The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - 5 Common Objections To Christianity

00:00:00.000 Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response

00:00:04.540 Ministries. Today, I was privileged to have as a special guest, Elisa Childers. She's done a lot

00:00:10.340 of wonderful work in regards to taking a stand against progressive Christianity. However, in

00:00:16.040 this particular episode, we discussed five common objections to the Christian faith. Five common

00:00:23.560 objections to the Christian faith. Enjoy.

00:00:26.780 Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:00:37.880 Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am Pastor Joel with Right Response

00:00:42.380 Ministries. And as I've already mentioned, I'm privileged to have as a special guest,

00:00:46.520 Elisa Childers. Elisa, would you just take a moment and introduce yourself to our listeners?

00:00:51.260 Yeah.

00:00:51.620 Hi, Joel.

00:00:52.260 Thanks so much for having me on the show.

00:00:54.500 I currently run a apologetics podcast and blog, and I just wrote a book that chronicles my

00:01:01.580 journey of encountering the ideas of progressive Christianity.

00:01:05.260 And so the book sort of walks the reader through my story and then in how to answer progressive

00:01:10.220 Christianity biblically along the way.

00:01:12.500 And so that's what I'm doing these days.

00:01:13.860 But in the past, I've been a musical recording artist with the CCM group, Zoe Girl.

00:01:18.660 And most importantly, I'm a wife and a mom, and that's my main gig, and I love it.

00:01:25.340 Amen.

00:01:26.080 That's good.

00:01:27.580 Okay, so this is going to be a little bit different.

00:01:30.080 So I've heard some of your talks.

00:01:32.600 I think I heard you on Ali Bestucki a few months back, and I've been blessed by your

00:01:36.860 ministry and the things that you've done and the ways that you've spoken out against

00:01:40.060 progressive Christianity.

00:01:41.360 But as we were talking a little bit before we started recording this episode, I thought,

00:01:45.500 and you agree that it would be nice to do something a little bit different, not entirely

00:01:50.120 out of your wheelhouse, something that I noticed that you've done before and that I thought

00:01:53.740 would be really beneficial for our listeners.

00:01:56.040 So really, if there was a main headline topic for this episode, it would be apologetics.

00:02:01.640 And what we're going to do is kind of, maybe you could call it apologetics 101, kind of

00:02:07.260 a primer, a basics course.

00:02:09.680 And so what we're going to be hitting is not every nuance and every intricate detail of

00:02:14.520 how to defend the Trinity perhaps. But what we're going to do is, what is your kind of your nine

00:02:20.140 millimeter that you keep in Texas, you can open carry now, so that you keep on your side, that

00:02:26.260 you pull out for the most common occasion. So what are the most, five most common objections

00:02:32.080 to the Christian faith, the five most regular accusations or questions or opposition that you

00:02:41.020 receive and how could Christians respond? So I know that's a big question, but maybe we could

00:02:45.300 just go one at a time. So maybe to start with, what's the most common objection that you've

00:02:51.820 experienced, Elisa? I think the most common one would have to do with any objection that's going

00:02:58.520 to sort of make a claim against the reliability of the Bible. And there's sort of two different

00:03:04.380 areas that that will happen. So sometimes people will claim that the New Testament in particular

00:03:12.060 that you have sitting in your lap today or on your desk is not the same words that they wrote

00:03:17.640 back in the first century. And so often you'll hear people say things like, oh my goodness,

00:03:23.000 there are so many, they'll use the word mistakes in the manuscript. So we can't even possibly know

00:03:29.300 what they wrote in the, in the first century. So that, that would be one side of it. The other

00:03:32.920 side of it would have to do with, okay, let's even say we do have an accurate copy. Well, those copies

00:03:39.340 don't tell the truth about what happened in the first century. This was just some legendary

00:03:44.300 things that sort of developed over time. The earliest Christians didn't really think Jesus

00:03:49.840 was God. And so there's a little bit of an attack on the reliability of the information and also an

00:03:56.500 attack on the reliability of the actual words themselves and so I think and I think that the

00:04:02.900 reason that's one of the main objections is depending on where somebody's coming from we

00:04:08.240 we hear so many stories of people walking away from their faith or having serious doubts about

00:04:12.960 their faith and almost always one of those pillars is the bible because if that pillar gets knocked

00:04:18.040 down it sort of leaves you adrift and where do I look for for truth if my bible isn't accurate and

00:04:25.200 hasn't been telling me the truth, where do I go? So I think that that's probably the biggest one

00:04:29.340 if I had to guess, but there are some other really big ones too. Okay. So what are some

00:04:35.780 of the ways that you would respond to that objection? Well, let's take, for example,

00:04:40.780 the idea that the manuscripts themselves have been corrupted. This is a topic that

00:04:46.120 early in my journey of, I had a faith crisis of my own, and this was a huge part of my journey

00:04:52.380 is trying to learn why do we believe that the words we have in our New Testament are the words

00:04:58.180 that they originally wrote. This was a hugely unsettling question for me when I was trying to

00:05:04.380 figure out what I believed about this faith that I'd had my whole life. And so what I discovered

00:05:10.640 was that there's a science called textual criticism. And essentially, this is a science

00:05:17.460 that scholars use to reconstruct the wording of ancient documents when the original documents

00:05:24.040 no longer exist. And so this isn't a science that's only used with the Bible. It's used with

00:05:30.000 things like if you've ever read the Iliad, or if you've ever read Shakespeare, or even the

00:05:35.100 Gettysburg Address. Yeah, yes. So textual critics are basically looking at the existing manuscripts

00:05:42.440 and they're trying to figure out what the original wording was.

00:05:45.780 And this is because back then, every manuscript was handwritten by a human being.

00:05:51.560 So they didn't have printing presses or computers where they could print it out.

00:05:54.800 So humans would copy the text.

00:05:56.620 And so textual critics, to get a really good idea of what the original wording was,

00:06:04.420 they want to have a lot of manuscripts, as many as possible.

00:06:07.440 and then they want those manuscripts to come from as early or as close to the original as possible.

00:06:13.300 And when they have a lot of manuscripts and then they have really early manuscripts together,

00:06:17.780 it elevates the level of accuracy.

00:06:21.300 Now, the thing about the New Testament is the New Testament actually has more manuscripts

00:06:25.820 and earlier manuscripts than any other work of ancient classical literature.

00:06:31.100 In fact, to the point that it actually dwarfs any other ancient literature.

00:06:36.140 And I think the closest one might be the Iliad.

00:06:39.400 So with the New Testament, just the broad flyover, you've got over 5,000 manuscripts.

00:06:45.120 And every manuscript isn't necessarily an entire book.

00:06:47.920 Some of them are entire books.

00:06:49.380 Some of them are maybe a single page.

00:06:51.100 Some are even so small, they're just like a postage stamp with a few words scribbled on there.

00:06:56.220 So we have over 5,000 of those for the New Testament.

00:06:59.060 and they arguably the earliest one we have it dates within 30 to 100 years of the original

00:07:08.900 which is unprecedentedly early in fact before they discovered this fragment a lot of the liberal

00:07:14.880 scholarship had to be corrected because they thought the book of john which is where this

00:07:19.260 manuscript came from was was much later and so these early manuscripts and then a lot of

00:07:25.480 manuscripts help them to put these things together. Now, I think the main thing we have to understand

00:07:30.540 is you might hear skeptics say, okay, among these 5,000 manuscripts, there are tons of, they might

00:07:36.720 say, mistakes. We call them variations. So these are variations between the manuscripts. So you

00:07:42.460 might have one manuscript that says Jesus Christ, and then another manuscript of the same text

00:07:48.180 might say Christ Jesus, where the word order is switched. So that counts as a variant.

00:07:53.060 So it's true.

00:07:54.200 We have anywhere, depends on which scholar you ask, anywhere from 350,000 to 500,000

00:07:59.800 of these variations between the manuscripts.

00:08:02.220 But the most important thing for Christians to understand is that the vast majority of

00:08:07.960 these variations, and even skeptical scholars like Bart Ehrman will agree with this, the

00:08:13.180 vast majority of those variations don't affect the meaning of the text at all.

00:08:19.040 It's just, you know, if you have Christ Jesus in one and Jesus Christ in another, nobody's confused about what that's saying.

00:08:24.560 Right. So we know what it's saying. 0.70

00:08:26.440 And, you know, admittedly, there is a very small percentage of variations where scholars aren't sure exactly what the original wording was.

00:08:35.040 And in those cases, you know, there's debate.

00:08:37.720 And I've heard scholars debate some of these things.

00:08:39.800 But here's the broad flyover important point, is that of this tiny percentage of variations

00:08:46.200 where scholars aren't exactly sure what the original text was saying, not one of those

00:08:51.520 calls into question any cardinal Christian doctrine.

00:08:55.360 You have the gospel even outside of this.

00:08:57.580 So in my view, if somebody's going to reject Christianity because of these variations,

00:09:04.440 there's probably something else going on there.

00:09:07.100 And so this, obviously, I get excited about this stuff.

00:09:10.320 This is a topic that I dug really deep into, and I'm certainly not a scholar, but I found

00:09:15.980 it really fascinating to learn a lot of this stuff, because if you would have asked me

00:09:19.460 before, you know, I had my faith crisis, why do you believe that we have an accurate copy?

00:09:25.000 I would have just said some spiritual answer, like, well, I'm sure that, you know, that

00:09:28.960 it just is, or that God made sure it was that way.

00:09:31.640 And that's true too, but it's nice to know you can actually look into the evidence for

00:09:35.640 it and know that that's actually true. Amen. Yeah. So the spiritual answer is, like I said,

00:09:42.700 that's true too, because it is a good answer that the same Holy Spirit who inspired the text is able

00:09:47.540 to preserve it. But in God's preservation, whether it be the preservation of saints, of our souls,

00:09:54.460 our faith, that Christ is the author and the finisher, this idea that it's not just us clinging

00:09:59.560 to Christ, but ultimately he holds us fast. So we're not just persevering, but he's preserving.

