Apologetic methodology & do tongues continue today

Apologetics Live

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September 12, 2019

Topics: Apologetic methodology, transcendental arguments, the role of evidence

00:00: It's fascinating to me how easily someone in one religion can find the fallacies and biases in another religion.
00:07: I think that what's fascinating... You're razor sharp on your criticism of Islam here.
00:13: Yeah, but what I find fascinating, Jeff, is that you recognize that with other religions, but you don't do it with your own.
00:20: That may be the case. And there's that confirmation bias coming up again.
00:32: This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host of Striving for Eternity, Andrew Rappaport.
00:49: Well, welcome. We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your questions, challenges, or whatever else you may throw our way.
00:58: Give you guys some updates. We're going to be joined by Eli. He's been here before, so I hope you guys will enjoy him.
01:06: But to let you know, give you guys some updates on status. What we're going to do, Eli, is we're going to give
01:12: Matt status first, then I'll give some status on me. But yours is the good news, so we'll put yours last because you should always end on good news.
01:22: So, you can't hear me. That's not good. Can folks hear me? That wouldn't be good.
01:35: Let's see. Can you hear me now?
01:46: Okay. Eli, they say they can hear me. So, Eli's got to check his speakers.
01:57: We had this all working. I love technology because it works great when it works.
02:06: And when it doesn't, oh well. All right. So, this would be really bad if Eli can't hear us because that would be bad.
02:17: All right. Well, while we're waiting for Eli to get himself set up, let me give you an update on Matzlick.
02:25: Matzlick is planning to move. I think it's in October, sometime in October.
02:31: So, he's probably packing up and getting ready to move and then moving and getting down there.
02:39: And then what we end up seeing is he's probably going to be out the rest of the year is the way it's looking.
02:48: So, we're going to have some different people coming in. And just so you know, those different people will be next week, will be
03:00: Dr. Jason Lyle. Nope, wait, do I got that right? Let me double check the dates. I think it's Paul Taylor, Paul Taylor from Mount, let's see.
03:12: Let me see who it is. Yeah, Paul Taylor at Mount St. Helens Creation Center is going to be the 19th.
03:19: And then we have Dr. Jason Lyle that will be coming in on the 26th. So, if you have questions about things like creation,
03:30: Mount St. Helens, evolution, that'd be a great one for next week. If you want to talk astrophysics, well,
03:36: Jason Lyle is an astrophysicist. So, that would be really good. So, those are who's going to be coming on.
03:45: We're going to have some different guests coming in and speaking so that we'd be able to have some other folks.
03:55: So, let's see. Eli says, I will try and use the laptop. It's kind of slow though. So, Eli's having some trouble.
04:03: It was working. Don't know what changed. So, here's an update on me, just so you guys know.
04:17: Some of you know that I did not do a show last week. And basically,
04:25: I had an unexpected medical emergency that was not fun.
04:33: So, basically, what ended up happening was I had come back from the Philippines, was not feeling that wonderful, thought
04:41: I was sick. I thought maybe I got a urinary tract infection. In fact, I did get a urinary tract infection.
04:47: I was feeling a little better and thought not to go to the doctor. But because I had just returned from the Philippines, I thought better of it and said
04:54: I should go. So, I did. Good thing that I did. So, basically, not to get too graphic, but my bladder was retaining too much fluid.
05:09: And so, they put me on a medicine that was supposed to solve that. And I went in for what was supposed to be a routine test just to make sure the medicine was working.
05:20: And the doctor freaked out because I was retaining way too much liquid and had to do an emergency catalyzation.
05:30: And if you've ever had that or just think about what that is, it was not fun.
05:35: And so, I had to have that in for over a week. And so, they think the medicine is working now.
05:43: I will be going in for a procedure on the 21st where they will take care of it, hopefully for good, and solve the problem.
05:54: But basically, it was a very painful experience.
06:00: And I'm glad that that is removed. But the day they were doing that was last
06:06: Thursday to see whether they could remove it or not. And I was very glad that they did.
06:13: So, now I'm on a fun regimen. I have to drink cranberry juice.
06:20: My wife gives me cranberry juice now because that's supposedly good for you. So, I don't like it that much though.
06:27: It's really sour. I don't know if Eli has his setup working yet.
06:33: He looks like he's still working on something. But I need to tell him to try to go out and come back in because he has the good news.
06:50: Eli has the good news. And I should really wait till he comes back in to say,
06:57: Now, folks, if you want to join, go to ApologeticsLive .com. If you're watching on YouTube, just go to ApologeticsLive .com.
07:07: And you'll be able to join from there.
07:15: Catherine asked this question. Can you see my message first time on here? Well, Catherine, there you go.
07:22: Now, everyone can see your message because it's right there. Yeah, so if you guys have questions, we can answer them through the
07:30: YouTube chat. I should mention this is a brand new YouTube channel for Striving for Eternity.
07:36: We're moving off of CARM. I think I might have mentioned this last show. CARM is going through making a bunch of changes.
07:44: And in those changes, basically, there was a lot of people that had access to the website and YouTube and a bunch of different things.
07:52: And they're trying to reduce that. Okay, you can hear us now. Good. Yes, that was weird.
08:00: All right, so why can't I change this? There we go.
08:05: Okay, so, folks, if you want to join, go to ApologeticsLive .com.
08:11: If you are on that YouTube channel, please hit the little bell up there.
08:16: Hit the thing that says subscribe. I think it says subscribe. Let me double check. Go to subscribe to the channel and then go up top where it has a little bell,
08:26: I think, that tells you that you can get notified when we go live. But, folks, share this right now so that other people know and know that we kind of changed which page we're on.
08:40: Striving for Eternity created a new page because our old page was kind of in a crazy state. And so we just figured we'd start a new one.
08:47: And hopefully that'll work because the other one was always problematic. Eli, you had some good news to update.
08:54: I updated everyone on the bad news, which you totally missed because you were playing with your computer.
09:00: But you have some good news. You've been busy staying up late and changing something.
09:09: Diapers. Yeah, so what's been going on, sir? Well, my wife gave birth to a
09:16: Protestant reformer. His name is Calvin. And he, well, you know what?
09:22: I can't take any credit because when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, I have nothing to offer.
09:29: Usually my wife, I get up just to give visual, you know, the visual effect of, hey,
09:36: I'm here to help. But, you know, my wife is feeding the baby like a champ waking up in the middle of the night.
09:42: And I'm just waiting until the little guy gets on the bottle and then I'll step in.
09:48: But, yes, we had a baby. His name is Calvin Jude Ayala, CJ for short.
09:54: And he's awesome. Please tell me he looks like your wife. Hey, I'm a good looking guy.
10:02: Come on, man. You know what? I actually do think he looks more like my wife.
10:07: Although my other two kids, I have a daughter who's four and a son who is two,
10:13: Ethan and Autumn. And I would say they look like me. So I got two of them. My wife. Okay.
10:24: Well, folks, if you want to come in and join us, you can. Just go to ApologeticsLive .com.
10:30: There's a link to participate there. And so until we get folks coming in, we got a couple of things we wanted to talk about.
10:39: First thing, Eli, that we wanted to talk about is apologetic methodology.
10:46: Right. So there's typically three schools of apologetics in a general sense.
10:54: Right. We have evidential, classical, presuppositional.
11:03: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It would depend how you break those.
11:09: There's subcategories, too. I think even in the five views on apologetics, you have the epistemology and categorizing.
11:24: I'm sorry? Your internet's getting bad. Maybe we should turn your camera off. Let's try that because you're.
11:30: Okay. All right. That won't be as much fun. I don't know. Can you hear me now?
11:37: I hear you. If folks who are watching, do you hear them okay? Or is it just my end? Maybe it's my internet, but I had a pretty good signal.
11:45: We'll wait for them to respond whether they hear you cutting in and out. Maybe it's just me. So. Okay. Which one would you hold to?
11:54: Well, when I first got started in apologetics, I held to the classical method. And through later study and some exposure to the work of Cornelius Mantel and Greg Bonson, I was convinced of the presuppositional methodology.
12:09: So that's where I stand now. Okay. Now, so let's deal with one thing that I find happens often.
12:16: A lot of people feel you must hold to one or the other. What say you?
12:23: Do you think that these are mutually exclusive positions? Yes, I do.
12:32: But I need to be very careful in that. I have a very good friend who is a classical apologist, and he says,
12:40: I don't mind. I'm not a presuppositionalist, but us classicalists like to play with your toys.
12:47: So he says something to the effect as a classicalist, he likes to use presuppositional arguments.
12:53: And I think that's an illegitimate move because it almost assumes that as a classicalist, presuppositionalism is just an argument that can be employed in a completely different methodological context.
13:09: And that's not necessarily the case. For example, when a presuppositionalist utilizes evidences and say like the use of the
13:18: Kalam cosmological argument, that is not the case unless engaging in classical evidences within a presuppositional framework is not to leave the presuppositional framework and operate on a different methodology.
13:34: You see, that's the false perception of presuppositionalism is that presuppositionalists don't use evidence and evidentialists don't care about presuppositions.
13:44: Presuppositionalism is an entire methodological framework with which we work out if we don't skip in and out of methodologies, if that makes sense.
13:53: Yeah, and that's I think the thing. So let's define some terms. Right. So in a broad sense, because we have a couple of different topics we want to address, but in a broad sense, evidential apologetics is going to be where people try to use evidences to convince someone to be saved.
14:08: They're giving enough evidence here. If I give you enough evidence, you're going to see that Jesus is the
14:15: Savior and you need to repent. And you're going to do that because here's all this evidence. Some evidential apologists that we would think of,
14:24: Josh McDowell would be one. Oh, I just lost his name.
14:29: The journalist, Lee Strobel, he would be another.
14:36: So these are guys that they are looking to evidence. Presuppositionalists like you and I would hold to the fact that,
14:46: I mean, I argue there's two presuppositions I hold to. God exists. He has spoken.
14:52: In other words, these are two things I'm not going to try to argue. I'm not going to give up in a debate if we're sitting and discussing and an atheist says, well, just give up your
15:00: Bible and then let's discuss. No, no, I'm not. There's nothing that you can use to ultimately prove
15:07: God, because if you could, that would be greater than God. And we don't put God on judgment. He's the judge.
15:15: He's not the one that we're going to sit under and say, and we're going to judge whether he exists or not. So a presuppositional mindset starts with the fact that we could not know anything without God first existing.
15:30: In other words, things like our ability to reason. I mean, whenever you get into a discussion, you need to have an ability to reason.
15:38: And if you don't have an ability to reason, that's going to be you're not going to be able to do science or anything else.
15:45: But where do we get that ability? Where do we get any of the immaterial things like truth and knowledge, laws of logic, morality?
15:53: All of these things are immaterial things and can only come from an immaterial source. And so we would look at these things and say, when we examine this, we cannot even discuss things like truth and knowledge without first presuming
16:10: God. And that would be a presuppositional view that we presume that God exists and he has spoken.
16:19: I guess the only thing I would add is that I would probably, maybe you would agree with me once I clarify, that priests do not seek to prove
16:31: God's existence. I would say we seek to prove God's existence, but not in the same way other people try to prove
16:38: God's existence. In other words, you know, I was talking to an atheist
16:44: YouTuber by the name of Tom Jump. He's kind of an upcoming YouTuber kind of guy. And we were talking about, does
16:49: God exist? We talked about presuppositions and he said to me, and I hear a lot of people say this and it's relevant to the point
16:57: I want to make, is that presuppositions by definition are assumptions that do not have justification for them.
