So we defined apologetics. We talked about different apologetic methods, different ways to defend the faith. And then we talked about the biblical basis of apologetics. And now we want to start actually learning how to do apologetics. And, you know, you could A whole system of things, a whole list of things, like absolute truth, man's ability to know, What I'm doing here, I'm just listing kind of the logical progression of thought for us to make a defense of Christianity. Keep in mind, this is like positive apologetics. We're defending Christianity. Negative apologetics, we've also got to refute those who contradict. The possibility of miracles, the historical The liability of the New Testament. Jesus claimed to be God. Jesus rose from the dead. The Bible is God's Word. I wrote an unpublished manuscript in 1987 where I had a 12-step defense of the faith, and it was very similar to the 12-step approach that Norman Geisler and Frank Turek came up with in their book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, but it contains these that absolute truth exists, certain things are true for all people at all times and all places, okay? And then we've got to defend man's ability to know that truth, and then provide evidence for the existence of a personal Creator God, the possibility of miracles. We've got to show that the New Testament is reliable, and that Jesus did claim to be God, and He proved that He's God. In fact, He claimed to be God, Savior, and Messiah, and proved that He's God, Savior, and Messiah by bodily rising from the dead, also by the And then Jesus taught that the Bible is God's Word without error. He taught the Old Testament is completely God's Word without error. And he promised the Holy Spirit would guide the apostles into all the truth. He basically said, Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. So he was claiming that his words would be preserved throughout the centuries. Well, they didn't have video, audio, recording, video recording. It was going to be passed through, it was going to be memorized, it was going to be written down. The Jews already had 2,000 years of written revelation. And so he was basically confirming that there was going to be a new testament. Now, so we're going to go through kind of a progression very similar to this. Now besides reliability, we're going to cover issues like that we have, the canon of scriptures, that we've got the right books that belong in the Bible, that Jesus is not a myth. He actually existed in history. There were a few things, you know, there's a lot of other things that are going to go in there, but this is just the main progression of thought, okay? Do not, as you start this, okay, Do not get the impression that what I'm saying is when you do apologetics, first thing you gotta do is prove the reality of absolute truth. Okay? You might have to. You might have to prove the reality of absolute truth to a kid in your church's Sunday school class. Because what were some of the statistics 81% believe all truth is relative, that there is no absolute truth. 70% believe morality is relative. It's right for you, it's right for you, it doesn't have to be right for me, vice versa. So you might have to, but then again, if the person you're talking to already believes that God exists, why in the world would you go through this? So keep in mind, I'm not saying, look, you get a system of the way you do apologetics and there's like 12 steps, guys in rhetoric are not saying this, they would agree with me in other words, just because they have a 12 step method does not mean that whoever you're witnessing to you have to use those exact 12 steps. Okay? There's got to be a certain aspect of your apologetics where you actually get to know the person you're witnessing to. Okay? So, if it turns out that the person is a Jehovah's Witness, they're going to believe miracles have been performed by God. They believe that God exists. They believe in absolute truth. They believe in man's ability to know. They believe the New Testament is right. But they don't believe that Jesus claimed to be God. that he rose from the dead. They do believe the Bible is God's Word, but they misinterpret it greatly. So with them, you're going to have to focus on these two, and you can go to the Scriptures with them. Now, somebody else that might, you might have a deist, somebody who believes in God, but doesn't believe that God performs miracles, of miracles. So he doesn't even want to consider that, so you might have to focus on there. But just keep in mind, as we go through this, it doesn't mean you have to cover every step with every person. You want the intellectual ammunition so you can go to a file cabinet, and as I'm talking with somebody, I find out, oh, this guy doesn't think Jesus claimed to be God. Let me go to this drawer and take out this evidence. and start dialog a little bit. Make it person-centered. No leading apologist that I know says there's one