Evangelism Practices and Challenges

Thanks for having us back. I'm looking forward to Sunday in getting a chance to preach. A great message. I hope you feel the same. Let's go to Lord in Prayer for just a moment here. Lord, thank you for gathering us together today on Wednesday night Bible study. And Lord, as you know, Pastor Casey's vision for the church is to grow in evangelism and discipleship. That's I pray that this is used to help grow the church in evangelism and in apologetics. I pray that you give everyone hearts ready to hear, minds ready to listen, and protect the words coming out of my mouth that it's only of you. In your holy impression we pray. Amen.

So we're going to leave off or we're going to start where we left off last time. Now how many of us have questions for me tonight on apologetics?

Not a single one. Wow. So you guys are all pros? Is that what you're telling me?

So we're going to cover some challenges and

questions that are often brought up during evangelism encounters or when we're just talking to people, right? And they find out we're Christians and they want to hit us with something between the eyes. So having said all that, as always, I believe in review because the only way that we get things up here. So there's something called unconscious competence. Anyone know what that is? Unconscious competence. So, conscious competence is like when you're learning how to drive a stick shift, right? And you're you drive the stick shift, you got to think about it the whole time, right?

But eventually it becomes unconscious competence where you can drive that stick shift without even thinking about it anymore, right? It just comes natural. Well, this is what we want to do with evangelism is we want to be able to have unconscious competence when we go out and speak. We don't want to have to think about this. It should flow naturally from us. So what is the gospel?

It's the good news. Specifically, what is the good news? It is the truth. It's God's word. I mean, but okay, now we're getting somewhere. Life of Christ, right? Story of God's love. These are all good things, right? The it's a path of salvation, right? These are all good things. But if I have a knife in my back and I'm going to die in literally 15 seconds, what do I need to know? I'm a sinner. I deserve what? Hell, death, good. And how do I get out of it? I need to save my life. I need to repent and believe good. Believe what now? On the Lord Jesus Christ. What about Jesus? He died, was buried, raised on the third day to pay the penalty of our sin. That's the gospel.

Thank you. Did we get it under 30 seconds? Did we get it under 30 seconds? That's good. Collective salvation. Is that what they call it? No. Okay, so what is the gospel, right? Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians 15 verses one through four. This is the gospel. I preached to you unless you believe in vain that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, is raised in the third day in accordance with the scriptures. So for those of you who can see my screen here, I have these main words underlined, right? Died, sins, scriptures, buried, raised, and buried in the scriptures. This is what we have to have in our noggins when we talk to people.

Let's explain this a little bit further. On that cross, what happened on that cross?

It is finished, right? It was completely finished, completely paid for.

Is our propitiation, right?

Justice was served, right. Now, how was justice served on the cross? Christ died on the cross, but what came down on him? I think Isaiah 53. God's wrath, right? So the full wrath of God, think about it as the eternal wrath of God that is going to be poured out in hell for eternity for sinners, that that wrath was poured out on his own son, on the cross.

And Christ bore that, right? So when we understand this gospel message and getting it up here, it's understanding what happened on that cross. He took the wrath that we deserve.

When we talk to sinners, Christ took the wrath that sinners deserve. And at the moment, someone repents and believes what happens. Let's think 2 Corinthians 5 21. He who knew no sin became sin in order that we might become the righteous of God. So immediately, you know, Martin Luther calls this the great exchange,

where the sin of us was placed on that cross.

And Christ's righteousness immediately is credited to your account.

The moment you repent and believe. So this is what we have to think about as we are talking to people. Okay, now we've said this, how do we reach the lost?

Right? It's all good and well. We know the gospel. We know how to approach people. What do we say?

If I were to ask you today, where would you spend eternity?

Awesome question. That's my absolute favorite question to use. So we're gonna get to that in a moment. Now, before we start these conversations, we walk up to the unbeliever and we talked about the several things that we know about every unbeliever when we walk up to them. Right? Now, first and foremost, Romans 1 16. What is the power of God and salvation? (Inaudible)

It is, but there's specific words. Let's look it up. Romans 1 16.

I can tell you what it's not. It's not my ability to give good evidences. It's the gospel. Thank you. The gospel is the power of God and salvation. Right? We just talked about the gospel. Right? See, this is the point, right? The point is that the power is not in ourselves. The power is in God. Okay. Let's go now. Now notice we're doing some repeat, but then we're also going to add some more stuff in. We want to build on our theology and our understanding. Let's open up to Ezekiel 36 24 starting in verse 24.

I'm going to read this out loud. I'm actually going to start in verse 22.

What I want you to think about as I read this passage in the ESV is I want you to think about how many times does the, does God use the word I in this passage, right? This, this passage is talking about Israel first and foremost, but it has a dual meaning in this passage. Talk about the specific unbeliever. So think, I want you to hear the word I in this and how many times.

Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act. But for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring, bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleanness and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord, let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord God, on the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the waste places shall be rebuilt.

How many times is the word I used here? A bunch. I counted 18. Yeah, right. 18, somewhere in that neighborhood. Okay, now let me ask you this question. What is God trying to tell us?

I think we did.

It's him, right? The gospel is probably God's salvation. God does the work.

Okay, what does this, so who changes unbelievers heart now?

Well, the scriptures might be the means, but who changes the heart? God does, right? God does, God changes the heart. So now what does this imply about God's role in salvation again?

He's sovereign. He does it all, right? He does it all. Okay, now let's flip to Romans 10 verses 8 through 15. I'm going to read this out loud as well. So starting in verse 8 here, but what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word faith that we proclaim because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord as Lord of all, bestowing his riches and all who call on him. For everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? First question, how will unbelievers call on him, believe in him, and hear him? According to this passage.

They had to hear it, right? They had to hear it by whom? By preachers. And in general, it's not the person necessarily going out to street corner preaching, right? Everyone who is giving the word of God is considered a preacher in this passage. So who's responsible now for the unbelievers to hear the word of God?

We are. We are the ambassador.

I was going to ask a question about the question in the statement. Go ahead. I was in a Bible study, I won't tell you where I'm here.

And I won't tell you who either, but I think it was all in that Bible study. But it was almost an argument at our table that it's useless to witness to an atheist.

That's a shame.

I would wait for that over here. We didn't hear that. So I'll repeat it. So you were in a Bible study where there was almost an argument at the table because somebody made a comment that you should not witness to an atheist. Right. Why not? Because it was useless. Useless.

To which we would have to say, God is sovereign. God is omnipotent. Right. All powerful. God is omniscient. All knowing. Do we think God could handle an atheist? Yes. Probably. Right. Yes. He could probably handle that. I told him to say, now you have the limit on God. Yeah. Where God can only do so much. Yeah. And I'll tell you as a corollary to this, right? That's why I'm liking this open forum tonight is because when you go up to military men, especially guys, you know, there's not many left of World War II vets, but you go to Vietnam and Korea and others. So many of the older military men are ashamed of their lives. And when you go witness to them, they say, I don't know how I could possibly save you. You have no idea what I've done. You have no idea who I've killed. You have no idea. Right. I hear this a lot. To which, how do we respond to that?

God. Right. God is infinite.

