How Do I Defend The Christian Faith?

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So we are talking about apologetics. This morning we talked about apologetics to the glory of God.

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And now we're talking about apologetics to the glory of God and the application of that into the world.

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So I should first start by talking about the word apologetics, not making any assumptions that we all know exactly what that is.

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We're talking about the defense of the Christian faith. You could be, of the Christian faith, you could be an apologist, a defender of atheism.

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You could be an apologist for Marxism. You could be a defender of Marxism. You could be an apologist for the

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Biden administration. You could be an apologist for anything. It's about bringing a reasoned defense for something.

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And when we talk about the history of the Christian faith, the history of the Christian faith is a history that is filled with Christians who went into the public square and they defended

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God's truth in the public square. We actually have a command in scripture that all believers are actually given a mandate by God that you are called to be ready, always be ready to give a reasoned defense for the hope that's within you and to do it with respect to those that you give it to.

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And we get that from 1 Peter 3, verse 15. 1 Peter 3, 15, we call this a charter verse of Christian apologetics.

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Now, in the short time we have together tonight, we'll be done by midnight. In the short time we have together tonight, it's not possible to unpack all of these passages.

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So I wanna encourage you to make sure that you're writing down these passages or go back and watch the video later and make sure that you understand what these passages are saying.

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It's actually this little section here from 1 Peter 3, 15 is used often as a charter verse of Christian apologetics.

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But there are things I think that are often missed as people sort of explain that Christians are commanded to always be ready to give a reasoned defense for the hope that's within them with gentleness and reverence.

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And Peter actually begins, the inspired apostle begins this charter verse of Christian apologetics with the statement that we are to set

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Christ apart as Lord in our hearts. Now, it gets missed oftentimes as we talk about the defense of the

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Christian faith. As a Christian defending God's truth, defending the claims of Christ, it gets missed that we're first called to set

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Jesus apart as Lord, to sanctify something, to set it apart as a holy thing.

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Peter says to set Christ apart as Lord. I would actually argue there that he's quoting from the

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Old Testament and he's actually saying to set Christ apart as Yahweh, as God in your hearts.

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So before we begin this discussion about defending the Christian faith and this command to always be ready to do so, we need to consider that the apostle

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Peter first starts with the charge that Christians are to set Jesus apart as Lord in their hearts.

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Now, I would say that that begins this discussion with abolishing the myth of neutrality, that we can defend the

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Christian faith on neutral ground. But the apostle Peter says that, set

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Christ apart as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to give an apologia, a reasoned defense for the hope that's within you.

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Apologia, and I'm saying that properly, Dr. White will be very proud of me for saying that properly. Apologia is a word that's like courtroom language.

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It's the kind of thing you say in a courtroom or in a public debate. Apologia, a reasoned defense of the

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Christian faith for the hope that's within you. And you have to do it with gentleness and reverence. Oftentimes, that gets missed as well.

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We miss things on the front end and the back end of defending the Christian faith. On the front end, oftentimes, you'll have

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Christian apologists, famous Christian apologists, who will even go into a discussion publicly with a mixed crowd or in a public debate and they'll say things like,

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I'm not here defending the Christian God. Well, that's not setting

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Christ apart as Lord in your hearts. That's approaching the defense of the Christian faith without a foot in the

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Christian faith. Doesn't make a lot of sense. So that gets missed oftentimes. We try to defend the

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Christian faith on neutral grounds, and I would say that's unfaithful biblically, and I would say philosophically, it's impossible to do so.

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But on the back end, oftentimes, you'll see people who are very zealous about the Christian faith. They have an internal desire to glorify

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God and to defend Christ and his claims, but they'll do it in an abusive manner. They'll do it in a way that neglects the image of God in front of them.

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They'll do it in a way that neglects the truths of scripture about how a person comes to faith to begin with.

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It's God who opens eyes. It's God who changes hearts from stone to flesh. It's God who brings dead people to life.

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It's God who takes enemies and makes them children by adoption. That's what God does.

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And so what am I in this whole enterprise of Christian apologetics? Well, I'm the apologist and the evangelist.

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I'm here to use the apologetic methodology to bring this person the gospel, to call them to repent and to believe the gospel.

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But I have to do so in such a way that I remain balanced and I do it with gentleness and with reverence, with respect.

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And so what I wanna say is as you begin this discussion about the Christian faith and defending the

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Christian faith, apologetics at a street level in the 21st century, I think it's important for us to do something, and that is to make the book of Acts the grounding for our methodology of the proclamation of the gospel and the defense of the

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Christian faith. You see both of those things in the book of Acts. You see both things taking place, evangelism and apologetics.

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Now, they are two categories, but I would argue that evangelism and apologetics are supposed to be wrapped up together.

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They are categories. One's the defense of the Christian faith, one's the proclamation of the Christian faith, the call to repent and believe.

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But I would argue if you follow Jesus' methodology and the apostles' methodology, evangelism and apologetics are supposed to be wrapped up together.

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And what you see in the book of Acts and in terms of methodology is you see the apostles going about defending the

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Christian faith and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they're doing it in such a way as it's not,

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I say this often, Bible studies in basements only. It's not something where they're just merely calling people into a personal romance with Jesus.

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It's not something where they're saying this is something we're to keep hidden behind our ears, behind our eyes and between our ears.

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They're actually going into the public square, into the marketplace of ideas, and they are bringing the

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Christian worldview and the claims of Christ into collision with all that the world has to offer.

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I wanna argue that a failure in modern missions is we fail to recognize that God has given to us a roadmap.

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He's given to us a ground for our methodology. What we see are inspired apostles and a leadership in the early

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Christian church, in the ancient church, filled with the spirit of God, and they go into the public square and they bring the truth of God into collision with the world's ideas and philosophies.

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Now what takes place? I've talked about this this morning. You can read throughout the book of Acts. There are many instances.

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What takes place? You have the apostles in conflict with the government itself. The government's telling them, don't preach in this name.

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Didn't we tell you to stop preaching this name? And the apostle Peter gives us a methodology. He gives us divine truth.

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He says, we must obey God rather than men. And they take a beating for Jesus and they leave the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

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And then what do they do? Obey the government, take a break, take a rest. No, they keep going out house to house, proclaiming

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Christ in the public square. They're getting in trouble. They're taking beatings. In Acts 9, when the apostle

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Paul comes to Christ, it says he takes a beeline to Damascus. He goes to Damascus and he starts going to where the

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Jews are, arguing with them, proving that Jesus is the Messiah. The apostles argued with people, argued for the truth of the gospel, argued for the truth of the claims of Jesus Christ.

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They went into the public square, into the religious context, and they argued for the

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Christian faith. They believed that this was the truth. Jesus said it. I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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No man comes to the Father but by me. They believed that there was truth. And you were either a part of that truth or you were in error or you were deluded.

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And so the early apostles would go into context where they actually brought the Christian faith in such a way that they believed that it was the truth and it could be defended.

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And the result in Acts 9 is actually rather interesting. I think many times, many modern professors or people who teach evangelism would probably have some words for the apostle

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Paul and say maybe change your methodology. Maybe invite people to barbecues on the weekend.

