Introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics

Thank you for gathering us together today. And Lord, just ask You to open up our hearts and minds to be able to learn this evangelism — I don't wanna call it even a technique, Lord — just a proper way for us to give our apologetic according to the Bible and not according to man and pragmatism. So Lord, just ask You, help us learn this and be able to put this into practice. And please give me clarity of mind and thought and speech as we teach here tonight. In Your holy and precious name we pray, amen.

So this is one of my favorite subjects. It's one of my — if you can call it a specialty, I don't know — but I absolutely love this. And when I was exposed to this about 10 years ago for the first time, it changed everything about what I did in evangelism and apologetics. And so what I'm gonna do is make a case for today as to why this is the only way for us to do our apologetics biblically.

And then as we get into the rest of the day today and into next week, we're actually gonna show you how to do this. And part of my goal for all this is that when we listen to Eric Hovind and Dr. Andy McIntosh, there's a lot of great information, but I know that it can be very high-level type stuff. And so what our goal is is we're gonna bring it down to street level. Because even elementary and middle school kids can understand this when we teach this at that level. So having said that, presuppositional apologetics — this is a very, very big word. And I just wanna let us know that the goal of this session is to establish that apologetics needs to be Bible-based. Everything we do needs to be Bible-based. How we evangelize needs to be Bible-based. How we do church needs to be Bible-based. How we study needs to be Bible-based. How we do our apologetics also needs to be Bible-based. And this is the key.

God is a starting point of everything. That's the key to it all.

And so I want you to keep this at the forefront of your minds because you're gonna find apologetics methods do one of two things. Either they put man's reasoning first — even from well-intended Christians — or they're gonna put God first. That's what we need to do.

And you heard this quote last Sunday — no, two Sundays ago — "The fool says in his heart there is no God." Why does God say this? Is He making fun of people? No, not making fun of him. So why does He say this? Because He says that if you actually believe, or say you believe, God doesn't exist, He says that's a foolish line of thought. The Bible's really clear that everybody knows. And I know we talked about that back in early January.

Now for this next thing, this is Ben Shapiro. He is not a Christian. I do not recommend getting all your arguments from Ben Shapiro. In fact, I don't recommend you getting most of your arguments from Ben Shapiro. I would get very few from Ben Shapiro because while he sounds really good, and a lot of his arguments are really good, what's his starting point? It's men's reasoning. It's not God. That's a problem. And I want you to hear it from his own words here right now.

"I don't think slapping a PhD from Ferris State next to your name makes you an expert in all things in the field in which you propose to speak. The fact is that even my arguments — go to my arguments. Citing to my credentials is a really bad way of making an argument." Now we're gonna stop there for just a moment. Is that true? Yes, absolutely, right? I can't even tell you how often I hear on the streets that old joke. When somebody finds out I'm a doctor and I'm preaching on a box — and Casey got to hear us at Cleveland State University back in October when the Butters were visiting us in Cleveland — and invariably it always comes out: I'm a doctor. And then, "Oh, what kind of doctor?" "Well, I'm a dentist." "Oh, you're not a real doctor!" Every time.

And the reason why they do this is they want to delegitimize my knowledge base in chemistry, biology, mathematics, Bible, everything else, because I'm standing there saying the God you believe in is a false God. And the God of evolution that you believe in is a false God. And the God of nature you believe in is a false God.

So these are the things we hear. And yet we have to — this is a great line of reasoning to understand — it doesn't matter about our degrees. Either an argument is a correct argument or it's not a correct argument. So don't let anybody delegitimize you for whatever degrees you have or don't have.

If the facts are the facts, they're the facts. And that's it. And we're gonna demonstrate between this week and next week that we have the highest authority in facts. In fact, we have the only fact-giver that exists. Right, and that's the God of the Bible. So you're gonna find out why our arguments must start with Him.

Now I'm gonna go a little bit further because I think this is valuable here. It's actually equivalent to a religious person saying, "Use the Bible for an argument. I'm a very religious person, right? I mean, see this? It's the Amica. I'm a religious person. The first source is the Bible. The reason I don't cite the Bible is because that's an argument from authority. And you may not believe the authority to which I'm citing. I don't believe the authority to which you're citing. So you're going to have to make me an argument as to what I'm saying that's wrong instead of just saying I don't have the properly enumerated degree from the institution of your choice."