17:05: Because if they have justifications for them, then they're not presuppositions. And I disagreed with that because in the presuppositional methodology, while it's true that some presuppositions are assumptions without justification, the
17:19: Christian presupposition is not a presupposition without justification. It has justification, but its justification is not justified by an appeal to something outside of itself.
17:32: The justification for our presupposition as presuppositionalists is demonstrated transcendentally.
17:40: So it's an appeal not to a standard external to itself. It is an appeal to itself showing its transcendental necessity that to deny it is to demonstrate its principle.
17:50: And the reason why I want to mention that is because there is a common misconception about presuppositional apologetics that we don't seek to prove
17:58: God. And if you look at debates by Greg Bonson, what does he say? He says the proof for the truth of the
18:04: Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything. That is a proof and we are to employ it.
18:10: And it includes both a positive presentation and a negative aspect in which we also try to demonstrate the truth of the
18:17: Christian faith, while also demonstrating the falsity and inability of other worldviews to provide a foundation for knowledge and truth and things like that.
18:27: Yeah, and I think the thing. So when we say prove, OK, we are looking at things that we're going to that show that God exists.
18:37: But I'm going to take God as the axiom. In other words, say again, as an axioms.
18:43: In other words, I would be careful with the word axiom. Why would axiom is because when we talk about axiom, when we use the word axiom, as opposed to, say, a mere presupposition, someone who has the background in presuppositional apologetics, we can now run into the deep waters of the best differences between the methodology of Cornelius Mantel and Gordon Clark.
19:04: And the difference between them is a very important difference in that Clark started with an ultimate axiom, which he defined as a starting point that cannot be justified.
19:15: You don't try to justify it. You just accept it because it's your authoritative dogmatic starting point. And he sought to show that when you start with the axiom, the
19:23: Bible is the word of God. That proposition houses the adequate ingredients to build a positive worldview.
19:30: And you can demonstrate the superiority of the Christian worldview by its logical consistency. And that's actually different than what
19:37: Cornelius Mantel tried to do. Mantel did not start with a Clarkian axiom because the axiom can't be proven.
19:45: Mantel believed that the Christian worldview could be proven, just not in the same way you would prove, say, a deductive argument in which you support its premises by appealing to something external to it as kind of a standard by which to measure what is considered valid evidence.
20:02: Mantel believed you can prove the Christian presupposition transcendentally. And I think that's a very big difference between Clark and Mantel.
20:10: And that's why as a Mantelian, I'm very careful not to use the word axiom, because an axiom, by definition, is unprovable, in which case you're not engaging in proof.
20:18: You're just engaging in, hey, my axiom is better than your axiom because my worldview is consistent. And that's kind of a different twist.
20:24: And I think an important difference there. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, we do use these things to say, look, if we examine this stuff, as I just did, you look at the immaterial world.
20:37: There is no way to explain that without an immaterial source. OK, and that would be the argument when people say, well, you know, we see evidences of God.
20:49: And we see that everywhere. But the thing that I won't give up in any argument that, you know, like you'll get a professing atheist will be like, well, let's step out of your world and step into mine.
21:03: Why yours? You know, I'm going to have a debate later this month. And it's really kind of funny because the guy wants to debate that secular humanism is better than Christianity or superior.
21:16: The problem is he first has to show that his worldview can actually exist outside of relying on ours.
21:25: That's the problem he has and doesn't even realize it, because what he wants to do is say, well, let's just step into my worldview and discuss the differences, things that I see.
21:35: It's like, well, that's nice, but that's not the worldview that we actually live in. So that's the thing that we end up recognizing that.
21:43: I mean, these guys have have some problems that they don't they don't even want to recognize. So I think that classical is kind of a mix between the two.
21:53: They will use evidence. At times, and they'll use presuppositional apologetics at times, so they're kind of in the middle.
22:02: I would say they wouldn't use presuppositional apologetics. They would use some of the tools.
22:09: They use some of the arguments. Right. But I would say that the classical method is inconsistent with the presuppositional framework, even though you can use a transcendental argument as a classicalist.
22:22: But I would argue that within the classical framework, there are certain presuppositions that are inconsistent with the utilization of the kind of methodology that presuppositionalist use.
22:32: But again, there are there are layers and crossovers in which, you know, as a presuppositionalist,
22:37: I often use the Kalam argument, but I don't think that that's illegitimate since on my world, on my methodology, everything is evidence for God.
22:46: And so if everything's evidence for God, I can talk about anything. If I want to talk about the universe, if I want to talk about aesthetics, ethics, logic.
22:54: I think it was Scott Oliphant, who is a professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster.
23:01: He said that and I don't think this is original to him. He said that presuppositionalists are eminently evidentialist since we believe that everything is evidence for God.
23:10: We can use anything and we can do it without forsaking our ultimate starting point, which is the the
23:18: Bible as that epistemological base and the triune God, which provides that metaphysical context out of which everything else makes sense.
23:26: We can do that while standing on that foundation. And when we engage in apologetics, assuming that knowledge acquisition is possible without the assumption and reality and existence of the triune
23:39: God, then at that moment we are using some other standard other than the word of God.
23:44: And we're actually granting a level of neutrality to the unbeliever. And I think that's what classical apologetics does on accident.
23:51: I don't think people do it on purpose. I think that's one of the inconsistencies in how that method is employed. Okay, so we got it for folks who may not be familiar with the whole issue of neutrality, right?
24:02: Because we throw these terms out having studied them. I mean, neutrality is the idea that somehow we have this neutral ground that we speak with a professing atheist and there's this neutral ground that we can both come to and agree on.
24:16: And we would have to give up our Bible and our faith and just come to their worldview of science.
24:25: And, you know, it's really not neutral is the thing people don't understand. What they're asking you to do is give up everything that's true that you believe and come into step into our realm.
24:36: But they never want to step out of their realm and come into the truth. And so the reason mostly is because they firmly believe that everything that they believe religiously, and it is religious, is true just because a majority believe it.
24:56: And that's a logical fallacy called the fallacy of populum.
25:02: So just because a majority believe it doesn't make it true.
25:08: And so I think that when it comes to the different methods, one of the issues
25:14: I see that, and I notice it more in the presuppositional camp than any other, that will argue that if you're not doing their method, you're doing it wrong.
25:29: And that's what I think we as presuppositionalists have to be careful of. I don't see that so much.
25:35: I definitely don't see it from classical apologists. I see it from some evidentialists, but not many.
25:44: But I see it very kind. And when we think of classical, I should give some names for classical apologists. I could think of Greg Koukl would be a classical apologist.
25:55: I think Frank Turek may be falling in that camp now because he used to be more of an evidentialist.
26:02: Classical? Well, with his latest book, I forget the title of it, but the title of his book and the whole premise of his book is almost seeming like a presuppositional argument.
26:17: So I don't know if he's kind of moving. Stealing from God? Stealing from God?
26:23: Yeah. Where he's arguing that the unbeliever is stealing from our worldview essentially.
26:34: Right. And I think he actually has a small little quotation from the debate between Gordon Stein and Greg Bond.
26:43: I'm definitely aware of Bonson's presentation or kind of how Bonson, you know, demonstrated that the unbeliever is in fact borrowing from the
26:53: Christian worldview. Now, he's using presuppositional principles. But when you get down to the foundation, there there is a vast difference.
27:01: And I think there is a little bit of conceding ground within the methodology of Frank Turek.
27:10: And I think that's again, it looks like presuppositionalism. And the book is completely awesome.
27:17: I have the book. I have it on audiobook. And I actually love Frank Turek, even though I don't agree with everything. And I like what you said before, that just because someone's not a presuppositionalist, you know, we tend to think they're doing it wrong.
27:28: And maybe maybe to be consistent, I do think many people are doing apologetics wrong. However, that does not mean that we don't have anything to learn from the other methodologies.
27:40: I've learned, I learned a lot from William Lane Craig, for example, even though there's a lot I disagree over. I learned a lot from Greg Kokel.
27:46: I learned we need to be able to stand firm on on a consistent biblical basis, allowing our apologetic methodology to be consistent with our theology, while at the same time, not dividing unnecessarily over issues like this.
28:02: People make these things, you know, hills to die on. And we fail to see the value of what other people are providing.
28:14: I find very little in the presuppositional. Presuppositional is a grasp.
28:21: People become intellectually lazy because, you know, when it is to some of the specifics, a lot of presuppositionalists are unable to because they're just reading presuppositional works.
28:33: They're not really dealing with some of the specific evidences that can be very useful when we're engaging with unbelievers.
28:41: Yeah. And this is a thing where I think with the methodologies, we have to be careful not to.
28:51: We got we got to have grace in this. Right. I mean, you'd be a good example. You started out more classical like an
28:57: R .C. Sproul. He he would have been a classical apologist. I think he's now pre supper. But but no, you started out one and you changed.
29:09: Right. Hey, I'm just saying,
29:14: I think that in heaven will be presuppositional. That's all I'm saying. I agree.
29:20: Well, will there be apologetics in heaven? No, there won't be a need. But but the thing is,
29:27: I think you see guys who have changed over time. So to be dogmatic and start saying that people are doing it wrong or things like this.
29:37: A lot of times I think that some people just don't understand the differences in the apologetics.
29:44: Some people have not been trained, haven't been taught, haven't read. And because of that, there is going to be some differences that you're going to see.
29:54: I mean, I I wasn't before I was trained in apologetics. I, you know,
29:59: I didn't know anything other than getting a copy of more than a carpenter by Josh McHale.
30:05: And he had some great arguments. And I would use those arguments when witnessing to people. And there were times where people were like, wow, that was that's neat.
30:13: I didn't know that. And it makes you think like, wow, this is really cool. So what do you do? You study more.
30:19: And I will admit, evidential apologetics takes a lot of work, a lot of knowledge.
30:25: I mean, you've got to study and you've got to know these things because all this science stuff, it changes.
30:30: And you got to have it just like rapid fire because you got to know all this stuff.
30:37: Presuppositionalism is a lot easier. It just is. You know, I don't have to know all that.
30:43: I just have to know. Can you explain your worldview without God? No. OK.
30:50: Right. I mean, it's like, you know, well, you know, it can be a little more complicated than a general principle.
30:58: And a general principle, I like I like what Greg Bonson once said that that when the
31:04: Bible commands us to do apologetics, that's something that's possible both for the professor and for Sophie, the wash woman.
31:12: The principles are principles that whether in a very simplistic form or in a very, very complicated form.
31:19: So the cool thing about presuppositionalism is it has a depth to it, but there's also a simplicity to it that really anybody can use.
31:27: Now, if you're going to do classical apologetics and evidential apologetics, it is going to take a lot more study and handling of facts.
31:36: But at the same time, we have to be very careful. I've heard some presuppositionalists kind of poo poo that fact kind of like, oh, well, you have to be a genius.
31:44: Well, we'll slow down. Those are good things to to attain. We want to know the facts better than the unbeliever.
31:51: But at the same time, if we define apologetics as necessarily having to deal with all of those specific things, then you've now blocked the average human being who is a profession, professing
32:03: Christian from actually engaging in that stuff in a very effective way. Whereas presuppositional principles are kind of they can have that simplistic flavor to them where really anybody can use them.
32:14: That's right. And, you know, let's let's engage with some that Katie says here. She says so -called science changes all the time.
32:21: Scripture doesn't. That's one of the things, you know, I mean, I don't know how many times have you heard the argument that we're just reading from an old book, you know, that goat herders had written.
32:33: But the reality is that book has not needed to change through all these centuries.
