Engaging Atheism, Judaism, and Other Worldviews w/Andrew Rappaport

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have another wonderful guest.

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His name is Andrew Rappaport, and I'm gonna explain a little bit about Andrew before I introduce him and bring him on the screen with me.

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And I just wanna let you know that I'm really excited about this guest. Andrew's a great guy. He's got lots of experience in doing apologetics and evangelism, and so I'm really looking forward to picking his brain, so to speak, on some of these issues, especially with respect to atheism and Judaism.

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We haven't really covered anything on Judaism very much. How do we engage in evangelism to Jews? How do we do apologetics in that context?

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And so hopefully this conversation will be very useful for folks who are interested in those sorts of things.

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But before we do that, I want to remind folks the Epic Online Calvinism Conference is

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January 21st. Once again, we have Dr. James White, myself, Dr. Guillaume Bignon, Scott Christensen, and Saiten Bruggenkate.

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We're gonna be covering various aspects of Calvinism, not your traditional tulip five points conference where someone talks about each of the points there.

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We're gonna be covering some different issues that I think folks are going to find very, very useful if that's your cup of tea.

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So that's January 21st. You can go and sign up RSVP for that on revealedapologetics .com.

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Click the Pre -Sup You drop -down menu, and you could sign up there. And it's an awesome way also to financially support

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Revealed Apologetics if you feel so inclined to do so. So again, that's January 21st.

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Now, real quick, oops, I invited you on there early, but I'll keep you on, I'll keep you with me. There you go.

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Andrew is the author of, well, he's author of multiple books, but Andrew Rappaport is the executive director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the

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Christian Podcast Community. He's the host of several podcasts, Andrew Rappaport's Rap Report, Andrew Rappaport's Daily Rap Report, and Apologetics Live.

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And so you definitely wanna check those out on iTunes and other platforms, I'm sure. Andrew is also the author of various books,

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What Do They Believe?, which is a systematic theology of the major Western religions. And What Do We Believe?,

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which is a systematic theology of the Christian faith. He's also contributed to other books like the book called

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On the Origins of Kinds and Sharing the Good News with Mormons. Andrew established

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Equip Conferences, formerly Spread the Fire Evangelism Training and Outreach Events.

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Actually, the first time I met Andrew was in New Jersey. I think it was a conference called Jersey Fire, and I had the privilege of meeting him there.

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And we went out to dinner afterwards, him, myself, and Matt Slick, and some others as well. I'm not sure if he remembers that.

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Andrew grew up in a Jewish home and was saved at the age of 16. He holds a master's degree in theological studies, a

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Magnum Cum Laude from Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary, and a BS degree from Monmouth University in computer science.

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He and his bride live in Pennsylvania and have two adult children. So a lot of cool stuff, a lot of cool information there.

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Have I got it all right there, Andrew? Mostly, but it actually wasn't Equip Jersey we met at.

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It wasn't Equip? No, Matt and I were keynote speakers at the,

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I think it was the South Jersey Apologetics Conference. And we went out for dinner afterwards.

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Of course, you do know who bought dinner for Matt, right? Yes, I think Matt eventually was able to pay for you at some point, but I was there to witness the struggle.

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Yeah, and this is, I will admit, this is like a reverse. Now, for folks who don't know some of our history, when

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Matt and I started Apologetics Live together, and then Matt had issues with his wife and needed to bail out, you were coming in weekly and co -hosting with me

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Apologetics Live on Thursday nights. So I was the host, you were coming in with me, and we've switched roles this time, and now

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I'm the guest in StreamYard. It's very weird, I know, that's awesome.

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I was joking, I was pointing out to the product placement behind me as you were doing things, but I guess good product placement.

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We got my shofars right above my head there, since we're gonna talk about Judaism, and right above my head right there is a nice manuscript from Deuteronomy.

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Oh, wow, Deuteronomy what? I'd actually have to double check, because I forgot, it is, because I have two of them, and so I don't know if, it's probably, either that one is the

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Ten Commandments, or it might be Deuteronomy 6, one of the two, because those are the two fragments that I have.

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Okay, awesome. Well, I'm excited to have you on. There's some folks already listening in. John Rizos says, hello, greetings from Greece.

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That's awesome. I got some Canadians here as well, so thank you so much, guys, for listening in.

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I hope you guys find this conversation useful and edifying to you. So I wanna jump right in.

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I know the thumbnail says engaging atheism and Judaism, but I actually wanna start with Judaism before we start with it, because atheists,

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I mean, when you do apologetics, atheism, content on how to respond to atheism is all over the place.

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That's kind of what most people think of when they think of apologetics. It's not normal for the average

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Christian to encounter a Jew and really go into the weeds of some of the important issues, so I want to have you, for a moment, explain to us what was it like growing up as a

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Jew and then converting to Christianity, and then maybe we can kind of unpack how you use what you've learned to engage with others who are from the

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Jewish faith. Sure, yeah, and so I grew up in a home, my family actually went all,

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I mean, from Orthodox. By the time I started going to Hebrew school, we were conservative. Conservative is actually more liberal in Judaism.

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By the time I was bar mitzvahed, we were Reformed. Reformed in Christianity is a good thing. Reformed in Judaism is a bad thing, okay?

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They're not like Calvinist Jews? No, no, no, no, no, that's the most liberal, and now my dad's basically a practicing atheist, so we've gone the whole gamut, but it's somewhere,

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I mean, I've had 10, 12 years of Hebrew school where you're learning about the

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Jewish faith. Growing up a generation after the Holocaust, I always have to preface this,

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Eli, when I say this to Christians because they just do not understand, so I'm gonna say something that's gonna shock people, and then let me explain it.

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Growing up the way that I did, Jewish people are raised to believe that Jesus Christ is

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Hitler's God, and that seems shocking, I get it, but to someone who's

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Jewish, we really don't make the distinguishing characteristics between Christians, you're just all

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Catholics. I mean, that basically was the way that I was raised. Everyone's just a different branch of Catholic.

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You don't really think of it in different, much like people think Judaism is just one group, and yet I've just named three major divisions, and even within Orthodox, there's tons of divisions within there.

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You have the Hasidic, I mean, there's a ton of different groups that could all be living near each other.

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So just like everyone thinks all Jewish people are the same, that's the same, and so you have to understand that Hitler was supported by the

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Catholic Church, and the Roman Catholic Church funded him for political reasons, but to Jewish people, it's just another, the

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Holocaust, the Inquisitions, the Crusades, it was just Christians wanting to kill off Jewish people, that's the view, and so it seems horrific for people to hear me say it, but that's just the way that we would, and that I was raised, and that we would see things, that it's, this is who

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Christ is. So what you have to understand, when you speak to someone that's Jewish, whether they're religious or not, and typically, the very religious in the

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Orthodox community usually stick to themselves anyway, so you're not speaking to them, you're speaking to someone who, if they're even religious, they're probably conservative, or Reformed, or just go on the

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High Holy Days. It'd be kind of like in Christianity, you have the Christmas and Easter Christians, we have them in Judaism too, you know, your temple dues are paid, or synagogue dues are paid on the

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High Holy Days, and so that's really, you know, so I grew up, I was born Mitzvahed, when

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I, you know, I know that, you think

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I'm this bold Christian now, that stands on the street corners in New York, but I wasn't then, for sure, and I knew what would happen when my parents found out, and so I got saved at 16, still living in their house, two years in high school still, did not say a word.

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When I went to college, they discovered I was a Christian, and they went casket shopping.

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They were gonna bury an empty casket, and that's what I fully expected, and something had happened in our family, my dad said they went casket shopping, they chose not to do that, but they weren't gonna, he wasn't gonna pay for my college if I continued with this, which

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I expected, and I said, well, I understand that, Dad, that's why, you know, I'm in ROTC, and my dad, you know, the thing is is my dad was almost killed in the

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Army, so he never wanted his boys to be in the Army, and so when he heard that, he decided to continue paying, so when it came time for me to make the decision,

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Army or not, like, I had to sign the contract, and I realized, you know, I thought it'd be dishonoring to my father, having him pay for the education and then go in anyway, so still kind of regret that to a degree, but I feel like I was honoring my father.

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Sure, sure, now, you say you converted to Christianity, what were the specific things, as a

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Jew, like, what did you encounter about Christianity that started making you doubt Judaism, a

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Christless Judaism, so to speak? And just a footnote for you,

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Jewish, not Jew, if you could. Okay. Most people don't know that, but, you know, part of the

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Holocaust, Jew or Jude was a derogatory term. Okay. So some people, like myself, who grew up hearing that as a derogatory term, still, it's hard for me to hear it and not,

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I know you don't. That's really helpful, Andrew, because there's a lot of background stuff that we don't know, and when we engage, you know, people from different perspectives, if we don't know that background, we can come off as offensive without even knowing.

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Without knowing at all. Yeah, helpful information. And then, so, and it's still, it's like, I know you mean absolutely nothing by it.

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And yet, you know, it's a weird thing when you grow up with that, it's like ingrained. Yeah, it's hard to overcome, but, so, but yeah, no,

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I never really, it's not that I questioned Judaism as much as it was, so I, my mother died when

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I was, you know, when I was young. Okay. And I went, I got thrown out of every summer camp that my parents sent me to, because I just was not a good kid.

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Too smart for my own good and too dangerous in other ways. And so I went, my parents sent me away on a teen tour, basically get rid of all the kids.

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We took a bus ride, go around the country with adult counselors that watch over you.

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But the bus driver was a Christian. He made it his mission. He was gonna talk to all 48 of us, adults and kids.

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He was gonna share the gospel with everybody. And this is almost, almost everybody there is

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Jewish. And so we're sitting there, he's, you know, and everyone had been warned not to,

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I mean, you couldn't, at me at that age, you couldn't even make a mother joke, which, you know, is a popular thing.

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You know, your mom wears combat boots. I would actually black out. I, to this day, cannot tell you that,

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I can only tell you what multiple adults told me I would do. Sure. But I became,

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I would be very violent. Well, this guy's telling, he's sharing the gospel. And I literally, to my shame, this was,

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I said to him, I'm like, hey, Chuck, that's great for you, but I'm God's chosen people.

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I'm in like Flynn. And that's what I thought. I thought, you know, I was the elect, we're

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God's people, we're going to heaven, no matter what we do. And that's what I was taught. And so he said a really stupid thing.

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Whenever I do our evangelism trainings, I always say like, people get worried. Well, what if I say the wrong thing?

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Chuck said something that was really, really stupid, knowing my background. As I was walking away from him, he turns and says, what if your mother died?

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So you'd be right here, right now listening to his message and you walk away. She would have died in vain.

