atheists among the Four Horsemen and so on, to challenge them to debate on that theme.

44:14

And none of those that I spoke to would, because they said, well, no atheist worth his salt believes that Jesus did not exist.

44:23

Nobody believes that anymore, they were saying to me. We believe he existed, but we don't believe he was

44:28

God, obviously. Right. So that shows you that even about the question of Christ, there are differences of opinion among atheists.

44:38

That's absolutely right. Now, there are some atheists who do say he didn't exist, but that's drivel. Who say he did not exist, that's drivel, because no, in a certain sense, licensed historian believes that.

44:54

And not only that, no licensed historian, credentialed historian, holds to the idea that the whole account of Jesus of Nazareth that's recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is just a rehashing of this ancient dying and rising

45:11

Messiah myth, or dying and rising God myth. Nobody believes that.

45:16

Now, Michael Shermer does, and he'll talk about that, and you'll get all kinds of kind of pop atheists that bring that up.

45:24

And I was at Purdue University giving a talk once, and then afterwards I had a Q &A, and somebody in the atheist section, there was a big crowd, there was over 3 ,000 people there, there's a big crowd there, and one of the atheists came up and he raised that particular question, and I said, and I wasn't trying to put him down or be funny or anything, but after he raised this,

45:44

I just said, I shook my head a little bit, I said, you've been spending too much time on the internet. And everybody started laughing when

45:50

I said that, but it's true. These people put this stuff out on the internet, and then they go round and round and round in circles.

45:57

They never go back to primary source documentation for this kind of thing, because it ain't there. There is no evidence that the account of Jesus in any way reflects the ancient mythologies that actually came before him, okay?

46:15

And there's also a practical problem when you think about it, fellas. If the Jews wanted to make up a story about a

46:25

Messiah to convince other Jews to believe in him, they're not going to take a pagan account and sanitize it, especially when no

46:37

Jew expected the Messiah to die, much less rise from the dead.

46:43

I mean, this was not even in their expectations, so this is bad PR. One thing I noticed regarding that point, though, fellas, that just jumped out at me as I was reading

46:52

Paul, Paul continues to make reference to this all through his writings, and by the way, the

46:59

Apostle Paul's writings are not a dispute. They knew that that smart guy lived and wrote about Jesus. Well, he's repeating all of these things, too, early in the first century there, early and mid -first century, very close to the time when these things allegedly happened.

47:14

So how is it, you know, maybe there's one little story that pops up somewhere, you say, oh, that's just a rehash of a myth.

47:21

But we have four detailed biographies, and then you have Saul of Tarsus writing theology based on the historical events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

47:32

This whole explanation is not going to fly. There is just too much hardcore historical evidence for Jesus being the man that we understand him to be for any credentialed historian to take that nonsense seriously.

47:47

Yes, and if you did not know that Bart Ehrman was an agnostic, and you happen to be watching one of these television specials that they air every

47:58

Christmas and Easter about the life of Jesus, and they'll always throw in people who don't even believe that he is

48:04

God, like Bart Ehrman and others, people from the Jesus Seminar. If you hear Bart Ehrman strictly speaking about the history and the archaeology and so on surrounding the days of Christ, you would think this man's a

48:20

Christian. You know, he's just giving a historical account. It's not until he specifically starts attacking the reliability of the

48:28

New Testament manuscripts and other things, that's when you realize that he is an agnostic. Well, this is good, because what we have, though, is we have a hostile witness on our side on this issue.

48:39

I have a clip of Bart Ehrman, and he's answering questions after a lecture, and somebody, atheist, brings up this thing about Jesus not existing, and Bart's just shaking his head, waving his hand, saying, lookit, lookit, um,

48:53

I'm sympathetic to your general view, but don't say that kind of stuff, because if you say that kind of stuff, you sound like an idiot.

49:02

That's what he said. I mean, I'm paraphrasing here, but you just sound stupid, because nobody believes, nobody who knows what they're talking about says what you just said.

49:11

And it's not helping our cause, he's saying, with this, making common cause with this atheist. It doesn't help our cause against Christianity when you make statements like that, because you sound dumb.

49:23

So here you got Bart Ehrman that's making the point as well. Jesus was a man of history, and we can know a whole bunch of stuff about him with confidence.

49:32

Bart Ehrman's going to say that. Amen. Well, thank you, Scott in Bryan, Ohio.

49:38

You are also getting a free copy of the book, The Story of Reality, by Greg Kokel, compliments of Stand to Reason, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping that out to you.

49:52

So keep your eye open for a package with a label on it that says CVBBS, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com,

50:02

CVBBS .com. And we thank you for contributing to today's show with a question. We have

50:08

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who says, should we as Christians show the unbeliever the fallenness in their worldview and then present the gospel, or do different situations require different approaches in regards to evangelism?

50:28

I agree. I make the case for the latter. I think that, and if you look at Jesus too, you know, you see

50:36

Jesus dealing with people as individuals. Probably the best case is John chapter 3 versus John chapter 4.

50:43

So you got Nicodemus, you got a Pharisee, you got a really smart guy, theologically educated, whatever.

50:49

Jesus takes one approach with him. Turn the page, John chapter 4, you have the woman at the well, she's

50:55

Samaritan, she lives in Sychar, probably a woman of ill repute, and well, she's got five husbands.

51:02

I mean, it's, I mean, she, her wife's very different kind of approach. The irony is he's a bit stern with the religious guy, and he's quite, quite, offers the soft touch, in a certain sense, to the fallen woman there, you know, in John chapter 4.

51:23

I think Paul gives really good advice in Colossians chapter 4, where he says, conduct yourselves, this is chapter 4 verse 5 and 6, conduct yourselves with wisdom towards outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.