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Maybe spend a couple of years developing a relationship with the person so that you can earn the right to preach the gospel to them.

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That's one of the silliest things I've ever heard in my life. Jesus has already given us the authority to preach the gospel.

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I don't have to earn the right to preach the gospel to anybody. To anybody. But oftentimes you would have people today say you really need to create relationships with people so that they can trust you and like you.

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And I'm all for that. Listen, you should live your life in such a way that you live your life consistently so people understand that you are a truly consistent person, that you love them, that you're not abusive.

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I'm all for that. But what you see in Acts chapter nine is actually rather interesting. You see the apostle going to preach the gospel and argue for the truth of the

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Christian faith and what takes place? It says what? That the Hellenistic Jews wanted to kill him.

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Many times people would say maybe Paul should have just done something a little bit different there. He's got people that want him dead.

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I mean how many of us, and I said this this morning, how many of us have ever had people take oaths not to eat food until we're dead?

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I mean was it a failure in missions? These people in the community, they've decided not to eat food until you're dead.

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You know you're having to be lowered out of windows and baskets. Like you're on the run, you're in danger constantly.

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Like maybe you should change it up a little bit, Apostle Paul. No, it says in Acts chapter nine that as people wanted to kill

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Paul, there was that segment that wanted to kill him. It said that what? The church was built up, it experienced peace, and it was multiplied.

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So you have those two tracks running together. You have persecution, you have people wanting him dead, you have riots breaking out, you have beatings taking place, and you also have the church being built up, experiencing peace, and multiplying.

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The world was transforming. And I think it's important for us to recognize something. We have 2 ,000 years of church history behind us, huge transformation of the world.

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I mean just think about it today. We're in Asheville, North Carolina. We've got a mixed audience. We have people in this room, different backgrounds, different genders, different colors, two genders by the way, different colors.

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We've got, we have just this very diverse past behind us, and most of us,

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I mean how many of you guys are physically descended, you're Jewish by descent?

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Anybody, raise your hand. Okay, so raise your hand. Don't be afraid, I don't even know why you're ashamed of that. It's a wonderful thing. Okay, raise your hand.

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We got one, is that it? Okay, thank you. So we have a room full of basically descendants from pagans, right,

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Gentiles. You got Asheville, North Carolina in the 21st century. I'm from the desert in Phoenix, Arizona.

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I got a church, same way. It's filled with all kinds of different people, mostly descendants from pagans, all worshiping and loving the

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Lord God of Israel because of Jesus. The world has been transformed, is being transformed.

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We've got to think about something now. We've got all the benefits of 2 ,000 years of church history behind us, and the

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Christian worldview transforming the world in so many different ways. That's all behind us.

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But oftentimes people look at the culture around us and they're like, oh man, it's difficult. The world is so far gone right now.

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There's all this homosexuality, and you've got all of this confusion with gender.

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You've got all this confusion in terms of truth. You've got all this subjectivism, all this idolatry.

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All this is going on. Brothers and sisters, that's what the world looked like in many ways when the church broke into Rome.

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You understand that? Yeah, homosexuality was a very big thing then. You had pagan temples down the street from your home where you can go into where you had men acting like women in these pagan rituals.

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You had all this going on in the first century. You have all this confusion going on in the first century. You've got all this idolatry, and you had a state that said that it was

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God literally. Caesar, his lord, was a claim to deity, ultimately.

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Caligula amplified the deity of Caesar, and then of course Nero took it and ran with it, but that's what the church broke into, and the church, don't forget, started with some very confused disciples, small handful of them, where this small handful of disciples, after their master and their lord and their god and their king dies and rises from the dead, they're a little bit confused about what's going on, and before he ascends, what's he say?

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He says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been, past tense, by the way, has been given to me.

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On that basis, he says, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and doing what?

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Teaching them to obey. Now, here is this man who was recently murdered on a cross, raised from the dead, small handful of disciples in a pagan society, overrunning everything, and he says now, ready?

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Go in the world, it belongs to me, right? And that's what they did.

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So I wouldn't argue the book of Acts should be a model for us when we talk about apologetics on the street level in the 21st century, we should be looking at the book of Acts in terms of how did they do missions?

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How did they proclaim the truth in the public square? They should be our model.

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That should be our standard. And I wanna just argue, as I did this morning, you have two tracks there you see in the book of Acts.

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One, persecution, beatings, riots, all that's taking place, and you see the church being built up, experiencing peace, and being multiplied.

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Both of those, ready? To the glory of God. Both of those are successful missions when done faithfully.

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I wanna argue, if you take a beating for Jesus, if you're hated by the world and the culture for Christian truth, if you're persecuted, thrown in jail for a faithful proclamation of the truth, that is successful mission.

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It is purely successful mission because God will be glorified in the last day when the final resurrection happens and all of this is finally fully renewed and all that takes place,

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God will be glorified in two ways, in his justice and in his grace.

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Right? People that are coming to Jesus, church being multiplied, proclamation of God's truth,

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God's glorified in his grace. They didn't deserve to be saved. None of us do. If you know your heart, you know that.

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And then over here, when you have people persecuting the truth on the basis of Christian truth being proclaimed and defended,

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God will be glorified in his justice. He can say to the watching world on that final day, he can say,

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I sent my people with my truth and you hated them, you persecuted them.

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You're such an enemy of God that even when my truth is brought before you, you hate me.

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God is glorified in missions when his truth is proclaimed faithfully and I'm gonna argue, here's the sidebar.

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I want you guys to make sure you're hanging on to. God is not glorified. God is not glorified in the defense of the truth that is coming from a neutral position or a pretended neutrality.

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We're Christians and the only foundation of knowledge or wisdom in the first place is

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Jesus Christ. I'm gonna go to the text here. Follow me to Colossians chapter two. Colossians chapter two.

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For some of you guys that were here earlier today, you'll recognize this, but I wanna make sure everyone has these in your toolbox.

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Colossians chapter two. Just a quick background as you get there. The Apostle Paul and the

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Apostle John have to engage with the early beginnings of Gnosticism in the first century. You see them responding to Gnostic thought or directly to the

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Gnostics as the Apostle John does in his letter. But the Apostle Paul here is responding in part to some of those things and I wanna point you to what's being said here about Christ as the foundation of knowledge.

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He says in Colossians chapter two, verse one, for I want you to know how great a struggle

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I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery which is

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Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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That is a bold, bold, bold claim. You got people running around in the first century claiming the secret knowledge.

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They've got secret knowledge. They've got the secret wisdom, the secret understanding. You gotta be with them to understand it.

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You gotta get their stuff. And the Apostle Paul says, Christ, it's in him who are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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You want knowledge? You want wisdom? You want understanding? It's hidden in Christ.

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Avoid Christ. Don't stand on Christ. Don't have Christ as the reference point.

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And there's no real wisdom and knowledge available. It's gonna be confused.

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He says this, I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body and I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

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Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus, Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught at bounding and thanksgiving.

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And here it is. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

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So for the Apostle Paul, he doesn't want you to be robbed. He doesn't want you to be robbed by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

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So there is a philosophy which is according to Christ. And there is one that is not according to Christ.