He saves Paul. Right. Well, yeah. Right. He saved Paul. The fact is, God is infinite. God is eternal. You're not.

God could save you. God could pay the penalty of all those sins. Paul has sin and Paul has everything.

Well, that's right. We can certainly go to those passages, right? But of course, they recognize that they're sinners. They just think their sins are too great for God to save. And so we say, no, no, no. God is bigger than your sin. Way bigger than your sin.

Okay. So question.

Well, that's right. I mean, you can come up with all kinds of examples. So, so what does this imply now, but man's role in salvation? We need to take a bigger part of the order.

That's a good answer.

We're the vessel. That's right. We're the vessel.

So God is in control of every aspect of salvation. And yet he allows us to be part of one part of it, which is speak his word.

Be the messenger.

Be the messenger. That's the only thing that we are responsible for.

I mean, now, now tell me how, how easy should evangelism be if we don't have to worry about the results? All we have to do is worry about accurately speaking God's word.

And if you don't have a memorized, open your Bible and read it to him. That's okay. Right. But use the word. And that's, that's the only thing we're responsible for.

Also in this passage, how does God view the evangelist?

What does he, what does he say about the evangelist? How beautiful are the feet? Right. That's right. So, so God is complimenting the evangelist here.

How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news?

So now brings up the next question then.

Now I might be poking in the eyes of some people here.

Is it biblical to use the sinner's prayer?

Is it biblical to use a sinner's prayer?

Why not?

That's good.

Sinner's prayer is when you desire somebody to be saved and you tell them about your head, repeat after me, and you try to manipulate them. I'll put your hand on their shoulders or your head. Right. Well, that's what it is. It's a form of manipulation. And so is sinner's prayer biblical? No. We don't see the sinner's prayer anywhere in the Bible. We see preach the word to the unbeliever. That's what we see. Okay. How about this one? How about is it biblical to call people to come forward in a service? By the way, I did clear these to pastor Casey first. So just so you know. So is it biblical to call people to, you know, I've seen this routine before, right? Okay, everyone, close your eyes and bow your heads. There's anybody in here who just feels it right now, who just, who really, who just thinks they need to come to Jesus. You've got problems in your life and you've got problems in your marriage and you got problems with your children. And maybe this is the time that you're being called, right? And so if you're not, if you're not ashamed enough, can you just raise your hand right now? Maybe just a little bit. I mean, everyone's got their eyes closed, right? And you've heard this routine, right?

You're shaving into it, right? And then you get them to walk forward, right? I'm that guy when I, when I, when we've accidentally been in those churches, I'm the guy with my eyes open looking around. So I want the pastor to be really uncomfortable as he's doing this.

Who's that? No, so this is what I would say. I think that churches have, have had,

I think churches have, have meant well with it, but I think they've gone beyond the scope of what scripture would teach. I think that would be the best way to say it, right? So is it okay to call people to repentance? Absolutely. In fact, scripture tells us to, we're commanded to do this. If a pastor stands up there and commands people to repentance

and says, you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You must put your faith in Jesus Christ who paid the penalty for your sin, right? Repent and believe. Do it all day long.

The issue becomes when, when, and there are many books written on this, on the, the manipulation of it. So we're using techniques to try to manipulate people into an emotional response rather than a response that comes from here and here, right? A response that recognizes. So the difference is, is in like first Corinthians, I think it's first Corinthians where it talks about a worldly sorrow versus godly sorrow. This idea that are you upset that you got caught or you just looking for the benefits of Christ versus you have a godly sorrow over your sin against almighty God, your law breaking against almighty God. And so this is how we are to be presenting the gospel is, is presenting it in a way that they understand that they need to have a godly sorrow over their sin. And so when we, when we can present it this way, biblically, we're good. The, the issue again comes when we are starting to manipulate somebody into an emotional or worldly response versus a godly one. And so I can't, I can't say that every

technique is wrong, so to speak. I'm, what I'm saying is that a pastor or any of us have to be really, really careful in presenting the gospel, that we're not doing it for an emotional reason, right? We're doing it out of this godly sorrow. Does that help answer the question?

I have to look it up. I think it's in first Corinthians if I'm not mistaken. It might be second Corinthians. It's one of those two books, but there's an, there's a long passage regarding worldly versus godly sorrow in there. And I know if you guys type into the Google machine, you'll find it out really, really fast. Question.

You are saying you have something to do with it. Well, that's right. I mean, in scripture, I mean, as I make some really bold statements here, right, our job is to take what I'm saying and go to scripture. What does scripture say about these things? If you go through the book of Acts, right, the greatest evangelistic book ever written,

I've mentioned in the past as I've been here that when people say that the gospel's all love, right, now the gospel is love, but it's also God's wrath, and Paul says judgment, I mean, we can't separate those. When people say it's only God's love, I say, well, let's go through the book of Acts and see how many times the word love is used in the course of the gospel, and it's not there. It's left out, right? We also don't see a sinner's prayer in the book of Acts. We also don't see any manipulative techniques in the book of Acts. What we see is Paul and Peter calling people to account for their sin.

In some cases, we see them like in Acts 17 in the statue of the unknown God saying, oh, this God that you worship, this false God you worship, no, no, no, no, let's talk about Jesus.

He's pointing right back to scripture.

No manipulation, no trying to get their heart all, you know, tug of their heartstrings. He's going strictly to this understanding in scripture of repent and believe.

Now we can do it nicely. We should do it kindly. We should have a heart with somebody that we talk to in presenting the fact that they're a sinner, they're going to stand in front of God and they need the gospel.

We need to do those things. It's just, again, we have to be really careful not to cross over into using emotions to reel them in.

We need to use what, according to God's word?

God's word, right? That's what we need to use. And so what it becomes just fully on this is it becomes this idea of do I trust God's word to do the work? Do I trust God himself is going to save sinners the way he claims he's going to? Do I trust that God is omnipotent in saving sinners? Or do I think that somehow I can play a role in terms of causing somebody to repent?

And this is a hard concept for a lot of people because the old school churches have been doing this for years, these manipulative techniques. Where did that start? Charles Finney? Charles Finney, Billy Graham exploded it and others. And there's a lot of them who did this in several movements actually. And so as we've been trying to recapture the gospel, right? Over the years and recapture proper evangelism and whatnot, this has been a big battle that we're having to retrain people in these things. If you wanna know more, one of the greatest lectures I ever heard was by Ray Comfort called "Hell's Best Kept Secret." And he's got another one called "True and False Conversions." Each one's a 45 minute or so talk. And the first time that my wife and I listened to this, it dropped us to our knees

because we used to do the manipulative technique. In fact, I encouraged my friend to do it to my dad years ago.

And so let me tell you what happened to my dad years ago. My dad got saved on his deathbed, thank God, a year ago. But years ago, we convinced him to go to church, he watched a play, "Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames." You guys ever heard about those manipulative plays? We went to watch one. And one of my friends came up to my dad intending, he had the purest of intentions, thank you, purest of intentions. And my friend comes up to my dad and said, "Mr. Sylvester, don't you want Jesus right now? I mean, don't you want Jesus?" Just buy your head with me, Mr. Sylvester.