prolonged six-hour argument that you've got to use with each and every human being. Every human being is a little different. By the way, I had an atheist who thought that belief in God was not consistent with science, and he was a scientist himself. And I provided scientific evidence for God's existence, and didn't even know that he came to Christ that night. So they had dinner at my house. Found out six months later that he came to Christ that night. And I said, well, you didn't show any emotion. He said, well, I never show emotion. And I said, but we just talked about God's existence. He said, but I told you, my friends talked to me about Jesus, And everything they told me about salvation through Jesus and all that, that sounded good, but how can I believe Jesus is God if I don't believe in God? And I removed the obstacles so he automatically went right from there, right to there. Okay? That usually doesn't happen that way, but each person's different. And so I would try to deal with them like that. So let's talk about absolute truth and then man's ability to know. about absolute truth, unless we answer the question that Pilate asked, and that is, what is truth? What is truth? Anybody want to take a stab at it? Some people, even some Christian philosophers, argue that truth is that which does not contradict coherentist, as long as the truth coheres, doesn't contradict, so they're going for logical consistency, so your worldview is true if you don't have any contradictory views in it. Well, it's logically possible to have a worldview that doesn't contradict itself, that still is not true. So certainly a true worldview would be non-contradictory, but it's got to be more than non-contradictory to be true. So anybody know, can paraphrase how Aristotle defined truth? The ability to, or that which is, is, that which is not, is not. Yeah, Aristotle said, to say of what is, like it is. Truth is telling it like it is. If my name is LeBron James and I play for Cleveland Cavaliers and I point at myself and I say I am 6'8 or 6'9, that's a true statement. But if I'm Phil Fernandez and I'm pointing at myself See, the law of non-contradiction, we should talk about this a little bit too. The law of non-contradiction, A cannot equal non-A at the same time in the same way. So, is this statement false? True or false? I am 6'5". Is that a true statement or is that a false statement? False. That's false. But is there a way that could be true? See, A cannot equal non-A at the same time the same way. If I'm 5'5", if a guy would say I'm 6'5", well if the guy was like, if I was like, 11 years old? 6 foot 5 might be true someday, at a different time, that statement. But I'm 56 years old, I'm not grown. Is there a different way that could make me 6 foot 5? So the statement, what would that way be? Stand on a ladder. I can stand on there and just, yeah. Another thing I can do is I can go to 10 inch feet. If I can get legislation passed where at least across our country, we agree to a 10-inch foot instead of a 12-inch foot. Then I'd be 65 inches. So just keep in mind the law of non-contradiction. A cannot equal non-A at the same time in the same way. Okay? So just keep that in the back of your head on what what a contradiction is. But what is truth? Truth is telling it like it is. Here's the more philosophically precise definition which just says the same thing. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. That's called the Correspondence Theory of Truth. I got a program that was all simulcast over the internet for the C.S. Lewis Society of South Africa. It had Paul Copan, one of the world's leading defenders of the faith. It had, I don't know, Matthew Flanagan or something from New Zealand, brilliant guy. We had about four traditional apologists, and they had me go on first. And then we had two presuppositionalists at the end. And when I was asked, what is truth? I said, well, truth is that which corresponds to reality. So when they asked each of the traditional apologists, they said, yeah, Phil is right. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. Then it got to the presuppositionalists, and it's like, Truth is what God says it is, and these guys are compromising, they've accepted the wisdom of man, and all the blah, blah, blah, and it's just like... It's kind of like they just take philosophical terminology, redefine everything, and if you don't agree with them, you're an idolater. But truth is that which corresponds to reality. If I say this is a chair, If that corresponds to reality, if this is a chair, that's a true statement. If I say this is my Bible, if it is my Bible, that corresponds to reality and it's a true statement. If I say this is my Bible and it's Blake's Bible, then it's not true, that's falsehood. Now, is every falsehood a lie? You could utter a falsehood but really believe that the falsehood is true, so it wouldn't be a lie, it's not intentional. But whatever the case, truth is that which