Public Square, Humanism, and the Sanctity of Human Life

I would say, if the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified Jesus in the public square.

Use humanistic principles. It's the same idea.

I would say, what's the problem with stardust. Bumping into stardust?

In the cosmic picture, none. There's no problem. In the cosmic picture, it won't matter.

No, Mr. President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom. You are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year. I'm sorry, my friends, but I am tired of seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar.

He is a powerful savior, and the gospel is not a suggestion. It is a command.

Ramola, don't you sympathize with that?

I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living God, but I believe there's only one way that that can happen through Jesus Christ, and the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.

The Spirit has not experienced this before.

But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3 .15.

Y 'all, I said preter. Preter. My mouth's not working today. It's a day like that, right?

Yep.

My mouth is not catching up with my brain this afternoon. Hey, welcome everybody to the Gospel Heard Around the World. We are so glad that you joined us. You can get more at apologiestudios .com. That's A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A studios .com.

Go there, get all access, partner with us in this ministry, and let's get the gospel around the world together. You get all kinds of great content over there, and additional content, Apology Academy, monthly ask me, ask me, see, asks.

You can ask.

It's going to be a day.

You can ask me anything, monthly ask me anything. You also have all kinds of additional content there, all the podcasts. And if you haven't done so yet, get Bonson U for free. It's a seminary education in your pocket with one of the greatest in the history of the Christian church.

Bonson U for free. Thank you to the Bonson family for entrusting us with that amazing treasure. And we are so glad you guys joined us today. We're going to be talking about apologetics. Would you like to know how to defend your faith?

Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to play some clips. We're going to hang out with you guys. We may even open up for some questions live for those of you guys that are in the feed right now.

And I'm Jeff, the Calm of the Ninja.

That's Luke, the Bear.

What up, though?

Over there is Zach Conover. He's the Director of Communications for End Abortion Now, by the way. Pray for End Abortion Now, and please go to endabortionnow .com to get your church signed up. Go save lives.

Abortion is still happening all over this country. It is not over yet. It is only really just beginning. Of course, Roe is out of the way. That helps a little bit, but it still gets us to the same place that we said we always needed to be, and that's establishing justice and equal protection for all humans from conception.

And I just want to announce. Can I just say this? Luke and I were just talking about this yesterday, and then I'm going to kick it over to you because I know you guys have something to say.

I do.

And we have good news for you guys, too. We just actually, before this, it's taken a little while, we had to film a little commercial, and Gabe Green was just taken forever in the back.

And so, see Gabe?

Gabe Ruth?

He wasn't really. But we're going to tell you some cool stuff we have. But you know what's great about this moment? It's sad, but it's also great. It's sad, but it is great. Sad because Roe is out of the way, and now you have, of course, the leftists and the pro-aborts doing their best right now to make sure that abortion is codified as law, federal law, even.

And so Joe Biden has been making it very clear over the last couple of weeks, but especially over the last week, that he is working to make sure that Roe is codified as law, federal law, which I said, of course, is sad because it is those who hate me love death, and they hate God, so they love death.

And in this case, particularly the death of the preborn in the womb, the most innocent and defenseless among us. However, it is great because it actually is vindication of something we've been saying to you all along.

We've been saying it for years, and it was one of the things we try to constantly communicate to legislators who are putting in bills for us. More bills are coming, by the way. I'm going to announce more near the year end where those states are and when those are coming in.

But we even have a trip coming up in a couple of weeks here. We're going to meet with some legislators and our teams in one state. But we've been saying for years that Roe v. Wade was not the law. It never was the law.

Congress creates law in a nation, not the Supreme Court. And so it was a fallacious court opinion that the states had a responsibility, a duty before God and their citizens to resist and to establish justice in the states.

Just like in the time of the issue of slavery, you had the Dred Scott decision and the states resisting the Supreme Court's evil, wicked opinion.

They had a duty to do that.

