Exodus, chapter four, beginning in verse one. The book of Exodus, chapter four, beginning in verse one. And Moses answered and said, But behold, they will not believe me nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say, the Lord has not appeared unto thee. And the Lord said unto him, what is that in thine hand? And he said, oh, rot. And he said, cast it on the ground and he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, put forth thine hand and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand and caught it. And it became a rod in his hand. But they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob hath appeared unto thee. And the Lord said furthermore unto him, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom. And when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow. And he said, put thy hand into thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again and plucked it out of his bosom and behold, it was turned again as his other flesh. And it came to pass that And it shall come to pass that they will not believe they neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. And it shall come to pass that they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river and pour it upon the dry land. And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. I hope that this is meaningful coming from me, but you should know that Reformed theology is not perfect. It never has been, it is not now, and it will not be until we go into glory. The Reformed actually had a doctrine concerning this. They said the only theology that is whole Complete and perfect is the archetypal theology which exists in the mind of God himself. Everything else, all other theologies are ectypes, that is, copies. But whereas God's theology is infinite and comprehensive, finite theology never can be. In that respect, it won't be in this life or in the life to come. We do have a perfect ectype in the scriptures, but the Reformed have always acknowledged that we have not yet attained to that perfect ectype. We are semper referenda, always reforming, always reforming. You'll have to judge for yourself, but it seems to me that Reformed theology has certainly been in better shape than what it is currently. I do think that there was an age in which it far transcended its present incarnation. We have covered in preaching some areas of concern, but in recent days I have had occasion again to be concerned about what has become known as the Reformed apologetic. As much as I have endeavored to escape from this, it continues to come in front of me and I don't expect that I'll get away from it in my lifetime. It just so happens that this has come in front of my attention once again and we have a text that deals with it with some directness. Let me give you a little bit of my history with what has become known as The Reformed Apologetic, otherwise known as Presuppositionalism. From the time of my own conversion, I would say that my theology was first shaped most by R.C. Sproul and listening to his lessons. But Sproul did something for me that in some ways was far better than anything he taught me specifically. he set me in the direction of some of the best authors and so very quickly I became acquainted with Jonathan Edwards early on and not too long after Sproul I started to read everything from Edwards that I could get my hands on I thought probably he was the high water mark as it turned out he wasn't Edwards stands at a period of time the swan song of high reformed orthodoxy and its passing out of the world in his age some of his theology shows the problems of his age and so I dug further back and I became acquainted with the protestant scholastics, Turretin and so on Now, while I'm in the process of doing all of this, some of you know the story. I had my first experience in a Presbyterian church. It was a PCA church not too far from the university where I was attending. And the minister there talked to me much about the ministry. And he suggested that I come under the care of the Presbytery with a view toward preparation for the ministry. so I had to go it's not so much an exam I had to go before the Presbytery for an interview and basically they wanted they wanted to hear my profession of faith something about my Christian experience and also a sense of call I remember very little about the interview itself I'm sure that it was awful but As I was departing from the Presbytery that day, I was on my way to Westminster Theological Seminary. I thought I was going to the Mecca of Presbyterian and Reformed Theology. This was the school that everyone must attend. This is the school of Machen and Murray as they were trying to hold fast to the faithfulness of their fathers. But as I was leaving, I was accosted by a minister and a ruling elder, and they were very excited for me. And they said, when you get to Westminster, you are going to have the opportunity to learn the reformed apologetic. And right away, my ears perked up because I had been reading a lot of reformed theology, but I had not yet read about the reformed apologetic. They used a word I had never heard before up to that point, presuppositionalism. And one of the things that the ruling elder said that really caught my attention, he said, and you'll have the ability to say to an unbeliever, you can't even think a single thought without presupposing my God. Some of you know my, I was just finishing up my first degree, which was a philosophy degree. And so this caught my attention. This is very interesting. I can't wait to get there. Perhaps I'm going to learn something new and exciting. I got to Westminster, all full of enthusiasm, hope and expectation, only to find myself very disappointed in a hurry on a lot of levels. But one of those was the Reformed Apologetic, which strangely enough I'd never