00:10:04.560 so in the issue of individual people and our salvation, God preserves, but he has means by

00:10:10.900 which he does so. So the idea that God preserves, it's perfectly acceptable. And I would say it's

00:10:17.760 even commendable for us to seek these things out. It's the glory of kings to search out a matter.

00:10:24.560 God puts mysteries in the universe for us to explore, for us to discover. And so

00:10:28.900 wisdom draws out these things. And so for us to say, okay, so God preserves his people.

00:10:34.560 great how you know and to dive into the scripture and and to see oh he preserves his people through

00:10:41.600 the church he preserves his people by the spirit uh he sets the spirit as a seal guaranteeing that

00:10:47.700 which is to come that cries out and bears witness within us abba father and he preserves his people

00:10:53.680 um by you know the spirit of god the the saints of god the people of god and by the word by the

00:10:59.300 word of god illuminating these things to us and so for us to do the same with the scripture and say

00:11:03.320 God preserves his word. That's great. And that's a good answer, but how, and for us to, to delve

00:11:09.520 into how God over the centuries and millennia has preserved his word, I think is absolutely

00:11:16.180 commendable. And, and it's also just inspires more awe and more worship, I think in our hearts

00:11:21.560 towards this, this God real quick. I wanted to read a paragraph just since we're on the topic

00:11:26.720 of, of the credibility of the scripture. How do we know that the Bible is in fact, the word of God?

00:11:30.400 But this is from the Baptist Confession of Faith.

00:11:33.740 So the classic Joel, I got to throw it in there.

00:11:35.940 But this is the 1689, second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

00:11:40.480 The first chapters of the Holy Scriptures, paragraph five says this.

00:11:43.900 And this is really more of the spiritual answer.

00:11:45.980 And so what Alicia has done is she's shown us some of the technical and practical side of how God carries this out.

00:11:52.720 But it says this.

00:11:53.600 We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church of God to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures

00:11:59.600 and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine and the majesty of the style

00:12:05.960 that some people would use this to say that they would point towards the King James.

00:12:12.400 And to be fair to that group, that would be the Texas Receptus group.

00:12:17.360 And so it's not only the King James, the Geneva Bible, it's basically the received text.

00:12:22.220 And they would look at that style, the writing, the majesty of the style.

00:12:25.340 But I would argue that adhering to the 1689 doesn't require you to adopt the TR position.

00:12:32.560 The majesty of the scripture, regardless of what translation you're using, it has a distinct majesty in it.

00:12:38.360 There's an efficacy of the doctrine.

00:12:40.440 The doctrine makes sense.

00:12:41.540 It's logical.

00:12:42.500 Sixty-six books of the Bible written by 40 different human authors over the course of 1,500 years.

00:12:47.820 And there's a cohesive pattern that you don't just see a bunch of guys contradicting one another.

00:12:54.800 So the doctrines that are logical and efficacious, the majesty of the style, it goes on and says the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, the entire perfections thereof are arguments whereby it doth, there's the old language, not it does, it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God, yet notwithstanding.

00:13:23.960 Now, now here's, this is really important. All these ways, all these ways we see that it is the word of God, yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.

00:13:43.440 And so all of these things, this is how God preserves his word. This is how the scripture was written. This is how we know it's reliable and true.

00:13:50.960 And yet at the end of the day, it's exactly what you said, Elisa, that the person who's making this objection at the end of the day, their heart is hardened.

00:13:59.080 There's usually usually now now it is it is possible because Jesus is merciful and kind.

00:14:05.220 So the bruised reed, he doesn't just walk up and kick it and break it in half.

00:14:09.600 And the smoldering wick, he doesn't spit on it and snuff it out.

00:14:12.760 He's a merciful priest. And there are weak Christians. 1.00

00:14:15.120 There's a difference between a false convert and a weak convert.

00:14:17.960 and there are weak converts that they need to hear the practical, logical manner in which God

00:14:25.140 has preserved his word and has kept it so that it is reliable and trustworthy. And that's a weak

00:14:31.260 Christian. But there are some who would bring this objection. The weak Christian is going to be

00:14:35.840 a question, a genuine question. There are some people, they ask the question, but it's not a

00:14:40.040 question. It's a statement. It's an accusation. It's an objection guised as a question. And for

00:14:46.320 that person, at the end of the day, one of the reasons they have the question to begin with

00:14:50.100 is because, yeah, there's some practical information that we could enlighten them with.

00:14:54.040 But at the end of the day, they don't have the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness

00:14:57.980 by and with the word in their hearts. But for the Christian, the weak convert, they do. So they

00:15:04.260 already have the Holy Spirit bearing witness in their hearts. And for them to hear some of these

00:15:08.360 details that Elisa just shared with us, all of a sudden, the spirit of God within them is just

00:15:12.520 going to cry out yes yes and affirm that truth um and be greatly consoled and encouraged okay

00:15:18.220 so that said any other thoughts on this first one before we move on to the next objection

00:15:22.220 yeah i might just even add to that too because i i think that in the culture that we live in

00:15:29.240 i don't even know if it would if i would say it would be a weak christian asking those questions

00:15:34.580 i mean it definitely could be but you know if you look at mormonism they almost have a similar

00:15:39.400 thing. They'll say, the burning in the bosom, do you feel that burning in the bosom? And I think

00:15:43.820 that sometimes people can be confused, but I think the Holy Spirit uses some of the more,

00:15:49.680 you know, just the evidence in the real world to actually do that work of confirming it to our

00:15:56.460 hearts. And I think that it's something that a lot of Christians go through a process of going,

00:16:01.760 why do I believe this? And I think that it can be a very healthy question to ask. And also just for

00:16:07.740 skeptical friends that come and say, well, you know, Hey, the Mormon says they have a burning

00:16:12.360 in the bosom and you say the Holy spirit's confirming it to you. But what, what is there

00:16:16.440 in reality that I can look to and think about that, that will, you know, confirm this to me

00:16:21.620 too. So it's just, it's neat to know that we have that available and the Holy spirit does use that

00:16:26.440 kind of information in people's lives at various points of their, of their journey.

00:16:30.980 I agree. Yeah. And I like R.C. Sproul. He was an evidential or like classical apologist and less of the presuppositional.

00:16:41.520 Now, I would be in the presuppositional camp as a confession. I got to be honest about that.

00:16:45.800 But I greatly appreciate R.C. Sproul and and he would make many he would provide a lot of the same information that you've provided.

00:16:53.120 And you're right. It is the Holy Spirit works with nature as well as with scripture, illuminating these things to us.

00:17:01.280 It's a great comfort and a great consolation. I completely agree.

00:17:04.440 And one other thing that I think Sproul would add is a lot of times he would, you know, work to he would he would work from Christ to the scripture.

00:17:13.160 So he would start with Christ first and he would he would talk about, you know, there's more evidence and more writing, more all these things for Jesus Christ than Caesar Augustus.

00:17:21.380 or any other historical figure, you know, and everybody, nobody has any problem with

00:17:25.580 Plato. Oh yeah, of course, Plato, he was a philosopher, you know, Socrates, and we don't have

00:17:29.520 nearly as many manuscripts and evidence of these characters as we do

00:17:33.620 the God-man Christ Jesus. And there's a lot of people today professing

00:17:37.500 Christians, and some of them may be Christians, and some of them may not, but who would say, yeah,

00:17:41.480 Jesus, I love Jesus. And okay, but what does Jesus say about the Bible?

00:17:45.820 You know, so working from Christ first, and then what does

00:17:49.480 jesus say about the old testament you know and uh every jot and tittle and then and then jesus is

00:17:55.240 the same one so it's his authority confirming the old testament and then his authority commissioning

00:17:59.760 the apostles for the writing of the new testament and so even the scripture we can look to jesus as

00:18:05.140 you know the cornerstone and um and and to write off there's just there really is no logical

00:18:11.740 no fair way of of writing off jesus christ you have to do something with this with this man

00:18:17.720 Christ Jesus. You either love him or hate him, you bless him or curse him, but you got to do

00:18:21.080 something with Jesus. He's not a fairy tale. And I love that you brought up the presuppositional

00:18:25.700 versus the evidential approach, because when I was in a faith crisis of my own, I didn't even know

00:18:31.380 what presuppositionalism was. So it was more like I went more into the evidential route. I would

00:18:36.560 consider myself to be an evidentialist, but at the same time, I think there's such value in allowing

00:18:41.560 for both. There's so much, like I've heard debates and I'm listening to the presuppositionalism

00:18:46.340 I'm going, yes, and I listen to the evidence, yes, and I think that there's great value,

00:18:51.620 and God uses all of it, and so, yeah, so there's great, I hate when people pit them against each

00:18:58.240 other, as if you have to, you know, pick one, and be in, like, you know, fight against the other,

00:19:02.060 I don't think you have to fight against it, it's many ways. Amen, if you ever get the chance,

00:19:08.220 I would encourage you, John Frame, I really like, he, you know, he says, well, isn't this circular

00:19:13.780 logic because that's the, you know, one of the big pushbacks against presuppositionalism. Isn't

00:19:17.400 the circular logic, right? The Bible is the Bible because the Bible says it's the Bible. And you

00:19:21.600 know, the word of God says it's the word of God. And he would say, yeah, but that is the number

00:19:26.280 one reason because the Bible is self-attesting. That is the reason. And it is circular logic.

00:19:30.220 And he said, and so let's just take a really big circle. And he argues in his book, Apologetics,

00:19:35.580 and he makes the evidential arguments and saying it's completely proper and completely appropriate

00:19:40.880 Because sometimes you can you can be on the presuppositional side and you can say, look, what people are trying to do ultimately is they're trying to put God as the defendant and themselves in the seat of the judge.