Okay, is that correct? Is that line of thinking? No. Some of it. What part of it is correct? The institutional thing — he's saying you can't appeal to the institution that I attended or the institution that you attended. So you can't make your arguments any better that way. Yeah, so he did bring up the fallacy of appeal to authority, right? And that is a logical fallacy that says that just because Dr. So-and-so said this would make it true, right? So when I'm on a college campus and I'm telling them evolution's false and they say, "Well, Richard Dawkins says it's true, therefore it must be true" — that's a faulty appeal to authority, right? Because just because he has a PhD doesn't make him an authority. Again, is it factual or is it not factual? Is it true or is it false?

What about the rest of his argument? That's where it falls apart. Because there's only one — you can say something, I can say something — but the Bible, it settles all of it. Yeah. Well, he's talking to a student in a crowd at a college campus. So he's speaking in an auditorium to college students. And they're challenging him on his conservative values, which is what always happens with Ben Shapiro, by the way.

So what I really wanna point out is: is it okay for us as Christians to use the appeal to the authority of the Bible? Yes, because it is an authority. Oh, interesting. So all of a sudden it's not a logical fallacy anymore, is it? Because we actually are appealing to the authority.

So this logical fallacy of authority does break down at times. It's not always a logical fallacy. And one of the things I want us to make sure we understand as we work through today and next Wednesday is anything humans come up with — right, let's call it a level playing ground. I mean, ultimately some guys might be a little bit more educated in an area than others, but ultimately humans are humans and we have human conventions that we can come up with.

Can human conventions change over time? Of course they can. So can you ever get an ultimate authority within a human convention? Why? Because they're not God. Because it changes over time, right? Yeah, and ultimately that's what it comes down to: they're not God. So the understanding of God is that God is up here, we're down here. God's morality, character, facts, information, knowledge — all that He has is projected down into us. And so He is the appeal to authority.

Now, I say this because in our evangelism training in the beginning of January, before we got to John 17, I focused very heavily on one concept: go to the Bible. Use the Bible to point people to God's existence. Use the Bible to evangelize from.

And what did I answer when somebody says, "Well, I don't believe the Bible"? What do we do? Give a Bible verse. Give another one. Doesn't matter, because we're still giving them the authority of God. So we're gonna work through that here a little bit more now.

So let's define our terms. Now, this is gonna be a brief overview because we did this last year at one point. Presuppositions — break it up into its roots: pre and supposition. Pre means before. Supposition means it's a supposing, right? So it's a belief or assumption you hold without proof. And so we put these two things together, pre and supposition, and it's what our pre-beliefs are. So before we come to any conclusions about any evidence whatsoever, we have these pre-beliefs within us that we filter everything through.

And so those pre-beliefs, these presuppositions, make up what we call our worldview. So if somebody asked me things about culture — what's appropriate or not — like, I was making jokes I think last Wednesday about eating dogs and cats. Now, here, that is considered taboo, right? In our backgrounds in America, that's a taboo subject. But if you go to China, is that taboo anymore? No, that's what you have for dinner. So that's what they call chicken there.

So they have a different worldview, they have a different set of pre-beliefs, a different worldview, and everything gets filtered through. So if you ask a Chinese person in China if it's okay to eat cats, they say, "Well, yeah, doesn't everybody?" Which would be exactly opposite of what we would believe.

That's what worldviews do. And so we have to understand that everything that we talk to people about — when we talk to the unbeliever, when we talk to the people of false religions like Roman Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and others — everything that we say to them, they're going to do what with? Filter it through their worldview. Are they filtering it through our worldview? No. So we give them a piece of evidence from our worldview. They take that evidence and filter it through their own worldview. That should make you start to think a little bit about how we do our apologetics right now.

So our worldview determines a lot of things: creation versus evolution, pro-life versus pro-death — yes, we should call it pro-death, stop calling it pro-choice — morality, view on marriage, religion, social justice, and all kinds of other things. Our worldview determines this. So when we go up to a pregnant female, some pregnant females will say, "This is the baby in my belly." Some pregnant females say, "This is what I'm going to kill in the next week. That blob of tissue." Same pregnancy, right? And yet two different ideas because it's filtered through a different worldview.