51:39

So first he says, be smart. Then he says, let your speech always be with grace, seasoned as it were with salt.

51:48

So first be smart, next be nice. What a concept. All right, and then he finishes out, so that you know how to respond to each person.

51:59

So be smart, be nice, but be tactical. That is, adjust to the individual set of circumstances.

52:08

And when you're talking to somebody, different kinds of things are going to come up. That is, different types of stumbling blocks for the person you're talking with.

52:17

And I think it's probably best to deal with the thing that the person themselves think is standing in the way of them taking the claims of Jesus seriously.

52:28

And it may be that that's just a smokescreen, but you usually have to blow away the smoke before you can see what the smokescreen is concealing.

52:37

And so I'm inclined with kind of speaking at least initially to whatever that felt need is, all right, in order to get down to the substantial things.

52:50

And so this is why the tactical approach that we teach at Stand to Reason, and last time

52:56

I was on your program, Chris, we talked about that book, Tactics, a Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions.

53:05

This particular book outlines an approach that allows you to fulfill Paul's encouragement there in Colossians 4, verse 5 and 6.

53:15

So you can speak carefully with wisdom in a nice way, but in a way that's tactically sound, that is speaking to the particulars of the circumstance you're facing.

53:24

And I just found that to be tremendously, tremendously helpful. It's changed everything for me, actually, in the way

53:30

I engage. Amen. Well, thank you, Tyler, and you are also getting a free copy of The Story of Reality by Greg Koekel, so please give us your name, your full name and address, and we'll have that shipped out to you.

53:41

We have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with your own questions, send in an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:48

Chris Arnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, with Greg Koekel. One sure way all

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01:05:10

This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the full two hours today is

01:05:17

Greg Kokel. We are discussing his book, The Story of Reality, how the world began, how it ends, and everything important that happens in between.

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and click on support at the top of the page, and that will give you the mailing address where you can mail checks made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:06:59

Now we are back with our guest, Greg Kokel. We are discussing his book, The Story of Reality, and we have a listener, an anonymous listener in Texas, and this anonymous listener says,

01:07:15

Brother Chris, Brother Kokel made me laugh when he responded to the question about eschatology that we don't need to discuss it with unbelievers, but know that Jesus is coming again, and it isn't going to be pretty.

01:07:28

He is mad. What would be his response to those who endorse The Shack by William P.

01:07:35

Young, some who say God is in a good mood? Thank you,

01:07:41

Chris, Brother Kokel, and Brother Buzz for this enjoyable, eye -opening discussion.

01:07:48

Wow, yeah, that's a big question, partly because it's really, really controversial with Christians right now.

01:07:54

I did not read the book, but I did see the movie, and I actually had a two -hour breakfast with the principal author, not the guy,

01:08:07

Paul Young, that everybody knows about. Most people don't know that there were two other guys that were really principally responsible for a lot of the details of the book, and also they were the ones responsible for the film, and there are some lines in that film that I was troubled by regarding the judgment of God.

01:08:28

I mean, it really bothered me, but then there were other lines that, I mean, to keep it in balance,

01:08:34

I think this was a problem with the movie. I agree with people who say, look, that looked like the judgment of God was getting the short shrift, but it wasn't absent from the movie.

01:08:45

There are quite a number of lines. Nobody gets away with anything, for example, and then when Mac is having this encounter with the woman in the cave, and he is humbled to his knees with his own sin, and then repents of his own sins before God, and kind of walks through a waterfall like he's being baptized.

01:09:06

I mean, there are those other factors that are in there as well, but sometimes they get eclipsed by some of these other lines, like God is happy with everybody.

01:09:17

That's the feeling you get from seeing that, so I think it was patchy in that regard, and for that reason

01:09:24

I was troubled by it. I like things to be nice and crisp. I want not only the love of God to be manifest clearly, but also what's at stake and the judgment of God to be manifest clearly, and in this regard,

01:09:41

I think that there was unevenness in the shack.

01:09:47

I understand there were other theological concerns that people have raised about how the Trinity was characterized, but that didn't bother me as much as the judgment issue.

01:09:57

You know, anytime you try to characterize the Trinity, this may... I don't want this to be misunderstood, but I just want people to think about this.

01:10:04

Anytime you try to characterize the Trinity, whether in print or in a drama, you have to individuate the persons, all right?

01:10:15

Even the New Testament individuates the persons, and that could be... I mean, you've got the baptism of Jesus where you've got the

01:10:22

Father, Son, and the Spirit. They're individuated there, okay? And this could be confusing. It is!

01:10:28

Jehovah's Witnesses get that confused. You know, Mormons get that confused. So even the Scripture in properly individuating the persons can cause people to get confused on things.

01:10:42

There's no other way around it, though, if you're going to talk about that aspect of the Trinity. Of course, what the Scripture also does is it unifies the nature, but you've got to find that in different places to unify the nature, so both are communicated clearly.

01:10:57

My objection to the shack, this second concern about the way the

01:11:02

Trinity is characterized is not so much that they individuate the persons, because that has to be done for orthodoxy, and not so much that that can be misunderstood.

01:11:12

I think they could have done a stronger job of unifying the nature to communicate a full -orbed concept of the

01:11:19

Trinity. But anyway, as a viewer of the movie, that was my takeaway from that, and those are my concerns about it.

01:11:30

It was very interesting, though, to talk with the fellow

01:11:36

I had breakfast with, I can't remember his name right now, I have to look at my notes, it was about a month ago, and Paul Young, whose name is on the book, he's a heretic, but these other guys, my assessment, they're not.