been able to find in any of the older Reformed authors. It seemed like Reformed theology had been around for many centuries before this Reformed Apologetic had ever appeared in the world. But if I were to boil it all down, and I've given you a statement from Dr. Gaffin, it's as close to verbatim as I could excise it from my memory and my notes, but it was at the very heart of the Vantillian presuppositional apologetics, and it was what I could never swallow. This was the basics, this was the foundation, and I couldn't get over it. The triune God of the scriptures is the epistemological principium. This is the way we talk in seminaries. Of course, most of these terms you'll know. You know the triune God and you know the scriptures. Triune God, as he's presented in the scriptures, is the epistemological. That refers to thought and reasoning. Principium, that's a Latin word. whenever scholars want to be but all common people they throw in Latin phrases basically it means the beginning the first so basically the triune God of scripture is the first principle of thought that's what the epistemological principium is the epistemological principium would not be proven but rather it would be the ground of all proofs You would use that as a solid bedrock and ground for all reasoning. So basically they were saying the triune God of scripture is the bedrock or the ground for all reasoning. It is the first thought in all reasoning. This is the very heart of Vantillian presuppositionalism. Ventelian presuppositionalists, just like apologists in all ages, would say you can't have an infinite regress of proof. This is the problem of, well, how do you know that? Well, how do you know that? How do you know that? It can't go back forever. Ultimately, there's got to be a ground, an unproven presupposition or axiom that grounds all of the reasoning and upon which the reasoning is built. For the Vantillian, they say, ultimately it will go back, every train of reasoning will reach back to the triune God of the Bible as being the ground. God is presupposed in every word, every assertion of truth, and every argument. As a matter of fact, they would say, the unbeliever really can't even know anything about a blade of grass or a cloud because he is not presupposing the triune God of the Bible. Just so you know that I've done my homework. Over those three years at Westminster, I studied Vantillian Presuppositionalism for an untold number of hours. I read everything in all of the classes that was assigned to me, and with respect to Vantillian Presuppositionalism, that was a lot. And yet I never got over this root assertion Now by way of critique, first of all I do want to make you aware of something because I do believe that this is emotionally powerful. When they talk about it as the reformed apologetic and accuse any other form of apologetics of Arminianism, this is emotionally powerful with reformed folks. And it has a great tendency to prejudice the discussion because we all want to be reformed, don't we? And it's almost like we have competitions in our circles about who can be the most reformed or the most Presbyterian or whatever. So when they say this is the reformed apologetic, it really prejudices the discussion. Logicians actually advise people in discussion not to do that sort of thing. Because rather than dealing with arguments, now you are dealing with profound emotional forces in the argument. Also, it sounds very pious, doesn't it? You can't think a single thought without my God. What's the problem? Look at the statement again. The triune God of the scriptures is the epistemological Principia. The problem is that the statement is false. You've grounded your apologetic on a statement that is clearly and I might even say self-evidently false. What's wrong with it? Basically, a thing can't be epistemologically prime if it requires epistemological antecedents. It can't be first if other things have to go before it. And other things have to go before this statement in order for this statement to be made. So it can't be principium. It can't be the beginning of reasoning. It can't be first. Do you understand that? I mean, is that plain enough? That's why I say it's almost self-evidently false, because if you are not first, then you are not the first. If other things must come before you, as I was sitting in my study and I was trying to think about ways to illustrate this, my mind traveled back to my days in public school and standing in line waiting for the bathroom. And it's like the tenth kid in line saying, I'm first, simply because he ignores the other nine. And that's very much what this is. This is a statement that claims to be first when there are other things that clearly precede it. Things that have to already be functioning in your mind in order for the statement even to be intelligible. Now we won't take the whole statement. We don't need to. But I want you to just take the word God. G-O-D. Three letters. A word that is constructed out of three sounds. Logicians say that there is a law called identity, and certainly there is. The law of identity is very simple, although you'd be surprised at how frequently people mistake it and mess it up. But the law of identity is basically A is A. A thing is itself. It has a corollary called the law of non-contradiction, which is a thing can't be itself and not itself, at the same time and in the same relationship. So A is A and A can't be A and not A at the same time and in the same relationship. Now in order to look at this word and be able to identify the letters on the printed page or the sounds as they hit your ear, the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction already need to be functioning in your brain. That's why I say it can't be the epistological principium. Because the letters and the sounds would