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Should you defend the Bible? And if so, how? Mike continues in part 2 of this discussion.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. Mike Abendroth here. I think that�s how I start almost every show. I don�t know why that is, but this is probably what I do. I think the tagline says, �Always biblical, always controversial.
But we are always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. That�s what we want. That�s what we�re after. And we try to talk about all kinds of topics, topics that teach sound doctrine and topics that do the opposite, refute those who contradict, right from Titus chapter 1.
And while you don�t necessarily need your Bible in front of you for this show, it probably helps occasionally, what I�m talking about today is a follow-up from last week�s show. From last� I don�t know what day that was.
Probably last Thursday�s show, if I recall correctly. If not, that�s okay. It all melds into one. How to defend the Bible. Do we defend the Bible? Should we defend the Bible? What is the rationale behind trying to defend the Bible to your unbelieving friends, in front of your unbelieving friends?
Your unbelieving friends say, �How can you trust the Bible And isn�t that how it ends up always manifesting itself? That is to say, you tell them the Bible says that they�re sinful, and then they question the authority.
And the authority here is the Bible. That is the issue. So what we talked about last time was that we shouldn�t really defend the Bible because of certain presuppositions that we have. And the first presupposition was that men are sinful and depraved.
So we said you should defend the Bible by proclaiming it, and of course if you proclaim the Bible, you will therefore proclaim Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The crucified Jesus Christ who was raised on the third day.
And then if you want to get into rationalism, I want to try to steer you away from that. Remember last time, if you are into rationalism, it is based ultimately and finally upon self-sufficiency of human reason.
And we looked at some detail in Ephesians chapter 4, and how Ephesians 4 talks about the mind is futile. The futility of the mind that is unregenerate. The unbelieving mind is warped, perverted, hostile in mind, Colossians chapter 1 says.
And we know, according to the Bible, that fallen man is not neutral. Fallen man does not have some kind of will free from sin, free from Satan's influence, free from the world's system. No, it's not. The fallen mind of an unbelieving person can't even apprise the truth of Scripture.
It can't appraise spiritual truth. That's the word I was looking for. No matter how well you package it. Listen to Meyers in the book, Geisler's book, Christian Apologetics. Total depravity, therefore, affects the reasoning process, if not the very ability to reason by wayward, lost, and unbelieving men in need of new birth.
The actual content of his reasoning begins with man's will and reason, not God's will and word. Man's continuous drive for ultimate autonomy demands that whatever he thinks of origins, death, and other ultimate issues, his self-produced presuppositions must reinterpret God's universe in an agnostic or atheistic manner.
Sin certainly affects man's psychological activities, hindering his ability to think correctly. In his actual godlessness and wickedness, then, man suppresses and or interprets in a non-theistic framework an obvious evidence of God's reality and care.
Meyers goes on to say, the fall thus affects the reasoning process, if not the ability to reason, as God's unique creature. I find that quote interesting in Geisler's Apologetics book because Geisler is an evidentialist and he would say that archeology changed life, manuscript evidence, evidentialism would be the approach for evangelism.
Of course, you would say use the Bible as well, but you would use evidences according to Montgomery, Geisler, Pinnock, even some Calvinists like Warfield and McDowell, Schaeffer, Gershner, and Gershner's disciple, R .C. Sproul.
These are some very godly men. They are more godly than I am. Certainly, I'm not trying to somehow relegate them to unbelieving status, but I think they fall into a Thomas Aquinas, Roman Catholic type of apologetics.
I don't use manuscript evidence when I'm preaching and teaching an unbeliever because people can be raised from the dead and other people will still not believe. I don't use, my life's been changed, therefore the Bible's true because Mormons can have a change of life.
People who go to AA can have life-changing events. These things, evidences, do not demand a verdict to an unsaved person because they are fallen. Romans chapter 1 says that they suppress this truth in unrighteousness, so you give all the truth you want and they just suppress it.
So you have to defend the Bible, quote-unquote, by proclaiming the Bible. And when you proclaim the truths of Scripture, those truths God uses as the vehicle or instrument to save his elect. So you preach about Christ.
That's who you need to talk about. So don't get sidetracked to talk about how many angels can fit on the head of a needle or who, you know, did Adam have a belly button? Who did Cain marry? Those kind of questions, who was Cain's wife?
They don't prove anything and if you answer them, it's still not going to mean, oh, therefore the unbeliever no longer suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. They elevate the truth in righteousness.
They can't do it. See, this is a moral problem. The fool has said in his heart what? There's no God. This isn't someone with the low IQ, the low MCAS scores, the low SAT scores, ACT scores. This is somebody who could be quite smart.
They could be actually brilliant, but they have a moral problem. So they suppress this truth of God and they say there is no God. Do you, when you evangelize, realize how sinful the mind of the unconverted person is?
And if you do recognize that, it should change the way you evangelize. Your methods should tell me about your beliefs and if your beliefs are man is a rebel against God and he has a fallen nature and the only way we can have success in evangelism is by being faithful to God in preaching the gospel, then you are doing the right thing.
What does anthropology have to do with apologetics? Let me ask the question again. What does anthropology have to do with apologetics? Everything. Since man is a sinner, we have to do things according to God's ways.