00:19:52.000 And we should never let that happen. And I understand that. And I agree with that. I do agree with that position.

00:19:57.020 Greg Bonson argued against that. And at the end of the day, no, we don't get to judge God.

00:20:03.040 But but I think that that there is something to making a defense and Bonson would, of course, adhere to that.

00:20:09.120 And so making a defense, always be prepared in season, out of season to give an answer for the hope that you have and to say the Bible is the word of God precisely because it says it's the word of God.

00:20:18.520 And and then you just start taking them on this big circle and you're resting it ultimately on on the authority of the word of God.

00:20:25.500 But you're also giving all the practical, evidential, circumstantial evidence as well.

00:20:30.460 And I think really the big question, because there's some presuppositional guys who feel like they can't ever appeal to logic or practical or evidence.

00:20:37.580 Because I think what makes, if you are in the presuppositional camp, I think ultimately the question is not whether or not you can use evidential arguments.

00:20:45.400 I think the question is simply, what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

00:20:50.460 And so is it first the word of God because God says it's the word of God and, or is it first the word of God because of these practical reasons and now I can, it's the chicken or the egg?

00:21:06.080 And that is certainly a debate. But I think that both are really helpful. And so even as a presuppositionalist, I often find myself giving practical evidence. And I don't think that that's, I personally strongly would disagree with that being a contradiction to the presuppositional position.

00:21:23.160 So anyways, any other thoughts or you want to go ahead and jump into the next objection?

00:21:29.180 Well, let's let's jump into the next one, because I think that one of the things you definitely hear from skeptics and even sadly, even in the people who would identify themselves as Christians.

00:21:41.820 Of course, I mentioned that my book is about progressive Christianity.

00:21:45.040 So in a lot of cases, not all progressive Christians have sort of denied the resurrection

00:21:51.620 of Jesus, at least as it being a physical resurrection in the progressive world.

00:21:56.300 It's like, well, whether or not he was really raised physically doesn't really matter.

00:21:59.320 And then, of course, skeptics are going to say there's no evidence for the resurrection

00:22:03.660 of Jesus.

00:22:05.020 And one of the things that really was so just exciting for me to learn was that there is

00:22:11.560 actually a lot of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, I argue, and I think this is

00:22:18.440 true, I'm not saying you can prove the resurrection outside of the Bible, but even if you never opened

00:22:23.340 a Bible in your life, there would be enough historical evidence from non-Christian sources

00:22:28.340 within 150 years of Jesus' life to get to that conclusion, because even secular scholars will

00:22:37.080 admit that the earliest followers of Jesus had an experience in which they believed they had seen

00:22:42.880 the risen Christ, and then they were willing to go to their deaths and they were willing to be 0.99

00:22:47.940 tortured and beaten, holding that that belief was true. And it's really interesting when you

00:22:54.100 ask skeptics, what do you make of that? If he wasn't really resurrected, what's the answer?

00:22:58.620 And they come up with a bunch of things that don't really work. But the good news is there

00:23:02.960 actually is quite a bit of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. And so there's a scholar,

00:23:08.740 a historian, Gary Habermas, and he collected over 1,400 of the most critical scholarly works

00:23:15.140 on the resurrection between 1975 and 2003. Now this spanned the gamut of the most conservative

00:23:21.360 scholars to the most liberal to even atheist and, you know, hostile biblical scholars to the

00:23:28.520 resurrection. And he discovered that there were certain facts that virtually every scholar agreed

00:23:34.800 upon. And so he lays these out. And so four of those facts would be, number one, virtually every

00:23:41.160 scholar agrees that Jesus, well, first of all, existed. You know, you're always going to have

00:23:46.300 your outliers on the fringe, but that Jesus existed and was crucified in the Roman Empire.

00:23:52.460 So he died by Roman crucifixion. So that's the first fact that virtually every scholar agrees on.

00:23:58.300 The second fact that virtually every scholar agrees on is that Jesus' disciples believed

00:24:03.760 he rose from the dead and appeared to them, and that they were willing to suffer and die

00:24:07.800 for those beliefs.

00:24:08.820 And then there's a couple more facts they all agree on, and that's that Paul, who went

00:24:13.000 from being not just skeptical, but an actual persecutor of the church, you know, breathing

00:24:18.300 threats and murder against Christians, instantly flipped after having an experience that he

00:24:24.760 believed was the risen Jesus.

00:24:26.380 Now, I'm wording that the way the skeptical scholars would word it.

00:24:29.320 We, of course, know that Paul did see the risen Jesus, but the skeptic might say that

00:24:32.860 he believed he'd seen the risen Jesus.

00:24:34.820 But the point is that his life flipped on a dime from that one experience.

00:24:38.900 He went from literally bringing Christians to their deaths with Stephen the martyr, his

00:24:43.260 cloaks being put at Paul's feet, to becoming like one of the greatest evangelists of all

00:24:49.780 time and writing a good chunk of our New Testament.

00:24:52.620 And then the fourth fact that virtually all scholars agree on is that Jesus' brother James

00:24:57.660 was skeptical.

00:24:59.180 The Bible talks about Jesus' own brothers didn't even believe in him, and he was suddenly

00:25:03.620 converted after he believed he'd seen the risen Jesus.

00:25:07.480 And Paul writes about James' eyewitness account in 1 Corinthians 15, where he lists out all

00:25:12.160 these eyewitnesses.

00:25:13.140 Paul lists 500 other eyewitnesses that, by the way, most of them at least would have

00:25:18.280 been alive during the time that Paul wrote about them.

00:25:21.020 and if that wasn't true, Paul wouldn't have written that because they all could have been

00:25:25.620 like, wait a second, you're saying I saw something I didn't see, but nobody ever did anything like

00:25:29.940 that. And then there's one more fact that fewer scholars believe, but still about 75%

00:25:35.900 of scholars believe that Jesus' tomb was found empty. And so the thing I just love to ask people

00:25:42.400 is given all those facts, Jesus died by Roman crucifixion, his disciples believed they'd seen

00:25:47.560 the risen Jesus and were willing to be to suffer and die for that belief. We've got Paul, the

00:25:52.340 skeptic flipping on a dime and James flipping on a dime who was skeptical. I mean, this was Jesus

00:25:56.440 brother, right? Like your little brothers, the big brothers, the Messiah. I mean, that's a hard

00:26:01.960 sell, but he becomes the leader of the church in Rome, as we know. So there's all these facts. And

00:26:07.880 so the thing I just like to ask people is how do you explain those facts? And it's interesting just

00:26:14.000 to watch people kind of think about that. And so I have another blog post where I list some quotes

00:26:21.260 from some different scholars. So there's an atheist, Gerd Ludemann, a German New Testament

00:26:25.260 scholar, and he wrote that it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples

00:26:32.200 had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. Now, this is

00:26:38.100 not a guy that believes that the New Testament is even historically reliable, but he's saying this

00:26:43.820 is a fact um of course bart ehrman we mentioned as the the skeptical scholar that grew up as a

00:26:49.260 christian walked away from his faith and and he wrote this he said historians have no difficulty

00:26:55.440 speaking about the belief in the resurrection of jesus since this is a matter of public record

00:27:00.920 it is a historical fact that some of jesus followers came to believe that he had been raised

00:27:06.360 from the dead soon after his execution um and then he wrote in a blog post i pulled this from

00:27:12.440 one of his blog posts, he said, the most important thing to stress is that there are two historical

00:27:16.700 realities that simply cannot be denied. The followers of Jesus did claim that he came back

00:27:21.920 to life. And if they had not claimed that, we would not have Christianity. And then, of course,

00:27:28.300 N.T. Wright, there's a famous quote from him where he says, as a historian, I cannot explain the rise

00:27:33.880 of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him. Because, of

00:27:39.320 course, we know there were other people claiming to be the Jewish Messiah that were killed. And

00:27:44.480 those stories just faded out. The only thing that explains Christianity getting off the ground is 0.99

00:27:50.600 that Jesus actually was resurrected from the dead. And so those are just sort of some of what Gary

00:27:57.020 Habermas refers to as the minimal facts. Those are the minimal facts, just the most basic things that

00:28:01.800 all scholars agree on. And the question for everyone listening is how do you explain those

00:28:05.880 facts because there's different ways people will try to, but the, but it's a lot more plausible

00:28:10.700 that the best explanation is that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

00:28:15.660 That's really good. I really appreciate that. I'm going to let, I'm just going to let your

00:28:19.300 comments and, uh, and everything that you've contributed right there lie. I really don't

00:28:23.880 have anything to add. So let's go ahead and jump into the third objection. If you're ready.

00:28:27.840 Okay. Now the third one is, and we hear this a lot from skeptics and that's the idea that science

00:28:33.980 has somehow disproved god um we this this is something that gosh there's so many debates about

00:28:41.500 there have been tons of books written but the thing i think where i just like to bust it down

00:28:45.640 to its bare bones is that by nature first of all if even if you ask what is science people are

00:28:52.300 going to give you a hundred different yeah i was going to ask are we talking about science or

00:28:55.880 the science right like because because we could be talking about like mathematical science the

00:29:01.640 Science, yeah, because hashtag science, right?

00:29:03.820 That's the reason everybody gives writing.

00:29:06.000 But so if we're talking about the natural sciences, you know, by definition, that's trying to find the causes of things.

00:29:12.860 And so, you know, I think that's probably the broadest definition of what science is.

00:29:16.820 And so scientists, just by definition, what they're doing is they're studying the material world.

00:29:23.720 So they're studying this one thing, but God is actually not made of matter.

00:29:28.340 He's not material.