So our states should have done that. But Congress creates law in a nation, not the Supreme Court, and we've been saying for a long time that Roe v. Wade is not law. Proof, proof, proof now is that what are the pro-aborts trying to do right now?

What are they trying to do? What are they just saying out loud, plainly, we're trying to codify Roe, even though it's gone now, what Roe said as federal law.

Because guess what?

Roe was never law. It wasn't law. It was a court opinion. And if the states wanted to agree with that, they should have created some legislation that agreed with it. They should have created law. If the federal government, Congress, in this case, agreed with Roe, they should have created legislation that said they agreed with it.

That would have been law, technically, in our nation. But a court opinion is not law, legislation. That's something that's in a different category. And in this case, the proof of what we've been saying for years is in the fact that right now, our president is trying to codify Roe v. Wade as law, federally, meaning it was never law.

And so it's the duty of the Christian church to rise up, establish justice, protect the pre-born, and that's what we're going to be doing. So go to endabortionnow .com and give there. We need you to financially give.

We operate as a ministry of Apologia Church on pennies, pennies, compared to the massive budgets of the pro-life establishment and industry. And let's just be honest. They resist bills of equal protection and establishing justice and abolishing abortion at every turn.

They have made it their official position to resist establishing equal protection for all humans. That's not what we're doing. We're trying to end this and trying to get it behind us and move on. We're not creating an industry.

We're not trying to create a business. We are trying to establish justice as the Christian church, equal protection, and then move away from this issue. That's what we desire to do. And so we need your help to do it.

It actually does cost money to do this work. We're going to a different state to work with the churches, to create the groundwork, to get with the legislators, getting these churches who are going out to save lives, kits for free and training for free to do what they're doing to save about 10 babies a day on average.

That costs money, and we need you to be a part of that ministry with us. And so sign up your church to go save lives. Get free training, free resources. We want nothing from your church. We want to give it all away to you.

And if you guys want to be a part of this with us, please go to endabortionnow .com to give.

ReformCon Tickets, Livestream Access, and Partner Offers

Luke?

So speaking of sleepy Joe, I may or may not be coherent today.

Sleepy Luke.

Not that I'm sleepy. It's just that my brain's on overload right now because we have ReformCon 2022 in a week from today, and we're in the final push with all the last-minute details of things, and my thoughts are swimming up above right now, and some are drowning.

And we just tried to film a commercial for ReformCon .org, and I wasn't even sure what year it is, so it was fun.

What's my name?

Yeah, I don't know.

2022.

But you should come. We have tickets available still, and it's going to be really awesome. That's all I got. Just kidding. We actually just announced, and you'll probably see them.

We have some nifty-gifties.

Some nifty-gifties. And I'm going to let you say it because I totally butchered it.

It's okay. Nifty-gifties. Here's what we've got. So I know the economy is very challenging for all of us right now. There is a shortage apparently of eggs across the country, and they've known about it for some time, and it's starting to hit us now.

We know that there's going to be some wheat shortages, stuff that's going to trickle down to us, all those sorts of things. We know how expensive gas is right now and inflation, how hard it is to go to the grocery store right now for many of us.

And so many of you guys couldn't make it out, and we totally get that. We thank all of you guys who sacrificed so much to come out to be with us, to be here next week at ReformCon. We're excited to do this with you, very excited to create a conference experience that's like no other, definitely better than Fight, Laugh, Feast, no matter what.

But what was that?

Hashtag.

Hashtag.

Most Def.

Most Def.

But some of you guys can't make it out, but you want to get this teaching that's been prepared and this whole experience, and so we have a live stream. Yes, we have a live stream, and here is the good news.

So if you want to just get the live stream, you can go to ReformCon .org, go under Tickets, just get the live stream. It's $99 .95?

Correct.

Get the whole weekend, you get all that stuff, $99 .95, you get the live stream. But you can also partner with us in ministry, and here's what we do for all of our All Access ministry partners.

Which is ideal.

Everything that we do possible. If you see all these people coming to Christ out of the cults, all these people coming to Christ out of atheism, these babies that are being saved, all the teaching at Apologia Studios, you need to know that that is actually through our ministry team and our partners who are part of our All Access.