corresponds to reality. So now we've got to ask the question, does absolute universal truth exists. Are there things that are true for all people, at all times, in all places? Some people say, well, there is no absolute truth. It's true for you, it's true for you. Doesn't have to be true for me and vice versa. So you like Christianity, fine. I like Hinduism, leave me alone. And they'll act like absolute truth doesn't exist. Is there a way that we can argue that absolute truth does exist? Gravity. The only problem with gravity, the person would have to accept sense perception. Because if the Hindu believes the physical realm is an illusion, by the way, it's really crazy, but philosophers, even scientists, we don't really so much prove the reliability of sense perception, because in order to prove it, you'd have to assume that you'd be arguing in a circle. But just to get through life, you could argue it's not livable if you try to live. but technically these are things we philosophically assume. There are certain truths that we have good reason to assume to be true if the rejection of such absurdity that you cannot live consistently with it. I would certainly say, yeah, gravity is real, because if you try to disprove it by jumping off a 10-story building, usually the landing can be very persuasive. But is there a way that we can even just bypass I could write the statement, there is no absolute truth. And that's everybody who claims that truth is relative. The statement, there is no absolute truth, is self-refuting. Okay? It cannot be true. If that's true, then it has to be false, because there is an absolute truth. See, the only way for the statement, there is no absolute truth to be true, it would have to be an absolute truth. But since the statement says there can't be any absolute truth, it refutes itself. And if it refutes itself, the opposite of it has to be true. So, since there is no absolute truth in self-refuting, absolute truth must exist. Not might, but must exist. So he says, I reject that. Well, then your rejection of absolute truth, your denial of absolute truth, would be an absolute truth. So absolute truth must exist. And by the way, there are some people who just want nonsense, so they just don't listen to this. But there's really no logical way to escape it. Absolute truth must exist. Now, if the person is honest enough and they give in to that, then they might say, okay, absolute truth must exist, but man can't know it. So they might then switch their argument to man cannot know truth. So now they've backed off of there is no absolute truth, that's self-refuting. So absolute truth must exist. Okay, well absolute truth... Alright, so maybe absolute truth does evolve on us. Okay, so absolute truth must exist, but I don't think man can know it. Man cannot know truth. Well, what is that? A truth statement. That's a claim to know truth. it is a claim to know truth. So right off the bat, at the start of our examination of truth and knowledge, we need to acknowledge that there is absolute truth and man can know it. If it wasn't for those two, philosophy would be a waste of time, theology would be a waste of time, apologetics would be a waste of time. The fact of the matter is, truth is that which corresponds to reality, absolute truth must exist, and man can know it. So, in other words, seeking truth is a worthwhile endeavor. Okay? So, any comments on that? So, man can't know truth. Now, there's gonna be, we have a lot of people that are gonna fight us on this. They don't have a logical leg to stand on. You're gonna get not going to dialogue with too many Hindus, but they're around, but Hindus might deny absolute truth, Buddhists, New Agers, you might get some atheists is really inconsistent, but you might get some atheists who deny absolute truth. If they are, they're probably in the post-modern camp. You might even get some modernists. Modernism started with René Descartes, who was a Christian trying to defend the faith. But it's the attempt to find all truth and solve all our problems through human reason alone. So modernism, enlightenment, rationalism, it kind of deified human reason and then it started attacking Christianity. But as time went on, we found that reason really didn't help us find too much truth. Once we severed ourselves from God's revelation, what God revealed to us, reason left to itself, we were having a hard time figuring things out. It ended up leaving us with Immanuel Kant's dilemma. Man could know reality as it appears to him, but not reality as it is. By the way, I think that that's the apex of human philosophy, human wisdom. you can do on your own, you could explain how reality appears to us, but you have no guarantee that it's really reality as it is. Kind of an oversimplified example of that, I have a Bible in my hand, it's a black Bible. How do I know I have a black Bible? Well, because I have an idea of this Bible in my head, it's like I have my idea of the