00:29:29.800 So whatever they're studying, just by its very nature, is not going to be investigating the

00:29:35.040 question of God. They're going to be studying the natural world. And so what is so interesting

00:29:40.940 about the way so many scientists go about saying that they've disproved God is they'll say something

00:29:48.940 like, I've heard this, like all truth can be discovered by science, or the only truth we can

00:29:55.200 know comes from science. But think about that statement. All truth comes from science. Just

00:30:02.120 take that statement. That is a statement that is philosophical. It's not scientific. You can't test

00:30:09.440 that in a lab. So you have to have philosophical presuppositions basically undergirding how you're

00:30:17.540 doing the science. And so even for a scientist to say God does not exist, that's not a statement

00:30:26.360 of science. It's a philosophical statement that can't be proven in a lab. They can't test it. So

00:30:31.380 in order for scientists to assert that God doesn't exist, they have to filter their findings through

00:30:37.140 the lens of materialism, which, you know, I guess a broad definition of materialism is it's the

00:30:42.740 philosophical belief that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, that all phenomena are a

00:30:49.740 result of material interactions. And so it excludes just by nature the possibility of anything

00:30:54.460 supernatural. And there's a really interesting quote from one of the world's leaders in

00:31:01.260 evolutionary biology. This is a Harvard professor. His name's Richard Lewontin. And he actually

00:31:06.740 admitted that scientists are committed to the philosophy of materialism. And so the reason I'm

00:31:13.340 harping on this is because when they're studying the material world, every scientist, in order to

00:31:18.980 analyze the evidence, they have to use philosophy. So this is why people like Frank Turek will say

00:31:24.860 science doesn't say anything, scientists do. You can have scientists that all have the same data,

00:31:31.240 but they differ and disagree on what the conclusion is because they're analyzing and they have to use

00:31:35.900 philosophy to do that so you can't just there's there's not anything in the material world where

00:31:40.580 you just look at it and everybody knows the conclusion maybe mathematics or something like

00:31:44.180 that but here's what Richard Lewontin said he said and he's talking about scientists he said

00:31:49.640 we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs

00:31:54.460 in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life in spite

00:32:00.180 of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated, just so stories, because we have

00:32:06.220 a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. And then he goes on to say that, um, uh, they,

00:32:15.740 they, they, for them, materialism is absolute because they can't allow a divine foot in the

00:32:21.900 door. They realize if they go outside of that materialism, they're making room for God. So in

00:32:27.120 essence, they're not following the evidence everywhere it goes. In fact, Berkeley philosophy

00:32:32.080 professor John Searle famously compared this to a religion. He said, materialism is the religion of

00:32:37.420 our time. Like more traditional religions, it's accepted without question and provides the

00:32:42.400 framework within which other questions can be posed, addressed, and answered. And so I think

00:32:48.420 it's so interesting to realize that when scientists are studying the natural world,

00:32:53.920 they definitely have a presupposition that they're coming to the science and they're analyzing it

00:32:59.860 through that filter of materialism. But there's a great illustration from Frank Turek's book,

00:33:05.220 Stealing from God. And I think this will kind of bring this home for everybody. He says,

00:33:09.940 to say that a scientist can disprove the existence of God is like saying a mechanic

00:33:15.880 can disprove the existence of Henry Ford. It doesn't follow. A mechanic's job isn't to discover

00:33:22.000 who made the car, it's to figure out how the car works. And so I think that's a really good

00:33:25.780 analogy to help us kind of process. You have to take a philosophical leap to say that science

00:33:31.120 has disproved God. Yeah, I completely, that was really, really great, Elisa. Thank you.

00:33:36.140 I completely agree. And I, you know, so part of what we're talking at this point is, you know,

00:33:40.020 talking about creation, we're talking about natural revelation. And so for our listeners,

00:33:44.540 if you're not familiar with these terms, I think they're helpful categories. There's special

00:33:48.200 revelation and natural revelation. Special revelation, uh, would be, well, first and

00:33:53.700 foremost, we have the Bible, both the old and new Testament. Um, but, but it's more than that. We

00:33:58.460 have a prophecy, um, we have, uh, visions, dreams, and I'm not saying that these things continue

00:34:04.260 today. I would be in the cessationist camp. Um, but that's where we got the Bible. We got the

00:34:08.480 Bible, the old Testament from prophets and dreams and visions and the Lord speaking. Um, and so,

00:34:13.620 all that would fall into the special revelation camp. So even prophecies that were not inscripturated,

00:34:19.560 they were not written down like in the early church. You know, Philip had four daughters

00:34:23.460 and they prophesied. We don't have a recording of any of those prophecies from Philip's four

00:34:28.060 daughters, but we know that they did. And if it was true prophecy, which that seems to be what

00:34:33.880 the Bible says, then that was special revelation. So special revelation is God's revelation through

00:34:39.760 prophecy, through dreams, through visions, and of course, scripture. And the chief is actually not

00:34:46.480 scripture. The chief of special revelation is Christ. Hebrews 1 says, long ago, God spoke to

00:34:52.780 our fathers in many ways and at many times, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son.

00:34:58.400 He is the exact imprint of the father's nature and the radiance of the glory of God. And he

00:35:03.800 upholds the universe by the word of his power. So Jesus is the final revelation and he is the

00:35:09.280 pinnacle of special revelation. Natural revelation, however, we see multiple places in the scripture.

00:35:14.800 I think Psalm 8, no, I think it's actually Psalm 16 would be an example of David, the psalmist

00:35:22.100 saying that the skies proclaim, the skies are screaming and preaching the glory of God. And so

00:35:29.020 we see all throughout the scripture, but perhaps the most memorable and iconic portion of scripture

00:35:34.660 this speaks of natural revelation, how God, how God is revealing something about himself

00:35:39.320 by what he has made would be Romans one. So Romans one, uh, starting verse 18, it says,

00:35:43.460 for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness

00:35:49.280 of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. So the truth is there, but they're

00:35:55.660 suppressing it. Doug Wilson uses this illustration. He says, uh, unbelievers are like, uh, like people

00:36:02.140 in a pool trying to hold a beach ball under the water. And our job as Christians is to poke their 1.00

00:36:06.760 arms, maybe tickle them a little bit and say, what do you got there? What do you got there?

00:36:10.920 So for what can be known about God is playing to them because God has shown it to them for his

00:36:15.980 invisible attributes, namely, now this is key, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly

00:36:20.760 perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that had been made. So in these

00:36:27.100 material things, there is something about God that can be seen. And then it concludes verse

00:36:33.340 20 by saying, so that they are without an apologia, without an apologetic, without an

00:36:39.140 excuse, an argument. And so at the end of the day, it's important for us to recognize that the

00:36:44.100 unbeliever, God forbid, if he does not save them and judgment has come and they're in hell, 0.96

00:36:52.960 Now, we should not think, oh, this poor person that just their greatest, their primary problem was that they were ignorant.

00:37:05.940 I think a lot of times Christians, because we want to be sympathetic, we want to be compassionate, which are all good godly traits. 0.90

00:37:12.520 However, I think sometimes we're tempted to make excuses for the unbeliever. 0.61

00:37:16.720 And we think in a nutshell, we do this. 1.00

00:37:19.700 We say they're rebelling against God and certainly they're doing things that are sinful, but they're, they're rebelling against God because they're ignorant of God.

00:37:27.640 So we think that rebellion stems from ignorance, but what Romans one tells us is that ignorance stems from rebellion.

00:37:33.900 So, so it's not first and foremost, a matter of the intellect.

00:37:37.520 It's first and foremost, a matter of the will because people rebel against God because they can't let the divine foot in the door.

00:37:44.760 Like Elisa just said, because every man does have an allegiance, because, we should say it like this, because neutrality is a myth.

00:37:52.800 There is no neutrality.

00:37:55.020 Math is like, well, math is neutral, two plus two.

00:37:58.400 And all of a sudden, wouldn't you know it?

00:38:00.540 We have people saying, well, maybe two plus two isn't four.

00:38:03.320 Math is whiteness.

00:38:04.980 Math is white supremacy. 0.85

00:38:07.120 It's oppressive, you know.

00:38:07.920 And so even those things that we thought were, and here's the thing, all truth is God's truth.

00:38:13.500 But what we're talking about is we're not just talking about the matter or the principle,

00:38:17.480 but we're talking about people discerning, people interpreting, people observing this

00:38:23.460 matter.

00:38:24.120 And those people have an allegiance.

00:38:27.020 So the scientists have an allegiance.

00:38:30.220 So even when COVID happened, and I remember all the way back in March, I was really, really,

00:38:35.300 really, you know, like, whoa, let's slow down before we shut down, you know, the entire

00:38:39.600 economy and every church in America.

00:38:41.040 And, you know, and I remember arguing with my elders and back and forth.

00:38:44.360 And I was like, okay, you know, they're like, Joel, don't, don't politicize everything.

00:38:47.800 And I said, I don't want to politicize everything, but I think we're being, um, we're being naive

00:38:52.740 if we don't recognize that everything is being politicized for us.

00:38:57.280 So, so we don't need to politicize everything, but we're naive if we think that everything's

00:39:02.500 not being politicized by someone.

00:39:04.480 And we need to be discerning enough to say, okay, data doesn't have an allegiance, but

00:39:09.260 where does data come from?