You're making it all possible. So from the baby that I saw that was saved the other day because someone just randomly came across our content when they were going to the abortion facility, and now their baby's alive today.

To the people coming out of Mormonism to Christ, the whole family's coming to Christ out of Mormonism because of this content, and that's the truth. You're a part of this, so we wanted to bless you. So here's what it looks like.

If you've already paid for and donated for an All Access annual subscription for 2022, you've already done it, you know, whenever, way back, you get the live stream for free. Check your email.

It's in there.

It's in there.

Now.

If you are a monthly partner with us, if you're a monthly partner with us in this ministry, you make it all possible. We want to bless you as well. And so the team came up with something that would work, and so we're giving all of our monthly partners with All Access 50 off the live stream.

Check your email. Please check your email because all the information's in there.

However, if you are like,.

Man, I really want to get that live stream, I'm not All Access, I've got good news for you. If you go to apologiastudios .com right now and you sign up for an annual All Access partnership thing with us, you are going to get not only All Access and make all this ministry possible, but we're also giving you the live stream for free.

So if you want to get the live stream for free and get All Access, just go to apologiastudios .com.

Double whammy.

Apologiastudios .com. Sign up for the annual All Access. You are going to get All Access for the year and you're going to get the live stream for free. And if you're like, man, I can only come to one day of the conference, but I want to come.

Guess what?

You can also get a day pass. Reformcon .org, under tickets, day pass. And if you're a pastor and you're like, man, I've got to get this stuff and I want to get fellowship and I want to get encouraged and I want to bring this stuff back to my church body to encourage them to get to work in the world with the word of God, but it's difficult for me because I'm a pastor,.

I get it.

And so here's what we're doing for you. If you're a pastor and you want a seat, we're giving you a seat for free because we want you to get encouraged. We want you to get filled and we want you to go home and fill your church with this truth so that they get to work on the mission of the gospel.

And so pastors, right now, we are giving scholarships away to get you in a seat, to get you encouraged and filled. And that's what's up. That's what's going on. Lots of things.

So email for the scholarships, email team at reformcon .org. So it's going to be good. We're going to have our main sponsors there who I want to make sure I don't forget to mention. So Armored Republic, love those guys to death.

They're going to be a huge part of what we're doing at ReformCon. David Reese is going to be at the after party, which is going to be a really cool opportunity for people just to chill and hang out with us for a couple hours.

He's going to be doing a lot throughout the conference. They're super, super awesome. And they're partnering with us in the fight for liberty. And then of course, New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, will also be, Dr. Ben Merkle will be there and speaking and so will his wife.

Becca will be doing some stuff with sheologians. And we're very excited. We're thankful for their partnership. And if you're going to go to college and don't want to come out dumb, you should go to New St. Andrews.

New St. Andrews.

That was my advertisement.

NSA .edu. So that you're not dumb.

Not that NSA.

That's the tagline.

Hashtag not dumb.

Don't be dumb. NSA .edu. That's good. That works.

Yeah, it does work.

NSA.

Don't be dumb.

I like it.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll have to run that by Ben and see if he likes it.

Defending the Christian Faith Begins with Christ’s Lordship

All right, so let's talk.

Here we go.

We're going to talk about apologetics. Last week, we did a little bit of a discussion on apologetic methodology. We talked about foundations. We talked about that charter verse of Christian apologetics that I just did at the beginning of the episode today, 1 Peter 3 .15.

And Zach astutely pointed out that it is often forgotten that there's something before the words that say always being ready to give a reason to fence.

Most important thing.

An apologia. It says first to set Christ apart is Lord. And James has done some good talks on that. Pastor James. Dr. James Wise did some good talks on that particular verse really pointing out that what Paul is doing there is actually referring to Jesus as God.

And so you set him apart. Sanctify Christ as Lord as Kurios and as Lord as Yahweh. And then you're always being ready to give a reason to fence. And so Christian apologetics begins with fidelity to Jesus Christ.