not even be intelligible to you without a preceding assumption of identity. G is G. G can't be G and not G at the same time and in the same respect say the G and the O can't be confused. Identity provides definition. And law of non-contradiction provides separation or differentiation. So you can identify the letters and differentiate between them by these two things. So you've got these two great epistemological principles and truths. A thing is itself and a thing can't be itself and not itself at the same time and in the same relationship. they must be present and functioning in your mind and already assumed before you can even differentiate the letters or the sounds much less deal with the concept which is much larger and much more sophisticated and actually takes something of a more sophisticated cognitive apparatus so here's the problem to me this is self-evident self-evident which makes the statement self-evidently false. It cannot be the epistemological ground, the ground of reasoning, when there are other things beneath it. You see that. I noticed this almost right away because my training was in an Aristotelian tradition. And basically, Van Til's presuppositionalism is a revival of Platonism. in the midst of reformed circles. So right away I could see the old struggle between Plato and Aristotle. And I thought I can't believe that I'm hearing this and I can't believe that I'm hearing this in a reformed school. A reformed school such as this. Interestingly enough, Machen and Van Til did work together. But the writings from others that knew them, they say that they doubted that Machen ever understood what Van Til was even saying. because Machen was more along the classical school of apologetics. I might even say classical reformed apologetics as opposed to this new reformed apologetic. Since that time to this time I do want to be clear. I have studied and I have listened. It has been 15 years and I have not heard anything in all of the time that would blunt the force of this critique. I have heard many words spoken. I have read many words written and nothing that could deal with this. I think that this is an insuperable problem and it's not a little one because if you give this up, you give up presuppositionalism. Everything else is just window dressing and development. But if you give this up, the foundation is going for its distinctive system. Without Gavin's assertion, really, there's not much left of presuppositionalism. Some years later, I came into contact with Gordon Clark, another kind of reformed presuppositionalism. While I was at Westminster, you should understand that Gordon Clark was just a shadowy villain figure that lurked in the background because he had a pretty famous dust-up with Van Til. I didn't know anything about it at the time. Interestingly enough, I think in his debate with Van Til and the point they debated, Clark was right. But Clarke's version of presuppositionalism to me is worse than Van Til's. Clarke's presuppositionalism is structured a little bit differently. He says that all of the truths of scripture are taken as the axioms of thought. They are the epistemological principium. So now, whereas Van Tilian presuppositionalism really just had the one axiom, the one, you know, the triune God of the scriptures, it's all gathered up into one. For Van Til, every truth that the scripture gives is taken as an axiom upon which you can ground other thoughts, but it's the only certain ground. So, for example, Clark did not believe that you could construct mathematics unless you did it from the scripture and the material that scriptures provided or physics or chemistry all of it had to be derived deductively from the scriptures or it would be considered uncertain as you can see he denies natural revelation for the most part, or at least the ability for a human being to pick up on any of it with any sort of certainty. And he says that you can't even trust your senses, which would be the overthrow of natural theology, wouldn't it? The common critique for this, again, which I think to be insuperable. I've listened, I've listened, I've listened. But the critique was, well, if you can't trust your senses, how do you hear preaching or read your Bible? And the analogy that he used, which is why what started off as Clarkian rationalism ultimately degenerates into mysticism, he said, your encounters with the word of God read or preached are not certain things, but that all of the truths of scripture are already written upon your mind, you hear the Platonism, but when you come into contact with that external word, it becomes an occasion for them to appear, like the appearing of invisible ink when you put heat to it you know it just suddenly appears in the mind that's mysticism you have in part a very strange combination of rationalism everything needs to be deduced and mysticism we've got invisible ink in the brain and so on but also in addition to this Clark has all of the same problems that Van Til does. How are you going to read the Bible without preceding axioms? Identity, non-contradiction, causality, the reliability of the senses. All of these things need to be presupposed in an epistemology before you could even read and understand the Bible. What brings all of this up? Our text is actually quite problematic for presuppositionalism. I would say this, and I'm not trying to be irreverent or glib, but I don't think that the Bible teaches us that the Bible ought to be taken presuppositionally or axiomatically. That there are other things that are known first that give us access to these things, or confidence in them, or the certainty that they come from God. And we'll talk about that and we'll talk about the relationship with this text. Remember where we are. We are still at the burning bush. We have been for many weeks in the