This is why when we go up to people and give pro-life arguments — great, do it. Give them biblical arguments, but recognize they're not filtering it the way you think they're filtering it.

Now, this is a trick question. Most of you should know this. If you know this, don't shout it out — we want to trick somebody new in here. With all the religions out there, all the belief systems out there — right, I just named a few of them earlier — how many worldviews are there in this world?

Well, let's see what the Bible says. Romans 8:7, "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." So we see carnal minds at enmity with God.

James 4:4, "Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship of the world is enmity with God?" That's at war with, by the way. "Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

Seems like there's two worldviews according to the Bible. Friends and enemies. Children of God, enemies of God. Two worldviews. And so those worldviews we would term biblical and not biblical. Biblical: the Bible is the authority in all matters. Non-biblical: man's wisdom is the authority. Those are the two worldviews. Now you might be saying, "Well, what about Catholics? I mean, they believe something different than Islam, who believes something different than naturalism, something different than materialism. I mean, aren't those all different worldviews?"

Not when we understand what the Bible is teaching. It is either the God of the Bible or it's anything else. That's from the highest authority, by the way — God, right? Two worldviews. So I would actually classify Islam and Roman Catholicism and others as subsets of the non-biblical worldview. And that's the only way for us to actually look at those from a biblical perspective. Not a humanistic or worldly perspective, right? Humanism says there's all these worldviews. God says, two.

And so this foundation that we have is that God exists and His word is true. Right, we've covered this in detail, so if you wanna know more, go watch old videos from, I think, a year ago now.

And one other concept I'm gonna cover again is this idea of neutrality. So people often think — and I'm gonna use my chair example again — people think, well, you know, here I am, I'm on my Christian worldview, and then somebody else might be on the Catholic worldview right here, or the Islam worldview, or the Buddhist worldview, or the most commonly, the materialistic evolutionary worldview.

Oftentimes what happens is the evolutionist says to the Christian, "You know, I don't accept your Bible for what you say it is, I don't accept it as the authority, so how about you step down, I step down, and we meet halfway, and then we can talk." Is that possible? No. And why is it not possible? Because there is no such thing as neutrality. What they've asked you to do is step off of your foundation of "God exists, His word is true."

Have they stepped off of a foundation when they've met you halfway? No, they've stayed on their non-biblical worldview the whole time. It's a trick to the Christian. This is why we never leave our foundation.

Matthew 12:30, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters abroad."

So now that we've covered those basics, we're gonna get into the next step, which we've covered already about a month ago now. Four things we can know for sure — what are they? Everyone knows God exists. Everyone knows God's moral law — it's written on the heart. The unbeliever, when they don't acknowledge God, is suppressing the truth. And then when the unbeliever is suppressing the truth, they exchange the truth about God for a lie or idols. We see both of those in the scriptures.

So now let's walk into apologetics. Why do we need apologetics? What's it for? You had a great question for me earlier — I'm not apologizing for the faith. We don't apologize for the faith. It's the Greek word apologia, and it means defense. We make a defense for the faith. Not that God's word needs defending, because it doesn't, but it is what we do when we defend the faith.

And so the power in apologetics — I know I've shown this slide before, but it's worth going through this again — is the power in apologetics in our wisdom, or our knowledge, or our kindness, or our ability to reason? It's none of those, right? The power is in the gospel.

And so when we look at salvation in Romans 1:16, the power of God unto salvation is the gospel. The only apologetic we ever need is the gospel. But yet apologetics does have some benefit to it. And that benefit is to help break down strongholds that people have, because people do have strongholds. People like myself had 15 years of evolutionary thought crammed into my brain. So sometimes you just need to hear some facts on the other side.

So the gospel — I hope we all have it memorized by now, because I know we practice this a lot, and maybe next week we'll do that again. But this is the gospel: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. This is the power of God unto salvation.