01:11:51

They're Christian guys, but they have this book that has some problems in it that's created them some grief, too.

01:12:01

But Paul Young has gotten a lot of publicity lately before another book out that is completely heretical,

01:12:09

Lies People Tell About God, and this guy's completely off the reservation. Really, it's just unfortunate.

01:12:17

So I guess what I'm saying is I think there's been, there's legitimate criticism of the way things are characterized in the book and in the movie,

01:12:28

I agree with that. Some things more people, other people are troubled about more than I'm troubled about them, but I think they're legitimate concerns.

01:12:36

To try to read all the innuendo in the book as an expression of Paul Young's theology is a mistake, though, because he's not, there's other guys in there that are trying to advance something much more orthodox.

01:12:50

So it's kind of a mess, though, I think that's just the way it's come down, and it's really created a lot of frustration by a lot of Christians.

01:12:57

I personally was touched by aspects of the movie, but you see, I'm a Trinitarian. I'm a clear, solid

01:13:03

Trinitarian, and so understanding that, I could be touched by that movie the same way that I'm touched by Lewis, where you've got a fictional character called

01:13:15

Aslan who's a representative of one person of the Trinity. But I think that people who have no sense at all, some of them are going to be confused.

01:13:23

Right, right, and we can be touched by a lot of things. It doesn't mean that are biblically accurate. Like, for instance,

01:13:30

I was touched in some scenes of the movie Silence about the

01:13:36

Roman Catholic missionaries in Japan, but what their message, the missionaries' message was steeped in superstition and all kinds of false belief and so on.

01:13:49

Yeah, I haven't seen that one yet, but let me clarify this. When I was touched, I was, I meant to say that I was touched by things that were actually genuine.

01:13:59

I think there's an element in this movie that the problem of evil is addressed much like it's addressed in the book of Job.

01:14:06

And I don't know if you recall that, you know, there's a lot about dealing with evil. I haven't seen it, I haven't seen the movie.

01:14:12

Oh, okay, but the answer that's given about the problem of evil is the same one that's given in the book of Job.

01:14:19

Where were you? Who are you? You know, God is still God, even if you don't understand everything that he's doing. This, to me, was a powerful message, and an orthodox message, and that was part of that movie.

01:14:29

And then to see the reflection of the tenderness of God in different ways, and of this man struggling with this terrible thing that happened to him, and then surrendering to God, even in the midst of his confusion about why

01:14:43

God allowed this to happen to him, that was also touching, too. So I think that there were moments of profound truth in that, and this is not to give the short shrift to the things that were problems, but I think there were moments of profound truth.

01:14:56

Which truth I responded to emotionally, that's what I meant to communicate. By the way, coincidentally, although I did not have breakfast with an author of The Shack, I did have breakfast in a shack recently where my co -host,

01:15:10

Reverend Buzz Taylor, lives. Just kidding, Buzz. By the way,

01:15:17

Anonymous in Texas, if you give me your full name and mailing address, of course

01:15:22

I will not identify you on the air, but you will receive a free copy of the book we are discussing,

01:15:28

The Story of Reality, by our guest Greg Kokel. So make sure you get us your full name and full mailing address, and that will be shipped out to as soon as possible by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

01:15:43

C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com. And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:15:52

Todd and Patty Jennings, the owners of cvbbs .com. By the way, before I forget to,

01:15:57

I just want to read a couple of powerful endorsements for your book, The Story of Reality, Greg.

01:16:05

First of all, one guest that I've had on this program a number of times, Michael Horton, who is the

01:16:11

J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology at Westminster Seminary in California, and he's also one of the hosts of the

01:16:18

White Horse Inn. He says, We're not likely to glean the point of our existence from CNN.

01:16:24

It takes the greatest story ever told and a great storyteller to steal us away from our dead -end plots and to display the richness of reality as Greg Koukl does here.

01:16:35

These are the big questions. The story of reality answers them in a sharp, winsome, and accessible way.

01:16:41

Read it and then give it to a friend. And then also someone else who has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron a couple of times,

01:16:51

Dr. Gary Habermas, Distinguished Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Liberty University and author of The Case for the

01:17:02

Resurrection of Jesus. Gary Habermas says, This primer on a

01:17:08

Christian outlook on life by Greg Koukl covers an incredibly large number of the pithiest issues in an amazingly small number of pages.

01:17:18

Time and time again I wondered, now how is Greg going to work his way through this question quickly and non -technically?

01:17:26

But the thoughtful, succinct, and quick -moving answer that followed never disappointed and was handled amazingly.

01:17:33

It is not an exaggeration to call this treatment C .S. Lewis -like in a number of ways.

01:17:40

Those who pay attention to the fast pace will later be astonished at how far they have come.

01:17:46

I recommend it highly. So some pretty powerful endorsements for The Story of Reality by Greg Koukl.

01:17:54

Before we move on to another question from our listeners, why did you feel compelled to write this book about such a broad field, broad spectrum of issues squeezed into one volume?

01:18:38

Oh, I just thought I'd believe in Jesus and love Jesus, and that's like sitting on a seat with no feet on the chair, you know, no legs.

01:18:45

What are the legs like? So this is what I wanted to kind of put out there. I didn't want to write a theological textbook though.

01:18:52

I wanted to show how the important pieces of Christianity fit together in a fascinating drama, you know.

01:19:00

I wanted to give a wide -angle view so that the Christians would never get lost in the details again, and Christians are always lost in the details, and a lot of times they don't have all the details.

01:19:08

That's part of the problem, okay? But here's the second thing that I had in mind, not just that big overview of the picture of reality, the story, because when you look at the main parts, things about God and about man and about Jesus and about the cross and about the final resurrection, that's your basic eschatology thing, it actually forms a kind of a story.