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And I remember, I remember clenching my fists and then I just, I turned around and I relaxed my hands and I don't know why, but I just said to him,

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I'm like, Chuck, you give me a logical reason to believe, I'll believe. And if you ever wondered if God has a sense of humor,

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God takes a kid who at that time, I was very arrogant about my intelligence, okay? 168

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IQ, I've passed the test for Mensa, but I was proud of that. I looked down on a guy like Chuck who didn't even finish the sixth grade.

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And yet that's what God is going to do. God's gonna use Chuck to make the most important decision in my life, right?

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And so Chuck just, in a course of three and a half hours, I went from believing Jesus Christ is

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Hitler's God to being a follower of Christ. And it was all because of mathematics. Chuck went through, though he never finished high school, he knew his

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Bible. He wasn't well -educated, but he knew his Bible.

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And so he could sit there with prophecies. And in my head, I'm running calculations going, okay, how many people could have been born in Nazareth at that time?

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Now, is that one self -fulfilling? No, Jesus had no control over that.

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There's certain prophecies Jesus has control over. I put that in a category of self -fulfilling, I'm gonna ignore that.

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I'm looking at prophecies that I'm putting in the category of coincidence. And just one after another,

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Old Testament to New Testament, we're going back and forth for three hours. And I stopped him and I said, okay,

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Chuck, we're beyond statistical impossibility, 10 to the 48th power. And he's like, what do you mean?

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I said, that means that it is statistically impossible for one man,

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Jesus, to fulfill all this by chance. It's impossible. I said, so the

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New Testament, the only explanation I could have is that the New Testament was written by God, like the Old Testament. So tell me what the

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New Testament teaches. And so he walks me through Christ's death and burial resurrection. I mean, he explained that I'm a sinner.

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There was no problem there. I almost burned my house down twice. Once it was put out with fire extinguishers, second time fire department, okay?

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But what ended up happening was, he talks about the resurrection and I'm sitting there going, well, maybe they got the wrong tomb.

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Maybe he didn't really die. All the arguments that we have for the resurrection that people try to explain in a way, one that I think is still original with me.

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Maybe my last argument is, Chuck, maybe the disciples, they dug a hole underneath the tomb, came up through a center and stole the body away.

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And he's like, Andrew, in three days? I mean, through rock? They didn't have heavy equipment back then.

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I was like, oh, I just put my hands in my head. And he goes, he's like, what's wrong?

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I said, well, look, if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then that means that he is

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God. And Chuck goes, yeah. I said, well, if he's God, I'm accountable to him. He's like, yeah.

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I said, well, then I need to know how to get right with him. So I thought every Christian gets saved the same way I do.

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Just here's the logical facts. Just here's the information, here's the evidence and you're good to go, right?

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But that really wasn't the issue because what I thought was just an evidence issue, what I really had was a spiritual issue, right?

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As you well know, when we look at the issues, I have the same sin problem that everyone else had and I had the same spiritual problem that everyone else had and I needed the same regeneration that every believer gets, right?

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And that comes solely from what God does in us. So, you know, I thought everyone, like it really was puzzling to me when

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I first started sharing the gospel. Like, I'm explaining this. Why aren't you understanding this? Like, why aren't you just repenting? Because I didn't quite realize that young in my faith that repentance is a work of God, not a work we do.

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That's right. Now, that's interesting. So you're the bus driver, went through some biblical prophecies.

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In my experience, I think apologetics via biblical prophecy is kind of a lost art.

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It is the primary way in which the apostles defended the faith, given their context. Yet when someone jumps into apologetics today, they're buying books on how to refute atheism, how to talk about evolution.

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And I think Christians have over -philosophized Christianity that they become completely useless when talking to someone who has the background and context of a

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Jew. So, can you help us think of this in the proper context?

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How can Christians put to better use biblical prophecy when engaging

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Jews? In your opinion, what are Christians lacking today that make that difficult?

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And how can we kind of overcome some of those hurdles? Well, I really think part of the problem we're lacking, and you and I are both guilty of this, we read a lot of books, right?

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Yes. And the thing is, I mean, what did Chuck have? I mean, Chuck was, and the guy who led me to Christ, Chuck, intellectually outnumbered.

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Now, I'm not boasting on that, I'm just where we were at. However, he knew his

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Bible. That's all he needed to know. He didn't need to know all of the arguments and how to explain this, anything

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I tried to argue, and I did, I gave him arguments for things, and he just would go right back to Scripture, right back to Scripture.

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And I'll admit, I could not argue against Scripture. I could argue against him all day, but he never let that happen because all he did was give

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Scripture. But if you're going to speak to someone who's Jewish, let me give a warning, if you haven't picked up on it already, don't mention

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Christ, not right away at least, because to a

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Jewish person, at least in my generation, the name of Christ is completely offensive, unless you're using it as foul language, because Jewish people do that all the time.

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That's the only time you hear Jesus's name mentioned by Jewish people is in foul language. But it is something where it becomes an immediate offense.

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You want to be careful with that. You don't want to just jump into that until they see the need. And so the issue is, you first have to try to identify what type of person you're speaking to, right?

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If you see someone who's wearing a kippah, that's the little yarmulke that people would call it, on the head, okay, you're dealing with someone who's religious.

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They're gonna, you can assume they know the Bible, but chances are they probably don't know the

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Bible. They know the Bible stories the way many Christians in Sunday school learn Bible stories, but they don't know the

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Bible because they usually study the Talmud, okay? And I can explain what that is in a moment, but see, if you're dealing with someone who doesn't wear a kippah, they're not as religious, they may not know the

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Bible stories at all. Or maybe they have an overview. They may be, like my family, religiously atheist, but culturally

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Jewish, right? I just was at my nephew's bar mitzvah this past weekend.

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Not a single one in my family really believes any of that, but to be bar mitzvahed was a major deal.

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Now, if I could interject real quick. So I know there are certain hurdles for people, psychological hurdles, depending on who you're talking with.

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So for example, some Christians will be afraid of, say, a proponent of Satanism, like, oh my goodness, it's a

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Satanist. I don't wanna talk to that person. Now we have preconceived notions of what a Satanist is like, or someone who practices

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Wicca, or a Muslim. I don't wanna talk to the Muslim because we already have some preconceived notions that will make us scared to talk to the

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Muslim. And I know that's the same with speaking to Jews, is that we automatically assume

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Jew knows the Old Testament inside and out. And so us

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New Testament Christians who have a passing acquaintance, or maybe a pretty good grasp on the Old Testament, we still feel inside, surely

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I don't know enough to go head to head with this Jewish person.

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What's wrong with that perception? Is that kind of like a false, I mean, obviously there are exceptions, but is that kind of a false notion that the average

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Jew that we may encounter is gonna have all this knowledge of the Old Testament such that really, who am

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I to kind of engage with them, with their book, their book, right? Well, no, you're exactly right.

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Most Christians seem to think that if someone's Jewish, they have a really good handle of the Old Testament. And most of them don't.

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Okay, so let me do this. There's four authorities within Judaism, okay? You have what would be referred to as, you'll see this in the scriptures where it'll say the law, the prophets, or the law, the prophets, and the writings, okay?

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That is what we would call the Old Testament. In Hebrew, it would be the Tanakh, okay?

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Because it takes the consonants from law, the Torah, the prophets, the writings.

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So Tanakh, that's what we would call the Old Testament. But then they believe that there was, at the time of Moses, up on the, when he was given the plates, that he was given an oral law that was passed down verbally, memorized without error, and eventually written down.

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And they would say that's equal in authority to the Old Testament. But there's also, both of those have a commentary.

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So the Tanakh has its commentary, and so does the oral law have a commentary. And the oral law, the commentary on the oral law is called the

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Talmud. The Talmud was written over about 1 ,100 years, eight to 1 ,100 years, and it's a redacted work.

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So Eli, if you're Rabbi Eli, and you're writing maybe three pages of commentary,

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I come along, and I think that what you wrote is really good, so I take your three pages, and I summarize it down to one, and I write four more pages.

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Rabbi Matt Slick comes along and thinks that we're kind of useless, so he takes what you have, that now became a paragraph, what

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I have became a sentence, and he wrote 10 pages afterwards because he thinks he's wonderful in everything he writes, right?

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Sounds like the real Matt Slick. I'm just kidding. I had to make it realistic.

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But that's what you end up having. So you have, with the

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Talmud, you really don't have what was the earlier writings, and some of that stuff start being written down prior to Christ.

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But that is what most, when you look at what the Jewish rabbis study, that's what they study.

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When we talk about rabbinic law, or we talk about the rabbinic temple, see, when we talk about Judaism, there's what we call biblical

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Judaism, and rabbinic Judaism. When you had the rise of the synagogues and the rabbis, Judaism changed into a workspace system, and that's the

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Judaism we have today, and it hasn't changed much in 2 ,000 plus years.

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That is based from the Talmud, and that's what they study today.

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They study that, yes, they'll sit in synagogue and read a Torah reading, read a

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Haftorah reading. If you're at the bar mitzvah I was at, you're freaking out because the rabbi can't even get the meaning of the text right.

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But it drives me crazy. Well, let me just jump in real quick. I know folks who listen to my channel, we place a great emphasis on presuppositional apologetics with various applications.

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And I remember Greg Bonson bringing up this point about Judaism is that we often think of Jews as people of the

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Old Testament when in fact it's really Talmudic. It's very Talmudic. It's very much emphasized on the commentary of the text, not so much the

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Old Testament. He actually referred to the idea of the Old Testament as being window dressing for the Jews. It gives the appearance that it's all about that when in fact it's more about the tradition.

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Dr. Bob says here in the comments, he says, Andrew is bringing up a big point. Most of my Jewish colleagues in grad school were virtually ignorant of the

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Old Testament text. They knew traditions associated with the text, but not the text itself.

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And Dr. Bob makes mention here. He says, Shalom, gentlemen, as a fellow Christian of Jewish descent. So he has kind of some background there to give some context.

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I think that's interesting what you just said kind of confirmed what I've always heard about various Jewish perspectives where they're not really engaged in the text per se, but kind of like the tradition surrounding the text.

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So my question for you is, could we liken the

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Jewish oral tradition to say like the tradition in Roman Catholicism? Is there kind of like a counterpart there, like a correspondence there?

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Oh, it's a huge similarity that you have. And you have this really with any man -made religion, right?

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Because it becomes about the traditions. In Judaism, what you have, the whole idea of the traditions, why do we have a

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Passover Seder? The whole idea of it is to remind the next generation what happened in the past.

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But what do people that don't want the truth of God's word do? They focus on the tradition.

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They focus on the Seder and not the meaning of the Seder. So it becomes about the nostalgic thing of the

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Seder. I mean, let me, I'll throw this out for your audience. I became a

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Christian and did not have a Christmas tree in my home during Christmas time.

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Now, folks, think about this. Think of yourself, put yourself in that position. How many of you would feel that I needed a

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Christmas tree in my home? Okay, now you're thinking that's you.