evening. We took another visit to the burning bush this morning in our sermon on Revelation. But Moses has received his commission for the deliverance of Israel. But even after he has received assurance from God that the Israelites will listen, he expresses concern in verse one. Behold, they will not believe me nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say the Lord hath not appeared unto thee. God then gives him three confirming miracles. But I want you to notice in particular, verse five, after the gift of the serpentine rod, that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob hath appeared unto thee." I want you to notice that little word, that. Litma'an in Hebrew, it indicates purpose. In order that, or for the purpose that, now, this is what's called an ellipsis. Something has been omitted that you need to supply mentally. And it's basically something like, I have given you the sign something along those lines, something equivalent. And now the purpose for the giving of the sign so that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers have appeared unto thee. So this is the sign is given so that they might believe. Interestingly enough, the sign is going to intervene so that they'll know that this man speaks for God. Last week, we looked at the leper's hand. And now we come to verses 8 and 9, which has to do with the function of these signs, what they were intended to do. And it shall come to pass if they will not believe, they neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. So here a situation is contemplated. If they don't believe the miracle of the rod turning into the serpent and the serpent turning into the rod, nor are they willing to listen to his voice. And if they won't believe the voice of the second sign, the leprous hand, then I'm sorry, I get ahead of myself. If they won't listen to the voice of the first sign, then they will believe the second sign, the sign of the leprous hand. Just a quick note. Remember, the miracles are significant. They are not mere acts of power. but they convey a message. We did this doctrine earlier. I want you just to notice here that the signs are portrayed as having a voice, as if they speak and deliver a message. This is part of that doctrine, that the miracles in the scripture are not just naked acts of power, but they carry a message with them. The first sign is portrayed as having a voice, and they will believe the voice of the latter sign. Isn't that very interesting? way of expressing this truth and part of their message and what's primarily intended here. What is the what is the speech of the signs that Moses has been sent sent by God? They will believe that you have that God has sent you. Verse nine. And it shall come to pass that they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river and pour it upon the dry land. And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. So another scenario is contemplated here. If they won't believe the two signs, nor Moses's words, then this third miracle is to be added. Moses is to take water from the river. The river is the Nile. is to pour it in front of the Israelite elders upon the dry land and then this water is going to become blood. Now again, notice the miracle. There's nothing in the nature of the water nor of Egyptian sand that would transmute the water into blood. So this is indeed a miracle. This is a work beyond nature. What is the significance of this? I think that this is probably easier than all of the others. This bodes ill for Egypt. This is a prefiguring of the cursing and polluting of the source of all Egyptian life. And there is some evidence that in the Egyptian cosmology, this would be the polluting of the source of all life. They thought the rains that fell in other land was the Nile running in the sky. and that Egypt was unique in that it came up from the ground but they attributed all of the waters of the earth ultimately to the Nile so here you've got in the Egyptian mind a cursing and a polluting of the source of life and I do think that there would be something about this that would be a more evident token of judgment for the Egyptians you remember the Egyptians had made the Nile bloody in the murder of the Hebrew boys. And now God is going to judge them in kind. You will make your waters bloody, and bloody they shall be indeed. Just a quick note, the turning of the waters into blood is the first great plague of Egypt in Exodus chapter 7. This miracle in this text is actually different The form of the miracle is the same, but this first miracle was performed in front of the Hebrew elders to convince them. The cursing of the waters of Egypt was the first judgment upon the Egyptians. So this is a slightly different thing that is being discussed here. It does not appear, unlike the serpentine rod in the leper's hand, it doesn't appear that the miracle was done here. But he was to wait until he got into Egypt and draw the water from the Nile. And then it would be turned into blood. In the other miracle, in the first judgment, the bloody water turns back into water. There's no mention of that here. It just appears that this little bit of water would turn into blood and then sink down into the ground and disappear. So what does all of this have to do with presuppositional apologetics? Actually, quite a lot, because it shows a very different way of thinking about these things. Now it is true that the Israelites already believe in God, and Moses doesn't seem to think that he's going to have to go down into Egypt and try to prove that there is a God, or that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the true God. But the question is, is this because they take the triune God of the Bible presuppositionally? And the answer is no. This God was known by revelation, first and foremost by all men