00:39:10.380 researchers collecting data. And then we have the media presenting data. So we have godless Yale

00:39:16.740 and the godless New York times working in concert. And we say that there's, there's no moral agenda

00:39:22.820 there. There's, there's no, that's, that's just, we, we must be innocent as doves, but we also

00:39:28.100 need to be as cunning, as discerning as serpents. So Christians, we can't, we can, we need to be

00:39:33.640 childlike, another Sproul thing, but we cannot be childish. We cannot be foolish. And so with this 0.99

00:39:40.860 matter, what the last thing that I was going to say with Romans one is it says for his invisible

00:39:44.980 attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. And that word

00:39:51.900 perceived, it doesn't just mean that these attributes of God have been revealed. But what

00:39:57.300 Romans one says is that all people, not just believers, but all people through natural revelation

00:40:02.140 have perceived. So it's not just God manifested it, but the retina caught it. It landed. It was

00:40:10.940 perceived. It was seen by not just believers, but also unbelievers. But what was seen? Every

00:40:16.140 single aspect about the Trinity? No. The gospel of Jesus Christ? No. You want the gospel? You need

00:40:25.740 special revelation for that. Natural revelation is only sufficient for one thing, which is

00:40:31.120 ultimately to condemn. Paul says, namely, or that language means specifically, particularly

00:40:38.200 what attributes of God? His eternal power and divine nature, not his mercy, not his son, Christ

00:40:44.760 Jesus. What's been seen is that there is a God. He exists. He is eternal. He is the creator. He's

00:40:51.500 divine. He is powerful. And by way of implication, he is worthy of our worship. That is all seen,

00:40:58.020 But all of that is only sufficient.

00:41:00.240 These attributes of God, that knowledge of the Holy one, all that is capable of doing

00:41:04.780 at the end of the day is precisely what Romans one says, stripping every man of any excuse,

00:41:12.440 taking away all.

00:41:13.280 So it's only really sufficient to condemn us before a Holy God.

00:41:17.040 We need the special revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ found in the scripture in

00:41:22.200 order to ultimately for redemption, for salvation.

00:41:25.220 So all that being said, my point is just to say that as we look at creation, it does say something about God.

00:41:31.300 But the problem is that every man has an allegiance.

00:41:34.200 So we're not always willing to admit what it says.

00:41:36.600 And then also, I think the other thing with natural revelation, part of the reason this is my theory, but part of the reason I think that creation itself does not testify to more of God is because even creation.

00:41:47.140 So not just the creature, humankind being fallen and therefore fallible in the way we observe and interpret matter, but also creation itself is under the curse.

00:41:59.000 So there are certain things about the natural world.

00:42:02.400 We have to remember nature reveals something about God.

00:42:05.420 However, even nature is fallen.

00:42:07.560 So there are certain things like death, for instance, that don't actually speak to who God is because, no, that's not what he made.

00:42:15.520 that's what we introduced into his creation by our sin. And so we have to, we have to say natural

00:42:22.140 revelation is a real theological category. It is absolutely sufficient to condemn every man, 0.77

00:42:27.400 woman, and child, apart from the grace that is found only in Jesus Christ. But we can't go too

00:42:32.720 far with natural revelation. I think sometimes some guys will say, you know, from natural

00:42:36.860 revelation, everybody knows, you know, this doctrine and that doctrine. Paul says, namely

00:42:42.140 his divine nature and eternal power uh it's a short list but it says something and um yeah so

00:42:49.080 right and that'd be tough so all right uh any other thoughts that you would like to add to that

00:42:56.140 no that was a very good breakdown i romans one is one of my um favorite of course i hate referring

00:43:01.840 to any chapter of the bible as a favorite over another one but i just think it speaks so um

00:43:07.420 you mentioned hell and how people would be like, well, how could God, you know, send people to hell

00:43:13.160 because they've never heard the gospel. And you make such a good point. And I always go to Romans

00:43:17.260 one with that too, because people don't, I always like to ask people, first of all, put aside,

00:43:23.560 whatever you think hell is, just, you know, put that aside. Why would you want to be with God

00:43:29.920 for all eternity under his rule and reign, submitted to his ways, if you don't even like

00:43:36.200 him now. And I think, you know, we, we look at Romans one and, and there, like you said,

00:43:41.380 everybody has that, that access to a certain degree of knowledge that God exists and even

00:43:46.840 know things about him. And like you mentioned, people reject that. And that's, and that is where,

00:43:53.240 you know, it is sufficient to condemn in that sense. And so there really isn't anyone ever

00:43:58.880 going to hell just out of pure ignorance because everybody has a chance to respond to that natural

00:44:04.120 revelations. And I thought that was a really good breakdown. Thanks. Thanks so much. All right. So

00:44:08.100 that was our third objection. So can we do a recap real quick? The first one was Bible?

00:44:12.740 First one was, well, I guess we could say, have the New Testament documents been corrupted? Like,

00:44:18.060 do we have a corrupted copy of the text? And then the second one was resurrection?

00:44:23.000 Resurrection evidence. Is there evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? And then

00:44:26.740 has science disproved God? Has science disproved God? That was the third one.

00:44:31.520 All right.

00:44:32.300 You got two more for us?

00:44:33.660 Can we do five?

00:44:34.660 Okay, great.

00:44:35.640 The fourth would be, this is a big one, and it's hard to do this on a quick flyover.

00:44:41.700 So I would just recommend that people dig deeper on this.

00:44:45.360 There have been books written.

00:44:46.600 There's Paul Copan's God, a Moral Monster.

00:44:48.660 There's lots of, Peter Williams is a great resource on this.

00:44:52.200 He has a couple of lectures on YouTube about this.

00:44:56.420 But the general story about slavery in the Bible is one thing we have to understand is

00:45:01.460 that the Bible, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew mostly, and we, it's translated into

00:45:07.400 English. And then we as Americans, when we hear the word slave or slavery, the first thing that

00:45:13.180 comes to our mind is the, the chattel slavery in the antebellum South, right? This is, this is our

00:45:19.080 context for slavery. But what we don't understand is that the word that's translated from Hebrew

00:45:25.180 into English is the Hebrew word abed. I actually watched a video from the translation committee

00:45:31.300 for the ESV Bible, having a discussion about whether or not they should change the English

00:45:36.760 translation from slave to servant. Because what the Old Testament is talking about, the system

00:45:43.640 that God instituted, is nothing like what we Americans think of when we think of slavery,

00:45:50.240 because we have a different context within which we experienced slavery. So I think that's the

00:45:55.860 first thing I would say. And so the word abed in Hebrew doesn't carry the same negative connotation

00:46:01.800 it does in our modern context. So in ancient Israel, this was a type of servanthood. It was

00:46:06.900 voluntary. So it wasn't race-based. It wasn't based on being forced to do something. It was

00:46:13.540 a voluntary system that if a destitute person, maybe they owed a family some, you know, they

00:46:21.920 owed them and they were in debt to this family. They could go live with that family. They could

00:46:27.480 be given food, shelter. They had legal rights. They had protection from physical mistreatment.

00:46:34.300 And even if their debt wasn't paid off after seven years, they were commanded to let them go

00:46:39.700 and they were given generous gifts like flocks and grain and wine. And so some cases there were

00:46:47.580 where the Israelites kept servants from surrounding nations, maybe conquered foes.

00:46:53.040 But those, they were commanded to treat humanely, and they were also protected from mistreatment

00:46:57.920 under biblical law.

00:46:58.880 The thing we need to bear in mind is that the type of slavery we had in the United States

00:47:03.960 would have been punishable by death by Old Testament law, because to kidnap someone,

00:47:08.540 or human trafficking, we might call it, this was punishable by death.

00:47:11.980 So that was the Old Testament system that God basically gave to Israel.

00:47:18.760 And the point of it was to keep people from dying.

00:47:22.460 You couldn't just go get a job at Starbucks back then, right?

00:47:24.920 If your crops failed, you could die.

00:47:28.460 And so this was a way for people to have kind of a plan B to get back on their feet, to

00:47:33.100 work their way up and out of poverty.

00:47:36.040 It's an example of case law.

00:47:37.900 Of course, it was not ideal that people would actually become destitute, but like you mentioned,

00:47:43.200 we live in a fallen world and stuff like that happens.

00:47:46.440 And so this was God's protection for people to be able to come up and out of destitution.

00:47:53.560 Now, in the New Testament context, it was a little different.

00:47:56.900 The slavery that was in the Roman Empire was not the same animal that God instituted for

00:48:04.680 Israel in the Old Testament.

00:48:05.960 And different scholars will give different percentages on this.

00:48:09.260 I think Paul Copan says that 85 to 90 percent of the Roman population were slaves.

00:48:15.100 I've heard that number a little lower from other scholars, but a good number of the Roman

00:48:20.480 Empire, the people, just the average Joe living in the Roman Empire were some type of slave.

00:48:26.080 And so we have to think about it this way.

00:48:27.560 First of all, there's nothing in the Bible that speaks positively of that type of slavery.

00:48:32.200 In fact, Paul condemns slave traders.

00:48:35.000 He specifically talks about that.

00:48:38.020 But think about if the New Testament writers would have come out and said,

00:48:42.200 okay, slavery's wrong.

00:48:44.280 What's going on is wrong.

00:48:45.420 All the slaves need to rebel against your masters.

00:48:47.820 I mean, this would have meant mass executions. 0.89

00:48:50.120 They could have been branded.

00:48:51.540 But instead, Paul teaches this radically subversive teaching that slaves are actually on equal terms with their masters in the eyes of God.

00:49:00.000 Now, that was radically countercultural.

00:49:03.020 And so that encouraged a change that began in the heart. 0.94

00:49:06.700 And this is the kind of teaching that would eventually play out and inspire people like

00:49:10.100 William Wilberforce and John Wesley to actually oppose modern slavery and support abolition.

00:49:15.800 And so I think that with a question like slavery, does the Bible support slavery?

00:49:21.060 Absolutely not.

00:49:22.320 Not the kind of slavery we think of in America, the kind we've experienced.

00:49:27.140 Now, like I said, that word, abed, could also easily be translated as servant,

00:49:32.000 as some sort of a voluntary work to work your way up and out of slavery.

00:49:35.980 But nowhere does the Bible speak positively of this.

00:49:38.640 In fact, even the whole book of Philemon, Paul is saying,

00:49:42.340 he sent the slave back and he says, receive him as you receive me.

00:49:47.360 I mean, this was like elevating the status of people.