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And the Apostle Paul says, I don't want you to be robbed. If you want knowledge, if you want wisdom, if you want understanding, if you want the truth, it's in Christ.

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And I don't want you to be robbed from all these treasures that are in Christ by following a philosophy that is not according to Christ.

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So for the Apostle Paul, it's a bold claim. You realize that this discussion about knowledge and wisdom and understanding and reason and truth, this has been going on for ages and ages and ages.

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And you have the whole history of philosophy. Is one philosopher saying, they all got it wrong,

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I've got it right. Today, today, in universities all over the world, you've got philosophy professors saying, this is the way, no, this is the way, no, this is the way.

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The whole history of philosophy is just confusing and filled with fools.

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People who refuse to start their thinking with Christ as the reference point. The question of knowledge, how do

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I know? And I wanna argue, actually, that's one of the foundational things, one of the pillars in the discussion of Apologetics of the

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Street level. How do you know? How do you know? And I'm gonna argue that apart from Christ, knowledge isn't really possible.

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It can't be justified apart from Jesus Christ. It's all hidden in Christ. Now, I'm gonna just say something really important.

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When you tell Christians today, who are engaging in a world that's been so impacted by the

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Christian worldview, and unbelievers have adopted and borrowed all of our capital that Christianity has given to them, and you say, but I really need to be able to reason well in this area, and I'm gonna argue, yes, you need to study those evidences, you need to study these different things and facts.

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It's all a benefit, mostly, to Christians. You do, but when you say, listen, you need to start with the foundation that knowledge isn't even possible outside of Jesus.

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A lot of times people go, that's kind of, you know, really? I mean, really?

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Like, it's not, you can't justify knowledge apart from Jesus? No, you can't, not in a coherent way.

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And that's what the Bible says through and through. I'll give you another example of it. Go to Proverbs chapter one.

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It's the book of wisdom. How to apply God's truth and knowledge.

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And in Proverbs chapter one, so we, by the way, if you've read

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Proverbs, you should already know this. It's chapter one, so if you're like, you know, you didn't finish, at least you got chapter one.

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And it's seven verses in. I think we can all handle that.

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Proverbs chapter one, it says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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Another bold claim coming from Scripture. Don't we miss it sometimes? I mean, I'll confess. This book is glorious.

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I have not even begun to tap this thing. It is so powerful and so amazing, and we all miss things.

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Things just go zip right past us all the time. Like a statement like that, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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That's huge. Knowledge begins with reverence, submission, and awe to God.

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You want to truly know something? It begins with reverence, submission, and awe before God. That's a bold, bold claim, and that's what the

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Bible teaches. I'm not ashamed of it. And when you defend the faith in the public square, on the street level, you shouldn't be ashamed of it either, and you shouldn't be afraid to say it either, because God is the central reference point.

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This is his world. It's his universe. That's his image bearer that you're talking to who's at war with him.

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This is God's truth. It's God's indestructible truth, and knowledge isn't possible apart from God.

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And so you shouldn't go into the public square or on the street level, fearful of standing on the word of God saying,

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God says. And that's how I know. Now that could be defended in very, very strong, rigorous philosophical terms.

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You can do it at a very sophisticated level, but essentially the Christian faith comes down to, this is

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God. It's his authoritative word. That's how I know. God says.

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So that's the beginning. Foundations is that God is the foundation. Christ is the central reference point.

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Now this conversation about doing this at a street level starts with a big word. We talked about it earlier today, but I'm gonna go into some more detail right now.

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Epistemology. How do you know what you know? Now this is a big deal, because when the

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Mormon comes to your door, they're making truth claims. They're saying, I've had a personal revelation from God.

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I've prayed about this. I've had a burning in my bosom. I testify to you that Joseph Smith Jr.

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is a prophet of God, and this is the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. They're making knowledge claims at your doorway.

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When you go into the university, and your professor is telling you all of these things about critical race theory, or telling you things about the glories of Marxism, or, oh goodness, or anything in terms of the history of anthropology, the history of mankind, and where we came from, and ethics, and all these different things.

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They're making knowledge claims. Moms and dads, you're doing it daily.

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So when I say something like epistemology, sometimes the modern Christian just checks out. Like, I don't even care about that highfalutin, philosophical stuff.

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Listen, this is about stuff like, when you tell your child, you are not to punch your brother in his face.

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Right? You're saying, that's wrong. It's immoral. You're making a knowledge claim.

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You're saying, I know, ethically, that it's immoral for you to haul off and punch your brother in the face for no reason.

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Or, when you say to somebody, yeah, I think it's important that we love our neighbors rather than eat our neighbors.

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You're making knowledge claims, right? You're making knowledge claims. When people talk all the time, this goes everywhere.

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It goes from the home, it goes to the church, it goes to the university, and it goes to government. What are people doing in government daily?

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When they legislate, they're legislating moral issues. They're making moral claims.

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Anytime a politician puts a bill in, they're saying, I believe that we ought to do this.

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That it's a moral responsibility for us in government or as human beings to do this thing and not this thing.

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What are they doing? They're legislating based upon ethical appeals to knowledge. They're saying you ought to do this.

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We had it fairly recently in our history when what took place? Supreme Court is arguing about an ethical claim to knowledge.

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Should a man and a man be able to, quote unquote, marry one another?

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Or should a woman and a woman be able to marry one another? Now, of course, we know where that went.

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They made the ethical claim. Yes, we know that they ought to be able to get married.

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So you got one claim over here by the United States Supreme Being, I mean, court. And you've got another claim being made over here by the truly

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Supreme Being, God, who says a man shall leave his father and his mother, cling to his wife, and become one flesh.

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That's God's knowledge claim. He says, this is what I did. This is how I made things. This is the order of the world and my creation.

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And of course, over here, you've got human beings at war with God and they're making different knowledge claims. Here's the thing.

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Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. How do you know? So moms and dads, when you challenge your child when they sin against their sibling or sin against you and you say you are not to do that, and the child comes back to you and says, why not?

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After the beating, just kidding, don't beat your kids.

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Spank them, don't beat them. What are you saying to them?

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This is the fundamentals of life. What do you say to them when they say, why should

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I do that? Or why are you telling me not to do that? What are you saying as a Christian? Are you just saying on your own authority?

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Well, just because I say so? No, all of us know as parents, what do we do as Christian parents?

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We say, God says, God says. When you tell your child at home, you shall not steal, you're borrowing, you're borrowing the knowledge claim.

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You're appealing to an authority that is ultimate, right? You're not saying to your child, you shall not steal simply because it's my own personal preference.

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You're saying, you shall not steal is an absolute. And the child says, how do you know that?

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And what do you say? God says. See, the Christian worldview, people may not like it.

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You might not like the simplicity of this, but this is how God brings his authority into the world. It's with a self -attesting revelation.

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He says. And by the way, when God became a man, and the incarnation was here in this dirt and in this air, in this world, when

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God became a man, you see that in Matthew 15, that's exactly how Jesus handled controversies in his day.

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You had a controversy in Matthew 15 where Jesus was actually dealing with something kind of complicated.