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Okay, good. Now, here's the question. Why do I need a Christmas tree in my home other than the fact that you grew up with one?

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You see, even within Christianity, we have certain traditions that end up being the main thing for many people because that's the nostalgic thing.

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That's the thing they remember of childhood growing up. I remember singing in Hebrew and lighting a candle for eight days.

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So there's no nostalgia associated. Correct. Christmas tree. Yeah. Do you have a

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Christmas tree now? Do you have a Christmas tree? My wife ended up buying one after Christmas one year because it was on sale because the kids wanted it.

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I'm like, fine, whatever. We had no decorations up. We got no tree up.

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The kids aren't here. Oh, well. I could care less. If it makes her happy,

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I put one up. She didn't grow up with a Christmas tree either. So, you know. But you see, the thing though is that for some people, that tradition becomes everything.

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And really, it's kind of like Dr. Bob had said there. Because so many focus on the tradition, they know the traditions, they don't know what's really behind it.

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You'll see this though with other religions. Go to Mormons. People think Mormons really know their Bible. I have yet to meet a

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Mormon that really understands the Bible and studies the Bible. They know the Book of Mormon. And I don't know,

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I haven't run into any Muslims. They say that, okay, they believe the Bible is the book.

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Right? Sure. But they don't know it. They don't study it. I debated an imam at Montclair State University.

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He had never read the New Testament. I actually gave him one when we left and he admitted he was going to read it.

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But the thing is that we often think that someone just because they're religious, that they have a love for the religion and the

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God that's in the Bible. And yet that's not the case. What they love typically is the man -made system that makes them feel good about their sin and tells them if they keep working hard, they can be right with God.

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And as long as they keep practicing these traditions, they're on a good path. That's the very thing you see in every man -made religion because it's the thing that man wants to create to avoid the

29:54

God that does exist that they know, and yes, everyone knows they're accountable to him.

30:00

Okay, so let's shift. Those are great points. Let's shift to some, maybe if you can give for us, if you could summarize three areas or three things that you can help my listeners be equipped with to engage the

30:16

Jewish people. What is the best way to approach a Jew within the context of like evangelism and apologetics?

30:23

Well, I really, and this won't be a surprise to you, Eli, but I'm gonna use really the way the master outlined style because I think it's very fitting.

30:35

I always ask questions. My style, as you know, is to ask questions. I don't,

30:41

I'm gonna just, you know, it avoids me being, getting defensive if I'm asking questions.

30:48

And so I'm gonna really try to get to the heart of the issue of their sin nature.

30:55

Because if they're Jewish the way I was Jewish, they think they're going to heaven just because they're Jewish. They don't, they're not looking for a savior.

31:01

I didn't, my issue is not looking to get saved. My issue was I didn't think I was lost.

31:08

And so helping them understand the weight of sin and to go through and try to argue, well, what about the blood sacrifices?

31:19

Most Jewish people don't even think about that. We haven't practiced in 2000 years. It's not something that's being discussed.

31:28

And so, but our sin, that's something every human being understands. So I really don't change the style of how

31:37

I evangelize. What I do change is the information I have about whatever religious background they are.

31:43

But even with that, my thing that I always tell people, and this is good for anyone evangelizing anyone, you do not have to know anything about Judaism to evangelize someone who's

31:55

Jewish because you can ask the person you're talking to about what they believe.

32:03

And it's amazing. I had a Muslim, we were in New York City once, and a Muslim who got upset with me because he said,

32:10

I had an agenda. And I said, all I've been doing is asking you what you believe. And he's like, but you gave me this gospel track thing.

32:18

I said, yes, but I haven't told you anything about what I believe yet, have I? That's right. And he's like, but you plan to.

32:25

I said, you don't know that yet. I said - For all you know, I could just walk away right now. Yeah, just walk, exactly.

32:31

Which the funny thing is I did because Mike Stockall got done, it was my turn to jump up on the box.

32:37

So I didn't finish with him. And it was kind of funny because afterwards the guy came up to me, he goes, he realized, he was like,

32:43

I was watching you with these people. You really just care for people. I said, yeah. But with Jewish people,

32:51

I do give the warning. I wouldn't, you wanna sit there, ask questions, talk about what sin is, but don't jump right into, you gotta believe in Jesus.

33:01

Ray does a thing, Ray Comfort does a thing where he says he's got his three minutes to live thing. Okay, if I got three minutes to live, tell me how to go to heaven.

33:08

I think how he words it. I just say, okay, if I had three minutes to live and I want you to tell me, how do

33:17

I get right with God? And oh, by the way, I'm Jewish and I think Jesus Christ is Hitler's God, go.

33:24

And you get people like, believe in Jesus. I go, that's Hitler's God, I want nothing to do with him.

33:31

And do you know, I see so many professing believers that cannot explain the gospel other than believe in Jesus.

33:38

That's all they know. But if Jesus is the offense, how are you gonna explain the gospel?

33:44

And trying to go into the Old Testament and thinking that they know the Old Testament and respect the Old Testament, that may not be true.

33:51

So I would say, start with the law, go through what sin actually is, help them see they need a savior.

34:02

And when they get to that point, that's when you can, you mentioned Christ, because now they see the need.

34:09

Sure, and that's interesting, that route that you just explained there. Some people are wondering, well, wait a minute, if I'm a presuppositionalist in my approach, isn't that anti -presuppositional?

34:18

Actually, as I'm hearing him, as I'm hearing Andrew explain, it's not actually. It's not disrespectful to Jesus by not mentioning

34:28

Jesus at the first part of your discussion, right? We wanna be gentle as doves, but wise as serpents, right?

34:35

We wanna use strategy, strategy does matter. We wanna be able to speak in a way that our conversation will last longer than two minutes so that we can get to these important issues.

34:46

So setting the issue up, talking about the law is not anti -presuppositional because you are still presupposing the authority of Christ.

34:55

You are just approaching this person and getting to that later in the discussion when it's appropriate. So I just wanted to throw that out there just in case folks might be wondering, folks who watch my channel, they always end up thinking presuppositional.

35:06

But here's the thing, let's say, what is presuppositional apologetics? Because a lot of people have differing views with this.

35:12

In any of the discussion, am I debating whether God exists?

35:17

Not at any stage. Am I debating whether God's word is God's word? Not at any stage.

35:24

So as a presuppositionalist, I hold to two presuppositions. God exists, he has spoken.

35:31

That's right. Metaphysics and epistemology, just for folks who know, that's a metaphysical assumption, the existence of God and the epistemological necessity of his revelation.

35:40

So that's very, very presuppositional. Yeah, and so I don't debate that. When people sit there and go, well,

35:45

I don't believe he exists, I just go, well, God disagrees with you and he created you, so he knows better. Or I'll just be like, yes, you do.

35:52

And it is funny because I know you know Cy and he'll talk about the time when, so Cy and I were out, and I always say that,

36:01

Cy and I'd, it sounds like when you say it too quick, but Cy and I, we were in,

36:08

I think it was Santa Barbara, California. And it was just, it was funny because he tells this story and I could say I was standing right there when he's sitting with the

36:16

Buddhist guy at the bike and the guy, or the guy who's reading the Buddhist book, I should say, and he said, he goes, he goes, well,

36:23

I don't really believe God exists. Cy goes, yes, you do. And the guy goes, yeah, you're right. It was like,

36:30

I know that we don't usually get that experience but I don't sit there and debate that. If they say they don't believe,

36:37

I go, well, God says otherwise, right? And they do not like that.

36:43

Oh, you're telling me what I believe? No, God is, I'm not. I'm just saying that one who knows everything and cannot lie has said this about you.

36:52

You are someone that doesn't know everything and has lied before, correct? So it's a thing of, when we think of the presuppositional apologetics, the core thing people have to understand, it's not, and I understand there's some on the extreme that believe that all evidence is a sin.

37:14

I don't hold to that. I don't believe that. I do believe that Christ, the apostles, prophets used evidence, but it's how they used it.

37:24

When Paul is up on Mars Hill, he's not debating the existence of God.

37:32

Look at all these statues you have and you're missing one. No, he takes the one that they're just, oh, we got to catch all in case we forgot one.

37:40

He says, yeah, the one you forget, the one you can't name is the real God that you're accountable to.

37:47

He doesn't sit there and debate the existence. He debates their knowledge of it.

37:54

They're wrong in not accepting the truth. And that's how we have to, we have to understand when we're talking presupp because there's so much confusion with the way, especially because presupp has really taken a good, and I think it's great that it's taken a hold more by evangelists in recent years.

38:15

There's people who still have a wrong notion of it, okay? My professor,

38:22

Steve Furman, I think you met, did you have him on your show? He wrote the book,

38:27

Every Believer Confident. Mark Farnham, yep, I've had him on. Yeah, so he, Mark, I forgot his first name.

38:33

So he's got his PhD in presupp. That was my professor. That's who taught me presupp, okay?

38:41

And he's like an expert in this area. But the thing is, is that it's an area where one of the things that we didn't have to battle with when

38:53

I was learning presupp, we have to now because so many people are fighting against it and coming up with different views of it.

39:02

And now there's becoming like, well, you're not really presupp unless you're completely against all evidence presupp. It's like, well, we gotta say, what are the presuppositions?

39:12

So what I hold to is, as I said, I'm not gonna sit there and debate with someone whether God exists. They already know that, right?

39:19

I'm not gonna debate whether the word of God. Now, can I use things like prophecy? Well, that's what was used with me and helped me understand that the

39:29

New Testament was a continuation of the Old Testament. But did the prophecy, is that really what convinced me that this is

39:37

God's word? No, the prophecy helped me see that, as I looked at it to reveal that I already knew

39:43

God spoke, but now I see there's a continuation of what he spoke that I hadn't been taught.

39:50

So what was it I said? What does New Testament teach? Chuck sits down and starts explaining that to me.

39:56

So once I realized this is God's word, this is a continuation of what he said in the

40:01

Old Testament, now I'm accepting that. I'm not debating that and fighting that. That's something we shouldn't do as Christians.

40:11

I'm just against when people sit there and say, oh, your audience may know who this is, but someone very well known who goes, well,

40:20

I could discuss and do apologetics and I could put the Bible aside. I could debate it. We don't need the

40:26

Bible to prove God exists, really? Then what are you basing it on? Man's arguments.

40:33

What good is that? Because now some other man can come up with a better argument. Then you're nothing but arguing philosophy.

40:45

Sure, sure. All right, excellent, man. Well, I hope that people can kind of digest all of that.

40:51

There are different ways to approach the Jewish people. A helpful way that Andrew's pointed out is focusing on the law.

40:58

And really, that's kind of Evangelism 101, isn't it? Letting people know the need of a savior because of their own sin.

41:06

So that's definitely a helpful way of coming at it. Now, you have a podcast,

41:12

Apologetics Live, striving for eternity. You've got a lot going on. You have lots of experience in Evangelism.