God has told us. God's even concerned about the means of our evangelism and that is stop defending the Word of God and just preach it because you can't prove the Bible with something less important and less trustworthy and less verifiable than the Bible.
So, miracles aren't going to help. See, people want to sin and therefore they will do whatever they can to truth because of their sinful desires. Huxley was right. Aldous Huxley. I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning.
Consequently assumed that it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher, Huxley said, who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics.
He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do or why his friend should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves.
So, you say, well, you know, cut to the chase. Here's Huxley's chase as we cut to it. For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness, that was his philosophy, was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.
I had to believe these things because I liked to sexually sin and I liked what it did for my politics. So preach the word. Don't defend the Bible. If you have to defend it, defend it by preaching it. The Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says, your anthropology, your knowledge that man is unregenerate should drive you to use the weapons of warfare spiritually that God has ordained for you to use as you engage the unbeliever.
That's a reason why you should defend the Bible by proclaiming it. Let me tell you another reason why you should defend the Bible as the word of God by proclaiming it. And of course, if you proclaim the Bible, you're going to proclaim the hero of the Bible.
That's not Daniel. That's not David. That's not Paul. That's not John. That is Jesus Christ. The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is the only hope. That's the reason why you should defend the Bible by proclaiming it.
The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit for anyone to get saved. You need the internal testimony of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Did you know that the Spirit of God must regenerate a person if they are going to be able to think properly and correctly?
You can't prove the Bible is inspired to yourself even. If you're a believer, it's not because you've proved the Bible to yourself as inspired. No. Why do you believe the Bible is God's word, inerrant, breathed out by God?
The position of the Reformers and the position of the Bible would be the same. It is the result of the testimony, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. And if you like the Latin words, it's Testimonium Internum Spiritu Sancti.
God bless you. Mike Abendroth here, No Compromise Radio. Today, we're talking about the Bible. How do you defend the Bible to unbelievers? Evidences don't demand a verdict to the fallen person. Evidences help Christians be sure in their hearts that the Bible is true.
But we need help as we preach the Bible to unbelievers. Unbelievers need someone outside of themselves to prove the Bible true, because you can't prove the Bible is true even to yourself, by yourself.
There's no way you can do it. You need the Spirit of God. And unbelievers who have no internal spirit don't believe the Bible true. You can't prove the inspiration of the scripture. The Holy Spirit proves that it's true.
Did you know Martin Luther said the Bible cannot be understood simply by study or talent? You must count only on the influence of the Holy Spirit. Did you know John Calvin said these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit?
James Boyer, a natural man, lacks the equipment necessary to examine spiritual things. He's like a blind man in an art gallery, like a deaf man at a symphony. Therefore, we are to preach the Word of God, and through the preaching of the Word of God, the Spirit is pleased, often, to quicken that person.
Listen to the Westminster Confession of Faith as we're dealing again with this topic. If you've got an unbelieving friend, how do you prove the Bible as true? And we believe here at No Compromise Radio Ministry that you preach the Bible, and the preaching of the Bible itself, as God has pleased, will enlighten a man, and then you will have a man certainly believe the Word of God is true.
Show me a person that's regenerate, and I'll show you somebody who affirms the Word of God. And sheep, listen to the voice of their master. So Westminster Confession said this. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and revered esteem of the Holy Scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficiency of doctrine, the majesty of style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation.
Yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
So the Spirit of God uses the Word, bears witness to the Word in our hearts that the Bible is true. And the implications are devastating. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Bible is inspired because the Church says it is.
The Bible is inspired because the Church tells us it's inspired. Other people think, well, there's some kind of audible voice that should tell you the Bible is true. Some, like the Mormons, believe it's some kind of experience or feeling, that is, some burning in the bosom that Mormons appeal to in order to prove that the Mormon book, the Book of Mormon, is inspired.
Those things are not true. What proves the Bible is true? The inward work of the Holy Spirit alone. Listen to the French Confession of Faith in 1559. We know these books to be canonical by evidence, by manuscript, by Church history, by the Church itself, the Roman Catholic Church, no.
We know these books to be canonical by the testimony of inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books. Article 4, you say, well, that's all fine and dandy, but the Bible says it's true, yet the Quran says it's also the Word of God, but that forgets what Kurt Daniels would say.
But we are not saying that the Bible is inspired merely because the words say so, but because God says so through those words. Did you get that? Well, you've got to be a good listener on No Compromise Radio to get it.
We are not saying, Kurt Daniels says, that the Bible is inspired merely because the words say so, like the Quran, it says it is, but because God says so through these words. Other books besides the Bible do not carry the testimony of the Holy Spirit.
It's never spoken. God has never spoken through those books like he has in the 66 books of the Bible. If you look at 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, that is really the coup de grace that goes against any kind of evidentialism and would help us in our view of presuppositional apologetics.
In other words, we defend the Bible, quote unquote, by proclaiming the Bible. You don't have to defend the Bible, just preach it. The Word of God, energized by the Spirit of God, based upon the eternal good pleasure of God and His will, often, regularly, saves people through the preaching of the Word of God, and the response of the human person who has been made born again is belief in the Scriptures.
