What I'm going to talk about tonight is the biblical basis for apologetics. I don't even know if everybody knows, but we've got handouts out there on that, so maybe a couple people can go out there and grab them and hand them out. If you've got something to look at, it makes looking at my mug a little bit less boring and stuff. We're going to talk about the biblical basis in apologetics. Now, apologetics basically means the defense of the Christian faith. It comes from the Greek word apologia, which means a strong rational defense. Now, what's happened over the centuries, we began to water down what the word apologetics means, so that now when you think about apologizing for something, it's like you're saying, yeah, I'm really sorry that I held to this particular view or that particular view. Please excuse me. But it used to be the exact opposite. to apologize for something meant to make a strong, rational defense of whatever you believe at that point. And so our definition of apologizing is a defense of the Christian faith. We're going to have six sessions, including this one, so we're not going to be able to get real in-depth. But there's a lot of different kinds of apologetics. I've got a few examples here. Philosophical apologetics, we'll talk about that a little bit when we present evidence for God's existence next week. There's also historical apologetics, where you give historical evidences, proving that the Jesus of history is one and the same as the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible is not a legend. The Jesus of the Bible is a real historical character, He really did live, he really did perform those miracles, he really did die on the cross for our sins, he really did rise from the dead, and he really is God the Son, become a man. That's historical apologetics. Scientific apologetics, that deals with scientific evidence. for the truth of Christianity. We see plenty of scientific apologetic ministries that are out there, whether it's the old earth creationists like you, Ross, or the young earth creationists like Ken Ham or Jonathan Sarfati. And so these guys are experts in scientific data, and they use that to argue for the truth of Christianity. We'll be talking a little bit about comparative religious apologetics in our last three lectures, because there we'll deal with Jehovah's Witnesses, how do you witness to a Jehovah's Witness, Mormonism, and Islam. And so that's comparative religious apologetics, where you compare and contrast. assume, because it's only right to assume that Christianity is true and the Bible is God's Word, and then from there you defend the Christian faith, you try to answer objections coming from people with other worldviews or other religions. It's interesting too, we often, we Christians are very quick to try to refute, to disprove a belief system before we even understand what the belief system is. That's like, I come from a Roman Catholic background, and I have to just keep my mouth shut when I hear Protestants talking about Roman Catholicism. Some Protestant theologians have studied Roman Catholicism and got it right and stuff, but I'm one of the few guys on the planet that can say that I'm the son of a former Franciscan monk. because my dad took five separate one-year vows as a monk, as a Roman Catholic monk in the Franciscan order. And then his superior told him either take a vow for life or get out. And he said, well, I don't know what God wants me to do. So his boss told him, well, then get out. You're in good standing. You can always come back. And he got out, a couple of years later he fell in love with electricity. A few years after that he fell in love with my mother, Angelina Mendocino. They got married, the rest is history. But there were times when she was yelling at him. He'd be sitting down, watching TV with the remote control, saying, yes Inge, no Inge, I'd be thinking. I know exactly what he's thinking. He's thinking the monastery looks real good right now. But that's something really to earn the right to be heard by someone who's in a different religion or a different world view. We've got to take the time to study what it is they believe because otherwise we might be refuting what philosophers call a straw man argument. If me and Gordy are arguing, and I know I can't refute his argumentation, so I make a straw man of it. I make kind of a duplicate, only it's a lot weaker and it's easier for me to smash down, and then I can pretend that I won the debate. And so we really have to do our homework on comparative religious apologetics. Presuppositional apologetics, I won't go into too much depth there. It's real philosophical. But it's actually the idea that these guys think the late Gordon Clark and the late Cornelius Mantill and the late Greg Bonson, they argue that you can't argue to God's existence and to the truth of Christianity, you're only allowed to argue from it. So they have their own views, they think are biblical, I think they're really more philosophical views. So you're arguing from God, not to God. And we're not going to really have time to Talk about that. What I find is a lot of people that don't like apologetics say, you shouldn't defend the faith, you should believe by faith and gluttony and blah blah blah. But when they share their faith with other people, what I find is if the people have questions, they very often defend the faith. They do apologetics, but it's what I would call testimonial apologetics. How God has transformed my life, how God has transformed your life. I