And hand on the shoulder, and, "Mr. Sylvester, I know you really want Jesus, and this is, you just watched a lot going on up here, what hell looks like, right?" And, "Hey, let's just walk out in the aisle, wait with me right now." And then, a minute later, "Hey, Mr. Sylvester, let's walk down." As people are being called down to the front. And next thing you know, my dad is ushered off into a room on the side where hundreds and hundreds of people were ushered off into after this set of plays.

They sit down, there's a counselor that talks to him for 10 or 15 minutes, gets their phone number and address, an email address, right? And then they follow up with him a couple weeks later. Well, every one of these events is exactly like what Ray Comfort found in his thousands of people that he saw come to Jesus during these manipulative techniques. What they found in these studies is that a year later, 98% of people were gone, no idea where they're at.

Now, if we are saved truly, who takes residence within us?

The Holy Spirit, right? Do you think that somebody who is filled with the Holy Spirit who had just gotten saved is going to disappear for the next year?

Or do you think the Holy Spirit might be bringing him towards other people of God that are also filled with the Holy Spirit? Or bringing people to church? Or bringing, right? This is what the Holy Spirit does when he's active in our lives.

What Ray Comfort found 35, 40 years ago is that all of these techniques were producing huge amounts of false converts because of the manipulative techniques. And that's what got him started in his ministry years ago in the whole law and the gospel. In understanding, wait a minute, we've been doing it wrong all these years. I've been doing it wrong.

I instead need to show people their sin by using the law. Let them understand the disease of sin that they have. It's in a direct affront against God. They've broken his law. They deserve just punishment for that. And then now let me give them the good news of the gospel to show them how they can be saved from that punishment.

And then leave it there because who does the work?

God. (Sighs)

And that was the change that Ray Comfort made, which really started off a lot of this new, I don't wanna say new evangelism because it's always been there, right? But a new fire starter, a new boom, whatever you wanna call it, where people started evangelizing differently.

And now when you use what the Bible calls the right technique for evangelism, we're not producing false converts.

What's happening is that when people hear God's word, they're either going to receive it because God has changed them or they reject it and they run off. What we're not getting is this middle ground of people who are manipulated into thinking that they want Jesus and then never come back.

That's cruel.

It's really cruel actually when you think about it.

Lots of kids.

That's right.

We call it being inoculated to the gospel, right? And so if you wanna do some fun reading on Charles Finney especially, it's called the Burnt Out District. So in Western New York, they call it the Burnt Out District, where Finneyism spread like wildfire, manipulative techniques for the gospel and produced all kinds of false converts who, oh, well, I'm saved. And a lot of what these people did too, is they said, okay, now here's a Bible for you. Now write your name, the date and the time. And if anyone tells you you're not saved, don't believe them, just go back to this page. These people were completely inoculated from the gospel. So it led to what's called the Burnt Out District, tons and tons of people that were not saved, false converts in New York. Now, for those of you who know a little bit about church history, from the early to mid 1850s, all the way through early 1900s, what do you know about different groups that have started in Western New York?

In Western where? Western New York. New York. Mm-hmm. Is it the Burnt Over District? It's called the Burnt Over, or Burnt Out District, either one. Charismatics. Charismatics.

Mormons.

Jehovah's Witnesses. Cults. All the cults.

This is where they came from. Jehovah's Witnesses started actually in Pennsylvania, to be fair, and then they moved to the Burnt Out District for all the false converts.

This is real church history, caused by some of these very, very bad manipulative techniques.

And so look, here's the thing, every one of us, I am sure, if we've evangelized in the past, we have been guilty of using manipulative techniques. Every one of us is, I'm guilty of this. And that's part of the reason why, when I heard Ray Comfort's message, and compared to what the scripture teaches, I was floored.

We were silenced from it, recognizing what we were doing, and it changed everything about how we started to evangelize. And think about it, do we really want the burden of

trying to manipulate somebody into the gospel?

Or do we wanna just say, God, you do it.

That's the good news about God's word being the gospel, is that it has to have anything to do with us, as long as we share his word, that's it. That's it. It takes away the stress that's right in there. Right, right. Because, yeah, because the burden's on us, right? So that means that, unlike the guys that were using these manipulative techniques for so many years, and the one's still doing it now, right? What do they do? They go, oh, got another one saved today. Let me put my notch over, one more, one more my belt.

Right, I mean, but it's true, right? They considered it another notch in their belt, they considered it, oh, another one for the chalkboard, right, and you put it on their little evangelism board in the front of the church, right? We got another one saved today, guys. Got another one saved today, guys.

And then, do they ever show back up at church again, the vast majority of them? No. No. They're not really discipled. You have absolutely no understanding of the spirit. Because they didn't get saved, right? I mean, because they were manipulated into believe, an easy believism of the gospel, rather than a true heart being ripped out of them, heart of stone, and replaced with a heart of flesh, as we read in Ezekiel 36, which is only a work of God.

They say to get around that, so it's not made. Mm-hmm. When we get through the aspect,

is this something that you desire,

or that a go-tell?

Absolutely, and there's nothing wrong with that. Not many, but you go-tell it. That's right. There's nothing, and look, if they want us to pray with them, pray with them, right? Pray with them that the Lord changes their hearts, that the Lord saves them, right? There's nothing wrong with us praying with somebody for that. But if we're saying, "Now repeat after me," right? I so-and-so am a sinner, and please forgive me, and now I'm saved, thank you, Jesus," that's not right.

Right, so this is where we have to be really, really careful when we're out there evangelizing.

And so that-- We're given a sense of false sense of assurance that there was need in that process, and I got convicted over that. I was like, "Oh, Lord, Instagram, "I've thought of people that I've spoken to "because I went through Bill Heidel's class, "and this is how you do it." You were, "I love you, Lord," and thought it was a great thing for me to do. Yeah, right. And so for my dad and other people we know, like my dad was manipulated that day, went down in front, and then, you know, within a day, he's like, "Eh, that was just whatever." And it was done, right? Like, my dad wasn't saved, and he knew it. It was all a manipulation that he went through for that hour or whatever that day.

He got emotional. Oh yeah, he got emotional. And then the next day it was back to normal life again.

What's that?

Back doing what he was doing, right. There wasn't a heart change. It wasn't Holy Spirit taking up residence, all because it was a manipulation technique. Probably more atheists have been created than Christians from that, because then they look at their mind, they're like, "Why am I still doing this? "Why haven't I, why don't I feel different? "Why am I not making better choices?" They don't understand why. They're still the same. They work the way they do. That's right. You know, when I go to college campuses and talk to students, there's a lot of,

they call themselves atheists, right? I know it's something that's an atheist, but they call themselves atheists. There's a lot of agnostics, right? There's this new atheist agnostic term that's out there, or agnostic atheist.

And when I ask them their background, how they grew up, guess what almost all of them told me? Not just the Baptist. Not just Baptists, but that's one of them.

Most of them have Christian and or Catholic backgrounds. Almost all of them do. It's scary.

Some of it, I mean, especially Catholics, it's because, you know, there's, they saw the atrocities in the Catholic Church. When it comes to Christian churches, some was atrocities, some of it was youth group inoculating them in the same way. And they, what's that? And they're professors. And professors, well professors, professors finish it, finish the job.