41:19

Folks, if you've never heard of Andrew Rappaport, you should go on YouTube and look up Andrew Rappaport debates.

41:25

He's actually debated a number of times. My favorite debate, I don't remember the guy's name, but you were debating the most unenthusiastic atheist.

41:35

I don't know if you remember this. But you gave this whole elaborate opening statement.

41:41

It was awesome. I was like, oh, this is going to be great. And the guy was just like, well, uh. I think he was playing video games, actually.

41:49

He was playing video games. Like, he totally didn't want to be there. It was the most weird experience ever.

41:55

It was, it was like, he wanted a monologue. And so here, I don't know if you noticed some of the backstory, what was going on with that.

42:03

But you, I mean, you've done debates. You know how debates are done, right? You have the opening statements.

42:09

Then you give a chance to do a rebuttal on the opening statements. And then you have cross -examination.

42:14

Cross -examination was where the heart of a debate is. Yes. So this guy did a rebuttal during the cross -examination time.

42:23

He just did a monologue. And I'm like texting the moderator going, oh, what are we doing here?

42:29

We having a cross -examination or? And he goes, well, I guess you just do a second round of rebuttal and then we'll do another cross -examination.

42:38

We'll do second round of cross -examination. I'll make sure it's clear. And so the second round of cross -examination, he's like, still like, almost doing a monologue.

42:48

And I'm like, well, fine. I'm going to do a cross -examination. And he just was like, not interested at all. But the debate, if I remember correctly, was, and he chose the topic, was that secular humanism.

43:02

Oh, I'm trying to remember exactly the title. Like secular humanism is better or, you know.

43:11

Yeah, something along those lines. It was a while ago. It was a long time ago. And it's actually the same debate topic that Matt Slick did with Matt, what's it from?

43:23

Experiencing Atheism. Dillahunty. Dillahunty. Okay. Yeah, the Dillahunty Dodge. When Matt and I did a show together, we would talk about how

43:32

Dillahunty, Matt called it the Dillahunty Dodge, where he just avoids having to actually answer anything.

43:39

And so we wanted Dillahunty to actually be on a side where he had to take a positive argument.

43:47

So he had to actually defend something. And I still think Matt was just being kind to him and let him off the hook.

43:53

Because if you watched Matt's debate with Matt Dillahunty, Matt Dillahunty at cross -examination, like, man, this is hard.

44:00

This is, what do I do here? I've never had to actually defend something. And we were like, yeah.

44:06

So Matt's like, okay, let's just have a conversation. And I was, you know, and Matt was just kind of being kind to him.

44:12

But that's when I realized Matt Slick won that debate because Dillahunty realized he couldn't really defend his own things.

44:19

It was the same thing with the guy that had it. Man, that one was a frustrating one because it's frustrating when you prepare.

44:28

And you got a guy that isn't prepared. I mean, he's playing video games. He's preparing to defeat the boss so he can go to the next level.

44:36

That's what he's preparing for. The only one that was worse than that was my Calvinism debate with Ari Fuentes.

44:44

Ari Fuentes is a guy from the Philippines. Okay, I'll have to check that out.

44:49

He claimed that he has a hundred formal debates and that there's, his claim was that there's no

44:59

Calvinist that was willing to debate him. And so someone tagged me and James White and a couple of others.

45:06

And I said, hey, Apologetics Live, you can come on anytime.

45:12

James White looked at some of the comments and was like, yeah, you're not really up for a real debate.

45:18

You're not there yet. And so James was right. The guy actually, it was funny.

45:24

What I did was I went through the five points of Calvinism without actually defining or without using the labels.

45:31

Right. I just gave the definitions. I said, do you believe that at the fall, not only our intellect, but our emotions and even our volition were affected by the fall?

45:44

I'm just giving definitions. He agreed to all five. And it was funny because you're seeing in the side chat, you're like, boom, check me.

45:51

Like all the Calvinists know what's happening here. Right. And so at the end I go, congratulation, you're a Calvinist.

45:56

And so the second cross -examination, I asked him to define Calvinism by, I said, can you define total depravity?

46:03

Totally misrepresents all five points. And I'm like, folks, this is the problem. He doesn't even understand the topic of debate.

46:08

He actually holds to Calvinism while saying it's dangerous and useless. Right, right, right. Yeah, I got to check that one out.

46:15

I remember when there was a post saying, sharing the comments of that gentleman and that you were going to debate him, but I didn't actually see the debate.

46:23

But all that - There is one person I've yet to debate that claimed he can't wait to debate me.

46:29

And that is Rabbi Tovia Singer. So anybody who knows, has a background in Judaism, Tovia is a guy who has made his, he's kind of like an evangelist apologist for Judaism, trying to bring people into Judaism that come from Christianity, and he does all these debates.

46:51

So he found out that I had said that someone gave me tapes and I said, I'll debate him anytime, anywhere, whether I'm prepared or not.

46:58

That's how confident that I am that I could debate him. Not because I'm great, it's because I have the word of God and he just has misrepresentations.

47:08

Well, I'd love to moderate that. That would be great. He actually created a banner. I mean, he had five different ways to contact.

47:17

He contacted me through the YouTube channel, the ministry, email, phone call. I mean, he really wanted to set it up.

47:23

And he even created a banner and said, coming soon and put my face and we're gonna debate.

47:29

Sure, sure, sure. And I'm like, you know, it doesn't have to be live. We could do it online. And then all of a sudden it was really funny was we were preparing for the debate.

47:38

He said he had a place. I got a phone call from a guy that said he used to be a pastor and the guy wanted to know how

47:44

I was gonna debate Tovea. And I didn't give the guy everything I would have done if we had the debate, but I gave a little bit of where I thought

47:53

I was gonna go. Because this guy said he studied Tovea a lot. Then I found out the guy was a pastor who converted to Judaism and follows

48:00

Tovea. And all I could say is that Tovea dropped me like as quick after that.

48:06

So I'm going, okay, I even sent him copies of my book, what do we believe and what do they believe? So he knows my view of what

48:13

I believe Judaism is and he knows my view of Christianity. Right. But he has yet to set that debate up.

48:21

Now, I am thinking I will be, my understanding is he moved to Jerusalem and I'll be in Israel in February.

48:27

Imagine you bumped into each other while shopping. Well, I'll try to find where he's at. Yeah, you know.

48:35

That'd be fun, that'd be hilarious. Hey, I just wanna remind folks, I am speaking with Andrew Rappaport of Striving of Eternity.

48:43

If you guys have any questions in the live chat, feel free to send your question in, preface your question with Q or the word question.

48:50

I know that this live stream is not at our normal time, so we have a different frequency of listeners, but we will take some questions at the end.

48:58

If you have any, if not, no worries. So let's shift here to atheism now, Andrew. You've engaged also, and the point of me mentioning your podcast, you've engaged all sorts of topics, one of which

49:09

I would like to have you back on. I've listened to a lot of your stuff over the years, but I thought one of the best talks you gave was on cessationism.

49:20

I don't know if it was recent. I listened to it and I'm like, let me listen to this thing. And there was a talk of like a documentary coming out or whatever.

49:28

I'm like, I know your position and I know you debated Matt Slick in kind of a conversational discussion a few times, some years ago, and I grew up in a

49:37

Pentecostal background. So the topic is interesting to me because I grew up with the gifts, so to speak.

49:43

I'd love to have you back on in the future to talk about your strongest arguments in favor of cessationism.

49:52

But that's for another, all that to say, folks should check out your talks, your teachings and stuff like that.

49:57

They're excellent and super interesting. Even if folks disagree with you, there is something to learn there. That specific talk, if you go, that was the cessationist conference up in Kootenai, Idaho, Kootenai Community Church.

50:08

It's their YouTube channel that has it. And yeah, that's in preparation. We were up there for the filming for the cessationist film that'll be coming out this year or this next year.

50:19

Excellent, excellent. But I'm gonna come back on and talk about that. That'd be fun. Yeah, that'd be great. But I highly recommend folks check that out.

50:26

Now, I mentioned your podcast for the purpose that you have engaged in all sorts of discussions with all sorts of people.

50:33

And so how do you approach the atheist? When you're doing your show and an atheist calls in and says, hey, I wanna talk about Christianity and atheism.

50:40

What is your mindset? Where are you looking in terms of like, here's where I wanna go in this discussion with this person to show the foolishness of atheism and the rationality of the

50:51

Christian faith? How do you approach that? It all depends. So Apologetics Live is, we do that on Thursday nights.

50:58

And I mean, just go to apologeticslive .com to watch. You can join from there. It's a show where we say we will answer any questions you have about God in the

51:07

Bible. Because I don't know is a perfectly good answer. I can answer any question.

51:13

I just may say, I don't know. And I think that's actually an answer. That's right. Here's the thing. I get a lot of different questions and it depends on the person.

51:20

So like this week, this Thursday, we have an atheist from a show.

51:26

He's got a, he and another guy do a show called Reason to Doubt. Two guys that claim to be, having been

51:34

Christians that have deconverted, they like to say.

51:40

And so he came on to a show that we had on. I think he came on when

51:45

Grayson Lyle was on with me. We're talking complete unrelated, but there were a bunch of people in there and we were responding to comments.

51:55

Well, this guy decided to come in. Now, one of the things is, is he came in because he kept making the argument in the chat that he was a

52:05

Christian. Okay. So I said, look, you know, as soon as he came in,

52:10

I said, let's just, you know, he came in because I was saying you were never a Christian. You're a hypocrite that stopped pretending.

52:17

And he's like, you're being so mean. No, I'm being honest, right? I said, so he came in,

52:22

I said, look, what does 1 John 2, 19 say about you? Does it say that you were once a

52:28

Christian or that you were never a Christian? It says you were never a Christian. You went out from among us because you were never of us.

52:37

So that's called the hypocrite that stopped pretending. Now, the reason, and this is what I said to him,

52:42

I said, the reason you want to argue for that you were a Christian is because you want some level of authority to an audience to say,

52:51

I know what I'm speaking about when you know very little of Christianity. It's a fallacy of authority.

53:00

And so that's what you're trying to do. Now, what am I doing there? Am I, you know, people thought

53:05

I was some, especially his followers thought I was being so mean. And I said, no, what

53:10

I'm doing is being honest with someone. I'm not gonna have him come into my show to deceive people.

53:16

Now he's gonna come in this week. He wants to talk about New Testament and he thinks it's just like no different than any other, you know, pagan religion documentation.

53:27

James White's gonna come in. And so this is, you know, fine. Let's have this discussion. We're - When is this discussion?

53:33

This will be this Thursday night. This Thursday, you and Dr. White will be on? Yep. Nice. So that's gonna be -

53:41

Is there a link that I can - Yeah, well, apologeticslive .com every Thursday night because you can watch it right there or you could click on the

53:49

YouTube to go actually to YouTube. But yeah. And so the thing that, here's the thing that we're gonna do because this guy, it was big for him about, you know, his, the homosexuality and supporting them.