really I feel convicted, I was thinking this morning, I need to start keeping a running log on all the prayers that God has answered. And we Christians, if you love the Lord and you're crying out to God in prayer on a regular basis, all we keep human nature, being what it is, all we keep track of are the ones that God doesn't answer. God, if you're there, how come you don't answer my prayers? Well, he answers 95% of the prayers you pray, if you're praying in accordance with his will. He probably answers like 95% of them. But you forget all about them. We don't even remember long enough to thank them. We do more of a, well never mind, I don't need you after all. But whatever the case, testimonial apologetics is, God has changed your life. And I don't know about your church, I know my church this is true, but it's probably true for your church, that if everybody had like a name tag on their forehead saying what they used to be, Before he came to Jesus, we would just be like him. We'd be like blown away, like wow, God cleaned up this great big mess. And is in the process, which he was done, but he was in the process of turning us into beautiful people. In the process of conforming us to the image of his son. So that's testimonial apologetics. And then psychological apologetics is more like Blaise Pascal, rather than argue Rather than using rational arguments to argue for God, Blaise Pascal, he basically would pull on the strings of the heart. He'd try to persuade your will to be open to believing in God rather than the strings of your mind. There are things that would fall into that category, the absurdity of life without God. If God doesn't exist, Richard Dawkins is going around arguing that God doesn't exist, but if his view is correct, then Richard Dawkins, I would ask Richard Dawkins, what incentive do you have for being a good person? Because he says we should stand up for justice, even though in other parts of his writings he says there is no such thing as justice, we dance to our DNA. But whatever the case, Why be good? Because if Richard Dawkins is correct, his ending, after he dies, his existence will not be there. He'll enter into non-existence just like the suicide bombers of 9-11. And so why be good? Why do the right thing? And so belief in God and belief in life after death and punishment and rewards, Without them, life is just not meaningful. And so that's kind of an example of psychological apologetics. So basically what I'm saying, and I've got seven listed there, I'm working on this major project that's probably going to end up about 500 pages long where I'm arguing that there's actually 16 different ways to defend the faith. So I don't want to bore you with all those, but basically what I'm saying is there's a good chance that everyone in this room has already done apologetics. I mean, even if you say that you're trying to lead your loved one to Christ, and they say, well, why should I believe you? I don't know, it just made sense to me. Well, you're giving a defensive debate. You're actually saying that, hey, I live in this scrambled world, and nothing made sense. I accepted Christ, and now all of a sudden, everything's starting to make sense. But whatever the case, Apologetics is defense of the Christian faith. Now the reason why apologetics is so unpopular today, things are changing. I've got a lot of colleagues, a lot of friends like William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Norman Geisler, that are just all of a sudden apologetics is becoming a household word for many Christian households. But that's not the way it's been for like the past 60 or 70 years. And one of the reasons is because We have redefined faith along the lines of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian who lived from about 1813 to 1855. In his view, faith and reason, it's really weird. It's the same exact view that the atheist Richard Dawkins has. Faith and reason, there's no overlap. Kierkegaard would say things like, faith is a leap of blind faith into the non-rational realm. So if you can find evidence for your faith, then it's no longer faith. So we're now using this newer definition of faith, and so you hear a lot of Christians say, well no, I never defend the faith, I never give reasons for faith, I just tell people you've got to believe. Well, that's the Kierkegaardian kind of belief. And there's a few verses that are taken out of context. It's like when Doubting Thomas saw the risen Christ, he said, my Lord, oh my God, and then Jesus said, well, you've seen me and you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. He's not saying, I want people to believe in me with no evidence. If he didn't want to give any evidence, he wouldn't have appeared after he rose from the dead. Every time he appeared, he was giving empirical evidence. to the eyewitnesses that he had risen. But see, what Jesus is thinking of us, he's thinking about us in that passage. And he's thinking that most Christians who will ever live will not have seen me risen from the dead. They won't see me face to face till that day that either Jesus comes back or we die and meet him in heaven. So why do we believe? We believe based on good, solid eyewitness testimony from the Scriptures and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, chipping away at our hardened hearts. By the way, the Holy Spirit has to do all this work on our hearts for us to come to Him. And it's not... I think really that the main reason why it's not even intellectual, it's just because our