But we have research to show by the time they get to college, is already accomplished.

So, question? Question, I'm not sure if it's gonna ask you this. We're talking about atheists. Romans 1.20 talks and says they are without excuse. It's creation, I mean, it's there. So atheists even know the terms of God. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's the beach ball. So good, I'm glad you guys said that because that was my exact next thing to go back over again.

Every unbeliever knows what? God exists. God exists, good. The unbeliever knows God's, according to Romans 2.

What's renowned as heart? The moral laws are in his heart. The unbeliever is suppressing the truth about God. That's right.

And so God, moral law, truth.

And then the last part is, oh, there we go.

Unbelievers, oh that came up backwards, that's weird.

I don't know how that happened. So, well you guys got these answers now already. Unbelievers exchange the truth about God for a lie and they exchange, or they start to worship what? Idols, right, false religions, gods, anything else. So this passage, just to kind of go off of what you said here, there's no such thing as an atheist for two reasons. Number one, to be an atheist, you have to be absolutely certain God doesn't exist. To be absolutely certain, you have to have all knowledge. Does anyone have all knowledge? No. So that's one strike. The other strike is, is according to God's word, it says that everybody knows he exists, by his creation, things have been made. Everybody knows, plain as day. And so when they claim that they don't know him, what are they doing to you?

Lying. Lying.

Or they've suppressed the truth so bad, they don't even recognize they're lying anymore. They're lying to themselves? They're essentially lying to themselves, that's right. Well, God has hardened their heart. Well, eventually God does harden their heart, right? They don't even recognize it anymore. But the bottom line is, is they all know, and God's so convinced of that, that they're without? Excuse, like you just said, right? They're without excuse.

Okay, any questions of this point? I know some of its review, and some of it was digging deeper a little bit, and some of the understandings of this topic. So any questions? You had mentioned a new way of evangelizing, well, for years, I went through many classes, how to do this, went through, you've heard of faith, evangelism, William Fay, how to share Jesus. Yeah, share without fear or something, as William Fay. And now, coming into this church, I've really,

Eye-opening. It's really eye-opening to see how we should do it, and do it exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, isn't it amazing? There's people who have written hundreds of pages of books of evangelism, and yet, God gives us some very simple instructions. (Audience Laughing) I used to go door to door knocking on doors and witnessing the people, and the door slammed in my face, and I'm like, "What's these people's problem?"

(Audience Laughing) Yeah. You know, I've had a group of us guys. Well, okay, so let's talk about this too, right? Because this is very similar now to the manipulation techniques that have been used in churches over the years, right? Let's talk about it now from the evangelist perspective. Here's one way that you may not have recognized, "Hey, why don't you come over to my house today for barbecue?"

We don't share God with them. Couple weeks later, "Hey, why don't you come over "and have, let's have another barbecue?"

Don't share any gospel with them. And you go to the studio for like six months before you maybe work up the courage to talk to them about God. What have you just done? Manipulated. You've manipulated them. Lifestyle of angelism. It's lifestyle of angelism, right.

I'm sorry, did Jesus go to the woman of the well and say, "Hey, why don't you come over "for a cookout tonight?"

(Audience Laughing) He was bad enough, he asked him for water. Yeah, that's right, yeah.

(Audience Laughing) Yeah, I mean, Jesus like talked about water and then went for the jugular, right? I mean, just bam. There was no, you know, let's make friends, let's talk for a while. Now look, does it mean that we shouldn't be friendly with people? No. No, it doesn't, that's not what I'm saying, right? What I'm saying is that we should share the gospel as quick as we possibly can with somebody.

We don't need to build this relationship before we've earned the right to share the gospel.

Because who commands us to share the gospel? God, there's no qualifications for this command. It says go out and share. Go there. Say make friends first. That's right, it doesn't say that. And I will tell you too, in a lot of these books that teach this friendship evangelism or relational evangelism, what ends up happening is you have them over cookouts, you do some nice things for them, and you go many, many months down the line. One of two things either happens. Either you don't ever share it with them, because you're now ashamed to do it, or two, when you do finally share it with them, guess what that person often thinks. Oh, you've just been doing all these friendly things with me just to do that. They should do that.

They think it's getting us here. They think it's getting us here motive the whole time.

It is, yeah, that's right. In the end, we're just better being ourselves, being who we're called to be, share the gospel, find ways to transition to the gospel, and just talk to people.

Question. I think someone will say that he becomes a friend with them and he gives about three or four minutes to do that.

Yeah, right, that's right.

I've heard him say that. He's also said that, oh, you want a relationship with me? Hi, my name's Ray, what's yours? Now we have a relationship.

Yeah, and Ray, if you ever get to go watch him live, it is amazing to go watch him. He's got a lot of great videos too.

So, okay, so let's talk now about conversation openers. So you gave a great one earlier. If you were to die today, what would happen to you? Or what do you think happens when you die, heaven or hell? It's a great, great opening question for people.

And I can promise you, I have done this thousands of times with people I know, with strangers and everyone in between, because most people have death on their mind.

Really, if you watch the last two years, in this country, you see that nearly everybody has death on their minds.

So this is a great question to ask people in transition to the gospel.

So what happens? We ask somebody this question. In general, we ask them the question, what do people answer us with?

Heaven, right? And then we ask them the question, why? And then what do we think that they're going to tell us back? Almost always. (Audience Member Speaking Off Mic) I'm a good person, I do good things. God's gonna forgive me, good outweighs my bad, right? Or they'll just go into a whole list of good things they do without even telling you they're a good person. Why? I walk the ladies across the street, I donate money, and I love people. It just comes out like a sprinkler.

Yeah, well, yeah, for the false converts, right?

And so what does right comfort do the moment somebody says that they're a good person or implies that they're good enough to get to heaven? 10 commandments. 10 commandments, right? He goes right to what he calls the good person test.

(Audience Laughing) Hit him with a moral, right? Oh, so you've done all these good works? Hey, that's really cool. How good, though, do you think you actually are? Would you like to take a good person test with me and find out?

Yeah, that's exactly what I do. I'll take it with you, too, right?

Well, essentially, that's what you were talking about. That's what Jesus did.

One went to the well, right, and her sin. He went right to her.

And then with the rich young ruler, saying things like through the law. He went through the law with the rich young ruler. That's right. Rich young ruler, so I thought that was a model.

Yep, those are great models.

So we see one of two things happen. You either have that type of thing where you go directly to their sin, or we also see instances like with the statue of the unknown God, where it was what we call a spiritual transition.

Jesus kind of did that with the water, too, though. But he took this unknown God and said, "Oh, no, this is about Jesus."

Right, he was very pointed about that.

I do this a lot. When I have somebody that talks about, even in passing, somebody says karma, right? You just start talking to them for a few moments. They say, "Well, you know, karma will get them," right? It's like, you know karma doesn't exist, right?

Like, God sees all. God will punish sin according to the way God wants to. Let me tell you how you won't be punished for your sin. Right, and I just transition right into what God's word actually says, because karma doesn't exist. I think I saw him go up. I'm sorry. That's okay. We want this to be interactive. This is good. Because there are people that are your friends, how do you start the conversation by saying, "Well, do you think you're gonna cut this money?"