54:04

And I'm actually thinking of just saying, you know, hey, I, you know,

54:10

I wanna make sure you respect my pronouns. My pronoun is, my pronouns are God exists and you need to use that throughout the show tonight.

54:18

So those are my pronouns. I expect you to use them. Now, why am

54:23

I doing, I'm, I am going to have fun with it, right? That was funny.

54:29

That made me, that actually - That's what I plan on saying to him. I don't know how Dr. White's gonna respond to that, but that's, this is my,

54:39

I forget who it was, someone asked on Twitter, like, you know, they were saying someone's, their family relative going to college as it was asked what their pronouns are, what should they say?

54:49

And I said, say my pronouns are God exists and I expect you to use them, right?

54:56

Because what does that do? It shows the foolishness of the world that we currently live in.

55:03

Right. We have to ask what pronouns are. And, but then we wanna argue from a sense of reasonability and logic and that we have intelligence, but we can't figure out what a boy and a girl are.

55:17

Right? I mean, this is the thing that, it's gonna depend who comes in.

55:22

I'm gonna debate, discuss with people differently. When I had a PhD professor from Rutgers University who came in, he came in because I had, you know, a guest on that he followed

55:36

Dr. Nielsen and he wanted to challenge him. He wanted to kind of have a little unplanned debate and we were like, okay, it happened.

55:46

It was fun. It was good. Dr. Dan didn't do very well, but then we got into a thing where he,

55:52

Dr. Dan and I would go back and forth online about what is a woman. So he decided to come in and he couldn't really answer.

55:59

He's just doing gobbledygook. He's like, yeah, you can use a lot of big words. And this is the thing you have to realize when you deal with certain people.

56:06

There's gonna be certain people that, you know, look, he's got a PhD in biology. Are there gonna be things he understands biology

56:12

I don't? Sure. But just because he knows some terminology, here's the trick.

56:20

What you're gonna see with guys like that, what they do is they throw these big words so that you feel intimidated.

56:27

Oh, I don't understand what that is. You don't need to. What you could do as what

56:33

I did with Dan was to say, well, can you explain that in a lay level so that everyone can understand that?

56:41

And it was interesting because he kept refusing to do that. Why? Very simple reason. Because if he explains it so everyone understands it, then people understand what he's saying makes no sense.

56:52

And it's not actual science to say that a boy can just feel that they're a girl and that makes them a girl, right?

57:00

He has to actually deny his atheism to do that because think about this.

57:07

Here's a very interesting thing how our culture is now eating itself. When you have someone that says they're an atheist, other than just saying you disagree with them,

57:18

God says otherwise, but I've started doing this with people that are atheists.

57:24

They say, well, let me ask you a question. Can someone be born biologically male but identify as a female?

57:31

And they always say yes. So I say, where does that identity come from if not from an immaterial source?

57:41

Because as an atheist, they have to believe that this is just a material world. And yet, if you're born a male, you're going to think like a male, behave like a male, be a male, because that's your biology.

57:54

That's the biology is saying you're male. Where's this identity coming from? That's coming from an immaterial source.

58:02

See, now this is precept, right? That immaterial source requires an immaterial, immaterial part of us requires an immaterial source.

58:10

That's God. They don't even realize that they're now arguing for an immaterial source or immaterial nature that they deny.

58:21

They cannot explain transgenderism without some immaterial source.

58:27

So can you expand that upon it? So if someone says that we can define our identity, how does that presuppose an immaterial source that requires an immaterial grounding for us?

58:37

If you and I are biological males and we're just chemical reactions, this is the atheist view, correct?

58:44

We're just chemical reactions. We're going to do what our chemistry does. It's not that we have any kind of immaterial nature to us.

58:50

We don't have a spirit. We don't have a soul. We just act out based on the chemical reactions. Okay. So if I'm a male, biologically, then everything

59:00

I do is going to be what a biological male does. I'm going to think male. I'm going to act male because I am male.

59:08

Once I start saying, oh no, no, no. I may be biologically one thing, but in reality,

59:14

I feel I'm something different. What do you mean you feel? Well, identify, what do you mean you identify? Your biology is all that they have.

59:22

They have nothing else to argue with in their worldview. What is an eye?

59:29

Yeah. I mean, an eye, you can say, if man is purely physical, what is the eye?

59:35

Well, you say, well, it's the center of consciousness in the brain. Well, why do you arbitrarily pick the material stuff that makes up your brain as the eye and not say the material stuff that makes up your foot?

59:49

Like why do you get to arbitrarily choose which part of your physical makeup constitutes the eye?

59:54

So many atheists don't even do good enough research. So one of the things with me is I do original source research.

01:00:01

So if I'm going to study some, I go back to the original source. The phrase that many people think it proves atheism,

01:00:10

I think therefore I am. If you actually read Descartes, read what he was saying, he was actually proving the existence of God is what he was doing.

01:00:21

He was saying the fact that I exist means God exists. He was questioning, questioning, questioning, and they have it exactly backwards to his own conclusion.

01:00:33

The fact that I think means I exist, and if I exist, God exists.

01:00:39

Because he has no way to explain his thinking, the ability to think, apart from a source that gives him that ability to think.

01:00:46

He recognized the immaterial part of us. Right, and that's interesting too, because many people think that Descartes failed in what he was trying to do, namely find that which survives skepticism.

01:01:00

And so he's like, I'm gonna doubt everything, and that which survives my doubting is what we can know for certain.

01:01:05

The problem is that Descartes didn't actually doubt everything. Because in saying,

01:01:11

I think therefore I am, the Cogito Ergo Sum, he also was presupposing logic, which he wasn't doubting.

01:01:17

He also presupposed the continuity of identity. He's the same person who said,

01:01:23

I'm gonna try this mental experiment. And he's the same person he was at the time he came to his conclusion.

01:01:29

He didn't doubt those things. There were certain things that he had to start with, and so he couldn't actually do what he claimed to do.

01:01:37

But you're right, even the I, we need to ask the question, what is an I? What does it mean to exist?

01:01:43

And how do we differentiate ourselves from, say, an external world, whether it's a mental projection, or a physical material world?

01:01:53

How do we make the distinction between the I and other things? Those are very fascinating discussions.

01:01:59

But see, this is what gets us right back to precept, because what's the heart of the issue? What are the preconditions in the discussion?

01:02:09

What is it we have to assume? And so when we talk as Christians, we say, well, you have to start with,

01:02:19

God exists and he has spoken. Why those two? Well, because you can't explain anything without first having

01:02:27

God exist. How could you explain, when you get into an atheist, I have atheists that come in,

01:02:32

I don't believe God exists. I say, but how did you get that ability to reason that God doesn't exist?

01:02:39

I said, this is why God says to you, only the fool says in his heart, there is no God, because you're using your

01:02:44

God -given ability to reason to reason that God doesn't exist. But you can't reason that God doesn't exist without him first existing to give you the ability to reason.

01:02:55

Unless the atheist is willing to argue that reason makes perfect sense without God. And that is the claim of many atheists.

01:03:03

But once they actually explain themselves, it doesn't really. Okay, so stage two, once they argue that.

01:03:09

So are you saying things like the laws of logic are not immaterial? Are they material or immaterial?

01:03:15

They'll say, oh, that's just a product of your human brain. Okay. The description, the laws are descriptions of reality.

01:03:24

You know, they'll say that they're descriptive rather than prescriptive, these sorts of things.

01:03:30

Okay, if they go that route, how do you know that? Right, how do you know that to be true? Because you can go that route, you can ask the question of how do you know that that description is always accurate?

01:03:43

These are laws of logic. What makes those laws actual laws?

01:03:50

What established them? But what most people argue is that they're a product of human thinking, that it's that we discovered, it's not that it's some, we apply to it.

01:04:01

And so what I do is I just go, well, let's go back in time to before there were human beings. We all believe that there was a time before human beings.

01:04:08

I would say six days, you would say millions of years. So before there are human beings, let's take the second law of logic, the law of non -contradiction.

01:04:17

Could the universe have existed and not existed in the same way in the same time? Okay, so now, okay, I'm glad you said this because it's kind of related to like if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it, it doesn't make a sound, those sorts of things.

01:04:28

So what if someone were to say, well, wait a minute, the laws require statements being made about them.

01:04:36

So they require propositions. So if I were to say the law of non -contradiction is binding before human beings,

01:04:43

I could only say that proposition because I'm here talking about it. But if there's no human beings making statements or anyone making statements prior to the existence of human beings, then would it be meaningful to say that that law still is true and binding?

01:04:56

Well, in this case, yes, because their argument that they just made was that the law is the product of a human mind.

01:05:07

And so now the question is, you remove the human mind, does the law exist?

01:05:14

And they realize you can't, now, you're gonna have two answers. Either you get someone that says, yes, you can have contradictions, or you're gonna have someone that says, no, you can't.

01:05:22

If they say, no, you can't have contradictions, then laws of logic had nothing to do with the human brain.

01:05:29

Now they're back in that problem where they have to explain the immaterial source. And you could also, if the laws of logic are mere descriptions and they're not prescriptions, then how do you know they're universal?

01:05:41

You can't derive the universality of the laws of logic based upon descriptions because your descriptions are always gonna be based upon your own experience, which is limited.

01:05:51

And so you can't project - Yeah, you can't project your limited experience and say these laws are universally binding.

01:05:57

The very moment you say they're universally binding is you're going beyond the very descriptive basis that you said that the laws of logic are.

01:06:04

Yeah, that's very fascinating. I always think those sorts of discussions - What is fun is when, and I had this, I had a guy that I was talking to,

01:06:11

I was in California, talking to six high school, college age guys, girls. And I had this guy that kept walking by and just drive -by heckling.

01:06:23

Like he had to shoot a comment and keep going. So eventually I stopped him. And we got into this discussion. And so I said, can the law, can the universe have existed and not existed in the same way in the same time?

01:06:33

And he said, yes. I said, so you accept contradictions? He said, yes. And he's like all proud of it.

01:06:39

He's like sticking up his chest when he says it. And I said, so you're wrong. He said, no, I'm right. I said, no, you're wrong.

01:06:45

He goes, no, I'm right. I said, no, you're wrong. And you can't argue against me because you accept contradictions.

01:06:52

That's right. And all of a sudden he realized he was stuck because either I'm right and he's wrong or he's wrong and I'm still right.

01:07:02

Like if he says he's right, I'm still right. He was in a no win situation. Right. Because once he says he accepts contradictions in his world, nothing matters.

01:07:13

Right. And he just walked off. I just want to put this up on the screen here. So this person here,

01:07:19

Robbie says universal laws are universal because they have never been shown to be false and no one can imagine what it would mean for them to be false.