32:40: It's still just as true 2 ,000 years ago, 4 ,000 years ago as it is today. And when we look at this, well,
32:48: OK, sorry, not 4 ,000 years ago because it was probably written about 3 ,500 years. But the point being is science.
32:57: I mean, I just I was just reading a report where they're they're trying to come up because they've now figured out mathematically that there was not a.
33:07: For years, they've been saying that the Big Bang came about from a single explosion, and now they're realizing it's mathematically impossible.
33:17: So they're trying to come up with a way of explaining that there was actually multiple singularities, not a single one, but multiple that explosion.
33:26: So is the Big Bangs, I guess, is what they'll call it. But, you know, this is the thing that we end up seeing is the fact that when we start with God and this is what
33:40: I love about presuppositional projects. The starting point is God. So we're putting God on high. We're glorifying him.
33:46: And he's he's the one that we're going to look to. And when we do that, what we end up seeing is they cannot these folks cannot explain their worldview without appealing to God.
34:00: And that's that's a must if they're going to if they're going to argue that we're just chemical reactions.
34:06: I mean, what makes one chemical reaction better than another? Nothing. Their starting point lacks the sufficient ingredients to build a worldview that can provide the foundation for knowledge, for science, for history and all these other kinds of things, because they do not have that immovable starting point.
34:29: You talked about people discuss this issue of, you know, science always changes, but the
34:35: Bible, the Bible doesn't. And usually that people kind of explain that in a negative light because it's a good thing that science changes because people say we're moving closer to the truth.
34:46: You have to understand that we're talking about science. We're talking about something that's categorically different than something like the
34:53: Bible. If the Bible is a divine revelation from a perfect being, then by definition, it shouldn't change since the truth that he declares is the truth.
35:02: Whereas the very methodology of science is based upon principles which require us to be able to revise certain things.
35:09: You see, the Bible gives us an ultimate starting point. It is a foundation upon which we build everything. Science is not a starting point.
35:16: It is something that comes along later in the web of our worldview. You need something immovable in regards to your foundation that doesn't change in order to actually have a rational basis to engage in science, which presupposes change.
35:32: And really, the fact that it's good that in science, in the scientific realm, things change. That's what the whole method is, is, you know, that change is an important aspect of that method.
35:44: We also have to understand, too, that when we're standing on the Word of God and we put the revelation of God at the center of our epistemology, our theory of knowledge, that which provides for us an explanation as to how we gain knowledge and how that's related to revelation.
36:02: When we look at things like that, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
36:07: We tend to mix categories when talking about science, as though science is a knowledge -acquiring discipline.
36:14: It's not. It's not a truth -finding discipline either. Sean Carroll, who is an eminent cosmologist, he actually defines science.
36:23: He says, science does not give us truth. It gives us theories that work. Science is, by definition, pragmatic, whereas scripture is epistemological, metaphysical.
36:35: God is giving us information that's true and that we can know with certainty. And science doesn't really set itself up to provide that kind of thing, since they're completely different categories.
36:45: So we want to keep those things distinct. Yeah, because – well, the underlying premise, though, is you can't do science without God first existing.
36:57: Yes, you can't do science without an immovable starting point. Correct. Yeah. I mean, there's an example
37:04: I always give. When I was a kid, I made the volcano out of plaster of Paris and put a cup on top, and you put a little baking soda, and then you pour the vinegar in it.
37:16: And I always ask, so what happened? People are like, oh, well, it fuzzes over. Okay, is it morally right or wrong?
37:24: And people go, what? Is it morally right or wrong? And people would be like, it's just a chemical reaction.
37:31: Oh, so it's just chemical, so you can't get morality from that. And they're like, well, no.
37:37: And then later, they're going to get into saying that our brains are what gives us morality. And it's like, wait a minute.
37:44: That's the thing. If we're nothing but chemical reactions and nothing more, nothing less, well, this is the thing that we'll end up seeing is chemical reactions don't have immaterial elements to it like concepts.
38:02: You and I are having a conversation because we have an immaterial understanding of concepts. I'm using words.
38:09: You understand the meaning of those words. Really, all this is is it's sound. It's a vibration of the air that is going through.
38:17: In this case, it's going through this microphone, being digitized, being converted into a digital signal and coming back out your end.
38:25: And you're hearing the vibration of air. But yet you understand the concepts in the certain vibrations and the sounds that they make.
38:36: And you know them and you understand them as a concept, not just a sound. That is something that's immaterial.
38:43: That is something you can't. That's a basic thing. You can't have any conversation without understanding that concepts exist.
38:49: And yet, if it's just purely chemical reactions and nothing more, well, then we can't have concepts.
38:58: We can't have conversations like this. And so there has to be an immaterial source for everything that we know.
39:09: And that is the problem that the atheist has, because they don't have an immaterial source.
39:14: They require a material source for everything. And there isn't one in this case, because that unchanged or uncaused cause, as the philosophers would say, you need that being that created everything.
39:34: I think it gets complicated, too, and I apologize if I'm making it more complicated than it has to be.
39:41: But that is a good example of what you're doing, which is an element of presuppositional apologetics.
39:47: One of the elements is that you are providing internal critique of someone else's worldview.
39:53: So if someone claims to be a materialist, then you grant the truth of that perspective and ask them, if that's true, what does that lead to?
40:02: And what you've just described there is what such a worldview, what a worldview like that leads to, which really is irrationality.
40:10: But then you get the person who is not necessarily a materialist. They won't say God doesn't exist, nor will they say that they know for a fact that matter and motion is all that there is.
40:21: Rather, they are more methodologically naturalists in terms of their method of how they do things.
40:29: But in regards to metaphysical reality, there may be a God. And that gets a little more slippery because the argument that, well, materialism leads to fill in the blank is not necessarily a critique of a metaphysic that they're assuming.
40:46: Because they don't necessarily assume that everything is matter and motion. But they assume kind of this methodological kind of naturalism.
40:57: The way they go about practically speaking, they don't assume God. However, even in doing that, if we can't use a materialistic critique on a person who doesn't necessarily adopt that perspective, we can also offer a critique in terms of epistemology, their theory of knowledge.
41:13: If someone says, I don't know if there is a God, maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But methodologically,
41:20: I assume there is none. Even in that perspective, that person presupposes that knowledge does not require revelation.
41:31: So even in saying, I don't know if God exists, they are already taking a metaphysical stance, an epistemological stance, and they don't see
41:40: God as a necessary element, in which case you can still engage in a worldview critique. How do you account for knowledge when you don't even know what the nature of reality is?
41:50: You don't even have a theory of reality. So how can you connect knowledge when you don't even know the object of that which is to be known?
41:57: This is the problem with agnosticism. You can't have a rational worldview and start with the ultimate foundation with,
42:03: I don't know. There are certain things we need to start with, and if you don't start with God, then you run into problems.
42:09: And you have people throughout history like, you know, Rene Descartes, for example. He started with his existence.
42:15: He didn't start with the triune God. He started with, you know, I think, therefore I am. Other philosophers start with other starting points.
42:22: And they all run into the same problem, that when you actually follow the conclusion, we do what you just did, an internal critique, what you'll find is if you don't start with God, you're going to run into the specter of skepticism.
42:34: And I think that is detrimental to any worldview that is trying to provide the ingredients, so to speak, for knowledge.
42:43: You can't get knowledge if you have a perspective that leads to skepticism. I hope that makes sense. Yeah. And I think that the thing is we end up seeing with it is, you know, there is this point.
42:57: And I want to say one thing actually first. You mentioned Descartes. And a lot of people don't realize
43:02: Descartes was trying to use skepticism to prove whether God exists. And people use him to try to say that he's proving
43:09: God doesn't exist because we exist. No, the actual thing, if you actually read what
43:14: Descartes actually was doing, he was just saying, if I asked enough questions, I'll get to the ultimate truth.
43:20: And if I keep asking questions, keep asking questions. And he kept asking and asking it to the point where he got to the point of saying,
43:26: I exist. Basically, I think. Therefore, I am.
43:32: Therefore, I exist. And it really, I would argue, is a presuppositional argument because he's saying the fact that he thinks proves that he exists.
43:39: But the fact that he exists proves that God exists. That was basically what he ended up proving with it.
43:45: And so many people that use Descartes, and I've had atheists that want to use
43:51: Descartes. And we had once on this show and the previous show that we used to do. And a guy just is like, he goes, well,
43:59: I'm going to go look it up. Oh, oh, you're right. It was like, yeah. So never say something without checking it.
44:05: Right. But the thing that you see is there is an argumentation
44:13: I think we have to make when it comes to this to say, when we're going to look at the way we're going about the discussion.
44:22: I was going to say about the argument, because argument is not a bad thing, folks. We think of arguments where people are yelling at each other and screaming and in a disagreement, like a fight.
44:32: An argument is in philosophy is just going to be that you're trying to prove something.
44:38: You're trying to convince someone of something. You're going to lay out a position with a conclusion, and you're going to have a persuasive way about it to try to convince someone, which is what we all do.
44:51: But we don't think of it as an argument, but that's technically what it is. And so in making an argument, when we look at these different views, these different ways of doing apologetics,
45:03: I hope you're seeing that with Eli and I, we're trying to show that there's different ways to go about making the argument.
45:13: And there may be some where people agree, people disagree, but the ultimate thing is this, and this
45:21: I know Eli is going to agree with me on. The purpose of any apologetics is not to show how smart you are, not to win a debate.
45:33: The purpose is quite simply so that we could get to the gospel.
45:40: Paul tells Titus to basically shut the mouth of the ignorant so that the gospel could go forth.
45:46: And that's what we should be doing. We use the apologetics to get to the gospel. That's the important thing.
45:53: That's what we want to focus on. And I think the beautiful thing about presuppositional apologetics is that unlike the classical method and unlike the evidential method, you can present an apologetic in which
46:07: Christ is the center. It's not, you know, as some people say, you're not arguing about the complexity of the eye for 20 hours.
46:16: Jesus is at the center. Unless the triune God lives, and that includes
46:23: Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture, you can't make sense of anything. And so when you're talking about science,
46:29: Jesus Christ is central. When you're talking about history, Jesus Christ is central. When you're talking about philosophy,
46:35: Jesus Christ as the logos, Jesus Christ and the triune God is connected to knowledge.
46:43: For Colossians 2, 3, for in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So Christ is always at the center, and I think the presuppositionalist position,
46:52: I think, does a better job in getting to Christ quicker because that's where we start. This is why generations ago you used to call theology the queen of the sciences.
47:03: It was the top because it's what everything else rests upon. And, you know, people have tried to remove
47:12: God and do science without God, and it really makes a mess of things because they can't explain what they see.
47:20: And because their goal is to try to deny God and to do that, they go, well, we have to allow chance to be the thing that makes everything happen.
47:31: It's just by chance. But then they start looking at the mathematics and go, well, 6 ,000 years isn't enough time for things to come out about by chance because, boy, these cells are really complex.
47:45: And then they start real. So they say millions of years. Then they start looking into a cell and finding out all these subatomic particles.
47:51: And they find out it's even more complex than they thought of. And they go, oh, yeah, we can't go millions of years. We've got to go tens of millions of years.
47:57: And they get to subatomic level and it's like billions of years, you know, and it's still not enough.
48:04: You know, I think the problem the problem there is when you say, well, billions, well, thousands or whatever, all of that presupposes knowledge.
48:11: You're making knowledge claims. You're presupposing that you can know certain things. When you remove God from your epistemology, your theory of knowledge, you must replace him with some other standard.