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You had the people of God that had what they saw was a divine tradition that sort of like ran alongside the

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Bible. They would say, I reverence the Torah. I reverence the Tanakh. The Old Testament is the word of God.

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They wouldn't have called it the Old Testament, but this is the word of God. These are the words of God, but they had what they considered to be a divine tradition that sort of rose up alongside the

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Bible. So you had the word of God, authoritative, and a divine tradition running alongside of it.

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How did Jesus handle that controversy where you got two different voices? Two different knowledge claims.

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How'd Jesus handle it? What did he point people to? He said to them, he said this. He said, you say, and then he quotes the

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Korban rule. And he says, Moses says. So he takes two voices, two knowledge claims, he puts them alongside one another, and he says this, thus, you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

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You make it void. So what did he do? He said, this is the authoritative word of God. This is the reference point.

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Your tradition contradicts this. Therefore, your tradition is invalidating the word of God. This is supreme.

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God says, and you say. And that's how I know. Epistemology, the theory of knowledge.

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How do you know what you know? This is what's gonna happen. When you get into an engagement with a Mormon, with a Jehovah's Witness, with a

31:03

Rosicrucian, with a Christian scientist, with the atheists, with the secularists, with the humanists, with the

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Marxists, whatever the case may be, it's all about knowing. How do you know?

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On what basis do you know? And the Christian claim always has been, God says, and that's how

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I know. This is his truth. That's how we should bring the word of God into the world.

31:27

And you have different kinds of epistemological systems. I can't go through them all now. There are varieties within each one, but there are some main ones.

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These are the ones you're typically gonna run into the most. Some of them are hitched up together. Some people are just confused, and there's sort of a combination of all of them.

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But when you hear it, you'll kind of recognize this is where this person is at. You have rationalism.

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And this is as old as the hills. Rationalism is the idea that it has to be rational. It has to be consistent.

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It has to be logical. I know things on the basis of logic and reason. Now, by the way,

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I wanna just say this. If you're a Christian, you get that too. If you have the word of God in the

32:07

Christian worldview, you get all the benefits of rationalism that the rationalist wants to have, but actually is not allowed to have, considering his system.

32:17

But you got the rationalist, the person that says, say they're a humanist, they're an atheist, they believe that their ancestors were fish, they believe in the evolution myth and fairy tale, they believe that we got here through random mutations, that a speciation happened, and one species just sort of like leapt into another one.

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We're all African apes, and this is a cosmically indifferent universe, and we're just stardust. And they say the way to get at knowledge, the way to get at truth is through reason.

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You also have people who hold to essentially the same kind of position today. There are people like Richard Dawkins, people like Sam Harris, and the late

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Christopher Hitchens, and they'll oftentimes make the claim, no, the only way to know something is that you got to test it.

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You got to be a scientist, you got to have a scientific mind, you got to actually observe something, you got to test it, use a scientific method, you have to observe it, empiricism.

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I need to see it in front of me, I has to be testable, I have to actually see it to believe it, sort of a thing.

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Then you also have another system that says, I know things based upon my own personal experience of what

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I feel is true. That's very popular today, right? Subjectivism is the king of the science of empiricism today, subjectivism.

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It's true because, in my experience, it's true. It's true because I feel like it's true.

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It's true because I like this choice that I'm making, right? It's true for me. May not be true for you, but it's true for me.

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Well, then it's not true. It's not true. If it's different for me, then it's not true, objectively true.

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There is no objective truth in that position. There's nothing even to aim at or to go towards. If it's all subjective,

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I'm getting ahead of myself, okay. And then you have the Christian epistemology that is a revelational epistemology.

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Revelation, how do I know what I know? How do I know it?

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Here it is, better word. How do I have certainty? Does that help? How do you have certainty?

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I know this is true, I'm certain of it. Revelation, revelation from God.

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I know because God says, God said. For example, how do

34:32

I know that it's absolutely immoral, wrong, and that I ought not murder my neighbor?

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How do I know that? Just think, just stop for a moment now, brothers and sisters, and stop and think about the power of the

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Christian worldview. The power of the Christian worldview. You're going into a context today where humanism and atheism and unbelief has just sort of overrun the

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West, a civilization that was started by Christians. We used to take gold from the

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Egyptians in the Bible, and now the Egyptians are taking gold from us. We gave the world all these blessings, right?

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And they've taken our gold from us, and now it's this dominant perspective of humanism and unbelief and atheism all around us, and watch this, you're the one that can say it's absolutely wrong to murder your neighbor.

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They can't, they cannot. Now, they can borrow from the Christian God and the

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Christian worldview and borrow capital from our worldview that human beings are unique and meaningful, have dignity, we should respect them, they can borrow that from us, but their worldview says what about humans?

35:43

African apes, stardust, the byproducts of a universe that didn't have them in mind, no special meaning, nothing different about the human being next to me in the car and the rock that formed through a long period of time that's just hanging out on the street.

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There's no difference between the African ape next to me and the snail getting run over right now by the car.

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Is it absolutely wrong for a human being in that worldview to murder another human being?

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Is it absolutely immoral? The answer, no. What's wrong with Hitler's Germany? What's wrong with Auschwitz?

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What's wrong with it? From an atheistic perspective, well, what is wrong with it?

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It was painful? Who cares about causing pain to humans? Who cares?

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Am I supposed to care about what happens to other African apes? What if I want my tribe to thrive and I want your tribe to suffer?

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What if I like suffering? There are tons of people in human history that enjoy the suffering of other human beings.

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Why are you trying to rob them of their pleasure and their experience? Do you see the point? Only the Christian worldview can provide a grounding to say it is absolutely immoral, absolutely immoral to murder a human being.

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We're also the only ones that can say with justification in a coherent way that it is a moral ought that you love your neighbor rather than eat your neighbor.

37:14

I pointed this out today. I'll just point you to it. I did a provoked episode last year with an atheist who wanted to come on that show and do a little bit of a discussion and a debate.

37:23

And I was pushing him to his foundations and pushing him to his foundations. And I'm so glad that we have it on record because I've heard it a number of times before but I've never actually got a chance to record it and have somebody go on record and say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

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I was challenging him with his worldview saying, well, if we're all just stardust and the byproducts of a universe that didn't have us in mind, if this is all just meaningless and nothing matters and there's no absolutes, there never have been any moral absolutes, which is his claim.

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I said that why should I love my neighbor rather than eat him? And he ultimately talked about this or that reason.

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And I took those away from him. And he finally just sort of acknowledged in the middle of the show, he sort of came to his own realization in the show trying to be consistent with his worldview.

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Yeah, I guess it's not absolutely wrong to eat your neighbor. He said, I guess you'd want to do it sort of in an ethical way.

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Like if you're going to kill them, dispatch them and eat them, you should at least clean your plates.

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Don't waste anything. Now why I shouldn't waste anything is another question I'd want to ask.

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Do you see the point? Do you see the point? When you talk about a revelational epistemology,

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Christians oftentimes get a little about, God says, that's how I know. Now again, you can get into the high sophisticated language and you could defend this in such a way that you can get over people's heads and all the rest, but you can just bring the

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Christian worldview down to a revelational epistemology. I know because God says.