hearts are morally hardened against God. Most of the time we don't even like the truth. And we want to take the Bible and use it. to make us look good and to slam everybody else, and to blame our problems on everybody else. And we need the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds to understand God's Word, but also to soften our hearts and enable us to be receptive to the Gospel message. And so, Kierkegaard believes subjective, inward beliefs are more important than outward, objective truth. He would say things like, what's important is not that Jesus rose from the dead, what's important is that you believe that with everything you've got from your heart. Now if you compare that 1 Corinthians 15 verse 14 and verse 17, it's the exact opposite of what the Apostle Paul said. Apostle Paul said, if Christ is not raised, then our faith is useless, we're still dead in our sins. So the Apostle Paul says, If Jesus didn't rise in history, we are still held up. Death still wins in the end. Soren Kierkegaard would say, no, just your inward belief, that's all that really, really matters. Now there's some debate about whether he was overstating his case, because we had reached a point where there was an overemphasis on reason and a de-emphasis on objective truth. But whatever the case, the way he spelled things out is not a biblical view of faith. The traditional view of faith, you have defenders of the faith throughout the centuries that go all the way back to the peoples of the apostles, to eventually guys like Augustine and Aquinas, who believe that Christianity is a reasonable faith. I would even argue John Calvin and his Institute He talks about immediate knowledge of God and immediate knowledge of God. Immediate knowledge of God, he says, that's the Holy Spirit telling us that God exists. But we're so good at suppressing that, God also gives us immediate knowledge. There's a go-between between God and getting that information to us, and that's the created universe, says Calvin. So the invisible creator has made his existence known to us through that which he has created. So whatever the case, what I would say is that it's just plain wrong to tell people, just believe. Now, by the way, you might have somebody who just believes, or at least thinks they just believe. Somebody who grew up in a home that's been Christian for five or six generations. And this is what I was taught, so this is what I believe. I just believe. I would argue that that's not a blind faith. I would argue that if mom and dad treat you real good, and your siblings treat you real good, and always encourage you, but correct you when you do wrong, and the same with your grandparents and your great-grandparents, you've got some pretty good evidence that Jesus is real, because you've got a really special family that nowadays sticks out like a sore thumb. So whatever the case, Apologetics is biblically based. First thing you need to know is that the Bible commands, look at 1 Peter 3.15, 1 Peter 3.15, and Peter says this, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. So set apart the Lord in your hearts, always being ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear. The American Standard reads, with gentleness and reverence. Paul says in Ephesians 4, 15, speak the truth in love. So we defend the faith. We have to be gentle with other people and we have to respect them. By the way, if you talk with people about your religious views, they're probably going to want you to listen to their religious views. And it becomes real hard to be respectful when you find out your neighbor's He's made a religion out of UFOs and aliens. You've got to be respectful. You've got to be gentle. Anytime you're thinking, wow, this guy's a weirdo, just remember who you are before you got saved. What kind of weird ideas you entertain. But there, Peter commands us. He said, if you're going to set apart Jesus and the Lord in your hearts, one of the things that that entails is that you'll be willing to give a defense to the faith. And again, that's where we get the Greek word apologia. That's where we get the Greek word where we get apologetics from. Look at what Paul says in Colossians chapter 4, verses 5 and 6. Paul says the same thing in different words. Colossians 4, 5 and 6. walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, those who are outside the church, the non-believers, redeeming the time, let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. So he says we should have wisdom towards others and always be willing to respond to their questions and give them the answers that they're looking for, yet we've got to do it, once again, with grace. Paul also says in Titus 1, verses 7 and 9, that the elders, that the pastors of the churches, should not only be able to exhort or encourage people in sound doctrine, but also should be able to refute those who contradict And if you're going to refute those who contradict the Bible and contradict Christianity, you're going to have to do apologetics. So somebody shows up at Pastor Loney's office and says, hey, I visited your church the last two weeks. It's great. I really love it here. You guys make me feel at home. I love the preaching. I only got one problem. I've been raised a Mormon. And that's all I know. Is that OK? Or does something have to give? Well, there you have to gently refuse those who contradict. Or you get people who will say, well, I had a neighbor that said such and such. And if they contradict, or said that Jesus is only a legend. That's