48:23: And in the history of philosophy, it's been replaced with some form of autonomous rationalism or empiricism or whatever philosophical construct you want to put in.
48:35: And when you look at the history of philosophy, all of them have relegated man to skepticism. This is why postmodernism is really the culmination of the failure of a lot of the philosophical perspectives that have come about, at least in the
48:48: West. And Eastern philosophy is even worse if you're trying to get to certainty. So once you remove
48:54: God out of your epistemology, you have to replace him with some form of rationalism or empiricism or a mixture of the both.
49:01: And again, those perspectives do not provide that which is necessary to have knowledge, to have an adequate metaphysic, a theory of reality and things like that.
49:13: So unbelievers don't realize that God is not just this thing we plug in. Metaphysically, because God exists, knowledge makes sense.
49:23: It's not just this unimportant thing we plug in. He is essential to knowledge, especially when we talk about issues of being created in the image of God and we get into the issues of the soul, the mind, rationality, logic and things like that.
49:36: These things are connected. They're not just these accidental things that just we just come up with this idea of God and you can do fine with or without him.
49:44: He's an essential element of it. And I don't think people recognize how essential the concept of God is in the study of philosophy and building a theory of knowledge and reality and things like that.
49:55: Yes. And so the thing is, is I want to I want to move on to onto another topic that we want to talk about the transcendental argument.
50:06: But let me let folks know if you have any questions about apologetics, about the Bible, maybe some challenges you have.
50:14: You disagree with us. You were challenged at work and you didn't know how to answer it.
50:20: That's what this show is for. So you can come in, ask questions. Can't promise we know all the answers, but we could try.
50:27: Andrew does. I know someone who does. It's called God. He's called God. So so but let's let's get into actually before we do that,
50:41: I should mention one thing. And and I should mention to folks that they should go to twenty twenty one
50:50: Israel trip dot com. And Eli, I haven't seen your name show up there on that.
50:57: It must be because you have a baby and you can't go to Israel in twenty twenty one. Take a trip. I did go to I did go to Israel like two years ago.
51:05: That's it was awesome. That was anyone I know I would love to go again, but it's super expensive and I have a baby in the family.
51:15: So sometime in the future. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So the guys are striving for eternity.
51:21: Anthony Silvestro, Frank Moss, myself will be taking a trip to Israel. We're going to be joined by Justin Peters.
51:29: And in that trip, we're going to be going to a lot. It's going to be 13 days. A lot of trips are like seven days or maybe some are 10 days.
51:37: We're adding some extra days so we could do a little bit of extra stuff so we can enjoy a little bit more.
51:45: And so it's going to be 13 days in Israel. There will be an extension. We may end up going,
51:51: I think, to Greece. But the cost, I think, is fifty one hundred dollars.
51:56: And you go, oh, that's a lot. That includes that includes your flight from JFK, New York City to Israel.
52:05: It includes all the hotels. It includes your breakfasts and your dinners. Everything's taken care of the guides, the bus, the bus driver, everything.
52:16: So it really does cover a lot. And if folks like you mean, like you said, Eli, it's not cheap to go there.
52:23: It's worth it, though. But it really helps in understanding the scriptures when you sit at places that they where where, you know, these things actually happened.
52:32: And so Anthony, Frank, myself, Justin Peters will all be teaching and it is going to be,
52:40: I think, a once in a lifetime event. I do have to let you know, though, two things.
52:46: One, we are getting we're basically are limited to fifty five people to the one bus.
52:52: And we are more than a quarter full already. So you need to make sure that you do that.
53:01: And the other thing is, if you do it in September, you get one hundred dollars off. The guy who's organizing it is offering one hundred dollars off for anybody who signs up this month.
53:13: So that's something to consider. We do have a question from Luke and Luke, if you want to join and ask this question so you can interact a little better.
53:22: You could go to ApologeticsLive .com. There is a link to participate. But let's deal.
53:27: Luke says, I have a question in in Molinism. Are there things in the world that ultimately will not glorify
53:37: God? So let me define Molinism a bit. And then, Eli, I'm going to let you answer the question because you've studied
53:45: Molinism a little bit more than me. So Molinism basically is the idea that God, now
53:53: I'm going to preface this, but we will say that this doesn't have to do with free will. OK, that it's not trying to make a way of explaining free will, which first off,
54:05: I don't believe in free will. I believe in a will. I think the will is enslaved to sin because of the fall.
54:10: So it's not free. It's an enslaved will. Until we're saved, then it's a free will, just so that's clear.
54:18: But those that believe that the will is free, that it's not influenced by sin, they want to try to make an excuse for that and try to rationalize everything.
54:26: And Molinism is one of the rationales. And so what you end up seeing, and I'm saying this, they say it doesn't have to do with arguing for free will.
54:35: But I've never, and Eli, you and I came in here once and had someone that was a Molinist on, and sure enough, it became all about free will.
54:44: Even though he made the argument, it's not about free will, but they always go there. But the idea is that God, in his infinite knowledge, took a look at all of the possible worlds that could have existed.
54:58: And all, I mean, every combination, this is called middle knowledge. He looks at all the things that could have happened and couldn't happen and works through all of those things.
55:09: And then he actualized the world, the world we live in, that would bring him the greatest glory.
55:15: And included in that world is going to be evil. People are going to sin. And what you're going to have is people that will go to hell and some that will be saved.
55:25: And their argument will often be that they are saved by their choice, by their free will.
55:33: Because God actualized the world where in that world they chose freely.
55:40: All God did was actualize that world. And so with that as a backdrop,
55:47: Eli, the question in Molinism, are there things in the world that ultimately will not glorify
55:54: God? Because their argument is that this is the one that glorifies God the best.
56:00: So in this one that's actualized, do you know of, are there arguments they make for things that don't glorify
56:08: God in this world? Well, it depends which Molinist you ask because Molinism is not monolithic.
56:14: One of the attractive things about Molinism is that as a particular understanding of God's omniscience, it is very flexible in what you can do with it.
56:25: That's why you have Molinist who are perhaps more Arminian leaning.
56:30: And you have Molinist who are perhaps more Calvinistic leaning. And so within that spectrum, you may have people who believe and say something like God actualizing a world where there is gratuitous evil.
56:44: Evils for which God does not have a specific redemptive purpose for. But that's not a necessary component of Molinism.
56:52: Molinism is a view of God's omniscience in which God's knowledge is categorized as three kinds of knowledge
57:02: God has. God has what's called natural knowledge. His knowledge of everything that could happen.
57:09: His knowledge of all possibilities. God has middle knowledge which is his knowledge of counterfactuals.
57:16: What would happen if certain things were to obtain. And then there is what's called
57:22: God's free knowledge. God's knowledge of what actually will happen. Now this is very important and I'll answer the question once I get there.
57:30: In between God's middle knowledge. His knowledge of what would happen if certain things were to obtain.
57:37: And his free knowledge, God's knowledge of what will in fact happen. In between that is
57:43: God's divine decree. And so Molinists believe that God has a decree.
57:50: And so when God chooses to actualize one of the many worlds that are the objects of his middle knowledge.
57:57: God will decree that world. And when it's decreed, everything within that world that God knows is going to happen will in fact happen.
58:06: And it becomes his free knowledge. It will happen. Now because there is a decree within Molinism.
58:15: That decree can be described in many ways as Calvinists describe it.
58:20: In other words, it is an all -encompassing plan. It includes God's purposes. And it includes everything meticulously so.
58:29: You read in Molinist literature that they believe that God is meticulously governing all things.
58:36: Such that everything will kind of fall out precisely the way God has planned. And so if we understand
58:41: Molinism in that way. I would argue that on some Molinistic perspectives.
58:47: There is nothing within a particular world that God chooses to actualize. That will not glorify him.
58:53: Since everything that occurs is a result of a divine decree. Which includes God's purposes.
58:58: His redemptive purposes and everything like that. So people who go to hell on Molinism still glorify
59:06: God. And people who go to heaven still glorify God on Molinism. So I don't think there is anything essential to Molinism.
59:12: In which there are certain things that will never bring glory to God. There might be versions of Molinism in which that plays out that way.
59:19: But I don't think it's an essential feature of Molinism. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, and one of the things you said. Actually, I hadn't thought about it before.
59:27: But when we think about it. Everything glorifies God. So if you recognize that fact.
59:36: That every single thing that ever happens will always glorify God. Then when you think about Molinism with these different worlds.
59:45: Where God figures out which one is going to give him the most glory. Well, there isn't a world that gives him more glory than the other.
59:53: Because all of them give him the most glory. Ultimately, in reality.
59:59: Because God created everything for the fact that it gives him glory. And so,
01:00:05: I haven't thought this one through. But thinking about it. It seems that when they try to say.
01:00:11: Well, there's this world A and world B. And one is better than the other.
01:00:17: But it's better because one gives God more glory than the other. And yet everything gives God glory.
01:00:23: So, I think that might be a problem in Molinism. Well, I would say that when we talk about a world giving more glory to God than another world.
01:00:33: That's really going to depend on God's purposes. Because what gives God more glory or not.
01:00:40: Is relative to what God is desiring to accomplish. And so, if God has a specific goal in mind.
01:00:46: And chooses to actualize a world in which that goal is accomplished. Then I would say that that world would give him glory.
01:00:54: You see what I'm saying? So, there's never a world in which God would actualize. That will not be in accordance with what he wants to accomplish.
01:01:02: Otherwise, he wouldn't actualize that world. Yeah, and I think this is similar. You and I had a discussion with Eric.
01:01:12: I don't know how far back. I'd have to go look. That was a good one. I actually really enjoyed that one.
01:01:17: Yeah, it was a very good discussion. And if folks want, if you go to our new YouTube channel.
01:01:23: And to get there. If you want to get to the new YouTube channel. Which is where this is playing now.
01:01:29: But just go to bit .ly .com slash YTSFE.
01:01:35: And that will get you to the new channel. But we have someone that came in here.
01:01:43: Let's bring in Dr. Silvestro. He's got a little bit of something growing on his face there.
01:01:51: Clearly, he is traveling. He is traveling and his wife is not around.
01:01:58: How would you guess? So, a couple of days ago, she's like, you know. You keep stabbing me every time
01:02:05: I try to kiss you. So, she's like, when are you shaving? You know how that normally goes.
01:02:10: I'm like, well, I guess now. I'm like, hey, you know what? I'm going to be gone for the weekend. Do you mind if I just go a few more days?
01:02:16: So, when I get home on Sunday morning, we'll be going. She'll pick me up from the airport. We'll go straight to church. And then
01:02:22: I'm sure she'll bring me straight home to shave. Well, I do see that you're getting the gray in the same spots that I get them.
01:02:30: Right here. You know, where it makes it look like you've got fangs or something. Actually, I think
01:02:36: I bypassed the gray and went right to white. It's age, certainly.
01:02:43: Yeah. So, you're in New York right now to do some evangelism. Yeah, we're in Queens.
01:02:50: I'm here with John, and he's kind of in the other room right now. But he's laughing. He can hear you, everything you say.
01:02:56: Oh, good. Ask John if he remembered where he left his water bottle. Water bottle. Yeah. Yep. He heard that.
01:03:03: For folks who don't know, we went to California. Three of us were in California. And literally, every time we went somewhere, it was like, where's
01:03:11: John's water bottle? Because John kept forgetting it, but the rest of the team didn't. And, well, John hopped on a plane and headed home.
01:03:18: And his roommate found, yes, that's right, his water bottle. And gave it to Anthony.