They hear the shepherd's voice in the Scriptures. First Corinthians 2, verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
The unsaved person, the unconverted person, the unbelieving person, the one without the Spirit, does what they do, and they go after their own thoughts, their own things, and so they don't accept the things of the Spirit of God.
You say, see, that's why we shouldn't preach. No, you just look through the Scriptures and see all the times that we are told to preach, to preach, to preach, to preach. If you say to yourself, these people don't accept the things of the Spirit, they reject them, they refuse them, they stiff-arm them, they don't have the welcome mat at the door of their hearts to the Word of God.
Instead, there's a trespassing sign, no trespassing. People will be shot on sight, and this is just the way the world goes. One man said, the best man can do on his own is to gnaw the bark of Scripture without getting to the wood.
See, they just can't get it. Luther said, man is like the pillar of salt, like Lot's wife. He is like a log or a stone. He is like a lifeless statue which uses neither eyes nor mouth, neither senses nor heart, unless he is enlightened, converted, and regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
I think you would agree with me if you remember some of the times your unbelieving friends, and maybe you as an unbeliever, were trying to figure out the Bible, and you just couldn't. They just could not connect the dots.
It's like they had a spiritual cataract on their eyes. It was just opaque to them, didn't have any meaning to them. They could get the grammar, they could read it, they could understand some of the things, but they couldn't get the real point.
They couldn't really understand the truth of it. Oh, why am I so tired? Probably because it's 8 o 'clock at night and I'm taping this show. Why am I doing that? We can't prove to ourselves or anyone else that the Bible is inspired.
The Spirit of God must do it. We are told to preach the Word. We're not told to debate the Word, prove the Word, examine the Word. No, we don't do that. It's like Lloyd-Jones in his Preachers and Preaching book, David Martin Lloyd-Jones.
He doesn't do debates. Why? Because God isn't to be debated. He would use Exodus 3 with Moses in the burning bush, and this is holy ground, take your sandals off Moses. Moses wanted, according to Lloyd-Jones, to kind of scientifically look at this.
It's a bush that's burning, but it's not burning. It looks like it's burning. Now let's examine it. And what he forgot was God was holy. And so too, Lloyd-Jones says, we don't debate the Word of God.
We proclaim it. We preach it. The Bible is self-authenticating. Scripture evidences itself to be the Word of God. The divinity is self-evidencing and self-authenticating. John Murray, the great Scottish reformer, not back in the Reformation of the 1500s with John Knox, he would be last century.
John Calvin, the highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it. The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason, for as God alone is a fit witness of Himself in His Word, so also the Word will not find final acceptance in men's hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.
That is the issue. Why should you defend the Word of God as the Word by proclaiming it and therefore proclaiming Jesus Christ? Well, I just tipped my hand earlier, and that is reason four. Scriptures are self-authenticating, self-authenticating.
Why do we believe the Bible is the Word of God? Because God says so. How do you know? It is written. You say, oh yeah, here we go again. Look at this circular reasoning. Yes, I'd admit that. It is circular reasoning.
But I would say to you that you argue in circles as well. But I'm arguing in circles that are at least biblical. That's what I'm doing. You argue in circles. I argue in circles. But I'm arguing in biblical circles.
Van Til said the Reformed apologist throws down the gauntlet and challenges his opponent to a duel of life and death from the start. Why do we need to resort to Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle when we have the Word of God?
The scriptures are self-attesting, self-authenticating, and they are their own criterion of truth. All reasoning circular. One man said all paths or argumentation will trace themselves back to starting points which are taken as givens.
There can be no flat-line reasoning to faith because of the fundamental tension between conflicting worldviews and competing theories of knowledge. That's why we remember the self-attesting Christ of scripture has always been my starting point for everything I've said.
That's Van Til. That is Van Til. How do we know that you believe the Bible is true, Dr. Van Til? His answer, I am sure of my faith because it sources the Bible, the revealed Word of God. We have the scriptures.
You have the scriptures. What I'm asking for you to do today is when you have an opportunity to preach the Word, preach it. Don't defend it. Proclaim the truths of scripture. Talk about sin. Talk about fallenness.
Talk about what happened when Adam sinned and how we're in Adam, Romans chapter 5. Talk about God and His holiness and His graciousness and His love and how He would send His Son to redeem sinners and reconcile them, paying the ransom, which was Himself.
And it was a substitutionary death for sinners. God raised Him from the dead to confirm all those truths. Talk about substitution, justification, forgiveness, and the response to all these biblical truths.
You must repent. You must believe. You must trust. You must follow. You must obey. You must believe these things to be true. That's what's needed. Never has somebody been converted by anything less. Never has anybody, including your friends and family members, that you want so rightly and so properly to become believers.
It's not through defending the Bible. Preach the Word. God saves through the preaching of the Word. They're given the internal testimony of the Spirit. And depraved people then turn into new creatures in Christ, and those new creatures believe the Word of God.
And they believe those words as the self-authenticating Word of God. This is Mike Abendroth, Defend the Word by Preaching the Word.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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