00:49:50.120 So, yeah, I don't think it really holds water for people to just make a blanket statement

00:49:54.360 that the Bible supports slavery.

00:49:55.880 They're not digging deep enough to understand what's really being said in there. 1.00

00:49:59.420 I completely agree. 1.00

00:50:00.740 I also think so part of the problem is that Christians are not well educated.

00:50:04.300 So everything that you just said was really, really helpful.

00:50:06.220 And a lot of Christians just aren't prepared to get that response.

00:50:09.080 I think another part of it is that Christians, we're just too embarrassed of the scripture.

00:50:13.440 We're too embarrassed of our God.

00:50:16.560 And, you know, we should have no problem passages, you know. 0.85

00:50:21.640 So I think sometimes I wish that Christians would just, you know, if somebody is pressing, well, your God condones slavery. 0.80

00:50:29.740 If you're not prepared, I would say, yeah, the Bible talks about slavery and it does seem as though there are forms of slavery and instances of slavery and circumstances surrounding slavery that are acceptable to God. 0.68

00:50:44.640 And I'll do some homework in the meantime.

00:50:47.220 So what?

00:50:47.660 I'm not going to apologize for that.

00:50:50.480 And so like even, you know, so I think of, you know, Southern slavery.

00:50:53.540 And so I've done some, some reading and some, some research on Southern slavery and those kinds of things.

00:50:57.800 But whether it be Darby or whether it be, you know, Jonathan Edwards would be certainly an example that people, you know, would be quick to throw him under the bus for having slaves.

00:51:07.880 But one thing I think to keep in mind, certainly there were atrocious cruelty and mistreatment of slaves in America.

00:51:18.420 It was wrong in multiple reasons.

00:51:20.960 And you named a lot of them race based.

00:51:22.980 Exodus, I believe it's either Exodus 20 or 21, or it's also in Leviticus, the man stealer,

00:51:28.820 the King James uses the term man stealing and man stealing would be punishable by death. And so

00:51:33.420 kidnapping. However, it is important to keep in mind with the wokeness that we swim in today and

00:51:40.980 that has seeped its way into the church, you know, and, and the idea of, of just completely

00:51:46.740 demonizing whiteness and white supremacy and colonialism and imperialism and all these

00:51:54.040 kinds of things. And it's really cool right now to hate America. But it's important to keep in 0.97

00:51:59.760 mind that in terms of biblical terms, were there many white American slave owners who were not

00:52:08.100 treating their slaves in a biblical manner? Absolutely. And I completely agree with you 0.53

00:52:14.540 that the principles in scripture are, are there. I think it was in the mind of Paul. And more

00:52:19.740 importantly, I think in the mind of God, that as we lived up to the principles of scripture

00:52:25.080 and Christ likeness, um, that slavery would be abolished. I thank God for William Wilberforce

00:52:31.300 and these kinds of things at the same. It's, you know, a lighter example than scripture,

00:52:35.500 but the U S constitution, um, slavery is, is the bug, not the feature. And, and as we lived up to

00:52:43.500 our ideals, these bugs were, were, were eventually worked out. That said, kidnapping, man stealing.

00:52:50.560 It is worth noting that, um, many white Americans did not go to Africa and steal people. They went 0.58

00:53:01.820 and bought them. They bought them from other black Africans. And, and so I just think that 1.00

00:53:09.740 it's important that as we try to demonize one group of people just based on ethnicity, skin

00:53:15.620 pigment, I think that it's worthy of acknowledging from a biblical perspective, there's something to

00:53:23.680 be said for America and slavery that was race-based, slavery that would separate husbands

00:53:30.120 from wives and separate families, a slavery that was abusive. The Bible is clear about how the

00:53:37.620 slaves should be treated. Slavery that is, is lifelong with no hope of freedom, no hope of

00:53:43.380 redemption, where it's not just a debt that's being worked off. All those things, the Bible

00:53:48.320 has something to say about it. But there's also something to be said for, if we're just going to

00:53:52.940 say, well, white people are the people who own slaves and America is the nation that owns slaves

00:53:57.120 and Christianity is, is the, the world religion that is pro-slavery. Man, I mean, that's just, 0.65

00:54:04.920 that, that dog won't hunt. I mean, we can, we can real quick look at, you know, at multiple other

00:54:11.340 nations that have had slavery is, as long as humanity has existed, there has been slavery. 0.84

00:54:16.940 Um, Chinese slave slavery there. I mean, every, virtually every ethnicity, every culture, 0.81

00:54:23.500 every nation, um, including ironically, um, multiple African countries, um, that, you know,

00:54:31.840 the two tribes, they duke it out. One tribe wins. The survivors are taken into slavery 0.97

00:54:39.300 and sold to some white folk. And those white folk have scripture like Jonathan Edwards.

00:54:44.640 It tells them how to treat those slaves. Do I think Jonathan Edwards should have owned slaves?

00:54:49.380 No, but man, it sure is nice having the luxury of being 200 years removed and get to look back on

00:54:58.920 on the past and point out every little flaw. I hope that our great, great, great, great

00:55:03.940 grandchildren will be a little bit nicer to us than we've been to our forefathers.

00:55:08.800 Well, and we have to look at the trajectory too, because, you know, think about the fact that

00:55:13.540 America and others actually abolished slavery. I mean, that's a huge step in the right direction.

00:55:21.440 You know, people act like slavery doesn't exist in other parts of the world. It exists

00:55:26.020 all over the world. Uh, I have friends who work, uh, very intently on this ministry where they

00:55:32.080 literally, there's a country in, in Asia where they raise money and they go by slaves to set

00:55:38.480 them free. And they set them up with like a, uh, a small business. And that's part of what they

00:55:43.260 raise the money for, but it's absolutely all over the world. And, um, and, and yeah, I, I think that

00:55:49.600 we have to look at the trajectory. I mean, look, look how we have righted some of our wrongs,

00:55:54.180 you know, and continue to try to do that. And, uh, so, yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think,

00:56:00.660 I don't think it's a fair, a fair assessment of certainly not a fair assessment of scripture,

00:56:05.660 of God, of Christianity. And I don't think it's a fair assessment of America. America, I think is,

00:56:12.280 um, I, I think it's the best country in human, the best empire in human history. And, uh, and I

00:56:21.140 think it's precisely because of biblical principles and, you know, even guys who weren't necessarily

00:56:26.040 Christians like John Locke, taking these principles from, from scripture and applying them to this

00:56:31.000 idea of, at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's free grace makes free men and free men make free

00:56:37.580 markets and they have freedom of speech and, and, and it makes, it makes a better, a better world.

00:56:42.620 And I hope that our nation gets back to some of that. I, Ali Bestucki recently said, I was talking

00:56:47.620 about America last, you know, our current presidency is kind of this America last thing. 0.96

00:56:54.000 And I think a lot of Christians are like, yeah, that's, you know, like whoever would 0.74

00:56:57.800 be first should be last, you know, and we'll misquote scripture, you know, and this idea

00:57:02.320 of, you know, well, Jesus, Philippians two, you know, he made himself nothing. 0.73

00:57:05.700 He emptied himself and humbled himself to, and not realizing that, that an America last

00:57:10.700 policy, it hurts others.

00:57:14.360 It's not just bad for America.

00:57:15.900 It hurts the rest of the world.

00:57:17.340 And I think the big the big reason why is because of this idea of it's not whether but which.

00:57:22.540 And that's we just I think we think naively.

00:57:25.220 Again, it's just this this childishness where we think, well, if America doesn't do this, this is a bad thing to do.

00:57:32.980 And if we don't do it, then it won't be done.

00:57:35.280 It's not whether but which.

00:57:36.360 So so there's. Right.

00:57:39.540 Chinese Empire, you know, or American. 0.94

00:57:43.260 It's like somebody is going to fill that territory in Afghanistan.

00:57:46.320 stand. Somebody's going to do this. Somebody's going to do that. And so I think at the end of 0.92

00:57:49.380 the day, I want our nation to be strong and I want us to go back to these principles. And I want us

00:57:54.000 to export, I want us to export an agenda and a worldview and a culture. The problem, I think the

00:58:01.020 problem is that for the last few decades, we just, we're not, we're exporting secularism and 0.58

00:58:05.380 secularism isn't much better than Islam or any other. Secularism is likewise oppressive and 0.64

00:58:11.480 and it's not a solution. And, and so we have some work to do. But this idea of throwing out the 0.89

00:58:19.380 baby with the bathwater, and I think that again, comes from your worldview and back to the

00:58:22.480 materialism idea that, you know, you believe in a big bang theory and, you know, everything came

00:58:26.700 out of nothing, you know, or then, yeah, then burn it all down and the Phoenix will rise from

00:58:31.900 the ashes. Just deconstruct everything, tear it apart, burn it all. But the Christian worldview 0.99

00:58:37.400 says that, you know, that creation, it involves care, that you can't just throw something on the

00:58:44.660 wall and it'll all just assemble in exactly the right positions. And, you know, things have to

00:58:50.560 be built and they have to be labored over and they're not accidental. So we can't just destroy

00:58:55.040 and expect order to come from chaos. That's the worldview. And so we shouldn't be surprised when

00:59:00.240 When when the secular politics is simply following the worldview from from their secular public school education, where they were taught evolution and taught that, you know, hey, order comes from chaos.

00:59:13.420 And so let's let's just have chaos in the streets and let's have chaos here and chaos there and tear down this and burn that business and do that and do this.

00:59:20.700 And and good things will happen. That's that's not the American experiment. That's not why this nation exists.

00:59:26.260 And so it doesn't mean we don't have work to do, but it's work. It's not just deconstructing everything and thinking that something magical and wonderful will appear. So any other thoughts that you want to add on on that fourth objection, slavery?