01:03:26: Yeah. And then we somehow left it in the rental car. Yeah, that's right.
01:03:32: We carried it for a week and then left it. So, what do you got,
01:03:40: Anthony? What's up? You know what? I just wanted to check in and see how you guys were doing tonight.
01:03:46: You were talking more than me. And come to New York still. Yeah. Well, I did.
01:03:51: You know, Eli had trouble hearing and didn't hear. You know the reason why. But I will let you know this,
01:04:00: Anthony, give you an update. I did go to the doctors earlier today. Okay. And they did an ultrasound to make sure that my bladder completely emptied, which is a good thing.
01:04:11: So, it means no more catheter, which. Yeah. That's nice. So, that means you're joining us tomorrow, right?
01:04:18: Yeah, no. I guess Cheekay's coming out tomorrow, Jasmine, a few other people. So, we're going to have a nice group in New York tomorrow.
01:04:27: That's tomorrow night? Yeah, we'll probably get out there around 3 o 'clock or so. And then hang out until whenever.
01:04:33: Well, oh, you know, I'm glad you reminded me. Because that's right. You know what I have to do tomorrow at 3 o 'clock?
01:04:38: I got to get my toys going because I'm going shooting. Yes. Are you allowed to show that on camera in your state?
01:04:47: Well, see, the thing is, in my state, it's like, you know, they're trying. They're trying so hard to outlaw them.
01:04:53: So, I got to get on my target practice in while I can. Yeah, that's about right.
01:05:00: Is that a light you had fashioned underneath it? Yeah, it's a - That looks fancy, Angie. Yeah, it's a -
01:05:06: You got like a laser scope on it? It's a laser scope and flashlight. Cool, okay. Yeah, it's both.
01:05:11: Yes. That's when he shoots raccoons in his driveway. Well, or for someone that wants to come in my house at night, you know.
01:05:19: Actually, one of the New Jersey State Troopers encouraged me to get the flashlight. And I would never have thought of it.
01:05:27: And his argument was, most often when you're going to use it for self -defense at home, it's at night.
01:05:34: When you're not putting lights on. And so, having an extra bright light is the advantage to you because you're blinding the person.
01:05:42: Right. Which gives you a better - You know, in New Jersey, you have to make sure that there is a threat to you to use it.
01:05:50: So, it kind of blinds them, gives you that extra second to respond, and gives you the advantage of making sure, yes, they are looking deadly.
01:06:00: Andrew, I don't own a gun, but I am black belt in karate movements.
01:06:07: And I do give a very strong impression that I know how to throw down. So, hopefully, that will work for me.
01:06:13: Wait a minute. Can you actually be a Christian and not own a gun if you're male? I don't know.
01:06:18: That's right. I'm not so sure about that. That's kind of theoretical. You could tell that - Tell them about repentance, faith, go out and buy a gun.
01:06:26: I think it's somewhere in there. Obviously, Anthony owns a couple. I'm sure.
01:06:31: You guys are packing, man. That was - We went from Molinism to, like, you whipped out a handgun with a flashlight.
01:06:37: Things escalated really quick. Oh, right. You want me to pull out the other one? Because I got to get my other one ready.
01:06:43: Okay. Yeah, I have a Glock - Andrew already reserved his tickets for the new
01:06:48: Rambo coming out. No, I only have three. I got a Glock 19, a Glock 17, a
01:06:55: Glock 19X, and a Smith & Wesson 9mm. I got a PS4. I got an -
01:07:04: Now, if we asked what Anthony had - I look like a gang member. I just put some fake teardrops in my eyes.
01:07:10: I just, like, meet the guy at the door. Yo, what do you want? And they usually just run away. See, now, if we asked what
01:07:16: Anthony had, we'd be here for the rest of the show and have nothing left. So, Anthony, we were talking Molinism.
01:07:23: And there was a question Jess asked. I asked Jess to join us. And, folks, if you want to come in and join us, go to apologitalive .com,
01:07:32: and you can join us. But Jess asked this. I'd like to hear why annihilationism is a false teaching and also speaking in tongues.
01:07:43: So, that's - I think, you know, I'm glad Anthony's here. I'm going to have definitely more ammunition to use the previous discussion against Eli when it comes to tongues one.
01:07:54: But let's start with annihilationism. Oh, wait, wait. Matt Slick is calling me now.
01:08:01: He wants - He wants to give you some pointers. Because, you know, you and Matt did two
01:08:07: Apologetics Lives together. And both times tongues comes up. So, what happens? I have to correct, you know, you guys, especially
01:08:14: Matt. I never break it up. I never break it up. I'm a gentle - I'm a gentle, soft continuationist.
01:08:21: I don't - I'm always open to the cessationist arguments. You know, it's an area of theology that I haven't really, like, thrown myself into.
01:08:29: So, I'm very interested. Oh, we can correct you tonight. Sure. Sorry? We can correct you tonight.
01:08:36: Hey, that's fine. Let's start with annihilationism. All right? So, annihilationism is the idea that when we die -
01:08:46: And there are different views on this. I should state that. There are a couple different views. But basically, the idea is when we die, those who go to heaven go to heaven.
01:08:58: Those who are going to be judged and will end up going into some form of soul sleep, an unconscious state.
01:09:07: They'll wake up for that end, that great white throne judgment.
01:09:13: And on judgment day, they will be judged and go into nonexistence.
01:09:19: And some will say that that nonexistence is eternal, and that's the eternal consequence. But the teaching of annihilationism is a core to Jehovah Witnesses.
01:09:30: That was the very reason that they actually started. But there's other groups that believe in it as well.
01:09:38: It's becoming more prevalent, unfortunately, in evangelicalism. So, now the question
01:09:46: I think is, why is it a false teaching? I think I can answer that, because when we look in scripture, the best verse to go to for this is
01:09:57: Daniel 2 .12 .2. And the reason I like this one is because it puts both eternal life and eternal death in the same verse.
01:10:07: Daniel 12 .2 says, for many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake some to eternal life and some to eternal contempt.
01:10:20: So, you see that there's the comparison there. Whatever that eternal life is, because people want to say that the eternal life is living continuously, but the eternal contempt they want to say is a nonexistence.
01:10:34: But whatever way that eternal life is, so it is for the eternal contempt, which we would argue is the second death.
01:10:43: And so that's why I would say it's a false teaching. I'll let you guys open up if you have other things you want to add to that.
01:10:52: Again, that's an area that I have not looked into for too much. So, I would agree with you.
01:10:59: I hold to a traditional view of conscious eternal torment. I just recently became phone friends with Chris Date.
01:11:10: I'm sure you're familiar with Chris. Yeah, and if you go to karm .org,
01:11:16: there's a whole set. I forget how many, I think Matt released like 155 articles on Chris's view and the whole thing.
01:11:28: And so, that's a good resource to go to for some of this.
01:11:35: But now let me ask you this. Well, you may not be able to answer that, but do you think it's heresy?
01:11:42: Because some would say that believing in this damns you to hell, you can't be saved.
01:11:48: Yeah, I think when we're talking about essential doctrines, I mean, people ask me all the time, how do you know the difference between an essential doctrine and a non -essential doctrine?
01:11:56: And I've always understood that essential doctrines are identified with qualifiers in Scripture.
01:12:02: So, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. And if a doctrine doesn't have the qualifier, which makes it an essential, that doesn't mean it's not important and it doesn't mean it's not connected to the essentials.
01:12:14: But I think at that point, I'd be very careful. What I would say is not just heresy, but damnable heresy.
01:12:20: I'd be careful if there is not an explicit qualifier to that doctrine in Scripture. All right,
01:12:27: John, what do you say? See you there. John, where's your water bottle?
01:12:34: I don't know, man. It could be somewhere in somebody's thrift store or something.
01:12:39: I got a water bottle right here. He's got throwaway ones. I got a little one now. Yeah, that's what you need.
01:12:45: You need the bigger one. Those little bottles, that's heresy. That's damnable heresy.
01:12:51: Yeah, how about here? Here's mine, although it's not throwaway. It's glass. That's fancy. That's a fancy one.
01:12:58: That's twice the size of yours. Just saying. All right.
01:13:04: Andrew, show John how you just got saved. Show him your little toy. He's talking about the
01:13:11: Glock. Oh, my goodness. You're a gun guy, huh?
01:13:19: No, I'm a Christian. With a gun. I didn't know you were into that.
01:13:26: That's cool. Well, you know, I started shooting.
01:13:31: That's why he wins arguments when he does apologetics. Yeah. It's how I got an argument there. So let's get into the issue of tongues that Jeff's asked.
01:13:44: And, folks, if you want to join and ask questions, you can go to ApologeticsLive .com. It's the best way to join us.
01:13:50: Let others know, actually, that we are live right now and share this where you can. So others will know.
01:13:58: I know our numbers are down because we switched channels on YouTube. So we kind of expected that.
01:14:05: All right. So speaking in tongues, this will be an educational thing for Eli.
01:14:12: I've never spoken in tongues, by the way. I grew up in a Pentecostal church. And even growing up,
01:14:20: I did not buy... You speak at least one tongue. I'm sorry? You speak at least one tongue. Well...
01:14:25: English. Okay. All right. Well, what are tongues? I mean, tongues are languages.
01:14:31: Okay. Right. But you know what I mean. You know what I mean. Well, see, the thing is, and this is why
01:14:36: I like the Holman Christian standard. Let me read the verse because there's only one verse that people argue for in an angelic language.
01:14:46: Okay. Everywhere that we see tongues in Acts, they're languages.
01:14:53: Okay. And when we see them in Acts, the languages are even named. If you want.
01:14:59: And so you... You know what? If you want to put the game on, you can. I don't care. What did you say, Andrew? I didn't catch that. I'm going to mute
01:15:05: Anthony until he's talking about a game. When you see the word tongues, which is the word for languages, and Holman Christian standard
01:15:16: Bible actually translates it as languages. And that's why they got in trouble, because that cleared up a whole lot of confusion.
01:15:22: And all of a sudden, a lot of charismatics were complaining about the translation.
01:15:28: But that's what the word translates into. That's what the word means. Right. We don't use the word tongues for languages anymore.
01:15:37: But back in the King James time, that is how you would say it. And that's what it became.
01:15:44: So when you look at Acts, the actual tongues or languages are mentioned.
01:15:50: And they're always English, you know, or sorry, always human languages. Now, 1 Corinthians 13 is the only one that argues for an angelic language.
01:16:00: Okay. So let's deal with that right off the bat. 1 Corinthians 13, 1 says, and this is in the
01:16:08: Holman Christian standard. So we get the word language. If I speak human or angelic languages, but do not have love,
01:16:21: I am a sounding gong and a clanging cymbal. So what he's doing here, hermeneutically, right?
01:16:28: We got to examine this. What he's doing here hermeneutically is he's looking at the issue of what is more important.
01:16:35: The speaking of these other languages or love. The emphasis is love.
01:16:42: Now he's using a form of sarcasm or, you know, expounding beyond what's real.
01:16:52: Because he says if he speaks in a human languages or even in angelic languages. Now, is there an angelic language?
01:16:59: People would say that because this is mentioned here, there must be. Matt would say, well, angels must speak to one another.
01:17:06: So they must have their own language. Well, how do you know their language isn't Hebrew or Spanish or, you know, but it wouldn't be
01:17:13: English because English is confusing. That just can't be in heaven. So when you look at it, you know, how do you know that this is saying there is actually an angelic language?
01:17:26: I would say it's not. I would say he's using an extreme. That's impossible.