And so for apologetics, we use it as a tool, not an end. If we're doing apologetics with somebody — giving a defense of the faith — and we never get to the gospel by the time they walk away or we walk away, have we done our jobs? No, in fact, we've done a disservice to them. Our job is to give the apologetic and then get to the gospel as quickly as possible.

So there are three types of Christian apologetics. Now, depending on what book you read, sometimes you see four, five, or six — they can all be broken down into three and really into two. One's evidential, second is classical, and third is presuppositional. So what are these?

Evidential apologetics is the most common apologetics method out there, and this is where we throw evidences at somebody, hoping that they stick and convince them of God. This is your Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, and others. And what they believe is that there's a great deal of evidence that supports the God of the Bible. Now, is that true? Yes, that is true. So they believe, well, let's just give a lot of evidences to the person and convince them.

Classical apologetics is pretty similar to this. They also use evidential arguments, but then they also tack on some philosophical arguments with it. Classicists never like to hear this. Guys like R.C. Sproul and Frank Turek and William Lane Craig and John Lennox — but I tell them that they are philosophical evidentialists. And it sounds kind of mean, but the reality is they do the exact same thing the evidentialists do; they just add some philosophy to it. And they like to focus on the uncaused cause — right, what caused the bang to begin with, if there even was a bang — or on the design of the universe and life.

But here's the key that I want us to understand. Evidential and classical apologetics — their starting point with everybody they walk up to is atheism. They just assume everybody's an atheist or agnostic, meaning they either pretend they don't believe in God, or they pretend that they lack belief in God. And why do I say "pretend," by the way? Because everybody knows God. Because everybody knows God exists. You guys are catching on.

So they start there with atheism, and then this is what the classicist and evidentialist does: they start piling evidences onto the plates of the person they're talking to. And when you get enough evidences, eventually you get to theism. Eventually you can convince that person that a God exists. Again, that's what they think, right? And then another evidence, and another evidence, and another evidence. And eventually they say, "We now have given you a preponderance of evidence that the God of the Bible is the most reasonable God that exists." That's their ending point. It's the most reasonable God.

And so again, they start with man's reasoning, historical evidences, and whatnot, and their whole goal is to prove the existence of God. That is what their goal is, as evidentialists and classicists. The problem is, does the Bible ever attempt to prove God's existence? No, it assumes it right from Genesis 1:1, and then proclaims it throughout the rest of the scriptures.

So this is what — who likes Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, by the way? This'll bring you back. This is what we think is happening when we are talking to the unbeliever as an evidentialist. We think we're giving them all these body blows, right? And we're just beating them up, knocking them. And eventually what happens — if you remember Glass Joe — you get that one last punch in, and all of a sudden he just crumbles, and you knock him out, and you're like, "Now he believes," right?

This is what their apologetics method does. I can promise you, the first several years I did evangelism and apologetics — and I was doing it wrong — in the evidential and classical styles, this is really what happens. They're blocking every move.

Now, I've given you enough background already. Why do you think they're able to block every move? Why are they able to block every evidence I throw their way? Because they're filtering it through their own presuppositions. They're filtering it through their worldview — not ours, through theirs. And so, you know what we all wanna do in our pride? We wanna protect what we know.

We wanna protect our belief system. Do you think an atheist wants to give up atheism right away? No. In fact, they hate God. They're suppressing the truth about Him. The last thing they wanna do is admit God exists. And so they're gonna continue to come up with excuse after excuse after excuse to delegitimize every evidence or philosophical argument that you throw their way.

This is what happens. And I know that the evidentialists and classicists hate it when I'm at a conference and teaching on this while they're sitting there in the audience in front of me.

But that's what the Bible says. Let me give a great example of this. Some of you have heard this before. I know Casey heard this in the five-day training in North Carolina.

Comets — this is a wonderful, wonderful example. Comets, what are they made of? Big ball of ice and dust. That comet is in this elliptical orbit around the sun. And when it's in this orbit far away, we don't see it. When it comes near, we see the comet with its long tail. Why? Because the heat from the sun is starting to melt off part of that comet and it gives this beautiful tail behind it of glittery dust and light.