01:07:27

Now that does not logically follow at all. You cannot say laws are universal simply because no one has shown them to not be universal.

01:07:38

It may be the case that, in other words, you can't say something's universal because someone's inability to show the opposite is the case.

01:07:47

You see what I'm saying? No one can imagine what it would. In other words, I don't think anyone has shown the falsity of the existence of God.

01:07:54

And I don't even know what it would mean to exist in a world where God didn't exist. And so therefore

01:07:59

God exists. No one would accept that argument at all, right? So again,

01:08:04

I don't think that's what makes the laws of logic universal. They're not universal based upon the fact that no one has shown them to be false or no one can imagine what it would mean for them to be false.

01:08:14

Well, it's interesting that Robbie would say that because his previous comment was to say, do you think feeling like a man or woman is a biological disposition, right?

01:08:25

So if you think about the two things that Robbie posted, well, one, he's arguing on feelings.

01:08:33

So this is like our biology. If we're biologically male or biologically female, that's our biology.

01:08:41

We wouldn't have feelings opposite of those things if it's driven by biology.

01:08:47

But then he wants to say there are universals. Well, if there's universals, then

01:08:52

I'm universally male in my biological disposition because that's the biology. I couldn't, it would be impossible to think or feel female if I'm a biological male in a world where universals are just, they just happen to be.

01:09:13

Right, I wanna put this up here. So Robbie has here, so he says, I asked a question, it wasn't an argument. That's fair.

01:09:18

He didn't make an argument. But I would say, based on your question, that would not be what it means for something to be universal.

01:09:25

Robbie says here, that's what it means. Universal doesn't mean anything more. No, universal does not mean what you just suggested.

01:09:34

So for the laws of logic to be universal, that doesn't mean that they've never been shown to be false.

01:09:39

That is true, they've never been shown to be false, but the never been shown to be false is not what makes it universal.

01:09:45

The universality of it is that it applies everywhere and always. And if it applies everywhere and always, then yes, it's true.

01:09:53

You're not gonna show it to be false. But that's not simply, that doesn't simply make it universal, this point that he has here.

01:09:59

So I would disagree with that there. But thank you for sharing that, Robbie. There's a question that people wanna deny absolutes.

01:10:06

I asked this question. Is the act of rape always wrong?

01:10:12

Now, if you say yes, that makes it universal, because you're saying always. So it's always everywhere for everyone.

01:10:18

But the act of rape, now there's a reason I word it this way. Why? Because people will say yes to that.

01:10:27

And I'll say, what makes it wrong? What makes it wrong is God is not a rapist. That's what makes it wrong.

01:10:33

Right and wrong is defined by the nature of God. So if you deny that God exists, you have no basis to say rape is wrong.

01:10:41

So what do they do? They say, well, it's because it does harm. Well, here's a little reality.

01:10:49

There was a dentist, I believe he's in Jersey. He had, he put women under and raped them.

01:10:57

But they didn't know it. One woman ended up getting pregnant knowing she hadn't been with a man, figured it out, had the doctor

01:11:07

DNA tested and found out that the child was his. Then here's the gotcha.

01:11:13

Other women came forward and after finding out that they also had been raped while under sedation, they started having the harm that occurs with rape.

01:11:29

So they didn't have it before they found out. So it wasn't the rape that caused the harm.

01:11:36

It was the knowledge of the rape. So therefore, if you're worried about the harm, then what we should just do is make sure that they don't know that they're raped.

01:11:45

You see, and people go, no, no, no, no, but rape is wrong. But what makes it wrong? Because we've just removed the harm aspect.

01:11:52

They always go back to consent. Well, how do you know that they wouldn't have consented? Why is consent, what makes consent the issue?

01:11:59

I asked if the act of rape, right? It's the act itself, not the consent of it, the act of it.

01:12:06

You see, there was a reason, folks, why we make these arguments. Have you been listening to this show?

01:12:12

You've learned from Eli things like this, right? You break this down, so A, you remove all the variables.

01:12:19

So we're arguing an absolute universal law. And what are we basing it in? We're not basing it on human nature.

01:12:27

We're basing it on God's nature. Rape is wrong because God's not a rapist. Stealing is wrong because God's not a thief.

01:12:33

Lying is wrong because God's not a liar. That's what makes it wrong. Yeah, good stuff, man.

01:12:40

Ravi here says, Eli, I love your channel and I'm an atheist. I'm super interested in precept philosophy. Well, I appreciate that,

01:12:47

Ravi. I hope you stick around and hopefully this is not simply kind of an intellectual interest of yours.

01:12:53

I hope you get to the point where you feel the weight of the importance of the issues that we're discussing. But you're more than welcome,

01:13:00

Ravi, to be here and I appreciate you listening in and showing your support in that way. Thank you for that.

01:13:07

Andrew, I'd like to get to some of the questions, if that's okay. There's some questions here and I know we're a little bit over an hour.

01:13:13

Are you okay for a few questions? I'm always okay for questions. Awesome, awesome. Okay, so let me just scroll through here.

01:13:20

And Ravi can always join if he wants. Come to Apologetics Live and we'll take challenges there.

01:13:26

That's what the show's for, so. Awesome. Okay, so Sarah D asks, what do modern

01:13:31

Jews believe about the destruction of the temple in AD 70? Was it judgment from God? That's an interesting question.

01:13:37

I don't know that they would see it so much of a judgment of God. So it is, so here's an interesting thing. The day that the second temple was destroyed, so there's a holy day that we would have in Judaism that is the remembrance of both the destruction of the first and second temple, okay?

01:13:57

In fact, I believe that we have a reference to at least that day when you end up seeing in Mark that you see

01:14:08

Matthew, the tax collector, collecting taxes on a feast day, on a holiday.

01:14:15

I believe that that is the holiday where they have the remembrance of the destruction of the temple. And so it is a day today that it's literally translated to be the, translated as the day of sadness.

01:14:27

And so it's a day where there'd be a fasting, you would not be eating, you would be, you wouldn't shower on that day.

01:14:37

You don't, you have a day where it's supposed to be a day of mourning for the destruction of the temple.

01:14:44

I don't think they would see it as a destruction or as a judgment of God. I can't be 100 % sure on it.

01:14:53

I'm just gonna base it off what I know from my study of the festival, is that they would see it as a day of mourning.

01:15:00

They see a day that God would restore the temple. It has been 2 ,000 years, so it's longer, the longest period they've had without a temple.

01:15:11

But they would, they have it as a day where they look forward to the rebuilding of a temple. All right, thank you for that,

01:15:18

Sarah. We have a question here by Simon. Simon says, Andrew, what's your take on Ben Shapiro? What do you think of Ben Shapiro?

01:15:25

I actually did a podcast, Ben Shapiro did a show where he was talking with an atheist guest about the second coming of Christ.

01:15:35

And it was quite interesting because he had a guest on, but he was actually answering all the questions. And this is before I really knew who Ben Shapiro was.

01:15:41

And I did a response to that. I do know that there are a lot of people that sent it to Ben Shapiro.

01:15:49

I do know that somebody told me that Ben Shapiro did get that video, you know, that podcast, where I basically took everything

01:15:59

Ben Shapiro said and showed how he doesn't know the Old Testament, in my opinion, as well as, now he is very religious.

01:16:08

He studies, you know, studies the Bible, the Talmud, things like this. He has, he's a wicked smart guy.

01:16:19

But he's someone who, his arguments that he makes for why

01:16:24

Jesus couldn't be the Messiah, I don't think fit well with hermeneutics.

01:16:30

And so the difference in the way that I'm going to interpret the Bible and Ben Shapiro's gonna interpret the

01:16:36

Bible is Ben Shapiro is gonna come with a presupposition of Talmudic thinking, of the

01:16:42

Talmud being God's word and having that mindset. And I'm gonna look at the

01:16:48

Bible and read it within the context, not of rabbis who comment on it, but what the

01:16:54

Bible actually says. And so I'm reading it within its own context and letting it say what it believes.

01:17:00

Ben Shapiro is gonna read, when he reads Isaiah 53, he's gonna read into that, what we call eisegesis, reading into the text, the thinking of the rabbis.

01:17:12

And so I would love the opportunity to sit down and have a discussion with him. I think that, whether he actually listened to the podcast, my rap report podcast that I did on that,

01:17:23

I don't know if he listened to it. I know he got it, but I don't think I'm a big enough guy that he's gonna, he's got nothing to gain by debating me and a lot to lose if he doesn't do well.

01:17:37

That's right. All right, thank you for that. Crusader for Christ asks, off the topic, do modern day

01:17:43

Jews who do not profess to believe in the triune God, more likely they believe in Unitarian God and do not believe in Messiahship of Christ, is the

01:17:51

God they are praying to a false God? So in other words, do

01:17:56

Jews and Christians worship the same God? You end up having to say no.

01:18:03

It is interesting because there does seem, when you study the Talmud, remember what

01:18:08

I said about the Talmud, right? It's a redacted work. And so we have of the Talmud today was not the

01:18:15

Talmud that they would have had the time of Christ in the thinking.

01:18:22

And so there seems, and I have to say seems because it's hard, you're dealing with textual criticism of the

01:18:28

Talmud. There's not as many people that do that as do the textual criticism within Christianity, but it does seem that prior to Christ, there was a belief in the

01:18:40

Trinity. Now you see this with some rabbis, and I think even Michael Brown has done some research in this.

01:18:48

I haven't read it, so I can't be 100 % positive, but when I've done some of the talks on this, people have mentioned

01:18:56

Michael Brown's work on this. So I believe he also has done some research into this where there does seem to be where they do reference a tri -head of a

01:19:08

God within Jewish thinking, that there is the idea that Isaiah 53 was speaking of Messiah coming and being

01:19:18

God. And so there's not as much evidence because it's a redacted work and we don't have as much that made it through history.

01:19:29

But those that are teaching today a non -theistic

01:19:35

God or a non -Triune God, that is different.

01:19:41

That is no different than the Mormons who say they believe in Jesus, but that Jesus is a man that becomes

01:19:47

God. It's a different person. It's like saying, well, I know

01:19:52

Eli very well. Eli is a seven foot tall black man who really has no intelligence.

01:20:01

And anyone that's looking at this going, yeah, no, right? I mean, you have a different Eli, right?

01:20:10

There's not a one -to -one correspondence. Correct. There's not a one -to -one ontological correspondence between a

01:20:18

Unitarian God and a Trinitarian God. And this was related to a question I had gotten from someone

01:20:24

I think this might be useful for some folks. One person asked, because it was within the context of presuppositionalism and whether Judaism has the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience since they believe in the

01:20:35

Old Testament. So here was the question that someone asked me. They said, does the Jewish faith also provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility or is belief in Jesus necessary?