Yep. I asked permission.

Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question?

No problem. And you could do that, yeah. It's a spiritual question. You're still okay with that? Now you can go in and do it very easily, because they've given you permission to do it. That's certainly a way you can do it, and nothing wrong with that. I usually just kind of cut to the chase.

That's just me. I'm talking about friends now. Oh, I do it to friends too, and family members. Yeah.

You know what, for me, I've just learned. I just asked the question. You know, and here's the thing. If you do it with a smiling face, right, you're in a friendly conversation, smiling face, "Hey, I got an awful question for you. "What do you think happens when you die, heaven or hell? "Like, where are you gonna go?"

People answer it. It's rare I have somebody that's offended by that question. It's rare. So, I mean, yeah, you can certainly ask permission if you want. You know, if you feel more comfortable, that's fine. Just make sure you get to the real question right after that.

For me, it's such a heaviness on the heart that they're not redeemed, and I know that's God's sovereign choice. I understand that. But I ask him for that opportunity in a way that I'm just like, "I don't know. "Today might be the day, Lord, so." I just always go to him. And afterwards, if there was still death, I'm like, "Well, this is not the trial, Lord, "but now it's, I just, I care about it." That's love, you know? And thank you, Lord, because it gives me another chance.

Yeah, that's right.

Question? It has to go on the comment. Comment. I just asked that Dr. Sveshko does exactly that. That was sitting across from him on the table over at the dinner when I had the food coming out. And he put one, came right to me and said, "How do you know you're saying it?" (Laughing) And I was like, "Wow!" (Laughing) And I believe I answered the correct answer. (Laughing) I was like, "It's right, it's right." Still, what he said, what he said he does, and he did that to people that he might have a level of understanding about. So, thank you. You're welcome. I mean, and this is the type of boldness we should have. Now, let's think about what we've learned, because unbelievably, our time is almost up already. It's amazing how it continues to fly like this whenever I'm here. What's that? Just tell Pastor Casey.

(Laughing) I think someone might have some manipulation techniques they can use.

(Laughing)

So, okay.

Let's talk about spiritual transitions for a moment.

So, how about if we're in the middle of a conversation with somebody?

Let's say we're at the bank, talking to the teller.

How can we transition to the gospel?

That's a good start. In fact, it's probably the easiest one, right? Give them a gospel tract, and people say, "What's this?" "I'm glad you asked."

It's a gospel tract. Let me tell you what it talks about. And you just give them gospel. Give you your testimony.

You can do that. Now, I will say one caveat, though.

Whatever we do, let's make sure our testimony contains that I was a sinner, or I'm a sinner, and I'm saved by grace through faith and Christ alone. So, we wanna make sure that they understand our testimony as we're saved from our sin and because of Christ. I've seen way too many testimonies over the years, and a lot of these manipulative books talk about testimonies where you give this big testimony how, "Well, my life was not so good, "now it's better with Jesus."

Without ever getting into sin and gospel, that's not a testimony. That's just a short story by yourself. So, yeah, testimonies are great so long as we have the gospel wrapped up in them.

Yeah, so I think they saw your hand up first. That's right.

Where do you go to church?

That's a great question. That's a question you can use anytime, anywhere. We use this a lot is, what's that? Oh, he said, "Hey, where do you go to church?"

Right, and when they were like, "Well, I don't go to church." "What do you mean you don't go to church?" And I'll just kind of say it with a smile and then walk right into why they should be going to church. Here's the gospel.

Great transition. You could ask, "You ever read what you're looking at here "in Godly trust, you trust in God?" (Audience Laughing)

Now we're thinking, right? See, this is what spiritual transitions is about, is about starting to think about how we can transition to the gospel and any conversation that we're in. Many people see downtown when they're gardening. Most of them are wearing crosses.

If I can get someone to slow down long enough, I'll always ask them, "Why do you wear that cross?" Yeah. Most of the time, though, they just, I try and attract and just keep on going. They're busy about other things. Well, most of them, they will stop and transition to the gospel. Yeah, that's right. And I'll tell you, so here's a transition you could use. If somebody's got a cross on and they're walking really fast, just say, "Do you know what that cross represents?" And then go right into a gospel message as they're walking past you.

(Audience Laughing) You had a question up there, Robert? Okay.

So I hope this is helping us to think about how to use the gospel, right? How to use the law,

and in how God's word has already given us the script for what we're supposed to do. Like, we don't need any of man's opinions. We don't need any of man's techniques. We just need what God tells us to go out and share. Where you gonna, where you sharing? Okay.

And so, again, everybody we walk up to, regardless of who they are, knows what.

The true God that exists, what's written on their heart? The moral law. So hence, when we walk somebody through the 10 commandments and they see their sin, do they know that their sin is bad?

Yes. Do you know their sin is bad against the God they know exists? Yes. Right? This is why we use the law to show people their sin, because God has laid that foundation for us already. Today people don't know what the 10 commandments are, you can't really ask them.

You can't ask them what it is. Well, they don't know it here, right? But they know it, but it's written on them. So they ultimately know. Yeah. That's right.

That's right. You just walk through the 10 commandments and they know. Kids are really easy actually, right? Have you always, 100% of the time without fail, always obeyed your parents?

It's easy to ask. One question for a kid, and you always get them to admit it. Usually they're laughing as they admit it too. And then you can share that with them, the gospel as well, very gently. So, okay. We know, we walk up to somebody, we know all these things, God has laid forth. Who changes the heart again?

God does it. Can God change the worst of sinners? Yes. So what is the only thing that we are responsible for in the entire package of salvation? Sharing. Sharing God's word.

Do we have any control whatsoever in changing somebody's heart?

Do we have any ability to shove the Holy Spirit into them?

No, right? I know it sounds kind of crass, but here's the point is that this is what most evangelism is today. Yes.

And so we have to get away from that.

We have to just use what God gives us. So I think on that we should probably come to a close. Venetian. (Audience Laughing) I do this, I wanna know that. Okay.

Well, it's your husband, so I'm gonna keep going.

(Audience Laughing)

Are you guys okay with that? If we go a few more minutes.

(Audience Chattering)

They say, oh, I'm gonna be reincarnated because I'm, you know, taking care of myself. Good question. Okay, so what if they say, I'm just gonna be reincarnated? In fact, I had a girl in Cleveland, Ohio, downtown, who said, oh, I don't believe in that. When I die, I'm gonna come back as a flower.

(Audience Laughing) What?

I was stunned. To which I said, like I would for a reincarnated person, no, you're not. You're gonna face God on Judgment Day.

You need to repent to put your trust in Christ.

Yeah, well, so oftentimes, oftentimes I will say this scripture, you might wanna write this down, Hebrews 927 is a great one to memorize.

Every man's appointed once to die, and then the Judgment.

So oftentimes, I will just speak, hey, Hebrews 927 says, every man's appointed once to die, and then Judgment. When you die, you're gonna face God immediately. No purgatory, no passing, go to collect $200. You go straight to God, who's gonna judge you for your actions.