And that comet comes around the sun, it loses part of its mass, goes back out in outer space, comes back around again. The reality is that no comet of all the comets we've ever discovered can last more than about a hundred thousand years, because the ice will all have melted away and the comet will obliterate. We just had one of these happen in 2017 or 2018, right around Thanksgiving time. And that comet blew up right in front of us as we were waiting for it to come around the sun.

So this is a great evidence, right? For the creation argument — I mean, granted, a hundred thousand versus 6,000, but this is great evidence. It means that the universe can't be billions of years old. Why? Because we still have comets. If you got a telescope, you can see a comet literally right now outside.

So we've got comets, the universe can't be this old. So there you go, Mr. Atheist, there you go, Mr. Astronomer. This Earth isn't that old. Believe the Bible, repent.

Did that work? No. In fact, what astronomers dreamed of — and I say "dream" on purpose — is they said, "You know, there's this cloud out there. I'm Dr. Oort, I'm gonna call it the Oort cloud. But there's this Oort cloud out here that has this never-ending supply of comets. And for some unknown reason and mechanism, it kicks a comet out and it gets trapped by the sun and pulls it into orbit. And that's why we have this never-ending supply of comets." Oh, and by the way, we don't know where this cloud is. We can't see it, can't detect it at all. But that's where the comets come from.

And that is our explanation in science textbooks today. Are you kidding me? What did they just do, though? They protected the worldview they have, right? We gave them a wonderful piece of evidence. And look, you can read every creation magazine from here to the end of time, and there's all kinds of evidences that are impossible for the evolutionists to refute, until they come up with fairy tales to refute them. Can somebody in science really say that? Absolutely true. You can look it up — O-O-R-T, the Oort cloud. This is how they explain away comets today. I know, it's completely crazy.

So this is what evidences do. The reality is — I know, don't have a heart attack on me, please — evidence alone is obviously not sufficient to transform the human heart, right? That's the point. Evidences can't do this because evidences don't work on people when they're trying to protect their worldviews.

And so when we use evidential apologetics, we never have an end game with it. We just keep throwing out more things. Oh, by the way, when you're on the streets and you're evangelizing to people and you give them a really hard piece of evidence that they don't know what the answer is to, or they don't know how to refute you, you know what they do now? They either phone a friend or they pull it up on a website. "Here you go, here's your answer, Mr. Preacher Man. I told you evolution's true." It happens all the time. They will always do whatever they can to protect their worldview.

And so what our goal as apologists is to do this from a biblical perspective — a very different way. Because the reality is there's all kinds of evidences that would show the Bible to be exactly what it claims to be. There's all kinds of evidences that would demonstrate a young-earth creation. But the battle is not about the science, is it?

The battle in their eyes is an interpretation of the scientific evidence. And because of that, because the interpretation — what does the interpretation lie on? Presuppositions. Our worldview. And what is our worldview? Either God or not God. And they're gonna continue to filter the evidences and philosophical arguments through the "not God" worldview that they stand on or hold on to.

And so here's a whole host of people who are evidential and classical apologists — although no longer is Ravi Zacharias one, because yeah, he's dead. He now knows the truth.

Now I'm gonna show you some heinous things here. This is what evidential apologetics ends up with.

Sean McDowell. How many of you remember, there was a Christian group a couple of years ago called Hawk Nelson? And there was a guy named Jon Steingard who apostatized from the faith. He was a singer or a guitarist, something from that Christian band. And he deconstructed — I guess that's the new fancy term for it. Yeah. So he gave some reasons why he deconstructed from the faith. Sean McDowell, one of Eric Hovind's actually really good friends, who is considered the number one youth apologist in the world today.

Let's see what Sean McDowell — who is an evidentialist — said about this situation. "In their book Sticky Faith, Kara Powell and Chap Clark show that young people do not often abandon their faith solely because of doubt. Rather, it is unexpressed doubt that is corrosive to faith." Now, here is the key. This is Sean McDowell, number one apologist in the world for Christian youth. "Believe it or not, but I still have some doubts today. I am not certain Christianity is true. I am confident, but not certain. My doubts drive me to find answers and also to rest in God's grace." Are you kidding me?