And that is to say at the start of this discussion of Christian apologetics and defending the faith, we need to make sure that we are Christians. Christian apologists defending the Christian faith. And Jesus says, you are either with me or you are against me.

There is no neutrality with Jesus Christ. And that's a key issue here. Apologetics has to begin that reason defense of the faith with Christ set apart as Kurios, as Lord, as God. And then you proceed to defend the Christian faith.

Christian apologetics starts off with fidelity to Jesus Christ recognizing that there is no neutrality with Jesus. You're either with him or you're against him. There's no middle ground. And so what's really important for us as we start this discussion of defending the Christian faith is that we actually talk about discussing defending the faith as Christians, not as neutral parties trying to just figure out where the evidence is going to take us, not defending some general theism.

It's amazing to me is that when we have this discussion, people will oftentimes sort of react to, are you saying that there are Christian apologists who don't defend the Christian faith as they're doing Christian apologetics?

Are you really suggesting that that actually exists? If you want, I could search the videos where they explicitly say that, that I'm not defending the Bible here. I'm not defending the Christian God. I'm just defending a general theism.

And let's just see where the evidence takes us to. Because let's just say you start using philosophical argumentations, whether it's a cosmological argument, a teleological argument. You're using arguments, but you're saying let's in a neutral way.

I'm not saying Jesus. I'm saying we use this argument that says that every effect has a cause, and we can't do that with infinite regression and go back and back and back. There has to be an initial first cause.

And say the atheist grants it and finally goes, all right, you got me. It is too obvious that there's design in the universes. It is too obvious that you've got to have this uncaused cause or this unmoved mover.

Great, I'm going with Buddha.

Or aliens.

Right.

Fantastic. I'm going to go over there with Islam. I like that one. What have you really accomplished at that point? I think you can reason through that to say, well, if we're not reasoning from the beginning with the call of the gospel wrapped up in our apologetic methodology, we'll get to that place.

If we're arguing from a position of neutrality with Christ not set apart as Lord, we can get to that place where we're just throwing out evidences and trying to see what sticks on the unbeliever. And one of the things that Dr. Bonson used to say is that we don't, in our apologetic endeavors, in our defense of the Christian faith, want to be found as enemies behind lines.

Meaning that I am actually assuming the pretended neutrality that the unbeliever assumes, or using his principles or his methodologies as I'm trying to point this person towards theism.

Right?

Because that's not what we're trying to do as Christian apologists. It's those who are defending the Christian faith. We're not just trying to get people to believe some general theism. What did Jesus do when he came to crowds of people and calls them to come to himself?

He says things like, you have to come and die. You have to take up your cross. You have to love me more in comparison to your mother, your father, your sister, your brother. You've got to come die. Count the cost and come or don't come.

That's how Jesus calls people in crowds to come to him. Like that. He doesn't placate to them. He doesn't placate to their fallenness. He just simply says, come to die or don't come.

Give me a try. Give me a 60-day trial.

Rick Warren said that. 60-day trial.

I couldn't believe it.

I was sitting at Christmas time. It was years and years and years ago. It was Christmas time. News was on. Rick Warren's on, and he actually suggested to people that they try Jesus out for, I think he said, 60 days.

60 or 90 days. Give him a try. Give him a chance. And he thought that was a wonderful suggestion. That's not the gospel that Jesus preached, and that's not the way that you actually get people to understand the call of Christ, the command of Christ to repent and believe by saying, try him out.

No, it's total submission. It's unconditional surrender. That's what it means to come to Jesus Christ. A lot of people don't like that. They're like, oh, that's tough. How are you going to convince the rabid unbeliever for unconditional surrender?

Man, we've got a problem understanding the gospel if we think that. That is the call of the gospel. You come to die, or you don't come. And so we can't play neutrality, and that's the start of Christian apologetics is no neutrality, abandon the myth of neutrality, and recognize, and this is it, and I see you want to say something, Zach.