So that's exactly what I do. Here's the thing I will never do, is I'm not going to allow somebody to tell me something that's wrong, and then me kind of massage them for a while before I get around to the right answer.

Maybe it's just my personality, I don't know. Maybe it's experience, I don't know. But I'm gonna say, no, that's wrong. That's not what God's word says, that's not what God says. Let me tell you what God says. Now, here's the thing, what if they don't believe me? Did I fail?

Why not?

Because I told the truth, right?

Oh, good question. Yeah, that's always what they say. Yeah, so let me give you the tongue and cheek answer first. Say, do you not believe anything written down by man?

So that means the newspapers, the books, the magazines, you just can't trust any of it, right? You can't trust anything to watch on TV, which is probably true now.

(Audience Laughing)

But that's my tongue and cheek answer, right? Is that really, that's your test, is that?

After I will oftentimes give the tongue, and usually it just comes in, when you see their tone, I will, I'll make that judgment call, right? If I see their tone as being more snippy, I'll be like, come on, you read books, do you not believe anything you read?

I mean, is that really the standard? And then they're kind of stunned, they don't know what to say, right? Sometimes I'll just skip that and I go right to, God's word says this, God has perfectly preserved his word, and you're gonna find out, I don't want you to find out on Judgment Day, right? And I'm gonna transition right to the gospel that quickly. Because again, I'm not gonna take something that I just heard. Now, maybe in the future, as we continue to work through these things, there are great answers for this. And I'll give one today that's a really good answer. So obviously there's been chapters and chapters of books written on how we know the Bible's true, right? How we know that is withstood the test of time, that it hasn't been changed because of different translations, it hasn't been changed because of the telephone game or anything like that, right? And so I'll make the claim, I'll say, look, the Jewish scribes had a very, very good system of counting up each and every letter on every page. And if they had more than three mistakes, they scrapped the whole page through the way and they went back and had a recopy it. You know, these guys were really, really good at the copying they did.

So I'll tell them that and I'll say, here's our proof for it, is back in the 30s and 40s, we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And those Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered, they were written, we don't know exactly what year, but they were written sometime in the couple hundred years before Christ walked the earth. So we're talking over 2000 years old. And guess what? When we compare those Dead Sea Scrolls to our scriptures today, they match up.

It goes to show that for the last 2000 years, God's word was perfectly preserved.

And so that's what I will, the thing we have to remember though, and I taught this a couple times ago and it's worth mentioning again here.

How much evidence does it take to prove to somebody God exists?

Like does it take five pieces of evidence? Does it take 10?

Can I ever get to 100% certainty in God's existence by giving people evidences? That's for their belief in their faith. That's right, right? We can't do that, which is again why manipulative techniques aren't good either, right? Because we're using man's way to try to convince somebody when the convincing is only done by God himself.

So we have to walk into all of these encounters with this understanding as well. We can't convince somebody of any of this.

Now I just lost what we were talking about.

Goodbye, the evidence. Yeah, the evidence is thank you. So sorry, it's past seven, that's why.

So I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. And so if we try to give them evidence after evidence after evidence regarding why the Bible is unchanged,

will that ever get them to 100% certainty, oh, you must be right, the Bible is unchanged? It doesn't get them there, right? So this is why we don't waste a lot of time on what I would call nonsense questions. We give them a fact, we give them two facts, and then what do we do? Because the only thing that's effective is? We go to the gospel, we go to God's word. Because ultimately, God's who changes our heart, not us giving them evidences.

So I hope that's the theme that we're really, really understanding here is we keep going back to what God has prescribed works, which is his word. And we let God do the work, we don't worry about the results. I mean, yes, we wanna see everybody say that we talk to, right? But we never, never should walk away from an encounter thinking, man, if I only would have just said this, then they would have gotten saved. Or if I would have just done these couple things right, then they would have gotten saved. Don't do that. If you remember, you're a vessel of the Holy Spirit, you've done what you were supposed to do at that time. And God's sovereign. That's right, God's sovereign anyway. So as long as, what's that?

And Grandma seen it and then God raised the woman. God does it all. And then her mom and her brother. That's right, that's right, God does it all. So that's right. So great question about the Bible. Any other questions we wanna cover here?

I've got two questions and one comment. Sure. And then I'm gonna answer them. So I'll get it out first. Okay.

Especially with family, and if you feel like you've done exactly what you said, what we're talking about tonight, and not the manipulation, how many times do you do that with,

I mean, so that's question one. Okay. See what I'm saying? Like it's your sister and oh my gosh, we've had this conversation. Yep. You keep doing it. So that's that. And then I'm wondering what you're teaching on this Sunday.

(Audience Laughing) I was just curious. Yeah. And then the last thing I just, I mean you really made me think about the whole manipulation, and it's really a manipulation too on the Christian, because I dealt for years with hearing in the church, oh I've led this many people to Christ, and I was always like, oh I don't know if I've led anybody. I'm just, what am I supposed to do I thought. You're right. But I never like melt down with somebody. So I think that is a little bit, church needs to take ownership of that too, but that's kind of manipulative of the Christian and making them feel guilty. Oh absolutely, and people have written entire position papers on all the evils and atrocities that occur as a result of these manipulative techniques. And that's one of them. Is because it shames everybody else. When you walk around and say, well I saved this many people today, and I did this, and I had this many this week, and then everyone else is like, man, I didn't, I must not know how to do this right. I'm just gonna stop.

Yeah, that's a great comment, thank you. Don't forget my support. Yeah, so.

(Audience Laughing) I made sure I got that in here. Okay, Sunday I'm gonna be preaching through 2 Corinthians 5 verses 10 through 21.

That is a message in case I have not, or Pastor Casey has not convinced every single person in your church that is the responsibility of every one of us to evangelize,

I will let scripture do the work through that passage.

And so as a quick primer, if you wanna read it yourself, if you wanna study it yourself, actually start in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10, and end in 2 Corinthians 6 verse 3, because it actually rolls over into six. Remember, chapters and verses are not inspired, right? They were put in about 1,000 years ago. So a lot of times, passage are cut off in between chapters.

Read that passage, and what I want you to notice before you walk in on Sunday is when people read this passage that has, right in the middle of it, right, verse 21, he who knows sin became sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God, we look at this passage and talk about how we have been changed, right? That we're a new creation, all this stuff is about us. And what people ignore in this passage is, therefore we persuade others.

We've been given a ministry of reconciliation. We've been given, right, we see in this passage, there's these two threads that are woven together, both in who we are in Christ and what we do as a result of it, which is evangelism. So I hope that's a good primer for Sunday. I gave away some of my ammo, but it's worth it if you end up going to read in the passage and seeing first as then I come and break it down on Sunday.

For your other question, it was, how many times do you tell a family member the gospel before you stop?

Never.

I mean, look, yeah, till their last breath. If somebody is getting really, really angry with us, right, I don't wanna hear anymore, I don't wanna hear anymore, then we wanna pick our times more carefully. Maybe we'll wanna change how we approach them at a different time. I noticed in the last couple of times that we talked about the gospel, you were really upset. Like why?

And just ask the question, open-ended. That question is a powerful one

because you will often have people who have been hurt by the church in the past, hurt by somebody who claimed to be a Christian in the past. There's all kinds of things out there that occur in people's lives that cause them to be angry towards God.