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He has a self -attesting revelation, a self -attesting authority. God says. Now let's talk for a minute now, just a quick smattering in terms of on the street.

38:58

When you talk to the rationalist, the person that says, well, I know what I know based upon reason. It has to be consistent and logical.

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Let's challenge that for a minute. When the person says that they believe that you can know things based upon reason and logic, you got to look at their feet for a minute.

39:17

What are they standing on? If they're standing on an atheistic presupposition, an atheistic perspective of the world, they believe that they are a cosmic accident.

39:26

They believe somewhere in the chain, their ancestors were fish. And before that, bacteria.

39:34

And this universe didn't have them in mind. And oftentimes you talk to the person today who's the rationalist, they're naturalistic materialists.

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Materialists, they believe that all that exists is the material world. There's nothing immaterial. There's nothing transcendent.

39:52

There's nothing like that. All there is is matter in motion. Well, you have to challenge this person who's the rationalist and thinks they get knowledge through rationalism or logic in that system.

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You have to say laws of logic. Are they made of matter? Because if all that exists is matter, are laws of logic made of matter?

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Anybody in here ever weighed the law of non -contradiction? What color is a law of non -contradiction?

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What's it smell like? What's it taste like? Where do I find it? Can I put it under a microscope?

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We all recognize something, don't we, right now? We talk about laws of logic. What are we talking about? We're talking about immaterial, unchanging, universal laws of thought.

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Now the Christian has a worldview that comports with appealing to logic. God demands it of us.

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Why? Because these laws of logic reflect the thinking of God. God cannot lie.

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Therefore, God cannot engage in logical contradiction. God is unchanging.

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The laws of logic reflect the thinking of God. God even says things in scripture like come let us reason together.

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God says things in scripture like he makes distinctions. This, but not that. He challenges people for sinning in the area of thinking.

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Do you see that? The Christian worldview provides justification for reason and logic. We sharpened it for the world.

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We said, hear everybody, this is from God. We made it better, as we often do.

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But the rationalist who says he knows things based upon reason, you have to ask the question, you know things based upon reason?

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Is all that exists matter? Yes. Where's the law of logic at? And so the rationalist says, oh, no, no, no.

41:48

Wait a second. Okay, that doesn't work. No, no, see, laws of logic are just something that human beings have created to sort of like wade through the things of life.

42:00

Oh, okay, so what you're saying is that human beings got together, and by convention, they determined that these are the laws of logic, and that's how they work, right?

42:09

Right, yeah, human beings created the laws of logic. Okay, so if a society grows up over here, and they make up a new system of laws of logic that says that it's okay to contradict yourself, then that's perfectly fine in your system, right?

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Because if laws of logic only have value because they're created by humans and human minds, then a society can just create this convoluted system of logic, correct?

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And it's just as valuable as the other. Also, how do you get laws of logic as universal and unchanging truths that are true today in Asheville, North Carolina, and Los, maybe not

42:42

Los Angeles. Do you get the point? Iceland, Greenland, Antarctica.

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Do the laws of logic hold in Antarctica? Do they? Are they universal? Are these things true everywhere at all times?

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Are they unchanging? You see, the rationalist who's also the person who's a materialist cannot make sense of, cannot justify their appeal to reason.

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They're borrowing from God. They're borrowing from God. They want to reason, they do reason.

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We're not saying rationalists don't reason. They do reason, and sometimes rationalists reason better than Christians.

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That's a shame on us. That is truly a shame on us. But they cannot justify their appeal to reason because their worldview contradicts you at every single turn.

43:33

Another example, empiricism. You have the person today, say, who's a naturalistic materialist. They say all that exists is matter in motion.

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This is a universe that came from nothing. It just sort of happened on its own.

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It's a cosmically indifferent universe. There's no governance. There's no order in this universe.

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It's just time and chance acting on matter. We're all cosmic accidents. But they say that the only way you can know things is based upon empiricism.

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You have to observe it, you have to test it, you have to see it. All right, question.

44:07

I have questions. How does an African ape in a universe with no ultimate order or purpose, where it's just chaos in motion, appeal to a universe that is uniform?

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Right? Think about it for a second. In order for science to be possible, now this is a big one and it's an explosive one.

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Only the Christian worldview can justify this. The Christian worldview gave science to the world.

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You know that. That came from us. We're the ones that actually gave science its big modern pop.

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We gave it to the world. Why? Because we had a worldview that made sense of it to examine things, to test things.

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Why? Because we believe that God is the one who carries everything along to its intended destination,

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Hebrews chapter one. He's the one who sustains the universe. There's purpose in the universe, there is order in the universe because God, ready, governs the universe.

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Why do we believe that science is possible and you can test things? Because we believe in a uniform creation.

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We believe God governs the universe. The unbeliever who appeals to empiricism says you've got to test it, you've got to observe it, you've got to see it.

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But they believe in time and chance acting on matter. They don't have a justification for appealing to the uniformity in nature.

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This is a big one. And this isn't a big one tossed out by Jeff Durbin, an apologist for the Christian faith.

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You can see atheistic philosophers and skeptics challenged with this thing all throughout the history of philosophy.

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David Hume, Scottish skeptic. You've got Bertrand Russell, atheist. They all talked about this.

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How do you solve the problem of induction? How do you solve the problem of the uniformity in nature?

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Because they said this. Look, we've got this real problem here. This is a real problem for us. We're saying that in order to know something, it has to be observable, it has to be testable.

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But in order for that to be coherent at all and make any sense, we have to be able to say that the universe is uniform and that the future is gonna be like the past was, right?

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I'll give you an example. Look, this can get really in categories where you just stop reading the book and put it down and say,

46:30

I'm bored to death with this. But you watch this. This is the stuff of life right here.

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I told you, this is the stuff of life and only the Christian world you can justify this. Every single one of us today, we got out of bed, you put your feet on the floor, you stood up, you probably walked first to the bathroom, right?

46:46

Because based upon past experience, you know there'll be problems if you don't, right? Every Christian today, you just assumed without even thinking about it, the gravity was gonna hold you down today like it did in the past, right?

47:05

And every one of us, if you grabbed a toothpaste tube, you squeezed it and you assumed and by squeezing it, the toothpaste is gonna spurt out of the tube and if nothing comes out of the tube, you don't go, oh my goodness,

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July, what day is today? July 9th, the laws of physics have completely been disordered.

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What do you do if nothing comes out of the toothpaste tube? You realize it's empty or something's blocking it, right?

47:35

You don't assume that the laws of the universe have now just gone awry on July 9th, right?

47:40

What do you do? Everybody assumes it constantly. When you grab a bowl, when you walk your dog, when you walk around in the house, you are making assumptions constantly.

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You're doing it right now. All the while you sat here listening to me, you didn't even realize that you were appealing to the uniformity in nature every moment you were here.

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You were assuming it constantly. Nobody sat here, I hope, in these pews and thought while you're sitting here listening to me,

48:08

I might float to the ceiling at any moment. If you did, talk to your pastor after.