01:19:29

So you've got beginning conflict, conflict, resolution, and ending.

01:19:35

So there's really a great drama there. But here's the other thing that was really important to me that I have to deal with this all the time.

01:19:43

What I wanted to do was continually press the point that what I describe in the book is not my spiritual fantasy, okay?

01:19:51

It's not my religious wishful thinking. It's not my make -believe -to -make -me -feel -happy kind of story.

01:19:57

A story doesn't start out once upon a time, you know, I mentioned that earlier, because our story is not meant to be a fairy tale.

01:20:05

I wanted the reader to understand that even if the reader, who may be a skeptic, doesn't believe the story,

01:20:14

I at least wanted them to understand the kind of story we're telling. This isn't my truth versus your truth versus his truth.

01:20:21

That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about reality. I'm talking about the way the world really is. What we are presenting as followers of Christ is an accounting of the way things actually are.

01:20:34

Now, we could be mistaken about that. I mean, that's where we can discuss, that's where apologetics comes in. But make no mistake about the kind of claim we're making.

01:20:43

I don't want non -Christians to relativize our claim. I don't want Christians to relativize our claim.

01:20:51

I don't want people saying, well, that's your truth versus my truth versus his truth, all that kind of stuff.

01:20:57

Because look, the fact is, if our story is not accurate to reality, it's not any kind of truth at all.

01:21:06

So it can't be my truth, it can't be your truth, even if you believe it. It can only be our delusion or our mistake or our error, but it can't be our truth.

01:21:14

And that's one of the things I wanted people to see, and one of the reasons that I wrote the story of reality. Now, another thing

01:21:20

I definitely can't remember, I can't forget, I should say. I definitely can't forget to have you discuss a little bit about what you're speaking on at the 2017

01:21:35

New York Apologetics Conference, which is being held in Smithtown, Long Island, in the very near future.

01:21:45

In fact, it's April 28th and April 29th, a Friday and Saturday at the

01:21:50

Smithtown Christian School. And there are four speakers, which include our guest

01:21:56

Greg Kochel, Jay Warner Wallace, Frank Turek, and Mary Jo Sharp. And if you could address what you specifically are speaking about.

01:22:05

I know that the umbrella theme is, Will You Survive the

01:22:10

Culture? Right. But what are you specifically addressing? Well, just for the record, I think

01:22:15

Jay Warner Wallace is out of the mix right now. He had a family conflict, and so he's not going to be there.

01:22:21

But that means everybody else is expanding a little bit to fill up the very big space that Jim is leaving behind.

01:22:30

And we're really sad that he can't make it, but that was just one thing that couldn't be avoided. So just truth in advertising, that's the way the state status is right now.

01:22:38

My talks are going to be, I think, as I recall, I'm giving four different talks.

01:22:44

I'm talking about the story of reality. So I'll give 45 minutes or so giving the foundational principles of the story of reality, what people will find in nearly 200 pages of the book, and I'll do a condensed version of that.

01:22:56

And that's important to know, I think. If you have an apologetics conference, we are defending the faith. Well, you better know what the faith is that we're defending in order to defend it properly, right?

01:23:06

You gotta know what you believe before why you believe it matters that much, okay? And so that,

01:23:12

I think, is the importance of laying a foundation with the story of reality, okay? I'm also going to be talking about two particular challenges, and these are things that Christians need to know how to maneuver in if they're going to be credible on their view.

01:23:30

And one of them is naturalism. This is the basic worldview of the atheist, and I call it matterism in the book, but most people know it as materialism or naturalism or physicalism, that there's nothing that exists except for the physical world, molecules, and the universe.

01:23:47

And I make the case here that one great advantage that we have as Christians in dealing with issues like this is we have reality on our side.

01:23:55

Now, I'm not just speaking of the story of reality. I'm just thinking, generally speaking, as I mentioned earlier, you can get clues from the world about what story is actually true.

01:24:05

And so when we're dealing with something like naturalism, I'm going to tell folks the particular ways that you can leverage what everybody knows to be true in favor of the

01:24:17

Christian worldview, okay? So that's called naturalism bumping into reality. I'll be talking about the problem of evil and suffering and the of God.

01:24:25

This, I'm going to point out, it's not just a Christian problem. It is a human problem. Everybody has to address this.

01:24:31

The real question is which worldview can do the best job of making sense of the problem and offering a solution.

01:24:39

And just in case maybe your listeners have never thought about this before, the one case

01:24:45

I'm going to make is that the problem of evil is not a good argument against God.

01:24:51

It is one of the best arguments for God. And so, of course,

01:24:57

I'll cash that out when I do my session there. The last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to provide what

01:25:04

I call a kind of a bridge. When you go to events like this, you get all this information. What are you going to do with that information?

01:25:10

How do you get that information into play? You know, how do you bridge from the content to the conversation?

01:25:17

Well, that's where the tactical approach comes in. The book Tactics, a game plan for discussing your

01:25:23

Christian convictions. I'm going to give a talk, a 45 -minute talk, in which

01:25:29

I'm going to make a promise and I'm going to fulfill the promise. And here's the promise that I make regarding that talk.

01:25:34

I will give the conferees a game plan that will allow them to converse with confidence in any situation, no matter how little they know or how knowledgeable or aggressive or even obnoxious the other person happens to be.

01:25:51

And that's going to be the final talk that I give there. It's going to tie it all together. It's going to give you that bridge from the content to the conversation or the scholarship to the relationship, whatever.

01:26:01

We're going to show you how to put this stuff in play in the easiest way imaginable.