00:59:39.520 yeah no i just yeah man i just think that you know when i think about an objection like this that

00:59:47.160 if if a person is reasonable and they learn the information the answer's there and i i think that

00:59:56.420 so often with with objections like this i've talked about doubt being sort of like there's

01:00:02.180 two kinds of doubt there's doubt like honest doubt seeking truthful answers seeking the truth

01:00:08.500 And then there's what I might call dishonest doubt, which I think we see a lot with so many of the deconstruction stories, which is someone looking for justification for the unbelief they already hold.

01:00:20.760 They're already out the door.

01:00:22.440 And so, oh, I can say that the Bible condones slavery, evil Bible, you know, done and done.

01:00:28.120 And I think that when people have these questions, just even doing a little self-diagnosis, like, why am I asking this question?

01:00:35.060 Am I asking this question because I really want to know the truth?

01:00:37.460 because ultimately it's you know i don't want to get too far on a rabbit trail here but when we

01:00:43.700 become christians it's it's it's by faith right we're saved by faith and that involves trusting

01:00:50.320 god that that involves knowing that he's good and just and holy and all the things he says he is

01:00:55.040 and if we believe that he's good and holy and just we're not then then we know there's an

01:01:00.440 explanation for something that seems on the surface to be confusing about his character

01:01:05.040 And I think that so many people come to the Old Testament without any trust for God's character.

01:01:11.240 And I think that, you know, just kind of keeping that in mind that with some of these difficult objections, that there's really two kinds of way of going about it.

01:01:20.900 You can either really want to be searching for answers or you can just be looking to justify, you know, because you've got your foot already out the door anyway.

01:01:27.480 You're right.

01:01:28.160 I like that honest doubt versus dishonest doubt.

01:01:32.020 It's okay to doubt.

01:01:34.240 not okay, meaning that it's not wrong at all, but it's permissible. Um, so long as we work

01:01:40.360 through our doubts, um, and, and go to God with our doubts, but, uh, but unbelief, unbelief is a

01:01:46.840 sin. And, uh, and I think you're right. And unbelief again, it's back to the Romans one.

01:01:50.960 And it doesn't ultimately stem from ignorance. It stems from rebellion. Um, it's, it's a matter

01:01:56.140 of the will, not just, uh, information. Um, but it's, it's rebellion that a heart is hardened

01:02:01.720 and does not desire to know God or to trust him or to serve him and obey him

01:02:06.760 and is harboring unbelief and is veiling that unbelief as this innocent doubt.

01:02:14.540 Well, I just have doubts, you know, and who wouldn't?

01:02:17.680 And in some cases that may be genuine, but in other cases I think it's a guise.

01:02:24.440 So that's really helpful.

01:02:26.220 All right, drumroll.

01:02:28.360 We're on the last one.

01:02:29.600 So what is our fifth objection?

01:02:31.720 So the fifth one is one that I was hearing a lot on social media, where people would come on, when I first started my blog, people would come on my social media and say, hey, you know, the only place that even talks about Jesus is the Bible.

01:02:47.040 There's not even anywhere else you can find anything out about him.

01:02:51.160 And this was actually something that was brought up in a class I was in, actually in a church, what I talk about in my book of this progressive Christian church, where the pastor was kind of saying, well, you know,

01:03:01.100 All these Christians kind of blindly trust the Bible, but there's really not any, you

01:03:05.400 know, have you ever wondered?

01:03:06.740 I think that's the way he worded it.

01:03:08.640 He said, have you ever wondered why there's nothing that talks about Jesus outside the

01:03:12.980 Bible?

01:03:13.580 And so this was kind of an important one for me to investigate.

01:03:16.860 And I sort of hinted at this earlier when I was talking about the resurrection evidence,

01:03:21.140 but there's actually 10 non-Christian sources that mentioned Jesus within 150 years of his

01:03:27.620 life.

01:03:27.860 And many of them are actually hostile to Christianity.

01:03:30.760 And the reason that matters is because if there was some sort of conspiracy to to say that Jesus didn't exist, the skeptics wouldn't be mentioning him as a real person.

01:03:41.780 Like it obviously wasn't on their radar that they should try to make people think Jesus didn't exist.

01:03:48.480 And so he's mentioned by Josephus, who was the Jewish historian, famous Jewish historian.

01:03:56.440 He was mentioned by Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Plegan, Thallus, Suetonius, Lucian, Celsus.

01:04:02.440 Now, Celsus was an interesting guy because he was an actual like apologist against Christianity.

01:04:08.240 He was trying to convince people that Christianity was false.

01:04:11.580 That was his mission and his goal. 0.67

01:04:13.200 And even he talks about Jesus as a real person who actually lived and existed in history.

01:04:19.060 And there's the Jewish Talmud.

01:04:20.620 So the interesting one, I'll probably just, because I know we're short on time, but I'll talk to you about one.

01:04:26.820 A lot of skeptics will say, well, hey, you can't use the Josephus quote because there's been some additions by scholars and scribes.

01:04:37.500 And so the quote from Josephus, and you can look this up online.

01:04:41.380 It's free online.

01:04:42.400 You can also get the books that contain all of the works of Josephus.

01:04:46.200 And so when, and this is, he was born around 37 AD.

01:04:50.100 So he was born just a few years after Jesus' resurrection, and in his Antiquities of the

01:04:54.100 Jews, he says, at this time, there was a wise man named Jesus, his conduct was good, and

01:04:58.820 he was known to be virtuous.

01:05:00.840 And so there are more sort of specific, fantastical, even supernatural versions of this quote that

01:05:08.980 get circulated around, and sometimes Christians erroneously will use those because it seems

01:05:14.760 like Josephus is even saying Jesus is a god, or he was a god.

01:05:19.460 And so I don't use that one because most scholars do agree that there were some additions from

01:05:25.380 scribes in that version.

01:05:26.740 But an Arabic version was found, and virtually all scholars agree that this one is more accurate,

01:05:33.280 and that's the one I quote from.

01:05:34.840 But the point being that Josephus is mentioning Jesus as a real person, and he actually mentions

01:05:40.400 the brother of Jesus, James, as well, in a different place.

01:05:43.300 So even twice we have Josephus mentioning Jesus as a real person.

01:05:48.000 And so the persecution of Christians was well-documented.

01:05:52.620 Jesus as a historical person is well-documented, not just by non-Christian sources, but actually

01:05:57.300 hostile sources.

01:05:58.780 And so, yeah, I was delighted to learn that, that the Bible isn't the only place that talks

01:06:03.380 about Jesus.

01:06:04.620 That's really helpful.

01:06:05.880 Yeah.

01:06:06.960 Again, I've heard it said several times, but there's more evidence for Jesus of Nazareth

01:06:13.000 as an actual person, a historical figure, than there is Caesar Augustus, than there is Plato,

01:06:19.180 Socrates, any other person. And we have no problem. It goes back to the whole moral issue

01:06:24.640 rather than intellectual. We have no problem just accepting. And when I say we, I mean virtually

01:06:30.200 every single person that I've ever met, believer, unbeliever, accepting, oh yeah, the history of

01:06:36.800 Caesar Augustus, the history of Beowulf, the Odyssey, the Iliad, all these different

01:06:42.880 things and, and certainly Socrates and Plato and all these philosophers. Um, and then we get to

01:06:48.940 Jesus, uh, are we even sure that was a real person? It's meaning that it's, it's not equal 0.95

01:06:54.620 weights and measures. It's not the same scrutiny being applied across the board. No, it's, it's

01:07:00.600 very clear that there is an allegiance. Um, there is an allegiance and, uh, it's, it's a supernatural

01:07:07.200 natural issue. And at the end of the day, ultimately we, we, we have, we have to pray

01:07:13.180 and cry out that, you know, it's not just ultimately persuading something. We want to

01:07:17.500 be persuasive. We want to be compelling in our gospel presentation and having always been prepared

01:07:23.360 in season and out of season to give an answer for the hope in which you have, which is first Peter

01:07:28.020 first Peter first. I have it here. Three verse 15. Yep. And so we want to be prepared for all

01:07:34.100 these things. But at the end of the day, we have to, we have to remember that we're banking on a

01:07:40.820 miracle. We're banking on God who raises the debt. And there goes my Calvinism. But, you know,

01:07:47.940 I always tell people, it's not just, you know, going in a hospital and offering medicine to

01:07:52.460 those who are sick and dying. And if they choose to take it, they'll get better. But at the end of

01:07:56.900 the day, I really do think that it's like going into a graveyard with people who are buried six

01:08:02.480 feet under and raising the dead, that Jesus with Lazarus, this idea of resurrection life, that we

01:08:09.140 were dead in our trespasses and sins. And I recognize there's a debate to be had there

01:08:13.620 within the banner of Christian orthodoxy, but that would be my commitment. That would be my

01:08:17.480 conviction. And I think that that's what God does in granting new life. I think that's what's

01:08:22.380 happening in evangelism. And so at the end of the day, we are God's tools. We're being used as the

01:08:28.760 human agency. Um, but at the end of the day, God has, he has to melt the heart of stone. He has to

01:08:34.300 raise the dead to life. He, he, something, the will has to be overcome. And it's not just a

01:08:41.420 matter of if we only had more information. And I think right now we're just, we're living in a

01:08:46.240 culture beyond just Christianity. We're living in a culture where we have no lack of information.

01:08:52.120 That's not our problem. It's not that we, we have so much information. The problem is that

01:08:56.320 we're drowning in information. And for some of us, we don't know what's true. But when you look

01:09:01.820 and it's like, we're so polarized and we're so divided. And I think so much of that is

01:09:06.240 not because this group just knows emphatically that this is fake news. And this group knows

01:09:12.080 that that's fake news. And no, like, why are we so polarized? We're so polarized because

01:09:16.380 everybody just believes what they want to be true. It's a matter of the will. You want something to

01:09:22.760 be true, you go into the equation with a presupposition, with a desire. You have a desire.