the big thing on the internet. By the way, this is the information age. It is not the intellectual age. Okay? We make a big, big mistake when we confuse amount of information that we have access to with intelligence or with knowledge. In fact, now we're starting, experts are starting to say, because a young person knows he's only two or three clicks away from the answer to any question that he has, they don't even bother doing the two or three clicks. They're actually motivated to just say, well, I'll do that tomorrow. I don't have to find the answer today. I can always find it tomorrow. In the end, they walk around thinking, I'm so wise, I'm so wise, and they don't know anything. But they just think, well, it's just two clicks away, so why do I have to know it? It's like a guy who's got a big library. So I don't have to memorize a whole lot of stuff. I can just walk into my library. As long as I remember where the books are, and find the bookmark, and find where I highlighted it, I can refer to it. But with the Internet, it's even easier than that. In Jude 3, Jude wanted to write about our common salvation. But instead, he said, I have to write you a letter encouraging you to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, because false teachers have crept in unnoticed into the church. We don't know exactly when Jude wrote that. It could be after most of the apostles left Jerusalem, when King Herod Agrippa I was persecuting them. It could be later on, maybe after the apostles are dying out. And so you could have that vacuum being filled by self-proclaimed teachers, who are actually false teachers, contend earnestly for the faith. It means that we're not just going to be willing to share the faith, we're going to be willing to defend the faith as well. So right there that tells us that the apologetics is biblically based because the Bible commands it. That's the main reason. If the Bible commands it, it's a no-brainer. A lot of Christians, I'll talk to them, when did you get saved? That's 10 years ago. When did you get baptized? I haven't got baptized yet. That doesn't say it doesn't hold true, but God commands you to get baptized. Jesus commands you to get baptized. But somehow in the American Evangelical Church, we take God's commands and we make them optional. Good advice, Jesus. I'll think about it. No, Jesus is still God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's still the King of Kings, and the American Evangelical Church hasn't even learned that yet. And we think God's commands are awesome, but one of the commands he's given us is to defend the faith. Now you might be sitting there thinking, well, I don't have the money, I can't go to seminary. Most seminaries don't even teach apologetics anymore, but that's a whole other story. I think what happened was America got so Christian that you never know. All you had to do was tell somebody, if he says it right here in the Bible, text it. Well, if I was God's Word, I'd have to believe it now. But those days are long gone. And the seminaries are behind on it. So there's only like five or six that are really emphasizing apologetics. But you might be thinking, well, I don't have the time to, you know, God hasn't called me to study deeply in apologetics. That's fine. But what you have to do is just find out, OK, what level of apologetics has God called you to. And if your loved one is a Mormon, God's probably calling you to a strong, vibrant ministry to Mormons. That's just the way God did it. But you might end up with a basic apologetics type ministry. You share the faith and you try to answer questions, and they ask you a question you can't answer. You say, well, I'll talk to Pastor Gordy and get back to you. I'll talk to Pastor Loney and get back to you. And then if they can't find it, if they don't know the answer, they'll look for it for you and stuff like that. So whatever the case, we're all called to defend the gospel. Not every one of us is called to be the Bible answer. So you just do the best you can studying the word. trying to love people and find out where they're coming from. Now, so number one, the Bible commands it. Number two, the Bible speaks of natural revelation. We all know what supernatural revelation is. That's when God supernaturally, miraculously reveals himself to us. But the Bible teaches that God also reveals himself to us through nature. Okay? So in Romans 1, let's take a look at Romans 1, 18 to 22, Listen to what Paul says. He says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. One important thing to remember, man cannot, we cannot suppress the truth unless deep down inside we already know it. So in the end, the problem isn't really intellectual, it's not a lack of knowledge. Richard Dawkins is probably smarter than everybody here. But he has a hardened heart and refuses to turn to God, so we suppress that truth. So it's a moral problem, not an intellectual one. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, literally, they have no apologetic." So Richard Dawkins' defense of atheism is a charade in Smoke and Mirrors. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools." Richard Dawkins uses his reason to argue against God. But that implies that his reason has a rational cause. If our reason If we were created in the image of a rational God, then it makes sense our reason would work. However, if our reason got here accidentally through a bunch of random, chaotic, physical events over billions of years, If our reason got here by chance, there's no reason to trust in the validity of human reason. There's no reason to trust our reason as delegates. Really, atheism shoots itself in the foot right at the outset. We're told by Richard Dawkins and his cohorts that Christianity is If you believe in God and you've thrown no intelligent person in the 21st century believes that God exists and stuff, you've thrown your brains out the window and things of that sort. But really, to be totally honest with you, because of the Big Bang cosmology, we're now even atheists. Whether you accept the Big Bang or not, they do. So both sides agree the universe had a beginning. So right now the debate between Christians and atheists is to either In the beginning, God created the universe, or in the beginning, nothing created the universe. I think they're without an apologetic, they're without excuse. So, Psalm 19.1, King David says, The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. I don't know if David's looking at a sunset or if he's looking at a starry night. Either one. And if you say God doesn't exist, that'd be like looking at a beautiful painting and say, well, I just got here by accident. Somebody paints the most beautiful sunset, you look at it and say, wow, that's beautiful. I guarantee the sunset the guy was looking at is an infinite times more beautiful. And if this one took an intelligent designer, how come the infinitely beautiful one doesn't take an intelligent designer? Psalm 94.9, King David says, He who made the eye, can he not see? He who formed the ear, can he not hear? It's not saying that God has eyes and ears, but certainly He can do more than His creation can do. Romans 2.14 and 15, Paul tells us that even the Gentiles who don't have God's laws written in the scriptures still have God's laws written on their hearts, and their consciences convict them when they do the wrong thing. Well, if that's the case, deep down inside, we all have God's moral laws written on our hearts, then we can use that as an argument. If there's universal moral laws that apply to all people at all times and all places, then there's got to be an absolute universal moral law gift. So whatever the case, the Bible speaks of God revealing himself through nature, so we can look to nature for evidence of the existence of the Creator. The Bible also speaks of historical evidence. Let's look at 1 Corinthians. He's got a couple more passages to turn to. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 to 80. I thought I was in 1 Corinthians until I put my glasses on and I saw the 2nd Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 15, 3-8. What Paul does here is he quotes an ancient creed that goes all the way back to the early to mid-30s AD. Even Marcus Borg of the radical far-left Jesus Seminar and Gerd Ludmann of the Jesus Seminar acknowledge that this creed came into existence probably within one year of Jesus' crucifixion. So if you think Jesus was crucified in 33 AD, these far left guys, who are not believers, would acknowledge, yeah, this creed was already being recited in the churches by 34 AD. But listen to what this creed says. Where I deliver to you, first of all, that which I also receive, that's rabbinical language for the passing on of oral tradition. And then Paul says this, and this is the treat, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he was seen by Cephas, that's the Aramaic name for Peter, then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that, he was seen by James, then by all the apostles, and then Paul adds his own eyewitness testimony to the creed. Then last of all, he was seen by me also as by one born out of due time." What he meant was he was born out of due time. He's like the baby that's born in the 11th month instead of the 9th month. Because all the other post-resurrection appearances of Jesus were before Jesus' ascension. Paul, the appearances to Paul were after the ascension. He was like one born out of due time. So this is not legend. The eyewitness leaders of the church, the guys who knew Jesus, wrote up this creed, and this creed was being recited in the churches before the New Testament was even written. And they're giving the eyewitness testimony of those who had seen Jesus risen from the dead, a summary list. And so the Bible deals not only with natural revelation, but with historical evidences. And then finally, the early church defended the faith. I think if we follow the example of the apostles, we see that they defended the faith. Look what Peter said. We're all familiar with his sermon on the Feast of Pentecost. And he says this in Acts 2, 32. This Jesus, he's trying to get them to accept Jesus, this Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. See, eyewitness testimony was important. And he's saying, look, we the church, there's 120 of us, and we're preaching Jesus to you because we think he's the Messiah. Yes, he was crucified, publicly and shamefully crucified, but we saw him risen from the dead on the third day, and we are eyewitnesses of this. And you can follow this throughout Acts. Acts 3.15, Acts 5.30-32, Acts 10.39-41. Constantly Peter, repeatedly he brings this up. We're not just telling you this, we're eyewitnesses. We saw him. Nah, but that guy stays there. No, no, no. We saw him. He is risen. He's risen indeed. The Apostle John, the reason why John even wrote his gospel, he tells us, John 20, verses 30-31, he said these are just some of the signs that Jesus did, some of the miracles that he did, but I'm writing to you these signs, about these