01:20:46

And if so, why? And I said this, now this is important. I'll read this slow because I think this is useful for folks.

01:20:52

I responded to this person. I said, the Jewish faith does not provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility.

01:20:58

First John 2 23 states, whoever denies the son does not have the father. Whoever acknowledges the son has the father also.

01:21:06

If Jesus is the Messiah as the New Testament states, and he is rejected, then such Jews would not have the true

01:21:12

Jewish faith because they have rejected the one whom Yahweh has sent. While they would hold to the

01:21:17

Old Testament, they would not truly believe it in the appropriate fashion since those very scriptures speak of Christ, John 5 39.

01:21:25

And so while on the one hand they have the Jewish faith, they've rejected the element of their own faith that gives room for further revelation that gives us information about redemption and the triune nature of God, which is the one of the prerequisites for having the preconditions for intelligible experience where we get into the issues of the

01:21:46

Trinity and things like that. But we believe that the Trinity of the New Testament is the triune God also of the

01:21:52

Old Testament. They're the same God. And so the worldview necessary for the preconditions of intelligibility includes this idea that God allows for further revelation that will find its fulfillment and climax in the person of his son, if that makes sense.

01:22:07

Let me tweak that a little bit because I think there's a little bit of a fallacy of equivocation in the question.

01:22:13

Okay. Because as - You want me to read the question again for folks? No, but it's because here's why.

01:22:20

Think about what we've heard throughout this program for folks. Judaism is being used two different ways.

01:22:27

We have to be careful when we say Judaism, are we talking Old Testament Judaism or Rabbinic Judaism, right?

01:22:35

Because Old Testament Judaism, I would say yes, because it's coming from scripture and they would have a biblical view of who

01:22:44

God is. That's a good point, yep. But Rabbinic Judaism does not. And so I would disagree.

01:22:50

Like, so you take this, the question, right? With the modern day Jewish people, are they worshiping the same

01:22:57

God? Well, biblical Judaism would, modern Judaism would not.

01:23:03

Modern Judaism is no different than what happened when Moses was up on Mount Zion, getting the 10 commandments, getting the law, and you have, you know, the people, and what do they do?

01:23:17

Aaron forms this golden calf for them to worship. And what does he say?

01:23:23

Who does he say that golden calf is? He says that that's the God that brought them out of Egypt.

01:23:33

So he's saying, this is the God of the Bible. And God condemned that because even though they were saying, this is the worship of the true

01:23:43

God, it wasn't in the proper form. And so he condemned that and said for that, they would be judged.

01:23:53

Well, that is no different than saying, we're people of the Old Testament, we're people of God's book, of his

01:24:00

Bible, and then we end up changing the way he wants to be worshiped and saying, instead of it being about repentance, it's about law -keeping.

01:24:09

Well, now you have a changed form. So that same judgment is on those in Rabbinic Judaism.

01:24:15

So back then to your question that you answered, and you answered correctly with Rabbinic Judaism, I'd agree with you.

01:24:22

Why? Because they deny the Father, but in Old Testament Judaism, they would not have.

01:24:29

Excellent, that's an excellent point there. Thank you for that question. Sarah D. asks, do you think the predominance of dispensationalism in the

01:24:37

West has led to Christians disengaging from evangelizing Jewish people? That's an interesting thought.

01:24:43

I don't know, you know, people always think that I'm dispensational just because I'm Jewish, and it's like, it has nothing to do with that.

01:24:49

It's just how you interpret the Bible. I think that, I would say this way,

01:24:55

I think that if anything, dispensationalism seems to have given a rise for people having a, and I'll put this in air quotes, a love for the

01:25:05

Jewish people and Judaism. But I think what that has really done is just formed a new realm of people who get into, well, what a friend of mine calls,

01:25:19

Robert Sahlberg calls Torahism, but it's Hebrew roots type movements where they get into the worship of festivals and they feel more spiritual because they do these festivals.

01:25:30

I remember when I worked, I worked at Bell Laboratories and I had a security guard and she was into all the, she would go to a messianic synagogue.

01:25:42

And I remember coming into work one day and she's telling me about this, oh, she had a great time at this festival that she was, that they were celebrating.

01:25:49

And I'm like, I've never heard of such a festival. Oh no, it points so much to Christ. And I'm like, I'm like,

01:25:55

I'm sorry, but I've never heard of this. I think someone's pulling your leg. You know, I think someone's making this up.

01:26:01

And she literally said to me, she goes, you're just jealous because I'm more Jewish than you. And I'm like, scratching my head going,

01:26:09

I'm like a Levite. I'm like of the 12, like, how are you more

01:26:14

Jewish? Like, you know, but it was this pride that some people have. And so I don't know if that,

01:26:22

I think that what I've seen, most of the groups though that are involved in evangelizing

01:26:27

Jewish people are dispensational. You know, we think of Jews for Jesus and frozen people, they're heavy dispensational.

01:26:36

And so I don't think they're effective as far as reaching Jewish people. I think they tend to reach more

01:26:41

Gentiles than Jewish people. That's my theory. But so I would think that dispensational pride gave a rise to more engagement with Jewish people.

01:26:56

But I would also say that the response from the

01:27:01

Jewish people side is to pull away. And so I don't know what it could be.

01:27:08

I can't be sure, but what could be is that it may be that with dispensationalism being having a high view of the nation of Israel and Jewish people wanting to be seen as separate from the other nations, that it may be pulling away from Christians more than it is

01:27:30

Christians reaching out. And I think that those ministries, I just find a lot of the ministries that have the goal of reaching

01:27:36

Jewish people reach more Gentiles than Jewish people. That's interesting. Here's the final question here that I found.

01:27:43

Simon asks, do you hold to replacement theology? Why or why not? Well, no, I don't.

01:27:49

And let me preface this by saying, I don't hold to covenant theology.

01:27:57

I'm a dispensationalist, but let me be clear. Covenant theology is not replacement theology, okay?

01:28:05

This is a fallacy I think that many that would be more in my camp will make with covenant theology and say that it's replacement theology.

01:28:14

So the idea that God has done with Israel, he's replaced Israel with the church, that's replacement theology.

01:28:23

Dispensational theology would say that God had a plan for Israel. He now has a plan for the church and later he's gonna deal with Israel.

01:28:31

Covenant theology, okay? And I'm gonna use some different terms, reform theology, because see, this is the thing.

01:28:41

When I talk, I'm talking in historical terms with their proper meanings and people are not always so precise.

01:28:47

So covenant theology technically is what the Roman Catholic Church taught. And the reformers took that and what we call in evangelical

01:28:57

Christianity, covenant theology is really reformed theology, okay? It came from the

01:29:04

Catholic Church. They removed the tradition, but there's still a lot of that thinking that's still there with the way of they handle the interpretation.

01:29:14

However, covenant theology does not always, some do, but not all, most don't teach that the church replaced

01:29:25

Israel. What covenant theology would teach is that Israel is the church

01:29:31

Old Testament and the church is Israel New Testament. It's not a replacement.

01:29:38

They would see that it's the same organization in a sense with two different administrations.

01:29:44

Now, some of you may be sitting there going, wait, but you said you're dispensational. How can you define these things?

01:29:50

If you're doing apologetics, folks, you need to be able to be that precise with positions you don't hold to.

01:29:58

I don't hold to covenant theology, but it doesn't mean I throw that under the bus to go, oh, it's all replacement theology because that's easy to knock down.

01:30:05

Sure. No, you don't do that. You have to be fair with the theological system or whether it's, or the religious system that you're dealing with and be accurate.

01:30:17

And this is the reason why, you know, when I wrote my book, What Do They Believe, I gave it to imams,

01:30:24

I gave it to rabbis to say, am I teaching what's right? This is the reason when

01:30:29

I debated, you know, one imam, I remember at a university we were debating, and he actually had to say to the students, to the

01:30:37

Muslims there, he said to them, he understands Islam because they were trying to practice a form of, it's called the qiyah, they're allowed to lie to defend the faith.

01:30:48

And he actually, the imam stopped them to say, no, he understands what we mean.

01:30:54

The thing you wanna do when you do apologetics is you wanna make sure that the person that you're speaking to, the opponent, can never say that you're misrepresenting them.

01:31:06

In New York City, I had a family of Muslims. The father was a

01:31:12

PhD professor, I believe it was the University of Cincinnati or Cleveland, I forget which, but he teaches that the

01:31:22

PhD students are at a PhD level, okay? Intelligent guy. He's telling me he understands

01:31:28

Christianity. He goes, but you Christians, you believe in three gods. I said, no, we don't. We had 25 evangelists out there that day.

01:31:37

And I just, grabbing one after another, okay, I did do one thing stupid, Eli, I admit this. I'm grabbing different people, right?

01:31:43

I'm like, you know, Pete, come here, define Trinity. You know, Anthony, come here, define Trinity.

01:31:49

But then I made one mistake. I said, Amina, come here, define the Trinity. I should never have brought Amina, someone who was raised in a

01:31:55

Muslim home because that name should have given it away. But every one of them defined

01:32:01

Trinity as one god, three persons. I hear in debates, people who tout themselves as kind of like Muslim apologists who crush

01:32:12

Christians, and I've listened to them in debates just define the Trinity as three beings.

01:32:17

And every time they say that, I'm like, this guy doesn't get it. What do you do? Do you have any respect, Eli, when someone says that we believe in three gods, do you respect anything they say about Christianity after that?

01:32:28

No, I become very suspect because this is, while it's true that it's difficult to understand and conceptualize the

01:32:36

Trinity, it's Christianity 101 to at least define it correctly. And so if someone who's attacking it and claiming to be an expert and in a position to attack it, if they get kind of basic definitions wrong, then my antennas go up.

01:32:50

There was a debate years ago where there was a debate that was supposed to happen between a

01:32:56

Christian and a Muslim. And the Muslim was trying to help create the proposition of the debate.

01:33:01

What's the debate gonna be about? And he suggested this. And right in the suggestion, you can identify the faulty understanding of what

01:33:10

Christians believe. Here was the name of the debate, ready? Jesus, God, or man. The Christian's like,

01:33:16

I'm not gonna debate that. He's like, well, why not? He's like, because I believe Jesus is the God man. It's not either or, this is based on your misunderstanding.

01:33:25

And that's just basic ignorance of what Christians believe. And I think it's very telling.

01:33:31

But see, that's the work now we have to do as apologists to make sure we're not guilty of that same thing.

01:33:37

So when we go and we study Islam, atheism, Judaism, whatever it is, we need to make sure that we're accurate in what we're saying, what they believe.

01:33:48

And that's why I spent 14 years studying different religions, writing and systematizing those religions and going to experts in those religions and say, is this what you believe so that you guys don't have to, right?

01:34:01

So you can grab my book, What Do They Believe? and go, okay, I can read through this. And one of the things I do in that book, I give you long sections of source material so you could read it and see what it is that they're believing.