Recognize that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So say the great benefit of Christian apologetics that are faithful and consistent is that you actually get knowledge. According to God, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

And so if you want knowledge, if you want understanding,.

Scripture's really clear.

It starts with God, and it starts with the fear of God. And so isn't it great to understand that according to God, if you start with fear of God, reverence, submission, and awe before God, you get knowledge, you get understanding, and it's the fool who says in his heart, there is no God.

It's a powerful thing to start in the discussion of Christian apologetics.

I think that's where it does start, is ultimate commitments. Starting points, what you're committed to, what you won't relinquish, because the unbeliever has those things, too. They have things that they won't relinquish, just like we do.

I was going through Van Til's Apologetic, which has got commentary by Greg Bonson in it. It's a really awesome starting point for the discussion, but he says something that's pretty profound in here. He says, as it turns out, the apologist, that's the Christian, defends what the theologian has learned with the tools and insights refined by the philosopher for the evangelistic purpose of seeing the unbeliever's heart and mind changed.

So he's talking about the relationship between apologetics, theology, evangelism, philosophy. They're not unrelated things. They're interrelated. All of these tasks come under the common umbrella of applying God's word to the hearts of men.

This is what we were made for, to receive God's word and apply it to our lives. So that's one thing I love about this approach to defending the faith. Not only is it consistent, not only is it faithful, it demonstrates fealty, obedience, loyalty to Christ, but it's not disconnected from the theological foundation of what we know to be true, which is what's grounded in Scripture.

So in other words, theology can't be separated from apologetics and evangelistic methodology and engagement. All of those things are related to one another, interrelated. And so, like he said, the apologist defends what the theologian knows.

And what does the theologian know? Well, his knowledge is based on God's revelation. And so that's what informs the manner of engagement, like you pointed out, from the beginning. And I think that's where a lot of people trip up is they're willing to go a mile with the unbeliever and say, okay, I'll play along.

I'll surrender this ultimate commitment of being a Christian just temporarily to get you where you need to be. But what they don't realize is they've done what, you know, Proverbs 26, 4 forbids us from doing, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.

And so you are entering into that foolishness because you're commanded to love the Lord your God with all of your mind. And so when you don't do that, you're being dishonest from the outset and really introducing dishonesty into this whole endeavor.

But twofold apologetic methodology, verse five, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. So there's a commitment that you have to maintain the ultimate foundation. But then as Bonson goes on to explain, you can actually step into the unbeliever system of thought and demonstrate, do an internal critique and show them where that thought logically leads to.

So it's not contradictory. You're entering into it at the same time and showing them this is where everything leads to, which is nowhere, if you don't start with God's truth.

Yeah.

Without getting this off subject, did you see the cover of the new Bonson book coming out?

No.

No Other Standard?

Nice.

Theonomy and its Critics?

Oh, good.

From American Vision, right?

Yeah.

No Other Standard, Theonomy and its Critics.

I can't wait for that.

That's by Bonson?

Yeah, it's an old one. They're reprinting it.

Oh, they're reprinting it. I thought they were putting a new book out.

Thank God for American Vision.

They're bringing back all these obscure classics. Americanvision .org, good stuff. Thanks to Gary DeMar for all the work he's doing. So yeah, the question... Okay, look, think about it in this way. You're having a discussion with, say, your standard fare, naturalist and materialist, everyday atheist today, right?

He rejects God's existence, or she rejects God's existence. And they say, you know, they just don't believe there's enough evidence for God. And they think that book over there, that Bible, is just filled with myths and contradictions.

They think that Christians are irrational. They think that Christians display the foolishness of their own position by all the hypocrisy that's displayed regularly from Christians. And so they've got a moral issue with Christians and how they live their lives, and the hypocrisy that's inherent, and all those sorts of things.

You're talking to that person, and they're making all these claims about what's right, what's wrong, how you ought to live in this world, problems with myths, and all the rest. And they appeal to science and evidences, and they just want the truth.