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But nobody did that. Listen, you have been living in God's world, assuming

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God's order and appealing to things that you can only make sense of if God says.

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You can only have certainty by the uniformity in nature if God says. You've just been assuming it. Now listen, the unbeliever assumes it too, but they do not have a justification for it because in their worldview, the future may not be like the past.

48:45

There's no governance. There's no order. There's no uniformity here.

48:51

You're acting like God is sustaining the universe. The scientist who's an atheist that walks into his laboratory today and expects the experiments to go the same way as they did yesterday is assuming the uniformity in nature and he has to have a justification for it.

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He cannot simply say, well, it always has been that way. No one's asking you that.

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We're asking you, how do you know the future will be like the past? Because in your world, in your theory, there's no governance.

49:25

This is chaos in motion. There's no God over this creation. How do you know the future is gonna be like the past?

49:31

And if the unbeliever says, well, it always has been that way, that means that they're living by blind, stupid faith.

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And when I say stupid, I mean it in the classical sense. You're ignorant. You're blind in your faith commitments.

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Christians don't have blind faith commitments. We don't do that. Scripture challenges those kinds of things.

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You need to believe things based upon evidence and truth. But the unbeliever lives his life every day with blind faith.

50:04

I hope the future will be like the past. How do they know? How do they know that the laws of physics aren't gonna just transform and change completely and they're gonna float away to the ceiling?

50:15

How do they know that? They live by blind faith. It's a secret dependence upon God at every single turn of their life.

50:25

They know God and they suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. Okay, let's move on.

50:32

So, revelational epistemology. I'll just give you a quick smattering on this just quickly so you can see it. I talked about this today.

50:38

Genesis. Epistemology is in the very first book of the Bible. How do you know?

50:45

This is actually a pretty powerful truth. I love this. Genesis, as it opens up, you have

50:52

God creating, special creation. There is beauty, there is artistry, there is goodness.

50:58

All of it, you get all of that because you have God. You get it all. And God creates and he makes distinctions.

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Here's this physical world, here's this vegetation, here's all these beautiful things, here's their purpose, here's their meaning.

51:11

He creates animals and creatures and all these different things. And he makes a distinction between the beasts and the image.

51:19

Here are the creatures, here's the beasts, and here's the image of God. And he creates in such a special way with the image of God that he makes a distinction that this is different than that.

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This is to be more highly valued than that. This is the image of God. Special creation.

51:36

But then God puts his image in the garden and what's he do in the garden? He says this but not that.

51:44

It's very simple. It's amazing, isn't it? It's not super complicated. That first thing in the garden was rudimentary morality.

51:52

It was like this but not that. And what did God say? He said this but not that because the day you eat of it, you'll surely die.

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There's God's claim, all right? There's God's claim. Now, another voice comes into the garden.

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It's the voice of the serpent. And what's the serpent say? The serpent says, no, not die.

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You'll be like God, knowing good and evil. And it's not, as I said today, experientially knowing good and evil.

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That is determining good and evil for yourselves. God says this is good. God says this is evil.

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God doesn't want you to be like him where you'll be the determiner. You'll be the one that determines what's good and what's evil.

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And so he says this but not that. God says that. And the devil says, no, no.

52:40

The day you eat of it, you won't die. And what's amazing here is this question of epistemology.

52:46

What if Eve had said, I'm not gonna eat the fruit because I think

52:53

I'll get fat? What if she said that? And what if she walked away from that tree and she didn't eat the fruit because she thought she'd get fat?

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That was her reasoning process. Nah, if I eat it, I'll probably get fat. Would she have been obedient?

53:10

Externally, she would have looked like she was obedient because she wouldn't have eaten the fruit. But she would have been sinning against God in her motivations because she would have not eaten the fruit on some other basis than God's own self -attesting word and authority.

53:26

God said this but not that because this will happen to you. And if Eve had walked away from that tree and Adam had walked away from that tree on some other basis, they would have been internally inconsistent and sinning against God, his command.

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If she had said, nah, I'm not hungry right now. I won't eat the fruit because I'm not hungry.

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On that basis, I won't eat the fruit. She'd be sinning against God. She wouldn't have eaten the fruit but she'd be sinning against God because her internal motivation would not have been in accordance with God's commands.

53:56

Do you see that? And what if, I know this is a course, as I said earlier today, the heretical hypothetical.

54:04

What if Adam and Eve had gone to God when he said this but not that and they had said, how do you know?

54:12

How do you know? Think about it. He's God, he's the creator of all things.

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There's none before him, none after him. He's the first, he's the last. He doesn't even know of any other gods. He's the eternal God. He has been

54:24

God from all eternity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And they said to God, how do you know?

54:30

Now watch, if God had appealed to anything else outside of his own self -attesting authority, then that other thing would be the ultimate authority.

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Like if God had said, well, you shouldn't eat the fruit because, well, this thing over here, because of this thing over here, because of this thing over here, then that other thing would be the ultimate authority and not

54:55

God's own self -attesting revelation. Get that and you'll get the substance of apologetics to the glory of God, God's own self -attesting revelation.

55:05

God appeals to nothing and nobody outside of his own self -attesting authority and his own revelation.

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What happened when they ate of the fruit? God's word was true.

55:19

God, of course, comes in with a promise of the Messiah, but they did die that day spiritually. They did fall away from God.

55:25

They were separated from God. God promised Christ in Genesis chapter three, but God challenged them on the basis of their sinful disobedience to his own word.

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Here was the thing. They should have obeyed God. Ready? Because God said.

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And that's it. That's a revelational epistemology. I'll give you one more. Luke 16, just go there quickly.

55:51

Luke 16. By the way, what time is it?

55:59

Doesn't matter? Good. Luke 16, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to give you your money's worth, guys.

56:05

Luke 16. I would have done it anyways. Luke 16.

56:15

It's actually a powerful section of scripture, and it does actually relate to the issue of apologetics to the glory of God and on the street level.

56:24

Here's the thing, watch. Here's the point I'm gonna make about this text. Is apologetics just simply about throwing out evidences to the unbeliever?

56:33

Is that really the problem? We're gonna get into it in a minute. It's not a problem of light and evidence according to scripture.

56:39

It's a problem of sinful rebellion. And it's only the word of God that brings dead people to life. But I mean, is it really an issue of evidence?

56:46

Like, we just need to be a master of all these different evidences? Like, for those of you guys that are, you know, reasoning with the astronomer, you know, you just really have to spend the next five, six years of your life, you know, going to university and learning everything about astronomy and learning about waves and all these different things.

57:02

Is that really what it is? They don't have enough evidence. Well, in Luke 16, starting in verse 19, you have the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

57:16

Now, what's interesting here, I'm not gonna go through the entire story, but in this story, you have that story of the rich man and Lazarus.

57:25

The rich man finds himself in Hades, Hades, and he's in torment, and Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom.

57:34

One's experiencing peace, one's experiencing actual torment. And look what happens in verse 27.

57:45

He says, and he said, "'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house, "'for

57:52

I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, "'lest they also come into this place of torment.'

57:58

"'But Abraham said, "'They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.'