01:26:07

It's my favorite talk, partly because I love giving it, partly because the concepts have changed my life so much, and partly because I have more people that come back to me,

01:26:18

Chris, and they say, that material that you gave, that tactics, that changed my life.

01:26:26

I hear that line over and over and over again, that exact line.

01:26:31

And I'm not surprised it changed my life, too. So that's the lineup for my part. And then you have

01:26:37

Frank Turek and Mary Jo Sharp. And I mean, it's just it's going to be a fabulous event.

01:26:43

And my sense is you don't have events like this very much in the New York area. And so people are going to want to take advantage of that.

01:26:51

Yes. And I thank my dear friend, Anthony Uvinio and his colleague, Nick Mitchell, for organizing this.

01:26:57

They are the founders of New York Apologetics. And in fact, Anthony Uvinio was the moderator at a debate that I organized just a couple of months ago, back in January, actually.

01:27:10

I had a debate that I organized between Dr. Tony Costa, who is professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, who debated another friend of mine, a

01:27:19

Roman Catholic apologist, Robert St. Genes, on Mary, sinless queen of heaven or sinner saved by grace.

01:27:26

By the way, you could watch that debate on YouTube. So just look up Dr. Tony Costa debate on Mary and you'll find it.

01:27:33

But Anthony Uvinio did one of the best jobs I've ever seen moderating a debate anywhere.

01:27:40

And I highly commend him and thank him for that. But anyway, the website to find out more about this conference is

01:27:47

NewYorkApologetics .com. And the words New York are spelled out.

01:27:54

NewYorkApologetics .com. Do not abbreviate New York. NewYorkApologetics .com. And the conference, again, is

01:28:00

Friday, April 28th, 7 to 9 p .m., and Saturday, April 29th, 9 a .m.

01:28:06

to 4 p .m. And unfortunately, I cannot make it to that event because I'm already manning a booth, an exhibitor's booth, at the

01:28:13

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. But my dear friend, Pastor Josh Fryman of Community Baptist Church in Riverhead, Long Island, will be manning an

01:28:22

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor's booth at the New York Apologetics Conference.

01:28:29

So please greet Josh Fryman and get any kind of literature from him for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio that you can pass out to your friends when you leave the event.

01:28:39

Hey, Chris, let me mention too that Anthony and his team out there at New York Apologetics do a fabulous job.

01:28:45

I've spent some time with him and at that Frank Turek's CIA event, and those guys are fabulous. They're just great.

01:28:51

So I'm really looking forward to working with them, and I hope you got a lot of folks that turn out for this because this can be a lot of fun.

01:28:57

Yes, and in fact, it was Anthony Uvinio that asked me to be the moderator at the

01:29:04

Frank Turek -Michael Schirmer debate. Oh, okay. So that was at Stony Brook University, and unfortunately, that's the last debate that Stony Brook University will allow an evangelical to have there, apparently, because of that debate, just because of some protests by homosexual activists on campus there.

01:29:22

Yeah, it's interesting. There's freedom of choice people, broadly speaking, freedom of choice. They don't want any choices but their own, you know.

01:29:30

Yes. So, you know, you want to speak, you know, it's not like, let's say, you know, the may the best idea win.

01:29:36

No, it's may our idea win by any means, you know, and it's just unfortunate that they silence proper debate and discussion, the kind of thing that we need.

01:29:48

In any event, we're used to that as followers of Christ, and it's been going on for 2 ,000 years, so okay, we're not going to whine and cry, but it is unfortunate.

01:29:55

Yes, liberalism has become leftism because liberalism would welcome a

01:30:02

Christian participation in a broad spectrum of ideas, but leftist ideology wants to stomp it out, and that's what this country is becoming more and more closely affiliated with is leftism.

01:30:15

Yeah, well, leftism always had a totalitarian impulse. Everywhere it goes, you see that.

01:30:21

Liberalism, no. It's a fair distinction. A lot of people don't make that, but I'm glad you did. And we're going to our final break right now.

01:30:28

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:30:34

and those of you who are waiting to have your questions asked and answered, I will get to you as soon as possible, and we look forward to hearing from the rest of you who intend to write in right after these messages, so don't go away.

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01:37:21

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 25 minutes to go is

01:37:28

Greg Kokel and we are going to continue to discuss his book, The Story of Reality.

01:37:34

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com

01:37:41

if you have a question for Greg and also please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

01:37:51

I also want to remind you that Greg is going to be speaking on Long Island, New York along with apologist

01:37:58

Frank Turek and Mary Jo Sharp at the New York Apologetics Conference Friday, April 28th, 7 to 9 p .m.

01:38:06

and Saturday, April 29th, 9 a .m. to 4 p .m. at Smithtown Christian School in Suffolk County, Long Island.

01:38:14

For more information on that conference, go to newyorkapologetics .com and that is the words

01:38:21

New York spelled out completely. newyorkapologetics .com

01:38:26

and please say hello to Anthony Eugenio and to Greg Kokel when you get to that conference.

01:38:33

If you happen to see them in person, tell them that Chris Arnzen at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio said hello.

01:38:39

And the question that we have from Lyndon Hearst, Long Island, New York.

01:38:46

CJ from Lyndon Hearst, Long Island, New York says, I was just amazed by a fantastic movie

01:38:53

I recently saw called Hacksaw Ridge. The World War II hero in this movie had a faith that is to be imitated by all, but I discovered during the movie that he was a

01:39:06

Seventh -day Adventist. What is your guest's views of the Seventh -day Adventists? Well, like a lot of things, it kind of depends on the individual person that you talk to.

01:39:18

I think Adventism has undergone a bit of a change, at least in some congregations, in the last 20 or 30 years.