What's amazing here is that oftentimes, Christians will sort of like, you know, placate to those things, buy into the emotional appeals that the person is making at the time, and just not think about something that's rather profound.

And that's that they don't have a right to talk like that.

Right?

The person puts so much pressure on the ignorant Christian. And when I say ignorant, I don't mean that offensively. I mean ignorant in terms of they haven't thought these philosophical things through very much.

They put so much pressure on the Christian, the Christian feels the need to actually, oh shoot, no, this really is true. Let me see what I can do to convince this guy. And they start just being like, okay, well tell me what you need to know.

What do you need, like archaeological evidence? What do you want? Do you want some historical proof? Do you want some historical proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ? I can do that. Do you want to see that the Bible has actually been transmitted faithfully down through the centuries?

And we can get back to the autographa and exactly what the original was through the free transmission of the text. And we've got over 5 ,000 Greek manuscript pieces and copies in the New Testament. We've got the early church fathers quoting from the New Testament.

We get pieces together like that. We get all these thousands and thousands of translations from the original Greek text into other languages. We've got more testimony from the New Testament than any other work of antiquity.

And our manuscripts come closer to the time of the writing than anything else. What do you want to talk about? Do you want to talk about cosmic ripples? Do you want to talk about the design, the clear design?

What do you need? Do you need evidence of design?

What will satisfy you?

Maybe we can look at human DNA and look at the fact that at the bottom of all human life is words. It's actual language. It's information. And if you take out any of those letters, you've got gibberish and life isn't possible.

Do you want to see evidence for design at that level? If you stretch the human DNA strand out, it goes all the way out to the moon sort of a thing. What do you want? What do you need to see? Do you want to see the complexity and design of all of life and the systems that operate in the world to show clear evidence of design?

And people just throw, throw. And it's like, wait, hold on. All those discussions and evidences are actually amazing and they're obvious and they're everywhere. But we've, we almost missed something completely.

They assume certain things.

And that's it. They're not supposed to be talking like that.

Right?

Like, why are you asking me to abandon my commitments? My commitments to God's self-attesting, authoritative word.

Right?

Why are you asking me to abandon my commitments to a self-attesting word which gives me the ground to make sense of all of your challenges? Even the emotional appeals of the hypocrisy in Christians. You know who talked about hypocrisy a lot?

Jesus.

Jesus talked about hypocrisy a lot. And so I've got a basis with Jesus as Lord to hate hypocrisy.

Why?

Because God cannot lie. That's from God's word. God cannot lie. I'm made in his image, which is why I obviously hate it when people lie to me. That's why we hate hypocrisy.

Because guess what?

God's not a hypocrite. He's the reference point. For truth and not lying, which is why image bearers of God have this instinctive repulsion to, like, liars. And you shouldn't be lying. You have to tell the truth.

Where does that come from? Oh, if I stand with Jesus, I get that. And I also get the emotional appeal you're making about the hypocrisy of Christians, and I can actually acknowledge what you're saying.

Yeah, I know.

It's horrible.

It's horrible.

Jesus hates it. We ought to hate it.

I hate it. I hate it myself. We need to put this to death. But you know what? With Jesus, I can make sense of that emotional appeal. I don't know why you're making it, though. And when the atheists start saying, you know, I want to believe things on evidence and proof, I'm like, man, that's weird.

It's almost like you're sounding like you're a Christian. It's like Jesus says, I am the way, the truth. There's an actual standard of truth. There's objectivity in the realm of the question of what truth is.

And you're acting like you've got that in your worldview, but you're a naturalistic materialist. You believe that all of us are cosmic accidents. You believe you're just Stardust. You believe there's no meaning in the universe.

You don't believe there's any absolute standard of truth to begin with. So what are you doing appealing to all of that? It sounds like you're acting like God is, and you just don't want to know him. It sounds like you're acting completely consistently with what God's revelation says about you, and that's that you're self-deceived, that you know the God that I'm talking about, but you just don't want him because you're a rebel.