01:17:32: Why? Because of the very next verse. And one thing you can never do is rip this one verse out of its context.
01:17:38: The very next verse says, if I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge.
01:17:48: And if I have all faith so that I can move mountains, but do not have love,
01:17:53: I am nothing. Now, if you had all knowledge, what would we call you, Eli? We'd call me
01:17:59: God. That's right. So this is obviously an exaggeration beyond what's real because none of us can have all knowledge.
01:18:10: So if you look at verse two and recognize that that can't be possible, then the same is true for verse one.
01:18:17: It's sarcasm. He's talking to people who are who are priding themselves on their spiritual gifts and they're they're boasting about their gifts, but they're not loving one another.
01:18:27: You see that throughout chapter 12, 13, 14. And when you look at 13, the whole chapter is is about love.
01:18:36: That love is is the more important thing. So, Andrew, would you say that you're not denying that there may be an angelic language, but you're saying that that's not necessitated from that text, given the nature of the sarcasm that that text is expressing?
01:18:53: Yeah, I would say the the angels obviously communicate. What language?
01:19:00: Who knows? Is it a language different than the ones that some humans communicate in? We don't know.
01:19:06: It doesn't need to be. It could be it could be one of the human languages that we already know.
01:19:13: And maybe because when we here's the thing, when I have a response to that, though, if well, here's now that's the tricky thing.
01:19:21: Did God create man first or angels first? Well, I have a rap report on that, because if angels are created first, then they would have been communicating before man came on the scene.
01:19:37: And that language, whatever it was, couldn't be human language since humans didn't exist yet for however long until they're actually created.
01:19:46: So I think it would be if they're created first, I think it would be OK to think that they have their own language.
01:19:53: But I think I would agree with you that the way that text is constructed, it doesn't necessitate that that's referring to the possibility that someone can speak in tongues of angels.
01:20:03: Well, the thing here's the thing to think about. You have people that don't know
01:20:08: English. People that are. Oh, we should add
01:20:15: Justin Peters to the call. Hey, Justin Peters, you're live on Apologetics Live right now.
01:20:25: I am. You are. Are you seriously, Emma? You seriously are, because I just put the phone up to the microphone.
01:20:32: How's it going, Justin? No, you should go to ApologeticsLive .com
01:20:39: and join us. Well, I'm out walking the dogs. All right.
01:20:47: Well, give me a call in about 40 minutes or so. All right.
01:20:55: Talk to you later. I love Justin, man. He's got some. He's not in Idaho anymore.
01:21:02: Yeah, that's right. He moved to Montana. Montana. Yeah, he's being closer to the grand. So, Andrew, I think it's worth noting.
01:21:10: Now, I am in lockstep with you on this passage of 1 Corinthians 13. He's clearly being sarcastic in verse one.
01:21:18: Clearly, clearly sarcastic again about all knowledge of the passage about love.
01:21:23: I'm with you now. If you open up the inspired version, you know, you know, the version where the translators were given special powers by the
01:21:34: Holy Spirit to correct the Greek and the Hebrew. You know that version? You must mean the King James.
01:21:39: Yeah, that one. So if you open up the King James, you will find that the wording is slightly different in 1
01:21:46: Corinthians 13 versus every other version. So the Pentecostals is going are going to go to the beginning of 1
01:21:53: Corinthians 13 in the King James because the wording is slightly different. So that's why so many of my king.
01:21:59: So here's what King James says. Do you have it? No, I can't pull it up because I mean, I'll read it.
01:22:05: So this is in the King James, though. I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity.
01:22:13: I've become a I've become a sounding brass or a clanging symbol.
01:22:19: And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I can remove mountains and do not have charity,
01:22:31: I am nothing. Yeah. Yeah. So it says, though.
01:22:36: Right. And it changes it slightly. Now, I now I've recently gone through this passage.
01:22:42: You look at every other major translation. They are all in lockstep except for the King James. Right.
01:22:49: Yeah. Every one of them. I'm flipping through them. Nice thing about my log. But every one of them. Yeah. If I speak, if I speak.
01:22:57: Anthony, are you saying that the King James says, though, which gives the impression that Paul does actually speak those languages.
01:23:05: And so that translation seems to support the view that one can speak in the tongues of angels.
01:23:12: Is that what you're saying? That's what I'm saying. That's where people will pull from. Is that passage from the King James?
01:23:18: Yeah. OK. I never noticed that. OK, cool. Now, here's the thing to realize. Think about this.
01:23:24: You have people that don't speak any English. They speak Spanish. Some that speak Chinese, some that speak whatever.
01:23:31: I mean, you think about all the languages in the world. And yet for many, we can't prove this in scripture, but many believe that the moment we die, we can all communicate with one another.
01:23:42: How will that be? I mean, we all speak one language in heaven.
01:23:47: And what would that be? I would say that if we do, that's probably the same language that the angels speak now.
01:23:54: But it's a language. But here's the thing. When we come to the gift of speaking in languages, what
01:24:04: I find interesting is almost everybody speaks the angelic language. Yes, that's what makes it suspicious.
01:24:13: OK. Right. I mean, I don't know. I asked this question of every single person that says they speak in tongues.
01:24:19: And my first question is, what language do you speak? And they go to this verse to say, well, you know,
01:24:25: I don't speak a human language. So there must be like tons and tons of angelic languages.
01:24:31: But the question comes in when you look at 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14. If you're speaking some angelic language, how is that benefiting the church?
01:24:39: It's not. Because no one understands it. But if I speak, if I walk in to a Spanish congregation or into a
01:24:46: Spanish setting where I'm sharing the gospel in Spanish, not knowing Spanish. Or I walk in and someone can translate it into, you know, into the language.
01:24:57: I start speaking Spanish and a Spanish speaker can translate it into French because they know both.
01:25:03: Well, then you have someone that can translate that. And it benefits the church. Me speaking gibberish doesn't benefit the church.
01:25:11: And that's really what a lot of this is, is speaking gibberish. Okay. So is there a passage that says that tongues will cease?
01:25:20: Well, actually, there is. Okay. This is in the same chapter in 1
01:25:26: Corinthians 13. When we look, it starts in verse 10. It says, but when, well, actually, let me back up.
01:25:37: Let me start in verse 8 so we have some context. So really start in verse 9. But love never ends.
01:25:44: But as for prophecies, they will come to an end. Okay. So prophecies are going to come to an end.
01:25:52: That end is because of the way it is in the Greek there. Okay. That end that is going to come to, it's going to be a passive thing.
01:26:01: So they come to an end. As for knowledge, or sorry, as for languages, they will cease.
01:26:09: Now, this is a future middle indicative, which means it's going to cease on its own.
01:26:16: Okay. It's not a future passive indicative the way that the prophecies are going to cease.
01:26:24: And also when it says, and knowledge will come to an end, that also is the same future passive indicative.
01:26:35: In other words, something acts on this thing that ends prophecies and ends knowledge.
01:26:41: Okay. But the languages end on their own. That's going to be an important point.
01:26:49: Now, the question is, what is going to bring an end to this stuff? Okay. What we see in starting in verse 9, for we know in part and we prophesy in part.
01:27:01: So we have a partial knowledge right now. Okay. And what was being done at that time?
01:27:09: Well, scripture was being written. It was partial. He says, but when that which is perfect comes, okay, the partial will be put to an end.
01:27:21: So the big question is, what is the perfect? That is the question that you have to look at to say, once the perfect comes, whatever this is, the
01:27:31: Greek word teleos, which means it can be translated perfect, but it also can be translated mature or complete.
01:27:40: Why do I make that emphasis? There's a lot of people because of the English word perfect.
01:27:46: They say this must refer to Jesus Christ because only Jesus is perfect. But they don't look at that word the way it's used everywhere else in scripture and say that there must be absolute perfection.
01:27:59: Nowhere else is it used as absolute perfection. Correct. And so you can't argue that this has to be
01:28:08: Christ because of the English word without you. We have to understand the Greek and the
01:28:14: Greek is the idea of something that comes to maturity, comes to completion, comes to perfection. It's the finalizing of something, which is right in the context here.
01:28:23: So whenever this thing becomes finalized, then these gifts go away.
01:28:30: Prophecy, which is a gift of revelation. Tongues, which is a gift of revelation.
01:28:37: Knowledge, which is a gift of revelation. So we see that these three gifts have to do with revelation.
01:28:44: So in the context, the clearest argument, I think, is that when the revelation of God was completed, the canon was completed.
01:28:55: There is no more need for prophecies. There's no more need for knowledge. So when the canon was closed, that acted upon those gifts and they ended because they didn't continue.
01:29:07: Let me just finish one more point because in the context. Now the tongues, if you're given the gift of tongues, you have that as long as you're alive.
01:29:17: So when God gives the gift of tongues or languages, that person has that until they pass away.
01:29:24: In other words, the tongues will cease on their own. Fits within the context. Go ahead.
01:29:30: And I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm just thinking in terms of someone who would disagree.
01:29:38: When you refer to the perfect as the closing of the canon, is that not an argument from silence?
01:29:46: That's not what it says. You're making an inference based upon specific interpretations, and that conclusion is not necessitated from that text.
01:29:57: And so couldn't someone find some wiggle room and say, well, that's a good argument and it makes sense, but that's not necessarily the explicit teaching of that passage.
01:30:07: That's based off the assumption of certain interpretations and understandings. How would you respond to someone who says something like that?
01:30:12: Well, here's the dilemma they have. Every argument that they're going to make does the same thing.
01:30:19: Here's basically the arguments we're going to make. They're going to say that this is when we see Jesus. Why? As we go on, he gives three illustrations.
01:30:28: Now, one, they're going to say because only Jesus is perfect. Or what we see here is three illustrations.
01:30:36: And now notice what the illustrations are. When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I thought of a child.
01:30:42: I reasoned as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. So the illustration number one,
01:30:49: I was a child. I did things like a child. But when I was matured, again, the word teleos,
01:30:55: I put away childish things. I put away the things that are no longer needed because I'm a man, right?
01:31:03: So it's the idea of completion. Again, fitting with that word. Second illustration, verse 12.
01:31:11: For now we see distinctly as in a mirror or indistinctly as in a mirror, but then face to face.
01:31:20: Now here's the one that like Matt and many others will go into. Face to face always remains a personal encounter.
01:31:27: And they'll say face to face must mean when we see Jesus face to face. And that is a case where you, how do you make that argument?
01:31:38: Because the context here that we see is that this is something where he's saying that this is, again, an illustration.
01:31:51: Just like the first one's an illustration, this is an illustration of looking in a mirror dimly.
01:31:56: Now the reason I think we have such a hard time with this is because when we talk about looking in a mirror, we have a pretty good mirror, right?
01:32:07: Hold on, I got a mirror right here. There you go. He's got to find one since he's cracked so many of them.
01:32:14: Yeah, right? But if I was to put up some polished metal, right, it doesn't look so clear.
01:32:27: So the thing that you end up having is that's the mirror of the day that they would be aware of is just polished metal.
01:32:35: You don't see clearly as if looking face to face. By the way, face to face does not always mean a personal encounter.
01:32:44: I think it's Psalms or Proverbs. It says that when we look into a water face to face, it's translated faith reflects face.
01:32:54: That would be a good translation here, face reflects face. Because the issue, the comparison here is looking in a mirror dimly versus looking at someone face to face.
01:33:06: The comparison is looking vaguely versus looking clearly. Same as the previous.
01:33:12: Now, why isn't your response there? Why doesn't that commit the two quoque fallacy where you admit, well,
01:33:20: I have to make an inference, but so do you. Suppose I didn't even, suppose I gave the interpretation you gave.