It could be that something tragic happened in their life. Maybe you didn't think of it as being as tragic as they did, or you didn't even recognize it.

And that's what's got them on this mental block against God. So sometimes just stepping back and asking that question is a good thing.

And so this brings up a good point. Like we don't need to get to have a relationship with somebody in order to share the gospel. But once we've shared the gospel with them, continue the relationship, right? Continue the conversations as they go forward.

I shared the gospel with my dad continuously over a 13-year period of me being saved until he died. And he came back and got saved on his deathbed without me even telling the gospel to him.

Like he texted me and then talked to me

after seeds were planted all those years. He just never, you just never know.

There's times we've been kicked out of Julie's family's house. I mean, there's one time it was on Thanksgiving. We were in two hours away in Columbus at her sister's house. We got kicked out on Thanksgiving night. And rather than drive home, we found a hotel and a steak place to eat our turkey dinner with ourselves.

And that's some of the cost that's involved, especially with family members. We just have to recognize that they're sinners, they're entrapped in sin, right? Ultimately, we go back to Romans 1, right? When somebody doesn't wanna hear the gospel, or they're angry about the gospel, it's because they know God exists. It's because the moral laws are in their heart and they know they're a sinner. It's because they're trying to do what Adam and Eve try to do back in the garden, which is hide from God. That's that suppression of the truth, right? The beach ball example. And that when you give the gospel, you're peeling those fingers off that beach ball, which is why they erupt in anger, or upsettedness, or other adjectives. It exposes the pain within the hindrance. Yep, it exposes all that. It exposes the emotion, the emotion, and exhaustion that they are experiencing. Yeah. From the going with God ultimately. Yeah, and it's weird. There's some people you can share the gospel with time and time again, and they'll receive it every time you tell them. They won't receive Christ, right? But you can have friendly conversation with them for years. There's other people, you do it the first time, they're angry and won't talk to you again. Other people, five times, they won't talk to you again, right, we just don't know that stuff. But our job is to be kind, gentleness, respect, and be persistent with sharing the truth, never backing down from the truth.

I think all of these things get people thinking. Like I know for my kid, my sub-bible, his son, he and his fiance just told me the other day, four or five months ago, they don't think that you can know there's God. So we had a little bit of a conversation, but that is subconsciously the suppression thing. Because if they acknowledge that there's a God, then they know they're gonna change their lifestyle. There's things that have to be changed. But any of this, I think, like the question, why did you get angry when I spoke to you? It gets people thinking, those are those scenes, they don't just sit there, they're thinking about things, maybe when they're home alone, and things are quiet, I think that they're the whole experience for those that are chosen.

They've been thinking of things. Amen, that's right. It's always fascinating to me when they say, well, you can't prove that there's God in their sight, you can't reach out, well, do you know, have you ever seen Abraham Lincoln?

That's a great comment.

That always pogos me, how they can so quickly believe, you said a minute ago, how can you believe what man is written?

So have you ever shook Abraham Lincoln's hand?

But that's what I mean, it gets them thinking. It's like, wouldn't it? That's true. How do we know Caesar existed? How do we know? You have to believe these things. That's right.

There's a lot of funny quips we can do regarding that stuff too.

So when people will often say, how do you know God has ever existed, or how do you know that,

yeah, how do you know for certain God exists, or I won't believe in God until he shows himself to me.

And R.C. Sproul had a saying, he said, you know what, the last time he showed himself to people, they crucified him.

You gotta write the scripture on that.

So, question. I already pointed to the building, so if you know, was there a builder? Yep.

Was there, oh, there was a builder for that. Yeah. How about that painting? That's right. It was a painting artist. So this creation, you know that there was a God who made it. That's great. So let's explain this one further again, right? So let's go back to Romans 1, that everybody knows that true God exists, and that's what we're talking about. Right. That's what we're talking about there.

So this is the example I often use. There's two different ones. Ray Comfort has the 747 jet he uses. So I use that one first. Ray talks about how there's over a million distinct pieces of a 747 jumbo jet.

So let's say I took apart all those pieces of this jet and put it down in a pile.

How many years will it take? Now mind you, you already have the pieces made, right? You don't have to worry about those pieces forming out of dirt out of nothing. Pieces are there. How long will it take for us to stare at this pile, millions, billions of years, before the 747 assembles itself?

Oh, and then you'll trust it enough to fly on it.

Right, that's the one he often uses. It's a great one. What I often use is, especially in college campuses, I'll point to the building behind me and I'll say, let's imagine I took that building and I took every piece of it apart and just laid in a nice pile. Every wire, every door, every window, every bolt, nuts, nail, put it down. How many billions of years would it take of earthquakes, tornadoes, and lightning strikes? And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to use what they said was in the early Earth, right? It was these magical powers that caused everything to form. I said, how about if we had all these things happen? How many billions of years would it take for this building to just magically form in front of us?

And guess what they always say?

It would never happen.

It's saying, yet one cell in your body is infinitely more complex than that building right there.

You fully well know God exists. You're just choosing to suppress the truth about him.

And yes, I do get that bold when I get to this point. When somebody is challenging the existence of God, and I bring out this whole example, I say, look, you know it. You know it in the example of the building. If I choose to give them the 747 jet, you know it there too. The other tongue in cheek one, which I think I said last time was, is how often do you think it would happen if you took your clothes out of the washer, put it in a dryer, and when the dryer cycle got done, they were all neatly folded and stacked? (Audience Murmurs)

Would that ever happen? Right, no. So I'll give them that one as well.

And you can think of your own, right? There's lots of things you can think of, but the point is that disorder doesn't create order.

The building was clearly designed. The car you just drove here in was clearly designed. Didn't come from nothing. Everything you see in life has been clearly designed, and now you're just gonna pretend that life came about by chance.

But it's irrational because it's like the big bang thing, and I said, well, what bang? What would bang? Where did it come from? Where did this primordial-- Primordial soup, yeah. Where did it come from? You're still not getting back to where it came from, even with that stuff. That's right.

Yeah, good question. Any other questions? Pardon?

Question. I changed on the background that I have to go do it from except Christ in my heart. Uh-huh.

My whole family had come to Christ the same way.

Now that God has opened my eyes to see the truth, when I came here the first time to see-- Justin Peters. It was soft, and he has allowed me to see the truth and the light, and be able to come to him independent of the lips of him and severe.

How can I reach my family to Christ? How can I make them, I've trained. The only thing I'm able to do is, I am praying that God will allow them to see the light as he allowed me to see. But then, because how can I reach out to them? How can I tell them, okay, what people have been doing for all this time, how can you know? Yeah, did everyone hear that question? She said that you took, you went, in one of those manipulative techniques, right, you said the prayer in your heart, and that you were a false convert for years, right? And that a lot of your family members have also become false converts. So how do you approach, so you said you got saved last year as a result of Justin Peters' conference here. You heard the gospel, so praise God for that. So let me ask the question to everyone here. Who changed your heart that day?

God, and how did God change your heart? By listening to the truth, I want to be preached. Good, by listening to the truth as being preached. So how do you think your family members could come to a saving faith?