58:05

"'And he said, no, father Abraham, "'but if someone goes to them from the dead, "'they will repent.'

58:11

"'He said to them, "'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, "'neither will they be convinced "'if someone should rise from the dead.'"

58:22

You hear it often today. By the way, the evidences for the resurrection, the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ are incredible.

58:31

Do not get me wrong. You need to study that. You need to know that it is powerful. We could do an entire hour here on the evidences, the historical evidences of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

58:44

It is amazing, powerful stuff. But does that convert people, throwing out evidences?

58:49

That's really the problem, is they don't have enough evidence for the historicity of the resurrection. In scripture, it says very plainly here, this is divinely inspired scripture.

58:59

It says they have Moses and the prophets. They have the revelation of God.

59:04

If they're not going to listen to the revelation of God, they're not gonna believe because someone rises from the dead.

59:13

And by the way, you see it in the New Testament itself. It boggles the mind.

59:18

It boggles the mind. When Jesus raises Lazarus, his friend from the dead, here's

59:24

Jesus calling into the tomb of a dead guy that's been dead so much that he stinketh. And when he calls in,

59:33

Lazarus come forth, he comes hopping out. This guy was dead. The family's like, you know, they're broken over this.

59:38

He's dead. He comes hopping out of that tomb and he's risen from the dead. It says in the text that some people believed in Jesus and some didn't.

59:48

What? Jesus is like healing blind people and raising a little dead girl from the dead and giving people their legs back.

59:55

And Jesus is healing the sick and he's feeding thousands of people. He's raising dead people. And people are like, meh.

01:00:03

Like, what? Miracles, right in front of them. Miracles don't necessarily change somebody's mind.

01:00:15

It's an issue of the heart. It's an issue of rebellion. God has to take the scales off the highs.

01:00:22

He has to do that. But what's interesting here is this question about evidence.

01:00:28

Here's a moment in scripture where someone's saying, if somebody could just come with the evidence then they'll believe.

01:00:38

And what's the word from God? If they don't believe scripture, they're not gonna believe he's risen from the dead. That's God's self -attesting revelation.

01:00:47

That's the power. And Christians have a revelational epistemology. How do I know?

01:00:52

Because God says. That's his truth. Okay, quick thing. Go to Luke, sorry, my bad.

01:00:59

Proverbs 26. Proverbs 26. And we'll wrap up on this.

01:01:13

Proverbs 26. We call this the two -fold apologetic methodology.

01:01:19

So I want you to know, on a personal level, that on the street, when

01:01:25

I'm engaging with the pro -choicer, when I'm engaging with the atheist, when I'm engaging with the nihilist, when

01:01:32

I'm engaging with the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness, whoever I'm engaging with, I want you to know, again on a very personal level, that this is in my mind constantly.

01:01:41

This is in my mind. The two -fold apologetic methodology. That's what we call this. In Proverbs 26, verse four, it says, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.

01:01:59

That's first. Don't answer the fool according to his folly, or you'll be like him.

01:02:05

Now, this next part sounds like a contradiction. It's not a contradiction. It's two ways to deal with the fool.

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And then it says, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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We call it a two -fold apologetic methodology. Number one, don't answer the fool according to his folly, or you're gonna be like him.

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That is to say, if we can unpack that a bit, don't take the fool's presuppositions.

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Don't take his standards. Don't assume what he assumes. That is to say, when engaging the world, and engaging the fool, and by the way, of course, in Scripture, when the

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Bible uses the word fool, it's not name -calling. It's actually a moral indictment.

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It's a moral indictment. It's an assessment of the person's ethical situation.

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The fool, the fool says there is no God. And in this case, answering the fool,

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God says, don't answer them according to their folly. Don't answer them according to their foolishness. Don't adopt their principles.

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Don't go their direction. If I could say this, stand on God's revelation, stand on God's word, have godly presuppositions, and answer according to those, not according to theirs.

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Don't act like them. If you go their direction, if you adopt their principles, if you assume or pretend neutrality like them, then you'll be a fool just like them.

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You wanna pretend neutrality? You wanna go into a debate not defending the Christian God? Well, then you're a fool just like them.

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You're a fool just like them because you can't justify knowledge. You can't justify induction.

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You can't justify the laws of arithmetic. You can't justify logic.

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You can't justify absolute moral oughts apart from God. So if you assume neutrality, if you act like the fool, then you're gonna be like them.

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You'll be a fool just like them. So stand on the word of God and God's revelation. Don't stand in their position.

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Don't put one foot in foolishness and one foot in God's world and try to make the two come together.

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Stand on God's revelation. And the next part of this twofold apologetic methodology is to answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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That is to say, stand in the unbeliever's position. Stand on the fool's position to show them their feet.

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Make them look down. Show them that they have no basis to make the claims that they're making.

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So I oftentimes do like to show this by standing on two chairs, but I didn't prepare for that ahead of time.

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Christians are standing on the word of God. We're standing on the revelation of God. That's underneath our feet.

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The word of God is underneath our system. We believe what we believe because God says.

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So as a Christian, I'm standing on the foundation of God's word when I'm making claims, knowledge claims, truth claims.

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I'm making those claims because I'm saying I'm certain about that because God says. That's what I'm standing on.

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The unbeliever is also standing on a position, a worldview, a view of reality, a view of ethics, a view of knowledge, a view of logic, a view of truth, beauty, or goodness, but they're standing on a position that is not the word of God, and they're trying to justify all those claims.

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What you should do as a believer is the two -fold apologetic methodology. Don't adopt their position.

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Stand on the word of God, and then at moments step into their position to do an internal critique.

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Do an internal critique. Let me give you a quick smattering of what this might look like. We've already done some tonight, but say today we were driving in tonight.

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We were driving in down one of these roads here. You have some windy roads here. In Arizona, have you guys ever been to Arizona?

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It's just straight. It's straight as far as the eye can see.

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Everything is grid all over the valley. It's just grid, grid, grid. It's just straight, straight, and desert, and blue sky.

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It's amazing, and hot. But I was turning a corner coming in tonight, and I saw a store with a big sign,

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BLM. BLM, Black Lives Matter, okay? Now, from a Christian perspective, when you first hear, when you first hear the claim that black lives matter, what are you thinking as a

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Christian? Yep, they matter a lot, because that's the image of God, right?

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All of us come back to the same parents. We're all made in God's image, right? God is glorious.

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He's creative and beautiful, and all these distinctions among us, they're awesome. They are glorious, right?

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So when I hear someone say to me, black lives matter, I go, yeah, as much as mine, and a lot, a lot, sacred, beautiful.

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What's amazing is that you're hearing this today from one of the major organizations that says that we're trained

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Marxists. So, black lives matter, we're trained Marxists.

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If you know anything about the history of Marxism, you have to look at it a little squinty -eyed, hmm.

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Because if you've read Marx, and if you've read Engels, you'll know that Engels said that there are no absolutes, and nothing is sacred.

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Black lives matter, there are no absolutes, and nothing is sacred. The claim does not comport with the foundation over here.