This is the best we can produce today? Oh yeah, this is not the only quote. I'm not just quote-mining from him. He's got numerous others out there that are just like this. And the reason why is because when you look at God from an evidential perspective and lay evidence after evidence after evidence, can you ever be 100% certain God exists when you do it from that method? No, you're always gonna have doubts. That's the problem with evidential and classical apologists.

You think that's bad? Let me show you one more. This is William Lane Craig versus Lawrence Krauss in a debate. This is part of the open Q&A. William Lane Craig is considered by many to be the number one Christian apologist to adults in the world today.

I'll just let you listen. Now, he's asked a question about whether he's certain about God. So listen to this. This is Lawrence Krauss, the atheist, asking the question to William Lane Craig and then the moderator kind of chiming in.

"That's the whole point. We don't claim certainty and that's great. Will you claim certainty?" "No." — Lawrence Krauss is on your right right now. William Lane Craig, the Christian apologist, is in the middle. So it's Lawrence Krauss that is actually stating here, "Do you claim certainty? That's the whole point. We don't claim certainty and that's great. Will you claim certainty?" "No." "Are you certain God exists?" "No."

I mean, videos don't lie. This is completely crazy. And this is what almost every apologetics book that's written out there is written either from an evidential or classical perspective. He would be what's called a classicist — which again, they're about the same thing. Not 100% certain God exists. Is this really the best we have?

I sure hope not. Well, let's give a biblical example now. Luke 16, the rich man and Lazarus. I think we all know that story, right? About the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham's bosom. And while the rich man's being tormented, he is asking Abraham — who has Lazarus on his side — saying this in verse 26: "And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us." And he said — this is the rich man now — "I beg you, Father, that you send him" — Lazarus — "to my father's house, for I have five brothers in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment." "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.'" "But he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'"

"But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.'"

This is before Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. You can see kind of the irony here in what was going on in this parable in Luke 16. But the point is that if somebody doesn't believe the scriptures, they're not gonna believe even if He showed up right in front of them. And as R.C. Sproul said, people often ask, "Well, if Jesus would just show up in front of me right now, that would cause me to believe." To which R.C. Sproul responds, "Well, that happened 2,000 years ago and you guys crucified Him." Right. And guess what they would do today? The exact same thing again.

It's not about the evidences. It's a heart condition.

And so now we walk into what we call presuppositional apologetics. This flips the script. We would call this the biblical method of defending the faith. The only true biblical method of defending the faith.

And so what we do with this method is we show that there's a conflict between the competing worldviews of the biblical God versus everything else.

And so our starting point now for this apologetics method — and it should be for all apologetics — goes back to what we already covered once before and we hammered home early January. Every person that you walk up to knows God exists. Every person you walk up to not only knows God exists, but what's written on his heart? The moral law. And that every unbeliever — even though they suppress — I'm sorry, even though they know God exists, they suppress the truth. And that the unbeliever who is suppressing the truth about the one true God they know exchanges the truth about God for what? A lie or idols. We see both of those in the scriptures.

That means if somebody is a genuine Jehovah's Witness, they have a knowledge of the true God that exists deep down. They know the Creator God and they know it's not Jehovah's Witnesses. The Muslim knows the Creator God deep down. And he also knows it's not Allah. That's exactly what our verses say in Romans 1.

It doesn't mean they know Jesus, right? That's what we have to do as evangelists — go out and spread Jesus Christ. But they have a right knowledge of the Creator God, including His invisible attributes, as it says in Romans 1. So this is the state of every person we walk up to.

Now, before I even put my next thing up on the screen, what's the problem with evidential and classical apologetics? Where do we start with? We start with man. And if you remember that chart that went from the bottom up, start with atheism, right? We pretend everyone's an atheist. But what do we know from the Bible? Yeah, they're lying. They know God exists. Why are we doing an apologetic method starting from atheism when they already know God exists? Maybe we need to have a method that exposes the fact that they already know. Maybe that's the biblical method for this.

And so unlike what we see on the evidential and classical side, this is what we do from a presuppositional side: we start with Creator God. You know He exists. I know He exists. Let's talk.