01:09:28.800 You have a motive. You have an agenda. You have a purpose. And then you accumulate for yourself

01:09:36.620 those new sources, that data, that information, that narrative. And it just makes me think of

01:09:41.680 what Paul said, that in the last days, men will gather for themselves. They'll have itching ears

01:09:47.180 and they'll gather for themselves. False teachers, people who will tell them what they want to hear.

01:09:52.760 And so I, I, yeah, I, I so appreciate you coming on the show.

01:09:56.340 I so appreciate you equipping our listeners with, um, with truth, um, with evidence, with

01:10:02.360 facts that they can use in those conversations because it, it still matters because I think

01:10:07.640 that is part of the work of an evangelist is bringing the person because, because, you

01:10:12.560 know, the scripture says deceiving, being deceived, they deceive others.

01:10:16.400 And so there's this sense of like, I'm being deceitful, but I'm being deceitful.

01:10:19.880 my deceitfulness is stemming from the fact that I am deceived. You know, even Romans 1 says that

01:10:26.360 there's this lying and suppressing the truth and deeds of unrighteousness, but then there is a

01:10:30.620 further hardening and being handed over to your sin to where eventually you are becoming

01:10:36.280 progressively blind. And so there is actually an ignorance, a blindness. The problem is that it's

01:10:43.500 something that was voluntary. It's something that was actually, you weren't born with it.

01:10:48.040 Um, you were born being able to see at least some aspect of, of, of the nature of God.

01:10:53.480 And you chose in your rebellion, you chose this further and further progression of ignorance

01:10:59.800 by lying and suppressing the truth and there, and, and then consequently being handed over

01:11:05.140 further and further to your sin by God.

01:11:06.560 And so we are, what we're doing by giving people answers is we're helping them see your

01:11:12.280 problem is not intellectual.

01:11:13.620 Um, if it were intellectual, here's an answer.

01:11:16.380 and and see you're and that that didn't satisfy you did it now for some it will but but for you

01:11:24.700 know and those are the people that God is drawing or the people who's are already a Christian but

01:11:28.220 just needing some help and needing some answers but for the hardened heart unbeliever you give

01:11:34.320 them an answer and it's not your answer isn't logical it's not it's not reasonable or any of 0.54

01:11:38.020 those things it's it actually will make them angry because because what you're doing is you're taking

01:11:43.080 away their apologia, their excuse. And I think that that is a merciful thing to do. That's exactly

01:11:48.560 what Jesus does with the rich young ruler. He approaches him. How much, how can I be saved?

01:11:52.180 Obey the commandments, which ones, you know, I, you know, this one, all those I've kept since I

01:11:56.260 was a boy. And the, and the Bible says, I love this. It says that Jesus looked at him and loved

01:12:01.000 him. And then he said, go and sell everything. Yeah. Not saying that here's the bar for all,

01:12:06.220 all followers of Jesus. You have to sell everything you have, but Jesus knew his heart.

01:12:09.800 He knew that greed was just one of, exactly.

01:12:12.520 He knew his idol.

01:12:13.440 He knew that was probably just one of many, but Jesus said, we'll start with this one.

01:12:16.600 And he points on that.

01:12:17.980 And, and the man, you know, the man walks away.

01:12:20.820 But, but what I love is right before Jesus puts his finger on his sin, it says, he looks

01:12:25.560 at him and loved him. 1.00

01:12:26.720 And I think that Christians, we can do that with a, with a haughty spirit. 1.00

01:12:30.240 We can do it arrogantly, but I do think that there is a way by God's grace. 1.00

01:12:33.980 And as we grow in Christian formation into the image of Christ and godly character, there

01:12:38.940 is a way for us to give these answers in love, to look at the person who's challenging, to look at

01:12:45.800 the person who's opposing and love them like Jesus loves the rich young ruler. And then say, all

01:12:52.180 right, if that's really your hangup, you're telling me that your problem is strictly ignorance. You 0.97

01:12:55.940 don't know what to believe, or you've heard this other thing. I'm going to refute it with logic,

01:13:00.080 with reason, with facts, with evidence. Here it is. Here's how you can fact check it. Here's how

01:13:05.800 you can look it up. Um, I'm going to do that because I love you and I want you to know. And,

01:13:12.620 and, and I think what can happen is God can use that not to save them necessarily, only the gospel

01:13:17.120 saves. Um, but he can use that to help the person realize, Oh, I'm not ignorant. I'm not a victim.

01:13:25.780 I, I just don't like God. And I think that that, I think that's a win. I think that that is

01:13:31.060 progress. You know, when you, when you walk away and, and the unbeliever says, yeah, I just, I, 0.99

01:13:36.880 I don't, I hate the Christian God. Praise God. That might be the only true statement that comes

01:13:44.260 out of their mouth, you know? And, and I think that that is preparing their heart. At least

01:13:50.120 they're acknowledging this is the actual problem. I don't like the Christian God. And I think that 1.00

01:13:54.540 that better positions at the end of the day, God's sovereign, but I think it better positions a

01:13:58.980 person to recognize, here's the real problem. Here's what we need. And the last thing I always

01:14:03.800 tell people is when you're giving evidence and all these kinds of things, remember those things

01:14:07.940 are incredibly helpful, but it's the gospel that saves. And so I think sometimes, you know, you can

01:14:13.020 go back and forth and have a conversation and sometimes it can get heated and all these kinds

01:14:17.040 of things. But I think it's really helpful, maybe even on the front end, or at least before the

01:14:21.880 conversation ends, just to say, hey, can I just share with you the gospel? This won't necessarily

01:14:26.380 answer the questions you've been asking. This won't, it's not evidential necessarily. It's

01:14:30.900 not this, but can I just share with you the gospel story? And I think it's just important

01:14:34.300 for us as Christians to remember there's power in the gospel. It's just powerful. It is a

01:14:39.160 supernatural. You can make these intellectual arguments and all these things and they're

01:14:42.360 helpful and they're good and we need to do it. But there's the gospel is the power of

01:14:47.320 God unto salvation. There is something supernatural that happens when we preach the gospel of

01:14:53.760 of Christ, his incarnation, his sinless life, fulfilling all righteousness, death, not just

01:14:58.940 as an example for sacrificial love, but as a substitute in our place, uh, atoning for the

01:15:04.460 wrath of God against sin and his bodily resurrection on the third day, his ascension into heaven.

01:15:10.660 Um, there's something, it's the power unto salvation. So I'll give you the final word.

01:15:17.020 Uh, Alyssa, thank you so much for joining us. Is there anything that you would like to leave

01:15:20.380 our listeners with. Well, that was just, that was great. I think, you know, the way I see it too,

01:15:25.700 I love what you said about just, you know, also ask if you can share the gospel because

01:15:32.020 the Holy Spirit doesn't need the evidence, you know, he could move someone's heart just with

01:15:39.840 the gospel. So it's important to do that. And I think that the analogy I think works that makes

01:15:45.700 sense is that, you know, not to confuse the evidence or apologetics with the gospel, because

01:15:50.060 it's not apologetics is not the gospel. But I've heard it said that apologetics can work, the God

01:15:56.820 can use it as something that will clear obstacles that maybe somebody's got a blocked view of the

01:16:03.000 cross, like they their view is blocked. And of course, the Holy Spirit can move that aside

01:16:06.860 himself supernaturally. But like you said, there's human human agency. And he uses us to to be able

01:16:12.680 sometimes with good arguments and good evidence to clear those obstacles so that someone can take

01:16:18.460 a clear look at the cross. And I think a great example of this is John the Baptist. So here you

01:16:23.960 have probably the one human being in the history of the world that should have no reason to doubt.

01:16:32.780 He touched the Son of God. He baptizes Jesus. He hears the audible voice of God at Jesus' baptism

01:16:39.820 and sees the Holy Spirit descend like a devil.

01:16:41.740 That's encountering the Trinity with your senses right there.

01:16:44.740 He should never have questioned whether or not Jesus was who he said he was.

01:16:49.040 But when he's in jail, Herod's jail cell,

01:16:53.060 for some reason, whether you want to call it doubt

01:16:55.000 or you want to call it questioning

01:16:56.660 or maybe he was panicking or whatever in his humanity,

01:16:59.940 he sends his disciples to ask Jesus,

01:17:01.540 are you the one or should we look for another?

01:17:03.500 And Jesus could have just said, you know,

01:17:06.320 just believe, just have faith, John.

01:17:08.280 but he he says go back and tell him what you've seen and he references a prophecy about the

01:17:12.800 miraculous deeds the messiah would do and essentially jesus was giving john evidence

01:17:16.640 like look you know this is this is me you know i'm the one who's fulfilled these prophecies

01:17:20.620 and i love how tender jesus was to john in that moment and so i think that just to remember that

01:17:28.340 that jesus has and even in jude we know have mercy on those who doubt i think jesus is very tender

01:17:33.120 toward people who have doubts i think we see that in the scriptures and um and so i don't know if

01:17:38.200 anybody's listening to this and you are encountering doubts, it, you know, it's okay to press into

01:17:42.540 those things and God will meet you where you are. And there are answers. And if you're looking for

01:17:47.580 them, you're going to find them and they're really good answers. So, um, yeah, that's probably what

01:17:51.700 I'd leave everyone with. That's great. Amen. Alisa Childers, thanks so much for coming on the show.

01:17:57.180 Oh, it was so fun. Thank you. As a special thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy

01:18:02.600 to send you a free digital book from our store to access this offer. Visit right response ministry

01:18:08.180 We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?

01:18:13.860 If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God,

01:18:17.600 this would be a great resource.

01:18:19.580 As a reminder, to get this offer, go to

01:18:21.300 And thank you for your generous support.

The NXR Podcast - September 22, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - 5 Common Objections To Christianity

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