signs, these miracles, so that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and in believing in him you have eternal life. See, John's doing more than sharing the good news, he's defending the good news, he's saying I'm an eyewitness, this is eyewitness testimony, he ain't with us, He broke bread with us, he walked with us, he talked with us, but he also raised the dead. He also gave sight to the blind. Peter goes way out of the way, too, by the way, in one of his epistles to say we didn't follow fables. We saw him on the mountain, the Mount of Transfiguration, when God confirmed that Jesus is the Messiah. Luke, his whole reason for writing Acts and Luke, for that matter, if you read the first two verses, was to give evidence to Theophilus that Christianity is true. But in Acts 1-3, it says, Jesus appeared alive and gave many convincing proofs that he had risen from the dead. By the way, I get blackened from Christians for taking debates on college campuses. I don't know any other way to publicly speak that it's a priest of gospel on a college campus unless you take the debate. You go to a Christian speech, 10 people show up on a college campus. You take a debate, they want to see the atheists draw blood from the Christians, you get 500, 600, 700 Christians. But Jesus debated the Pharisees, Jewish religious leaders. Paul was willing to debate. Apollos was willing to debate. He argued from the scriptures in the synagogues that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. And then, of course, the Apostle Paul. You find with the Apostle Paul, a lot of people don't even realize, the Apostles of the Gentiles, he would first go into the synagogues and preach Jesus until they rejected him. They would shake the dust off the sandals, go into the marketplace, and debate with the pagan philosophers and pagan worshippers. But you find that when you get a chance to look up these verses, and you'll see that this was very, very common to debate and defend the Christian faith and provide answers. And I just want to close with this, and then I don't know if we'll have time for questions, but why is apologetics needed? If you study a little bit of apologetics and you never lead somebody to the Lord through apologetics, I've led numerous people to the Lord through apologetics, but even if I never did, just the fact that it would confirm my faith and the faith of other believers and show us that, oh yeah, it just reminds us what we believe is true. You have the inward witness of the Holy Spirit, but the Buddhists and the Mormons, they say they've got inward fuzzies, these feelings, and they are, but the fact of the matter is, when that Mormon gets a burning in his bosom, it is not locked into any objective reality, because archaeology shows that the Book of Mormon is a historical joke. But to confirm the faith of believers, number two, to persuade non-believers by removing intellectual stumbling blocks. Number three, to stand up for what is right even when no one is listening. We're getting close to that day. This country has become so neopagan, so blasphemous that we may reach a point where every time you open your mouth about Jesus, everybody just makes fun of you. They might even beat you and throw you in a prison cell. You know, my advice there is just keep preaching the word. God's word does not return a boy. And then number four, to show the world that Christianity is not irrational. By the way, it's really sad, but it used to be the big argument against Christianity is that the world is irrational, that Christianity is irrational. Now the big argument, they don't even care about truth anymore in the world. They've thrown God out the window. The truth went out the window with them. Now Christianity is intolerant. Because the new God that is being worshipped in this country and throughout the western world is the God of the new tolerance. And that's scary. Maybe we'll get a chance to talk about that a little bit. Pastor, do we have time for a few questions? Until 6.58. Until 6.58, so I have... 7 minutes and about 15 seconds, so. Nobody's going to ask, I'll start. Okay. Something that occurs, like even today, somebody will ask me a question and say, you know what, hey, I had a son or daughter that was in the faith, but they've left the faith. You know, what's the response to that common question that you hear? What do you tell somebody you talk about? It's really, really sad. It's one of the reasons I enjoy teaching at Crosspoint Academy. is I feel that I could be on the front lines there trying to reverse that a little bit. But the fact of the matter is, my response is number one, you can't lose something you don't have. And I don't think, a lot of our evangelical youth groups, we think they're successful by entertaining kids So that instead of getting drunk on Friday and Saturday nights to come into youth group concerts or whatever, we keep them entertained and if the guy gets all the way and graduates high school and then goes off to college and hasn't gotten arrested during that time, we think that we've succeeded. And it's irrelevant if the kid loves Jesus or not. So the first thing we've got to do is teach our young people biblical truth. That's the first thing. And then, because we live in a world that hates Jesus, a culture that hates Jesus, we've got to teach our young people how to defend the faith. Otherwise, we're sending them like sheep to be slaughtered when they get their first philosophy course in college. It doesn't have to be philosophy. One of my