01:33:27: You said that someone could say this. They'll have to say this, and therefore they'll do the same thing.
01:33:32: They'll have to infer. What if the person says, yeah, I interpret it. It's talking about Christ, but I could be wrong.
01:33:38: And so in admitting that they could be wrong in that interpretation, the point is still made that the explicit teaching of that passage is not necessarily referring to the closing of the canon.
01:33:49: It could, but that's not a demonstration. Well, here's the thing. Even if I didn't have a proper interpretation of the text.
01:33:56: Well, if I'm going to look at this face to face as the argument, or as the next illustration says, now
01:34:04: I know in part, but then I will know as fully as I am known. And so they say, well, when will we know fully when we're with Christ?
01:34:13: And so the thing that we end up having is you see three illustrations, all three do the same thing.
01:34:20: They show something that's partial to complete. Okay. Which is what teleos mean.
01:34:26: So whenever it's complete, there's no more need for that. Now, when is it not needed to, to put up with childish things?
01:34:34: Well, that would be when you, when you're no longer a child, right? You don't need those things anymore.
01:34:41: When don't you need that mirror? When you can see someone face to face, when don't you need the partial knowledge when you have the complete knowledge.
01:34:48: So here what you have, you can sit there and look at all the different arguments.
01:34:54: But when we look at these gifts, they're gifts of revelation. Therefore the, any of the arguments are going to be one that you're, because the text is not a hundred percent clear on this.
01:35:08: And that's why there's discussion on it, right? The context is gifts of revelation.
01:35:13: Therefore, I think the clearest argument is to accept this as the canon of scripture, because that is revelation.
01:35:22: The arguments for saying that if you, you know, looking face to face, what you're doing there is you're ripping out an illustration and you're making it a literal, but then what does the mirror mean?
01:35:35: Well, it means nothing. You see what you have to do to make that argument that it's the, that it's the, when we see
01:35:42: Christ, when, you know, at the end of the age, whatever you're going to try to argue with that, you're ripping out an illustration and there's nothing in the context that says that these are not illustrations.
01:35:56: But suppose, suppose I refrained from providing an interpretation. So, you know what?
01:36:02: That's ambiguous. I don't, I don't really know what it means. I understand what you're saying, but I don't see what, what you're saying is necessitated by that by that passage.
01:36:12: If I were to just say, for example, tell me where the scripture teaches that the, the church is not to enjoy these gifts today.
01:36:21: You make an argument based off an interpretation and make an inference, which I think is a good one, but it's not necessarily explicit there.
01:36:30: And so I can see why, or at least this is why I'm cautious, not because I don't think what you just provided is a good argument, but I'm cautious in saying that it's a knockdown argument because I don't think it's explicit enough.
01:36:43: Yeah. So let's, let's go on. So now I would, I would challenge people and say, well, give me in context, the better argument.
01:36:51: And typically what they're going to do is they're, they're going to take something out of context here to say, okay, face to face must mean seeing
01:37:00: Christ face to face. Well, where does that? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
01:37:05: But what you just said, I don't see it. I don't see it. That it necessitates that it's speaking about the, but it does fit with the context because of what the gifts themselves are.
01:37:16: They're revelation. Okay. Right. So when, when, so let's like, look at the first illustration, right?
01:37:21: A child to manhood. What do you do when you become a man, you put away childish things. Well, if you have gifts that are giving you revelation, well, once the revelation is complete, do you need those gifts anymore?
01:37:34: You don't need them. No. Okay. So it fits perfect with the illustration when you have a mirror and you're looking at it and you're looking dimly, you're not seeing clearly, but now
01:37:45: I can see you face to face. Do I need the mirror anymore? You don't need it, but I think that there are a lot of things that Christians enjoy that they don't need just by being children of God.
01:37:56: For example, we don't need angels to do what they do. But the point is once we have the completed
01:38:04: Canon, do we need more, more revelation?
01:38:09: If God says the Canton is complete, then there is no more revelation. Right now. And I would agree because I believe that the
01:38:15: Canon is closed. But hasn't it been a discussion that the spiritual gifts are not,
01:38:22: I mean, I don't believe I, me growing up in church with the speaking in tongues, because I've never been taught that speaking in tongues prophecy was providing new revelation.
01:38:35: Rather, it was a miraculous manifestation that confirmed that, that confirmed what has already been written.
01:38:41: And through that supernatural experience, believers are encouraged and strengthened. So that's how, that's how
01:38:47: I was taught. So I know there are people who claim to have new revelation. Now let's think through that. Who is the source of this prophecy that they get?
01:38:54: Well, if, if, if it's a valid manifestation of the spirit, it would have to be
01:38:59: God. Therefore the Canon, the Canon you could argue is closed because God's not writing anymore, but whatever was given is equal in authority to scripture.
01:39:09: Right? Yeah. I wouldn't say there's a difference in the, in the authority since it's from, it's from God.
01:39:17: And so in other words, what I think the reason why people put it on a different level, for example, like, so then why don't we include that in the scripture?
01:39:25: I think the medium through which it comes, scripture is more, you know, it's kind of a more immovable standard as opposed to what
01:39:34: I, or someone else might say. So in that sense, I wouldn't write that. And if we wrote it down, the Bible would be huge.
01:39:40: That's why, you know, it's already huge. That's why prophecy, if it occurs today, I would think would have to already confirm what
01:39:47: God has established so that whereas it serves its spiritual and edificational purpose, it's not necessarily something that needs to be added on to what
01:39:57: God has already given. And, but here's the thing, what we end up seeing is, and this is the way many would argue is that it is new revelation because it is a word from God.
01:40:09: See, I've never heard anyone. I mean, anyone in, in those circles. Of course not. Because, because once they say that it's clearly false teaching, which is the question,
01:40:21: I know they don't believe that, but when you think through it, that's, and this is the way many would argue.
01:40:28: If God, if God miraculously gave a word, which confirmed a principle in scripture, but by God revealing it through miraculous means, it kind of points people back to what
01:40:38: God has done. I don't see how that's being. Well, I'm not saying that that happens. Yeah. I mean, typically, yeah, typically what you see, and this is if you read first Corinthians 12, 13, 14, in context, what you end up realizing is, and this is what
01:40:52: I did. I was in the charismatic movement. Someone said they didn't, that the gift ceased. And I was like, what? And they weren't even talking to me.
01:40:58: I just overheard the conversation. I went home, read these three chapters in context and realized everything that I was taught.
01:41:05: These chapters are condemning. They're actually condemning the VA. And these are the verses that people use to justify what they're doing, but they take them.
01:41:13: They take them out of context. They just take a few of them here and there, cherry pick them. Why? Because the simple reality is that when you look at them in context, it condemns the behavior of looking to gifts.
01:41:26: And that's what ultimately happens. When someone gets a word, they don't point back to scripture. They point to the word, the word becomes that, that word of faith becomes the thing.
01:41:37: And it's look how spiritual I am. And that's exactly what Paul's condemning here and saying,
01:41:42: Hey, if you don't have love, you're nothing. and that's because that's exactly what they were doing.
01:41:49: Right. Okay. Now, if you say, well, this isn't compelling, the challenge then is, as we look,
01:41:55: I think it's, I think it's very convincing. Like I follow your train of thought and I'm like, that makes a lot of sense.
01:42:02: I'm just thinking in terms of the person who is a continuation is I can see reasonably why they say that makes sense, but I don't think that's necessitated in the scripture.
01:42:10: And unless the Bible explicitly says these gifts have ceased, then I think we are in a, you know, a good place to affirm them and function within them.
01:42:21: Of course, in as much as they're consistent with what the Bible already says about them. So whether that's correct or not, I can see why someone could hold that.
01:42:28: And many are, many are going to come to this because they're going to say why speak in tongues. And therefore, once they do that, it's, it's their experience that become there.
01:42:36: So their experience actually becomes more important than scripture. And well, it can be it, but I don't think if a person is, if a person who is speaking in tongues, assuming, you know and they're trying and they, they receive that in a biblical fashion, then they will, they will function in that gift while still highlighting the foundational nature of scripture and the, and how these things point to Christ.
01:43:04: There are people who can speak in tongues and have that fleshly emphasis, but I don't,
01:43:10: I wouldn't say that to everybody. There are people who say, I speak in tongues, but it's not about the gift. It's about the giver of the gift.
01:43:15: And we need to focus on Jesus and not allow these things to take away from the glory of God. There are people who claim to speak in tongues and take that route.
01:43:24: And not necessarily the abuses, like you pointed out where people kind of focus on the gift more than the, than the giver.
01:43:31: I, again, I'm not defending the continuationist view. I'm just saying I can see where they're coming from.
01:43:36: And then here's the, here's the other thing you have to think about. Why do we see in scripture that these gifts somehow ceased?
01:43:43: Let me give you the gift of healing. For example, early on. I mean, just, just touching
01:43:49: Jesus could heal someone. Right. So you had this, where we see about the healings, they were immediate healings, complete healings.
01:44:01: Okay. And it wasn't like, you know, my, my, my legs stretched out an inch.
01:44:08: They were miraculous. That's my favorite one. That convinced me of continuation. Yeah. Just kidding.
01:44:15: Yeah. So, so here's what you end up having. Right. And by the way, the one with this leg stretching,
01:44:22: Justin Peters taught me this. So, so basically most people there, there, there will be a different length between their legs and it's just tension.
01:44:32: And if you, if you put it, put pressure on it, there's one pressure point where if you push the Achilles heel, it just relaxes it.
01:44:38: And your foot will automatically stretch out. And they go, Oh, look, it's a miracle. And then five minutes later, it's back.
01:44:45: So they just. Well, when you accompany that with music and songs. Hey, 30 minutes.
01:44:51: Then, I mean, I can make a simple magic trick look like a miracle. Yeah. And so here's the thing.
01:44:57: When you get later on in life, right. In Paul says to Timothy, Hey, you're, you're drinking just water.
01:45:05: You're getting dysentery. Drink a little wine for your stomach. Say, so in other words, kill the dysentery. He doesn't say, go heal yourself.
01:45:10: And he doesn't heal him. In fact, if you go to the book of Philemon, sorry, wrong book,
01:45:18: Philippians, Philippians. He's, he's got. No, I think it was finally me.
01:45:24: I was right. Finally. He's got, he's got a guy that is almost died. To take care of him.
01:45:31: No, it is Philippians. Sorry. I keep flipping on emphasis was, was almost died taking care of Paul and Paul sends him back to Philippi.
01:45:43: Okay. Because of his health, he says he almost died. And for that reason, he sends them back.
01:45:50: Why didn't Paul just heal him? Well, doesn't that presuppose that if someone has the gift of healing,
01:45:56: That that necessarily entails that such a person can heal on demand. That is the gift.
01:46:01: Yes. Well, at any moment, is there something, is there something, and I'm asking,
01:46:07: I'm not asking as a, as a response to you, is it. And I'm not aware of this, that the gift of healing is that at any moment, someone could heal on command.
01:46:17: That that's the understanding of the gift. And, and, you know, they would, and it would be a complete healing.
01:46:22: That's the reason I say, when people say they have the gift of healing, do they hate their neighbor? Because there's a hospital in their neighborhood.
01:46:32: Right. Okay. And I know Benny Hinn, he said he cleared out a hospital. There's no evidence of it, but, um, you know, and, and we, we just released a podcast,
01:46:45: Justin Peters and I, my Andrew reports, rap report, uh, dealing with Benny Hinn's supposed repentance.