Bible is really accurate. Easy. I take a photograph of my idea of the Bible and I compare it to the Bible. And I see that it's accurate. But do I really have the Bible here? No. I just have another photograph of it in my head. So, Immanuel Kant's philosophy leaves us with knowing reality as it appears to us, no knowledge of reality as it actually is. Now, if you believe that God created us in the categories of the mind, if God, the Infinite Knower, created us, then He could have created the world in such a way that our knowledge of the external world is accurate. But we're starting to sneak God in. But left to itself, so modernism you ended up with skepticism, they usually call it post-Kantian skepticism, which eventually led to existentialism, the idea there is no absolute truth, there's no meaning in life, the rejection of God. If God is like Nietzsche said, if God is dead, then truth is dead, morality is dead, and meaning is dead. Now what Nietzsche failed to realize, if God is dead, not only is truth, morality, and meaning dead, but man is dead too. And Nietzsche's attempt to arrive at the Existentialism says, well, through a leap of blind faith, an act of the will, totally apart from reason, I'm going to create meaning from my life. The nihilist says, oh, that leap of blind faith is a waste of time, you're just playing games. There really is no meaning. So this is where modernism, that is the final stage of modernism, and then that left to led us to post-modernism. See with modernism, modernism started with the rational individual trying to find all truth and solve all his problems. Okay? The final stage of modernism is existentialism, where reason is gone, truth is gone, meaning is gone, but you still have the individual and his will. But eventually, existentialism, the final stage of modernism, gives way to post-modernism, where now even the individual is dead. Individual is... community is defined by its narrative. So when there's no absolute truth, all you have left are stories. And each community gathers, so you have a gay community, so the gay community, there's no objective history, there's no absolute truth, so the gay community can deconstruct the Bible, and through the lenses of their community's narrative, turn Jesus into the greatest gay activist ever, or could actually turn Jesus into a homosexual himself. Or a liberation theologian could turn Jesus into the greatest Marxist revolutionary who ever lived. A black liberation theologian with big M's in civil rights could turn Jesus into a black male who was persecuted by the Italians and the Jews. That's exactly what President Obama's former pastor. He was a post-modern liberation theologian who applied that to civil rights. So we look at that and say, well, that's really dumb. Well, if there's no objective history, See, with post-modernism, since there's no objective truth, any writing, the reader and his or her community, the reader doesn't exist distinct from their community. You're just a product of your community and its narrative. And you have, your community and its narrative has as much right to the meaning of a text as the author themselves. So now, when they tried it, Derrida, Jacques Derrida wrote this big paper on his deconstruction and his post-modern views. So another guy turned around and wrote a paper critiquing it and purposely misrepresented Derrida's views. How did Derrida respond? See, because the readers got as much right to what Derrida meant as Derrida himself. So Derrida just responded like backtracking. He was on the ropes. He didn't know what to do. So, you know, if Derrida could deconstruct the Bible, we can deconstruct Derrida. But that's the kind of madness that comes if there is no absolute truth. So we might find people who are existentialists, who are nihilists, who are modernists or post-modernists, who are Hindus, Buddhists, New Agers, or Atheists. But most modernists still believe in absolute truth. They'll have problems with Christianity, but they'll still believe in absolute truth. But if they were more consistent in their philosophy, once you throw out God, truth goes with it. So, if Nietzsche said, Since God is dead, truth is dead, morality is dead, and meaning is dead, how can Nietzsche help us as apologists? Nietzsche said, if God is dead, truth is dead, morality is dead, and meaning is dead. This last thing, man is dead, that's Francis Schaeffer and C.S. Lewis who acknowledged that. Nietzsche says, if God is dead, truth is dead, morality is dead, meaning is dead. What Nietzsche has given us, without even trying to, he's given us three good arguments for God. Because there's a lot of people who say, no wait a minute, but absolute truth is real, okay, then God must exist. Well, absolute morality is real, okay, well then God must exist. Well, there's got to be meaning in life. Okay, well, if there's meaning in life, God exists. You've got no God in life after death. It's all one big cruel