former students went to a school in Las Vegas, and his first class was a Environmental psychology, of course. Don't ask me what environmental psychology is. I don't know, maybe you counsel trees or something. But the professor, first thing, started the course by saying, are there any Christians here? And he was the only one with enough courage to raise his hand. And so the teacher spent the whole first hour or two just slamming this guy for all the problems in the world. This guy is one of the nicest guys in history, just a great kid. Love the Lord, shares his faith and a very gentle spirit about it. He was really, really devastated. He wrote his mom. He texted his mom. Kids don't like their moms anymore, they text them now. He texted his mom, send us books. Tell Doc I need to talk to him, tell Doc he was right, stuff like that. But we got to get them grounded in the essentials of the Christian faith, and then we got to teach them how to defend those. Not only what to believe, but why we believe what we believe. Now having said that, if you do that and you don't have a good, solid, loving Christian environment for them to grow up in, none of that will even matter. If you have to choose between the two, I take the Christian-loving environment, because then you might still get the response of kids saying, wow, it sounds like this guy is disproving Christianity, but that can't be. Because Gordy was my friend, Pastor Gordy was my friend, and he was always there for me. And I know what Gordy has is real. So I can't explain it. So that love foundation, That foundation of sharing God's love with us will go a long way. We've got to also teach them what to believe and how to defend it. Evangelical Church America is so messed up, we're now trying to pattern our adult ministries after the quote-unquote successful youth groups. Statistics are somewhere between 75% and 88% of evangelical kids lose their faith during their first year of college. Now keep in mind, with a lot of these kids, they stop going to church, with mom and dad around, but if you corner them for at least three or four years, they'll still say they believe. But I tell you, you stop going to church, you get out of Christian fellowship, and then all of a sudden you fall in love with a non-believer, and you start dating them, and then you start sinning with them, All of a sudden, all these intellectual stumbling blocks pop into the picture. So I think most people reject God with the heart. They don't want God to be there. And then they go looking for supposed evidence, pseudo-evidence, to try to defend the rejection of God. Blaise Pascal and his work, Ponce, did a real good job on that. Probably got time for one more. Doc, I was going to ask you, what do you find to be the biggest obstacle for unbelievers? Is it that morality question that you just mentioned, that they don't want to change their lifestyles, they don't want to believe, or is it the problem of evil? What do you most often encounter in secularists? Historically, it's been the problem of evil and human suffering. How could an all-powerful God allow evil and human suffering? And of course, the only hope we have to solve the problem of evil is if God is real, and if he's done something about it. The last I heard, the incarnation, death, resurrection of Jesus, and the return of Jesus, that's to demolish the real problem of evil. That historically has been the case. Right now, especially, well, about 15 years ago when I debated at Princeton, I didn't go to school at Princeton, but I was asked to debate an atheist there, and the big talk on the Ivy League schools back then, and now it's trickled on down to community college and all. The big objection is not that Christianity is not true or irrational. The big objection now is that it's intolerant. And so these guys give a revisionist view of history where Christianity is behind all the cards, like the New Atheists. This is all over the place on the internet, but with the New Atheists, they act like Joseph Stalin, who was an atheist, Mao, the communist from China, he's an atheist. They act like these guys, and Hitler, who was a neo-pagan, they act like the tens of millions that they slaughtered in the name of atheistic communism, or with Hitler, in the name of neo-pagan Darwinian thought. He blended Darwin with occultic thought. But they act like those guys were religionists. So they were different kind of atheists. They were atheists who are like you Christians. It's like, no, no! If you list your ten favorite beliefs, Stalin is saying amen to every one of them. And so is Hitler, and so is Mao. And if we allow our universities, Europe is already done, and Europe is gone. I mean, there's an under... current of charges and all. But as far as academia, Europe is gone. But if we allow historians to rewrite history where Christianity is always the bad guy, then it's not going to be. Who cares whether your beliefs are true or not, Gordy? Look at all the people that have died in the name of your history. And of course, there's been people who claim to be Christians who really weren't. Jesus said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, went to the kingdom of heaven. He who does the will of my Father. And so, a lot of bad has been done by pseudo-Christians, and we're paying the bills on that right now. So right now, that's the big attack, is that, oh, you're a Christian, you're one of those intolerant bigots? And then we've got to try to dig ourselves out of that. So I think it's turned it over to you.