01:39:27

Walter Martin, as I recall, before he died, actually removed Adventism, I think, from his list of questionable Christian organizations, you know, or quasi -Christian.

01:39:40

It's kind of like a lot of Christian groups where, even though you may have an Orthodox gospel in practice, you might be overly legalistic, which ends up canceling out the grace of God.

01:39:52

So you can have people that are part of denominations whose general theology are not in question, but whose actual practice ends up undermining the work of the cross.

01:40:06

And I think that what you've seen, at least with some in the Adventist tradition, is that some, especially in the past, were like that.

01:40:15

They were legalistic in a way that obscured grace, and so their

01:40:21

Sabbatarianism was an expression of appropriate behavior to justify oneself.

01:40:29

If you didn't keep the Sabbath, then that was a sin before God that you had to answer for, you know.

01:40:37

I have since talked with a number of them who still believe that the

01:40:44

Sabbath, Saturday, is the right day to worship, and it's a matter of appropriate obedience, but nothing in terms of salvation hinges upon it.

01:40:54

Those folks understand the grace of God, they just differ with us on the propriety or impropriety of certain behaviors, which is, this happens all the time in Christian circles.

01:41:06

Some people think it's wrong to drink, something is okay, some people think it's wrong to smoke, something is okay, and some people think you ought to have church on Saturday, some on Sunday, you know, but if their view is that this is proper

01:41:19

Christian conduct, but it doesn't relate to your salvation because salvation is always by God's grace alone, through faith alone, through Christ alone.

01:41:28

Well, those guys are on our side, basically, even though they disagree, we might disagree with them with regard to Sabbath observance.

01:41:36

So I think it's a mixed bag, to put it simply, just like a lot of denominations are a mixed bag.

01:41:43

I mean, I think Lutheranism, taken as a whole, is sound, but even though I might disagree with some aspects of it, but you're going to get

01:41:50

Lutherans that are just right heathens, that is, who identify as Lutheran, and they go to Lutheran churches, you're going to have

01:41:56

Lutheran denominations that get way off the reservation. So, you know, it just gets down to the basics and what individual people, individual groups of Christians in a denomination, how they actually think and practice the basics.

01:42:13

That's the key. Right. And let's not forget that Bill Clinton, one of our presidents, was a Baptist, but I would probably be on the 180 degrees opposite end of the spectrum from him on many important, vital, salvific theological beliefs.

01:42:28

Sure. Jimmy Carter as well. By the way, Jimmy Carter as well, but there is a line here, too. Now, I would say that somebody like a

01:42:35

Mormon or Jehovah's Witness, they deny some of the basic tenets, most basic tenets, actually, that would qualify them as genuinely

01:42:45

Christian. Those are separate religions, and in fact,

01:42:50

Mormonism is actually much more different from classical Christianity, in my view, than even

01:42:56

Jehovah's Witnesses. So there is a divide, you know, that's important to keep in mind.

01:43:04

I just don't think that Seventh -day Adventists are on the other side of that divide, necessarily.

01:43:12

And I think that's the way Walter Martin left it, too, before he died in the late 80s.

01:43:18

Yeah, the most troubling thing about the Seventh -day Adventists is their official doctrine of investigative judgment and also their eschatological view that those worshiping on Sunday during the end times will be marked out as those accepting the mark of the beast, which is worshiping on Sunday.

01:43:39

But not all Seventh -day Adventists believe that, and there is, from what I've heard from even Seventh -day

01:43:44

Adventist pastors, there is a reformation going on amongst them.

01:43:51

And of course, you have people who are naive or ignorant of those deeper matters involved in the theology who are born -again believers who just seem to be drawn to the

01:44:02

Seventh -day worship and vegetarianism and other things. Yeah, or maybe it's just what they're raised in, but they still have a genuine faith in Christ.

01:44:08

So yeah, that's well put, Chris. Right. And I also did love Hacksaw Ridge, and I strongly recommend that movie to everyone.

01:44:18

It's really an inspiring and powerful movie of courage and the fact that this man's faith was greatly admired.

01:44:28

His comrades despised him and thought he was a coward initially, but grew to truly love him and view his faith as a precious thing and valued his prayer and so on.

01:44:41

Yeah, I look forward to seeing it. I missed it on the big screen, and that's the movie you want to see on the big screen. For me, that's the way

01:44:47

I like to see it, but we're going to get it on Netflix, you know. My wife and I will watch it. My girls can't watch it, it's too bad.

01:44:53

My wife won't even watch it, probably. I'll watch it by myself, you know. But I personally love those dramatic characterizations of heroic enterprises, even if they're not associated with the person's spiritual convictions.

01:45:07

And the reason is because this is a dramatic representation of the image of God in man, and so it speaks truthfully to the world.

01:45:17

It tells us human beings are different from everything else. They are noble. Now, they're fallen, of course, and that comes across in war films especially, but they're noble, and so these become affirmations of one particular detail of the

01:45:31

Christian worldview. Right. In fact, in the movie, the lead character only mentions that he's a

01:45:38

Seventh -day Adventist once or twice, and the only other thing related to that specific denomination is when he mentions that he believes in Sabbath rest on Saturday, but other than that, there was really nothing involving

01:45:53

Seventh -day Adventism. Right, and incidentally, that's the same actor who played in that movie that you mentioned about the priests, or priests in the

01:46:02

Japanese persecution. Same actor, you know, so curious. And he's also Spider -Man,

01:46:07

Stan. Okay. But the silence movie, he was a very different character, and the movie itself was very dark.

01:46:16

The silence was a very dark and disturbing movie. But thank you, CJ, and thank you for contributing to our show again with a question.