joke. So, sometimes when you read even the enemies of Christianity, you can actually get some ammunition there. The main things I want you to remember from this is that truth is that which corresponds to reality. It's telling it like it is. self-refuting and then the statement man cannot know truth is self-refuting so man can know truth. So there is absolute truth and man can know it. That might help us. All this stuff that I brought up here is just to let you know there are a lot of people out there that aren't going to agree with us on that. But I think we can make a strong case. This is why political correctness is one of the children post-modernism. So if you disagree with Bill or Hillary Clinton or President Obama, their post-modern political correctness, you know, when truth and reason are thrown out the window, all that's left is shouting. So all they can do is attack you. Attack your person. The post-modern influence on Bill Clinton, when it was being revealed that he had had sex with Monica Lewinsky, at one point he said that he did not have sex with that woman, and he said other things, and then it came down to he said, well I don't know what you mean by it, what is means and he was basically just deconstructing everything where language didn't have to have any relationship to the truth. Now it's to the point where his wife is just lying on a regular basis and in a criminal, in criminal issues and she's just lying, lie after lie after lie and we just, the masses have so little respect for absolute truth somebody tells the lies now, it's just like we don't care anymore. We don't care about what's true or what's right. We don't care about what's just and what's criminal. All most Americans care about is what do we get if she gets elected? And if it's a But there, the issues of truth are going on. Now, the guy who's running against her, he just spent his life wanting to make money. So it was kind of like truth is whatever works. But he probably is very traditional in his thinking, but if he's going to respond every time you disagree with him, If he's going to call you names, that's why they're trying to get him to act more presidential. If he's going to respond by calling names, he's not going to be able to take advantage of the fact that he's running against a lady who holds a very low view of truth and a very low view of morality. So it's kind of sad that he can't take full advantage of that. His view is just as low. His view of truth is just as low as hers. In him, is it a pragmatic way? It doesn't matter what... A practical way? Oh yeah, it does. Not truth is not truth. What's that? Not truth is not truth. Yeah, but what I'm saying is philosophical. But a guy like Trump, his philosophical view would be correspondence, theory of truth, be pretty traditional. But his practical view would be pragmatism. whatever he's looking for, whatever works. So he's running for president. I think it's all about the art of the deal. He wants to make a deal. He wants to be president. He wants to work with the American public. And he found a segment that he thinks if he gives them what we want, he'll be president. But I think he has a much more traditional view. I don't consider him a thinker. Hillary Clinton is very much a thinker, but it's very evil thought. His thought, his problem isn't in the realm of thought, his problem is in the realm of greed and practical issues and stuff like that. And, you know, I don't endorse either candidate. I'm going to be voting for one, but it's not like I'm thrilled about the person. but I do think that there is a there are a group of politicians that hate Christianity and yeah, so it's just kind of, it's a mess that we're in but I will say this though I would not want I wouldn't like having Donald Trump as a next door neighbor But I think he'd make a better president than the last three or four. As gross as he is, as vulgar as he is, I think he'd make a better president than probably three or four of the last Republican candidates that we've been given. Because the liberals are socialists. They're not patriotic internationalists. So it's kind of like, let's move towards global government with no respect for America. The neoconservative Republicans also want global government, but it's with America as the engine leading the way. So it's kind of a patriotic form of globalism. And this is the first guy, probably since Ronald Reagan, that has come out taking a stand against globalism. So it's kind of sad when you get an unethical guy that I think he could make a case is the best choice. But either way, I think we're at America's toes, I don't see. I'm a Ron Paul, Rand Paul constitutionalist and I don't think that's ever going to happen. So I just like, I'm just content being a voice crying in the wilderness as America, the American ship sinks. So, alright, so that's about what I wanted to cover tonight. So God bless you and see you back, God willing, next week and pray for everything.