Give them the word of God.

Same thing. The whole thing is, they do go to Christian churches, they do hear God's word,

but it happened to them differently. I come to them and say, okay, is it wrong? The way that we have been doing it for years is wrong. Well wouldn't you ask them what they believe about Christ, what they believe about Jesus, because they may not be all right. I walk down the aisle too, but the next time, that we still repent and believe.

And there are some people who've gotten saved by walking down the aisle, but it wasn't because they walked down the aisle, right? It's because God saved them, and they heard God's word, and they heard God's call while they did it. It had nothing to do with the aisle, it just so happened at the time. Our pastor back home is one of those people. He is vehemently opposed to walking down the aisle, even though he himself got saved during that time. So I would have to say that it's God's word, right? And so when we ask questions, right, like you had just pointed out, when we ask lots of questions, like what is the gospel, right? That was my favorite question to ask. When we left our old church, to go to the church we're at now, eight years ago,

and people kept asking me from the old church, because a lot of them were patients of ours, well why'd you leave, why'd you leave? I said, let me ask this question first. What is the gospel?

The vast majority of people couldn't give it to me.

And I said, that's why we left.

They stopped good evangelism from being taught in the church, they stopped creation from being taught in the church, they stopped all this good stuff being taught in the church. The pastors did stop truth. In the meantime, they promoted all this other stuff. They got off the chair?

What's that? They got off the chair. Got off the chair. You need to go to your example when you're on the chair and speaking the church. Oh, they got off the chair, thank you, yes, they did do that. Sorry, I'm too ashamed. Yeah, that's right. So we can ask questions, ask them what the gospel is, ask them why they believe they're saved, and see what they say. If they say that it's because they said a prayer in their heart, or if they say it's because they walked an aisle, then you can say, show me in the Bible where people got saved by walking down an aisle.

That's how we do it, we go back to the Word of God continuously, and so asking questions is often a very good way when we're doing evangelism and apologetics.

Question? I want to say to them, when you get to heaven, and he says, why should I let you in, what are you gonna say? And I just listen to what they say, because that shows what they're gonna say, and then I will tell them why, what I'm gonna say back to them, it's not because I've done anything, it's because I'm a aggressive sinner. That's one of the greatest questions to ask, right? Is why do you believe God's gonna let you in heaven? It's similar to the question I normally use, which is, if you die today, would you go to heaven or hell? If you ask them that question, see what they say. I do this with Catholics a lot, because they'll say, well, the blood of Jesus, to which I say, well, anything else? Well, yeah, I mean, you gotta do the sacraments, and you gotta do this, you gotta do that, and I was like, okay, now you lost me.

And then you--

Many times, yeah. (Audience Member Speaking Off Microphone) Yeah, so great, great question. Any other questions?

(Audience Member Speaking Off Microphone) That's a good question, and you're right, most of them don't know. So then it gives me, then, an opportunity to turn it around.

Yep, it's a great way to use questions to be able to expose those things, so that's outstanding.

Any other questions?

Have we had enough?

(Audience Member Speaking Off Microphone)

Yeah, unfortunately, I won't be here next Wednesday. I'm kinda wondering if there's anything quick I should cover here for you guys.

Okay, what if somebody says the gospel's all about love?

(Audience Member Speaking Off Microphone)

Good, and so the point is, is when somebody wants to say, well, God's all about love-- That's not all God's about. It's not what all God's about. Because in general, when people will object to you God is love.

Yep, we wanna go through some of his other attributes. So a tongue-in-cheek way of me saying this is, I'm gonna pick on you faster. I'm gonna say, okay, so if I was to describe you so that everyone else who doesn't know you would know you, and I tell them he wears glasses,

does that accurately describe you?

Does that give a full picture of who you are? Not at all, right? So this is what I'll often point out to people, is I'll point one characteristic, I'll say, will that accurately describe who you are to everybody?

Go, that's what you're doing when you say God is love and you ignore his other attributes, like his wrath, like his justice, his omnipotence, everything else. And then I can transition that to the cross, because what does the cross do?

All of God's attributes are on display on that cross. How is his love on display there? By giving his son.

So the father giving his son, the son being there in his love, how is the wrath of God shown?

It was poured out, how is justice shown?

Right? That that wrath paid the penalty. How is omnipotence shown, his being all powerful?

Rose from the dead. Rose from the dead, right? That's a great one. How about that, the almighty wrath of God came down and it took necessarily so, fully God, fully man, Jesus Christ, to be able to bear it.

That's omnipotence too.

How about omniscience? How does omniscience get played on the cross?

He had it for the foundation.

Knew it before the foundation of the world? Is a good one.

How about that, he knows everybody,

kind of like Santa Claus, right? Knows everybody.

If you think about this, go through the characteristics of Santa Claus.

You've done that already? Yeah, it's a rip off of Jesus. And so, we can talk about the omniscience that he knows what everyone has done

and they're all gonna face him one day. And that cross will either be that penalty, the paid penalty of sin on there or it's gonna condemn them because they didn't receive Christ. They didn't repent and believe.

So we can go through all of the attributes of God through the cross. And I did this as an exercise just to show you, when somebody talks about love, this is one of the ways we can tackle that.

First John four is a place I often open up to. It says God is love and the love of God was made manifest in his sons death and the cross.

So I think on that we have gone way overboard and, but I hope this was helpful all this time. And I'll certainly pick up where I left off again

in the future. What's it?

We're not gonna be here next Wednesday unfortunately.

Tell you how about this, let me end in prayer. And I think somebody wanted in a song. I think Jimmy wanted in a song, right? And then I will stay here as long as anybody wants to stay and answer questions.

Fair?

Lord, I thank you for gathering us today and I know it was very heavy, some of this information for us.

Some that had challenged our challenge, everything we thought we knew about evangelism, some of us that challenge some things.

And Lord, I just ask that you that, that it's not my words, but that you show everyone the scriptures and that you show them where the scriptures talk about what we talked about tonight.

And that use those scriptures to change our minds and change our hearts into understanding how do we evangelize better according to your word? How we understand walking into these encounters that you are the one and you alone, who's responsible for changing the heart of stone and replacing it with the heart of flesh. You alone are the one who grants repentance and faith.

And that you do all this work, Lord.

And that we are responsible smearly for giving the gospel, Lord, for calling people to repentance and faith.

Giving them the command that Jesus Christ gave

on the wall walking this earth.

So Lord, I just ask you to help us grow in this area of evangelism and apologetics as we're continuing to learn and getting all this in our minds. And that you give us the fire to go out, give us the fire, but also give us the confidence. Because your word gives us confidence in evangelism.

That the more we understand evangelism, or understand how you've prepared the people that we walk up to, the more we understand how easy this command is to fulfill.

Most importantly, Lord, we thank you for your sons, for your death, barren resurrection, your death, barren resurrection, Lord.

And the pre-arranged plan for the foundation of the world from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for that. And Lord, if there's anyone in here who is not saved, who doesn't know who you are,

that you save them, that you grant them repentance and faith, you give them a broken and contrite heart to cry out to you, Lord, that they repent,

that confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord.

In your holy and precious name we pray, amen.