through the things that he has made. Turn with me in the epistle to the Romans, chapter one, verse 20. Romans, chapter one, beginning in verse 20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power in Godhead, so that they are without excuse." I want you to notice here, you have the invisible things of God contemplated as being clearly seen. This is oxymoronic in its statement. It's intended to carry a rhetorical punch. How is it that invisible things exactly will be clearly seen? The invisible things in view are then defined for us God's eternal power and Godhead. And of course, God is a spirit. There's nothing in the divine nature to see. and his eternal power is not something that you could see or look upon you could view its effects in the creation but the power itself you can't see so these are the invisible things but he says that from the time of the creation of the world they have been clearly seen being understood by the things that are made I want you to notice the difference here between this and presuppositionalism. With presuppositionalism, the idea of God has to already be in the mind. It's an idea to which you must have immediate access. In other words, nothing intervening, no medium intervening, and immediate access to the idea so that you have it from which to do all of your other reasoning so God is not taken presuppositionally or as the innate idea the first thing that you have access to in the sequence of reasoning is the things that have been made and you view the things that have been made and you draw conclusions concerning God his existence his deity, the divine nature and his eternal power but you see the difference here we don't view God immediately nor take Him presuppositionally, but we view God through the medium of revelation. And isn't this just basic Reformed doctrine? Not that we have immediate access to God, but that we have access to God through what He has revealed. But the first cognitive step is the viewing of the things that have been revealed, or the things that have been made, and then the reasoning about what they reveal about the God that made them. There are steps. Presuppositionalists will frequently take great offense at this. They say, you put God at the end of an argument. I'm not afraid. So does Paul here. And I think that every human being that is born into the world does this if they come to such an age where they begin to use these slightly more sophisticated reasoning faculties because they start to reason in this way. Daddy, where do you come from? I come from my mommy and daddy. Where do they come from? I come from their mommy and daddy. Where do they come from? And eventually you get all the way back and you have to say God. There can't be an infinite regress. When you have finite divisible units, me, my dad, his dad, his dad, his dad, It can't go back infinitely. That's a contradiction. Number and infinity are contraries. Infinity is actually numberlessness. You can't put a lot of a number together and suddenly have infinity. Or here's a challenge. How big does the number have to get and still be finite? And when does it click over to infinite? And if it is finite, then it has a beginning. Time works in the same way. It has to have a beginning. Children do this. I remember doing this as a child. The answer had already been given to me, because I started to ask these questions and then my mom said, of course, God is going to be the ultimate answer to this. But this is the way that people really do it, and discover the God of nature by looking at nature and thinking about it. Another way of saying this, so that the presuppositionalist doesn't have to be so nervous. Your brain, as constructed by God, even though that's not the first thing you know, but your brain has an identity, it has a way it processes information. Your brain, operating on this world with its identity, draws invariable conclusions. It's built into the nature of your mind in this creation, that there is a God, that he is present and that he is powerful. Every human being draws these conclusions. So no, Moses doesn't need to try to prove the existence of God. And God had already revealed himself to the Israelites in time past. He doesn't have to prove that Jehovah is the true God. So he doesn't have to do that. He can take that as presupposed in this argument, not that it's at the very ground of epistemology, but he knows it and they know it. And he can start with that. And interestingly enough, you'd say Moses doesn't need to prove it to them because God already has. If you look at Romans 1.19, "...because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them." And he's done it effectually. This is one of the reasons, forget about our culture, our culture is a blip on the historical radar screen. and it is cancerous and diseased but when you look at the history of the world and men's minds operating upon this creation whether they be primitives or advanced societies they all draw the conclusion that there is a God and they know some things about him that is powerful and so on, basic things about God this is what Paul seems to be talking about in Romans chapter 1 What Moses is concerned about is that his own mission is liable to their doubt. And in some ways, this is reasonable. Anyone can come and say, I speak for God. And then say, and I have I have a sort of a strange idea. We're getting up out of this place. And they and their bondage are going to say, this is hard to believe. This is a this is a tough pill to swallow. We have to put a lot of confidence in you, my friend, to undertake something like this. Anybody can say that they speak for God. Now, this raises a question for Gordon Clark. He says that the truths of scripture are to be taken presuppositionally. Now, at this point, there is no Bible. There is no written