01:46:26

You are also getting a free copy of The Story of Reality, thanks to our guest Greg Kochel and Stan DeReason, and also thanks to our friends

01:46:33

Todd and Patty Jennings at Cumberland Valley Book Service, so keep your eye out for a package in the mail from cvbbs .com.

01:46:42

That's cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for Bible Book Service dot com. B .B.

01:46:47

in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania says, you said earlier that eschatology is not on the highest rung of importance, but cannot eschatology also be very dangerous, like those who are hyper -preterists, who do not believe

01:47:04

Jesus Christ is even going to return? And I'd like your thoughts on that,

01:47:10

Greg, and also I'd like to have Buzz Taylor, my co -host, chime in, because he just is in the midst of writing a book on eschatology.

01:47:19

Well, my response, I think when you talk about what is just described as a hyper -preterist, my understanding is they think

01:47:27

Jesus has already returned. So it's not that he'll never return, but he's already come back, to which

01:47:32

I respond, you mean this is it? Right. This is what we've all been waiting for, the blessed hope, the last 2 ,000 years, this is what got out of mind.

01:47:42

So I'm not persuaded at all by that. What a bummer. Yeah, what a bummer, right? You know, what a letdown, man.

01:47:49

The blessed hope turned out to be, you know, a blessed bummer. Wow. But I think this really reinforces my point.

01:48:00

Those people who press that issue are making their eschatological view drive a huge part of their

01:48:06

Christian project. And so if there was less emphasis on all of that,

01:48:12

I think that they would, you know, then it would be less problematic. If somebody thought, well, you know, the second coming of Christ has already happened,

01:48:21

I think that's false view. I think it's heterodox, seriously heterodox. But the way they're living their lives is communicating the

01:48:28

Gospel and trying to glorify God and being a good servant and all the things that are appropriate. Well, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about that, okay?

01:48:36

But if what they're doing is their whole life is hammered away at this same tune, Jesus has already come back, we're doing the preterist thing, and it overshadows everything else, it is the excessive emphasis on their eschatology that I think becomes the problem, just the same way as any amillennialist or postmillennialist or premillennialist would, if this was all they hammered on and we never heard anything else, we didn't hear the real important things, that would be the same liability from my perspective.

01:49:07

But I'm curious about the ever -silent buzz. Well, yes, yes. I think it's a lot like Calvinism.

01:49:14

You get some people that that's all they talk about, and we have 66 books and a whole lot of documents.

01:49:20

I personally would move it up a few rungs on the ladder, though, the eschatology thing. But that's, again, my emphasis right now is because I am writing a book on it, and that seems to be like with Chris, all

01:49:29

I talk about and everything. But it's hard for sales if you tell people I wrote a book and it's not for sale.

01:49:35

Yeah, right. But it's really the bottom rung, you know. But I do believe eschatology is extremely important in one sense, though, because we have people like Bertrand Russell, who definitely used some of the eschatological teachings against us as a skeptic, you know, everybody thought

01:49:53

Jesus was going to come in the first century, and he didn't. So, you know, you guys are all washed out.

01:49:59

Well, no, as a body of Christ, I believe we have a very inaccurate view of what they were expecting to happen in the first century, and what a lot of those prophecies were actually about, being a partial preface, not a full preface.

01:50:14

So yeah, I think it is an important subject. And it also, personally,

01:50:20

I've noticed that when my eschatology changed, it really affected the way

01:50:25

I view so much more of the scriptures as well. By the way, what's the title of your book again,

01:50:31

Buzz? I'm not sure if it's going to be the ultimate title, but right now it's Bible Prophecy Like You've Never Heard It Before...book

01:50:39

should have. And of course, the hyper -preterists, going back to them, they also deny the bodily resurrection of the saved and the wicked.

01:50:51

And that is, as you were saying, Greg, that is their gospel. That is what they focus on more than anything.

01:50:59

Yeah, yeah, that's the problem. I just, I look at, I became a Christian in the early 70s, the

01:51:05

Jesus movement, heavy -duty rapture going on. Oh yes, yes. And so it was,

01:51:11

I just, and I would live and die in that kind of doctrine, but I've moved way, way from that. And not just away from some of those ideas, at least, certainly the rapture thing, but also the significance or importance of it.

01:51:24

I've tried to go just broader to more foundational issues, and so I think, not that these are unimportant, but there's so many other things that are more important that let's look at, if you haven't done the

01:51:39

Book of Romans yet, you don't do the Book of Revelation. That's kind of my view. Right. And of course, an orthodox understanding of eschatology is also valuable to warn those who have embraced wacky understandings, who are, for instance, neglecting the care for their family and their responsibilities at work because they think the end of the world is coming next week or something, or who are following a nut or an evil person with false eschatological teachings.

01:52:09

That's why my main target is not so much to argue the isms, whether you're a post -millennial, pre -millennial, whatever,

01:52:17

I'm a millennial, I'll leave you in there, Chris, somewhere. But it's to come against the hype and all the hysteria and twisting of scriptures in what we call the modern prophecy movement.

01:52:32

Yeah. Well, I want you, Greg, to summarize in about five minutes time, uninterrupted, what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today regarding the story of reality.

01:52:45

Well, I ask a rhetorical question early in the book, and the question is, what is

01:52:50

Christianity? And there's a lot of ways to respond to that. It's a religion, it's not a religion, it's a relationship, it's a way of life.

01:52:58

Okay, great. But that's not enough. I think it's deeper than that, and the way I characterize it is

01:53:04

Christianity is a picture of reality. That is, it's an account or a depiction of the way the world really is.

01:53:14

And I think this has escaped a lot of people, because we have been accustomed to relativizing our own view.