01:34:12

Why? Because of the fact that you want to make sure that no one is going to say, no, you're misrepresenting my religion.

01:34:21

That family in New York, at the end of the conversation, I could sit there and I said, look, here's the thing. Have I misrepresented

01:34:28

Islam at any point in this discussion? And the father and the two sons said, no.

01:34:34

I gotta tell you, you got a really good understanding of Islam. I said, okay. And I'm saying Islam is wrong.

01:34:41

And here's the difference. You have, I've kind of pointed out multiple times that you have misrepresented what

01:34:46

Christianity believes. You don't understand Christianity. So you can't say it's wrong.

01:34:52

Right. Right? Because you can't, you're not representing it properly. Right. Excellent.

01:34:58

Well, that was the final question, Andrew. This has been an excellent conversation. I definitely want to have you back on if you're cool with that.

01:35:04

Oh yeah. Kind of another topic, but I appreciate, I just appreciate what you do. I know we haven't spoken in a long time, but I have been following every now and then when your podcast comes out or I see something pop up on YouTube and I very much appreciate what you're doing.

01:35:20

So I encourage you to keep up the great work. Well, you know, I'm encouraged with everything you're doing, Eli. We've been friends for a long time, even though we kind of both torture ourselves by being friends with that other guy,

01:35:31

Matt, Slick something, that guy. I love when you guys make fun of each other.

01:35:38

It's hilarious. You don't even have to talk theology. You guys can just get in a room and just make fun of each other. He's good at that.

01:35:45

Now I want to put this quote up here. I really appreciate this. So Clint Grieve says a long time subscriber from Australia here.

01:35:52

And finally, praise God, I get to enjoy a live stream on your channel. Well, thank you so much, Clint, for being a subscriber.

01:35:57

I really appreciate people from everywhere sending me love through comments like this.

01:36:03

And I just want to encourage you guys, keep strong in the faith. I hope that this content is equipping you.

01:36:10

It's not simply for kind of intellectual stimulation, but that we actually are not simply hearers of apologetics, but doers of apologetics, kind of a play on words there, not simply hearing the word, but being doers of the word.

01:36:22

So Clint, I'm glad you're finding the channel a blessing, and that's encouraging to me as well.

01:36:27

Just want to throw - Yeah, go ahead. If I could just, a parting word for Robby and any others that maybe like him that are listening.

01:36:36

Robby, the reason we would do a show like this, it's really for those that are believers. We want to encourage those that know

01:36:42

Christ. But you coming in and having an interest in the channel, having an interest in the apologetics, and really, as Eli said,

01:36:50

Eli doesn't want it just to be some philosophical discussion. There's a real issue at stake here,

01:36:57

Robby. It's your soul. The eternity is an awful long time to be wrong.

01:37:03

And so the thing is, we could sit and debate philosophy and have interesting conversations, but the concern,

01:37:09

I know that I can speak for Eli as well on this, the concern we would both have for you would be where would you spend eternity?

01:37:16

You can have all the great arguments you can come up with and try to discredit as much as you could try, but the reality is

01:37:23

God exists. You and I, Robby, both break God's law, both of us.

01:37:29

You may be far more moral of a person than me, but both of us have broken the law of a infinitely holy, infinitely just God.

01:37:41

And we're gonna have to face him. And it's not gonna matter what arguments we can come up with to make ourselves feel better.

01:37:48

When we face God, he is going to view us as criminals in his sight because who he is, he is what defines good.

01:37:58

And when we break his law, we're doing evil, we're criminals in his sight. When we, every time we lie, every time we steal something, every time we covet.

01:38:09

In fact, God says the greatest commandment is to put the Lord our God first and foremost, to love him with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength.

01:38:19

Robby, the average person makes 20 decisions, 20 ,000 decisions a day. Can you honestly say you've made a hundred of them because you love

01:38:27

God? I don't know that I could. And that means 19 ,900 times a day, times 364 days a year, times however old we are.

01:38:39

And that's just the first and greatest commandment. You and I, Robby, have a really long rap sheet with God.

01:38:45

We are guilty. We are wicked sinners in his sight because he's infinitely perfect.

01:38:51

And because of who he is, there is an infinite justice and an infinite wrath awaiting you and I.

01:38:58

Here's the difference, Robby. The difference with you and I is not the sin that we've done.

01:39:04

We're both guilty. Even if you've done far less than I have done, we're both guilty.

01:39:10

It doesn't matter who's done more. What does matter is whether we come to repentance with Christ, whether we accept what

01:39:18

Christ did on the cross as our payment of sin. Robby, my plea to you, if there's anything that you get out of this program, this is the most important thing for you to get out of this program, is how you could get right with Christ.

01:39:34

It's not by intellectual arguments because you and I don't have an evidence problem.

01:39:39

It's not that you need enough evidence. We have a sin problem. We have a spiritual problem. We need to repent.

01:39:46

We need to put trust in Jesus Christ as what he did on that cross, being eternal

01:39:52

God and suffering that consequence, the payment of sin for us, that he paid that price.

01:40:00

That's the only payment. It can't be by our works. It's only by the work of Christ on the cross. We need to turn and stop trusting ourselves, stop thinking our good works or our good nature.

01:40:11

No, we trust what Jesus Christ did on the cross and trusting in him, you can have eternal life.

01:40:16

And Ravi, that's my prayer for you today, that you would turn from trusting in intellectual arguments, turn from trusting that you think you're a good person or good works.

01:40:26

Trust what Jesus did on the cross 2000 years ago, when God came to earth and died on the cross as a payment of sin for you, that you could have eternal life.

01:40:34

I just hope that you'd consider that, Ravi. Well, thank you for that, Andrew. And I hope other people consider that as well.

01:40:41

And I just wanna encourage people too, just believers. The gospel is not just for unbelievers.

01:40:48

The gospel is also a very important reminder to Christians what

01:40:53

Christ has saved us from. And so be very careful how you interact with unbelievers. Make sure that you recognize that you were there once as well.

01:41:02

Do not engage unbelievers with arrogance. Do not engage unbelievers from a position of quote unquote superiority.

01:41:12

We are sinners saved by God's grace. And we wanna make sure that we express that as well. You see this a lot with Calvinism.

01:41:20

People speak of the grace of God, yet they speak so ungraciously about him to other believers.

01:41:26

So I wanna call believers to be consistent. If you preach grace, engage with grace.

01:41:33

So I just wanted to throw that out there. Now, lastly, before we wrap things up, I just wanna give everyone one more reminder.

01:41:39

Again, the Epic Online Calvinism Conference with James White, myself, Dr. Guillaume, Scott Christensen, Seitan Bruggencate, January 21st.

01:41:47

If you wanna support Revealed Apologetics financially, we definitely need it. This is one way you can do it, by purchasing a ticket and RSVP -ing your spot here for this

01:41:56

January 21st event. And also, if you can't support in any way financially, you can support us by prayer and liking this video, sharing it, and hopping over to iTunes and writing a positive review for the podcast.

01:42:09

That is super helpful. You have no idea. So if you can take the time to do any of those little things, those are free ways to support,

01:42:17

I'd greatly appreciate it. Well, with that said, Andrew, I just wanna say thank you so much.

01:42:23

I appreciate you and looking forward to having you on again in the near future. Well, I appreciate it.

01:42:29

I am honored to be here. I would love to come back. And just real quick, Ravi had posted a thing saying, what are you saying, you don't want me to contribute?

01:42:36

No, we do want you to contribute. We want you to be here. We want you to keep listening, but I want you to come to know

01:42:42

Christ more importantly. That's all I was trying to say with that. But I do, Eli, it's always great to be together with you.

01:42:51

Folks, I hope you appreciate Eli, the years of study that he has put in to bring to you, his audience, great material.

01:43:01

I've watched how he sifts through a ton of material to make it easy to understand, to make it something that you can take it and use.

01:43:10

And so there's not too many guys that, people that like to study at the high level usually stay at the high level.

01:43:15

And so I hope you guys appreciate this program. Sounds like that's gonna be an epic conference.

01:43:23

Just saying, just saying. But yeah, I hope it is. We've covered some good, well, let me just real quick.

01:43:30

So I wanna let people know, like if someone's like, well, what, I mean, we've heard Calvinism stuff all the time. I'm gonna take just a few moments to explain something real quick.

01:43:38

So we got these great speakers here. Are you gonna explain why you have like a 30 -year -old picture of James White?

01:43:44

I mean, I don't, I hope he's probably not gonna watch this, but I don't like the way he looks with the big fluffy beard.

01:43:50

I thought, I think he looks cool here. I don't know, I used to picture, I thought it was. I mean, I noticed you have a lot more hair in the picture there too, yeah.

01:43:58

Yeah, yeah, but okay, so just real quick. So if I can summarize people, for the people, what we're gonna be discussing.

01:44:05

So it is the topic of Calvinism. I use Calvinism on purpose, instead of kind of like reformed theology or something along those lines, because I know that it triggers people.

01:44:14

So I wanted, I did that for trigger warning on purpose, but Dr.

01:44:20

White is gonna be covering specific texts that are relevant to defending Calvinism. Guillaume Bignon is actually going to take us through what is the proper use of analogies when critiquing

01:44:35

Calvinism. So he's gonna actually gonna, he's gonna go through a list of analogies that people use to critique

01:44:40

Calvinism. Kind of like, you know, Calvinism is kind of like, God is a puppet master and he's controlling the strings.

01:44:47

Guillaume is an analytic philosopher and is an expert in this area. So he's gonna cover that specific area, which

01:44:52

I think is gonna be useful for people. Scott Christensen has wrote a book about free will. He's going to be talking about defending a compatibilistic view of divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

01:45:03

Saiten Bruggenkade, I had asked specifically, because I know he's kind of a very street level, kind of evangelist apologist sort of guy.

01:45:11

And I wanted him to present Calvinism at that level, within the context of like the everyday man.

01:45:17

How do we engage in discussions on reformed theology?

01:45:23

And my topic is a mystery. I'm on vacation right now, so I actually have time to think things through. I'll be picking a topic and announcing that shortly, but I'm looking forward to speaking alongside these guys.

01:45:33

They're helping support the channel by doing this. First of all, you don't have much time to come up with something. What's the date on this?

01:45:39

The 21st of January. So I do have some time. I do have some time. I do have some time.

01:45:44

But I appreciate each of these guys. They are doing this. They haven't asked for any fees or anything like that.

01:45:51

They're doing it simply to help out the channel. And I know you know how that goes, Andrew, with asking for support and it can be awkward asking for support, but -

01:46:01

You keep doing it. Yeah, but I'm doing it. You know, I have to just do it. You just, you ask and you trust and God provides.

01:46:07

So there you go. All right, well, that's it for this episode, guys. Thank you so much for listening in.