01:46:52: It's not repentance. Uh, so, so those would be the arguments that I would make against, uh, against the, that the gifts have ceased that some of these gifts have ceased.
01:47:01: Specifically this passage in first Corinthians 13 would give three of them, prophecy, tongues, and knowledge.
01:47:09: Now, those are the only three where we have scripture that says they cease. I could look at healing and in deduct from deduction, look at it and say, well, early on,
01:47:20: Paul's healing. Everybody later, he's got someone almost dies on him and he doesn't heal him. Okay.
01:47:27: Uh, Paul gets sick. Did he no longer, did you say Paul at that point no longer had the gift of beyond?
01:47:33: I would say he, he no longer had that gift. Yeah. Actually he told Timothy to go take a little grape juice for his, yeah.
01:47:45: So do you think there was a point where it's not this cranberry juice that I have to drink for my, uh, my prostate?
01:47:53: Yeah. Andrew would. Whoa. It just doesn't taste good.
01:48:00: Would you say that Paul who had the gift of healing one day tried to heal someone and realize it didn't work and said, wait a minute, what happened?
01:48:09: Let me try praying for someone else. And that person doesn't get healed. Yeah. I think there was a moment at which he just realized that,
01:48:16: Hey, his prayers for healing weren't getting answered. I guess I don't have it anymore. No, I, I would think that God, God probably put it on their heart to heal the person.
01:48:25: Right. So I wouldn't argue that it's their faith that heals them. Right. God puts it on his heart to heal someone.
01:48:34: And the person with the gift of healing, God puts it on their heart to pray for those that God is about to heal.
01:48:39: So it's not necessarily a healing on demand. It's a healing that's prompted by the Holy spirit in a particular context.
01:48:45: So in that case, that doesn't necessarily, that doesn't necessitate that any, that such a person who has a gift would be able to heal anyone.
01:48:53: You see, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Anthony, of course, the argument of the faith healers today is that they can heal at their.
01:49:04: Yes. Right. And that's where I would have issue with. Yeah. It's fault. Is it.
01:49:10: What's that? Oh, they don't have enough faith then. Yeah. It's the person that needs the healing.
01:49:15: Yeah. Yeah. And so this goes back then to the Bethel school, supernatural ministry, right?
01:49:21: BSSM of which Lindsay Davis was part of. And this is a school you pay tuition to, you go for nine months and you learn the gift of healing after paying tuition and courses.
01:49:35: I don't. You can come out and heal. Well, so I would probably disagree with the answer.
01:49:41: And one thing is that I don't, I wouldn't necessarily believe that Paul or Peter, these guys had that, that they were prompted to heal people.
01:49:52: I mean, it doesn't say that in scripture, it seems like they were just healing. And my suspicion would be that as time went on,
01:50:00: I mean, basic as we read through, say that the book of acts and you see that the gifts are declining pretty rapidly in the book of acts.
01:50:08: I would think that it's because early on there, they're, they're verifying they're being verified by these gifts, right.
01:50:15: And spreading the gospel. How much more necessary is that as time's going on? And the gospel is obviously spreading like wildfire.
01:50:22: Right. So they probably didn't need to rely on it as much. I do. I think that's an important point because you, when you just said that it made me think of the gospel of John, that, that when
01:50:33: Jesus performed miracles, they weren't called miracles. They were called signs. Yeah. And so the miracles were done in a particular context for a particular revelatory purpose.
01:50:45: It was pointing to the validity of what Jesus was doing. And it was pointing to the validity of what the apostles were doing.
01:50:51: I have a friend who is a Presbyterian. I don't know if you, if you're familiar with his name, his name is Bill Shishko.
01:50:57: He's somewhat well known. He debated James white on the topic of infant baptism. Okay. So as a
01:51:03: Presbyterian, obviously you guys would disagree with that position, but he became maybe drowning. That's what we call it.
01:51:09: I'm sorry. Baby drowning. That's what we call it. That's right. He framed the issue of tongues in a very helpful way that I, that was more convincing to me is that when we come to the question of whether tongues is for today to ask the question, our tongues for today is the wrong way to go about it.
01:51:31: He said something to the effect that the way we should approach the question is to explore what the purpose of tongues was.
01:51:38: So like, what's the purpose of tongues. And then from there deduce that it's no longer for today, as opposed to beginning with the question, is it for today is when you derive the purpose, then
01:51:49: I think you're in a better place to infer that there is no purpose for it in the context we're in now.
01:51:56: Okay. So the purpose that we see in act two, when the first account that we see of it is a sign to the
01:52:03: Jews. Right. And now we have mostly Gentiles.
01:52:08: So how's it go assigned to the Jews anymore? So I think the purpose of it ends when you have the completion of the
01:52:16: Canon, when you no longer have the, you know, the Jews being the ones that you're witnessing to there in that sense, that's no longer a
01:52:25: Jewish religion. So I would say for those reasons as well, because here's the thing historically, we see three major times where we see miracles occur.
01:52:39: One first time, Moses, Moses does this miraculous stuff.
01:52:44: Why what's Moses doing? He's writing scripture. It's the beginning of scripture.
01:52:50: Then there's a period of silence. And then what happens? Elijah and Elisha come on the scene miracles.
01:52:58: What starts happening after that? The writing of scripture with the prophets in a period of silence.
01:53:04: And then all of a sudden Jesus comes on scene and disciples and there's miracles. And what do we have?
01:53:09: The writing of the new Testament, the major sign that we see where there's major miracles going on all have to do with the continuation of scripture because it validates the writings.
01:53:22: Yeah. Yeah. Once the Canon's complete, I don't think there's a need for those miraculous gifts anymore.
01:53:30: So, so, so I get, cause see the word miracle can be misleading because miracle is just like,
01:53:36: Oh look, it's, it's a miracle. Something God did something amazing, but the word signs in my mind, it points to a context.
01:53:44: So the word miracle is, is kind of, we can look at that word in isolation where signs forces you to understand the miracle with a broader context.
01:53:53: Like Catherine says here in her comment, she says, okay, I was miraculously healed as a child. I was born a cripple.
01:54:00: Uh, that was a miracle and God can do miracles. This is the difference. God can do that.
01:54:07: We're not saying that God can't do that. We're saying that God doesn't give it the gift to men to do that.
01:54:13: That's the difference. So, so you're saying that the gift of healing someone could heal on demand and that's substantially different than me praying for Andrew and God happened.
01:54:27: It happens to grant my prayer and you're here. That doesn't mean I have the gift of healing because God responded to my prayer.
01:54:35: Because what you see is the gift of healing was always vindicating the message that the disciples proclaimed.
01:54:41: And therefore, you know, you don't have that. You're not proclaiming a new message. I hope.
01:54:48: And this is obviously the source of, uh, the big, I think the biggest straw man argument against, uh, cessationists is that continuationists will, will quickly say, also, you don't believe in miracles.
01:55:00: No, that's not what we said at all. I have no problem with God healing people in his own will and his own sovereignty.
01:55:08: Um, yes, I believe people get healed, but it has nothing to do with us. Well, it's like KT says here, there's a difference between miracles and gifts of miracles.
01:55:19: And I think she's right there. So, so we're going to end up having to wrap this up. Uh, I, I do love earlier for folks who are regulars here, uh,
01:55:28: Catholic traditionals came in, uh, earlier and in the comment section was demanding that someone, uh, answer his question.
01:55:35: He claimed that Justin Peters, uh, he asked Justin Peters for explicit verse, which says, uh, all who come to a repentance, um, uh, sorry.
01:55:47: Uh, he said, I, I asked you for an explicit verse, which says all who come to God will repent of any and all future sins before their death.
01:55:58: Uh, you didn't provide an explicit verse. Um, yeah, I don't understand.
01:56:04: I don't understand the question. Basically. Here's the thing. He asked the question. He wanted a verse.
01:56:10: Justin provided a verse. He kept interrupting Justin over and over and over again, and then said,
01:56:15: Justin didn't provide the verse. That actually says exactly what he was challenging. So, uh, and there's a bunch of folks in the chat that are trying to reason with Catholic traditionalist.
01:56:27: There's no reasoning with him because he does this all the time. Okay. He just ignores what is told to him.
01:56:34: So, uh, so you just kind of deal with it. So, uh, folks, just as a quick reminder,
01:56:40: I mentioned earlier, uh, we're going to Israel. Uh, we'll see Anthony beardless in Israel because your wife will be there, but go to 2021
01:56:50: Israel trip .com sign up now, because this is filling up. Like I said, more than a quarter of the bus is already filled.
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01:57:18: I've shared this before, but we have our, uh, one of our largest donors, or he is our largest donor. He's retiring and he's going to be, he's not going to be able to donate anymore.
01:57:26: And with that, we need to make that up. If we want to continue doing all the same ministry that we do.
01:57:32: Uh, if not, we have to cut back some ministry. So go to striving for eternity .org slash donate, uh, to set up a monthly donation.
01:57:40: We would greatly appreciate that. Um, there are some things you get. If you give even as little as $2 a month, you will get a free book from us.
01:57:49: You get one of my books called, what do we believe? If you give $5, you get that book. Plus what do they believe?
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01:58:03: Plus the book sharing the good news with Mormons, which has like 24 different authors. So, uh, just something for you to think about.
01:58:11: so we, we appreciate Eli coming in. Like I said, next week, uh, we will have, uh, a creationist
01:58:19: Paul Taylor from the UK. He is out in Mount St. Helens, and we're going to talk a lot about evolution.
01:58:26: So if you have questions of, of evolution and creation science, please come in next week, go to apologize, live .com.
01:58:34: If you have friends who don't believe in creation science, but believe in evolution, or maybe they're
01:58:39: Christians that they say they believe in old earth, have them come on in. It would be a great show for them to be able to get some of their questions answered.
01:58:48: Even if they have challenges, Paul will be able to address them. So that is, uh, was that the 19th?
01:58:55: Let me look at the date. So that is the, the, uh, September 19th is
01:59:01: Paul Taylor. September 26th is going to be Jason Lyle. Uh, that's going to be a great topic where we're probably going to talk some things about logic.
01:59:11: We're going to be talking about planets since he's an astrophysicist. Wait, what is what date is that?
01:59:16: I'd love to be, I'd love to ask Jason Lyle a thousand questions on presuppositionalism and logic.
01:59:22: Well, that is the 26th. That's two weeks from tonight. Okay. The 26th, three weeks from tonight,
01:59:30: October 3rd, we will not have an open Q and a, we will have a formal debate on the topic of baptism between a
01:59:39: Lutheran and a Baptist. Uh, it will be, uh, Ken Cook is the
01:59:44: Baptist. I don't know who the Lutheran is. I forget his name, but, but October 3rd, we will have a debate on baptism.
01:59:53: So I'm sure that's going to be good. So, like I said, Matt's going to be out at least for the rest of this year, but until he comes back, we're going to be trying to bring some folks in, uh, bring in maybe
02:00:04: Dr. Silvestro here, talk creation science. Um, I will be gone.
02:00:10: Uh, one of those Thursdays, probably, I think it's October 17th that we won't have a show just so you know.
02:00:16: And, uh, but we're going to try to get folks to fill in, probably try to get Eli set up.
02:00:21: This technology is easy enough. Even Eli could do it. But, uh, but we appreciate you guys watching, checking out, please folks share this, share apologetics live .com.
02:00:35: Join us. If you have questions, I know you can ask them in the chat, but we appreciate it a whole lot more when you come on in and ask us questions.
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02:00:50: So until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.