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So the internal critique to the black lives matter Marxist is to say, you know,

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I love the idea that black lives matter, because that's what Jesus says. That's my worldview,

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I like that. But you are a trained Marxist. You believe that there are no absolutes, and nothing is sacred.

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So how can you say that anything matters at all? And by the way, if you are a trained

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Marxist, and you're with Engels, and you believe in dialectical materialism, you have to ask the question, why does matter matter?

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You see? That's the internal critique of the system. That's taking the legs off the system and saying, you're borrowing from my worldview.

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You need to repent of your sin and come to Christ to make sense of what you're saying right now. We've done some on atheism tonight, but Mormonism.

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If you run into the Mormon, brothers and sisters, listen, this isn't complicated, I'll be honest with you. Apologetics to the glory of God isn't complicated.

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It can become overwhelming at times, because you gotta learn new things, you gotta figure out what does this person believe, where are they coming from? But it's all the same.

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I'm not giving you something that is super complicated. I'm not saying I'm special, and I have all this knowledge and wisdom, and hopefully you guys can catch up with my knowledge.

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I'm saying this, God says, that's it. That's it. How do I deal with the atheists? God says. How do I deal with the Marxists? God says.

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How do I deal with the Mormon? God says. How do I deal with the Josephanists? God says. This is simple. I should write a book, say simple apologetics.

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God says. It's one page. It would be longer than that. But that's the simplicity of what we're saying.

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God says. With the Mormon at your door, it's the same situation. They're coming and they're making claims about Joseph Smith, about a great apostasy, about the church falling away, and the

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Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, and all those different things, and what you really need to do is firm up your commitments to what we believe about the word of God.

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This is God's self -attesting revelation. What are you saying about Jesus and the gospel and Joseph Smith?

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Okay, what does God say? Who did that, by the way? Jesus, Matthew 15. What did he say? He says,

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Moses says, but you say, thus you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition. So Joseph Smith comes along in the

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King Follett discourse, and he says about God and man. He says, God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man who sits enthroned in yonder heavens.

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That is the great secret. He says, if you were to see him today, you'd see him like yourselves, like a man, in all the form of a man and all the rest.

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That's what Joseph Smith says about God. He's an exalted man. He had a God before him. Who had a God before him?

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Who had a God before him? It's an infinite regression of gods. It's mommy gods and daddy gods making baby gods.

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Exaltation's the goal in Mormonism. He says, you've got to learn to become gods yourselves the same way all gods have done before you.

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That's what Joseph Smith says. So Mormon comes to my door. How do I deal with this? Well, it is down the road helpful.

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You could get into the discussion about Joseph Smith who was a known con man and money digger or treasure digger in Palmyra, New York.

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You could get into all the discussions of his arrest record in Bainbridge, New York in 1826 for crystal ball gazing, which by the way, it's interesting, in New York in the 19th century, they were still following God's laws that occultism was a crime.

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Interesting, the Puritans were apparently theonomists. But in New York, he was arrested for occultism because it was a violation of God's law.

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1826, Bainbridge, New York. You can get into the fact that Joseph Smith, of course, demonstrated that he could not translate dead languages with the

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Pearl of Great Price and that he committed a fraud on the Mormon people by pretending that he had the

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Book of Abraham and the Book of Joseph and he translated that into the Pearl of Great Price. We have the document he translated from.

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It has nothing to do with what he said. We have his text, his translation with the words he translated from.

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He took a word like the and turned it into like several sentences. He was a fraud.

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You can demonstrate it without question, but when I'm trying to engage a person and I'm trying to win their soul,

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I need to stand on the word of God and use the word of God to be the sword to cut through their heart. So when

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Joseph Smith says you gotta learn to become gods yourselves the same way all gods have done before you, what do we do as Christians?

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What's God say? God says in Isaiah 43 .10, long before Joseph Smith came, he says, before me there was no

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God formed and neither shall there be after me. He says in Isaiah 44 .6, I am the first and I am the last.

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Besides me, there is no God. And God asks a rhetorical question in Isaiah 44 .8. He says, is there a

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God besides me? Indeed, there is no other God. I know not one. He says he doesn't even know of any other gods.

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Joseph Smith says he had mommy gods and daddy gods and grandfather gods and you can become gods one day.

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Joseph Smith's not a prophet of God because God says and Joseph Smith lied.

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Also, you use the word of God in terms of a test of a prophet. God says in Deuteronomy chapter 13, how do you know someone's a prophet of God?

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Even if they have signs and wonders. It looks legit. It looks like a real miraculous ministry. God says if they lead you after other gods, gods which you have not known, that's how you know they're a false prophet.

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So God's previous revelation of himself is the test by which you test prophets.

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And so Joseph Smith led people after other gods. He gave a false gospel that contradicts the biblical gospel.

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That's how you know he's a false prophet. He did try to raise people from the dead. He did try to do miracles and of course, he was a fraud and he didn't do them but apparently people still followed him.

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But Joseph Smith is also be tested by God's test of a prophet in Deuteronomy chapter 18. God tells his people, if you want to know if someone's a prophet, if they give one false prophecy, they're a false prophet.

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One. One. That's a pretty rigorous test considering the

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Bible is filled with hundreds of them. And God says this.

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He says, if you say in your hearts, how shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?

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He said, when the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the thing follows not nor comes to pass, that is the word the

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Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him. I'm not to be afraid of Joseph Smith and his false claims because Joseph Smith had many false prophecies.

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That's why it's called, by the way, the Church of Jesus Christ of Last Day Saints because he taught people that Jesus Christ was returning in their generation before they all died on a number of occasions and Jesus didn't.

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He taught them that they were gonna build a temple in Jackson County, Missouri before they all died. It didn't happen.

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He's a false prophet. So how do I engage the Mormon? When God says,

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Joseph says. You're making a knowledge claim, this is God's claim and that's how you test him.

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And I wanna say finally, and I did, this is a repetition of earlier today, I said this earlier today, the condition for success.

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I'll simplify it. How does anybody come to Jesus? Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice.

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You look, Jesus said in John chapter six, I don't care how you try to read your way out of this.

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Jesus said in John chapter six, he says, I've come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him who has sent me.

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And this is the will of him who has sent me, that of all that he has given to me, I should lose nothing. I should lose nothing.

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Jesus comes, he brings his sheep, he loses none of them. So don't manipulate people.

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You don't have to manipulate God's sheep for Jesus to bring them. You don't have to try to mess with their mind or mess with their emotions.

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Love them and tell them the truth. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice, them

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I must bring. Now, how do people come to the knowledge of God?

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How do people have their hearts changed? How do people come from death to life?

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How's it take place? The Bible says, Romans chapter one, the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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That word power, dunamis, is where'd we get the word dynamite from? So think about it, explosion, power.

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Paul is saying that the good news, the proclamation of the good news, is

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God's power to bring people to salvation. So when you and I proclaim the pure and unadulterated gospel we tell people the truth, we call people to repentance and faith,

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God by his spirit empowers that message to bring someone that is dead to life.

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How does he do it? Through neutrality, through manipulation, he does it through his truth.

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So, apologetics on the street level for the 21st century looks very much like the book of Acts.

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Go into the public square, proclaim and defend God's truth.