01:53:21

Now, many Christians don't relativize it, they get it, all right, but if we're going to go out in the world and communicate to others, we have to cross that bridge and let them know we're telling them about reality.

01:53:33

And also, that this picture is made up of pieces that have to be put together properly, so it's more like a puzzle in that regard.

01:53:42

And you gotta have all the right pieces. And so what I've tried to do in the story of reality is I've tried to give the big picture, so to speak, so people don't get lost in the pieces ever again.

01:53:54

And I use five words to provide a backbone theologically, and also it's a plot line of the story.

01:54:03

And those five words are simply God, man, Jesus, cross, resurrection.

01:54:10

Here I mean the final resurrection we were just talking about to reward or punishment. God, man,

01:54:16

Jesus, cross, resurrection. These represent the most important things that happen in the order they took place.

01:54:24

So we start with God, that's creation. God makes the world a certain way. We gotta understand the kind of world we live in.

01:54:30

And he makes man to be in friendship with him. Man gets himself in a heap of trouble. And instead of abandoning man,

01:54:39

God initiates a rescue operation by becoming a man himself in the person of Jesus.

01:54:45

And note in our story, man does not rescue himself. God rescues man.

01:54:51

That's huge. So you got God, man, now Jesus. Who's Jesus? Well, Jesus is the

01:54:56

God -man, okay? The rescuer. What did he come to do? He came to rescue us.

01:55:01

And strictly speaking, he came to rescue us from the father, because the father's the one who's mad, right?

01:55:07

Now the father sent the son, so the father's love motivates this, but he's also the ones who's angry.

01:55:14

And it's good that he's angry, because it's right to be angry at bad things, all right? So how does he do this?

01:55:21

Jesus rescues us by the way he lives his life and about the way he dies. That's the cross. God, man,

01:55:26

Jesus, cross. And on the cross, he makes a trade. His wonderful life for our rotten life, his innocence for our guilt, his merit for our demerit.

01:55:38

The reformers called this the marvelous exchange. And that is an exchange that is offered as a gift.

01:55:46

We receive it by faith. We can't purchase it. We can't earn it in any way. But the decision that we make about that gift will determine what happens to everyone at the final resurrection.

01:55:59

And at that point, one of two things is going to happen. Either perfect justice or perfect mercy.

01:56:05

Perfect justice, punishment for everything people have done wrong, and God misses nothing.

01:56:12

Or perfect mercy, that is forgiveness for everything that we've ever done wrong, and God misses nothing.

01:56:20

Those who reject the forgiveness get properly punished and banished from God's presence forever.

01:56:25

And that's not going to be a pretty picture. But those who accept forgiveness, bend their knee, become a member of God's family, restore to friendship with God, get to live in the kind of world that our hearts have always yearned for.

01:56:39

I like the way C .S. Lewis puts it, the door we've been knocking on all of our lives will finally be opened.

01:56:46

And that's it from beginning to end, a thumbnail sketch, the story of reality, how the world began, how it ends, and everything important that happens in between.

01:56:54

In less than 200 pages. Amen. Well, I think we have time to squeeze in one more listener question.

01:57:03

Let's see, we have RJ in White Plains, New York. And RJ says, going back to another listener's question on the shack, how do you subtly let a friend or family member who is believing in something that is heretical like the shack, how do you subtly let them know that you disapprove of that without throwing a bucket of cold water on their face and getting them so angry with you that they don't want to listen to the rest of what you have to say?

01:57:38

Well, I think what you have to be very clear on what precisely what it is that one thinks is heretical about the shack.

01:57:48

And the way I'll be communicated, I think there's a mixed bag here. And that is there's some good things and there's some bad things.

01:57:57

And I think the way to communicate to somebody is to communicate that very thing.

01:58:02

If you just say, well, that's heresy, well, that's a pretty broad generalization. You know, you have to specify what you mean.

01:58:09

And that's one of the tactics we teach people to say, what do you mean by that? More specifically, what is the concern?

01:58:15

And to be fair to any person, if we're going to criticize them, we have to get it right. We got to get their view right.

01:58:21

We have to be careful about how we do it. I would tell them, well, you know what, there's some good things and there's some bad things, you know, in that movie, and we've got to be careful about it.

01:58:30

And I wouldn't tell a Christian never to see that movie, personally. Personally, I wouldn't say that.

01:58:36

But what I'd want is for that Christian to be well -versed in an Orthodox understanding of not only the

01:58:42

Trinity, but also the judgment of God, and then go into that movie with that in mind, and listen to every line, not just the ones they don't like.

01:58:51

And so this, what it teaches us to do is become, is to be studious listeners. We're not just going to, you know, blackball a particular movie bad, you know, let's just, bad.

01:59:03

But rather, we're going to be careful in how we think about these things and try to separate the wheat from the chaff.

01:59:08

This, I think, is mature, a way of doing mature Christian assessment. That's the way

01:59:14

I'd approach it with somebody who wanted to see the movie. Well, R .J., thank you for the question. You've also won a copy of The Story of Reality.

01:59:21

Make sure we get your full mailing address, and try to go to the conference that I've been mentioning. It's not that far away from White Plains.

01:59:27

Go to the New York Apologetics Conference featuring Greg Koukl and others.

01:59:33

Go to newyorkapologetics .com, New York spelled out, apologetics .com, and for Greg Koukl's ministry, go to str .org.

01:59:42

That's str for stand to reason .org. Thank you, Greg, for being on the program. If you could hold on a couple of minutes,

01:59:47

I want to schedule you for our next interview. Okay, I'd be glad to. Great. I had a great time with you guys.

01:59:52

Thanks. Thank you, and I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.