word, but I doubt that Dr. Clark would have denied that people knew anything at this period. Things were revealed, and this had been revealed to Moses. So Dr. Clark would say, and if you were to take his argument and advance his form of argument, they ought to take what Moses is saying just presuppositionally. They can't do any reasoning or thinking about the situation without it. But that's not the method that God takes with his people. Moses is concerned they're going to doubt my mission. And God's method with the people is different than what the presuppositionalist would lead you to think. God sends Moses with the message, but anybody can make that claim. So God further testifies to Moses mission by miracles of divine power. This presupposes the sense experience of the miracles, and God is relying upon the sense experience of the people, and that they're going to be able to identify water, and that they're going to be able to identify sand, and that they understand something of the properties of both of these, and when you bring them together, the normal causal relationship and product, which would be mud, But this time it produces blood. So this assumes identity, non-contradiction, causality, sense experience, and so on. God says they'll look at these things and they'll draw the conclusion that you speak for me. And the multiplying of them is almost like a superabundance of evidence. In case they were wondering, wait a minute, is that a trick? And then they see all of these wonderful and mighty works. And then God gives the purpose. Not that they ought to take his mission presuppositionally, because God had declared it, but rather, they'll see these things, and I give these things, that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers hath appeared unto thee. Do you see the difference? And the difference in method? And if I could make just one other claim, isn't this much more in keeping with the common sense of mankind? You end up in presuppositionalism with these very frustrating conversations, not so much about the existence of God, they know it and you know it, but they say, well how do I know that this Bible comes from God? Both Van Til and Clark would just look back at him and say, oh, you know. This is when an apologetic becomes no apologetic at all. Oh, you know. Yeah, dude. until there was some sort of demonstration given? Did the Israelites know? Could they know for sure? Given what was at stake? Was it unreasonable for them to want to see some sort of demonstration of the divine power so that they could be sure before they undertook something that if it didn't work would be the destruction of the nation? I mean, this is not a small thing. Facing Don Ferro is not a small thing. They're under his military dominion. So if you've understood my meaning, presuppositionalism fails. I deliver this with something of a long face because when I get responses to sermons, it's usually about these, and I start getting hostile letters from Vantillians and Plarkians, where this is their chief joy. their favorite hobby or something like this, but ultimately presuppositionalism fails for the simple reason that these things are not on the ground floor of epistemology. They are not. There are things that come before, so they cannot be prime, primary, principium, beginning. They can't be any of these things. And you notice here that in the Bible, identity, non-contradiction, causality, sense experience, the witnessing of the miracle, the drawing of conclusions, is what we have sketched out for us here. Now as far as myself, I don't have anything new to sell in this. I think that there was a perfectly serviceable apologetic from ancient times before there was even anything called a reformed church when the reformed church picked up the apologetics of ancient times they just picked up the apologetics of ancient times they really didn't change it because the old arguments had already persuaded everybody but now in this present day the presuppositionalist wrings his hands because America doesn't seem to be very much persuaded And even that is not what it appears to be. You see these surveys. You'll see something like 85 or 90% of Americans will say that they believe in God. That doesn't make them Christians or anything like that. It's the people that control the media with the loudest voice that make it seem like Americans don't know that there's a God or something like that. The university professors who control the schools and the teaching and all of these sorts of things. For the most part, America is still doing Romans 1 20. They know that there's a God by the things that have been made. Now, as I said, that doesn't make them Christians, but they do know that there is a God. If we haven't done anything else tonight, there is a certain value in negative knowledge. I haven't sketched out a positive apologetic, but we have looked at a way not to go. a way that does not work a way, I read a book actually a big textbook on apologetics written from a broadly evangelical perspective about a thousand pages on my trip to Scotland it was in some ways a light read because it was written in contemporary times but I just read through it and to tell you the truth I was a bit embarrassed that he talked about the reformed philosophy and epistemology and he identified it as this and I thought this is less than a hundred years old there were reformed people for a long time doing apologetics before this ever came around the bend so I don't have anything new to propose to you just that good old way like Jeremiah I would point you back to the old paths which are the certain paths I want to point you to the footsteps of the flock that have gone before us, before this aberrant development in our theology. I hope I don't get letters. I thought we might conclude with Psalm 19.