You don't believe me? I'll share a quick story. Back when I owned a dental office — some of you have heard this already — back when we owned a dental office, you know, we would collect our deposits Monday through Friday. Friday, I'd go to the bank and stand in front of a teller for 20 minutes as she's counting through all the checks and all the money, making sure all my math was right before depositing. And so it'd give me 20 minutes to witness every Friday to somebody new.

This one particular Friday, one of my great opening lines by the way is, "Hey, what are you doing this weekend?" And she said, "Well, you know, I've got this, this, and this going on." So that's really cool. And guess what question they ask back to you? "What are you doing this weekend?" I said, "Oh, thank you for asking. Well, I got this going on, this going on, and I'll be going to church on Sunday, of course. Oh, by the way, do you go to church?"

And she said, no. And I said, why not? She goes, "I don't believe He exists anymore."

And I looked her dead in the eyes, countenance changed. I said, "Look, you and I both know God exists. What happened?" She burst into tears immediately. I was shocked. Went from a cordial, friendly conversation to tears like this. And what I came to find out over the next several minutes is that she and her husband and her best friend were going to a Lutheran church. Her best friend and her husband were driving in a car, got into an accident, and the baby who was in the back seat in a carrier died. When they went to get counsel from the pastor, the pastor said, "Oh, what sin do you have in your life that caused God to take the baby from you?"

Ouch. No wonder why they're like, "See ya, we're out." They went, and their friends went. Who's the bank teller? I mean, I've got whole kinds of talks on the problem of evil. That is certainly not the way that we address it. Certainly very unbiblical to think that things happen to us that are bad because of sin. Could it happen because of sin? Sure, there are consequences of sin, but there are larger purposes that we see in the pages of scripture. So that's what happened to her. And I've used this on numerous people — this exact line of reasoning — when they swear God doesn't exist. I will change my countenance, I will talk serious and ask them, "You and I both know He exists. What happened?"

And you can't believe how many conversations that has opened up just by doing that. Even against some really hardened people. I even had some people call me out and say, "Oh, you're just doing that to get me to talk." I said, "Yes, I am." And then they talked to me anyway. So it works. And it's not to be pragmatic — it's just that we're pointing out the obvious. We all know, right? Romans 1 shows it, Psalm 19 shows it. We all know. And we're just asking that simple question to them.

So, okay, we start with Creator God. And the fact that everyone knows God exists means that everybody's a theist, right? This is our starting point. Everyone knows God exists. So what do we do now? Bible verses. Give them the transformative word, the power of the word, and let God do His work by the power of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, if He so chooses to do so at that moment. We use Bible verses the way we're called to use them. The way it reads in Hebrews 4, that it's sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing soul from spirit, bone from marrow.

Use God's word for what it's called for. God's word never returns void, as we see in Isaiah. It will draw and it will repel all the right people at the exact same time. But use God's word. This is where our apologetic method ought to be. And then we call them to repent and believe the gospel and give them the gospel.

Now we did evangelism training in the beginning of January, so we can work through the good person test. We can work through some of their objections. But the point is that our minds should be on track that they already know God exists. The moral law is written on their heart. My job is to use the Ten Commandments because they already know them. Appeal to their conscience because it testifies, and give them Bible verses until we see them repent or run off. Because even then we've at least planted numerous gospel seeds into them.

This is what the Bible prescribes. It doesn't prescribe throwing evidences at their feet. It doesn't prescribe letting the unbeliever be the judge of the evidence and the judge of whether God exists or not. God is the judge. We just point them to that judge. By the way, you're gonna be held accountable to Him the moment you die. You need to repent.

And so that's how we do this. And we pray that God saves them and they become a Christian. They get saved. Their heart gets changed from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

And so our apologetics, as we've seen in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, should be nothing more than ways to break down strongholds to get to the gospel as quickly as possible. And we do that again through the word of God.

I'm gonna read this here, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." So I think most of us have this memorized. We know what this means — that all scripture is God-breathed and it's for us for all kinds of things on this earth. Then it goes on to say, "So that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." What does that mean when it says "for every good work"? Evangelism is encompassed there, right? It means it's sufficient.

God's word is sufficient for every good work, which includes discipleship, which includes apologetics, which includes evangelism. We don't need anything else other than what God's word gives us.

Now, does that mean that if somebody asks me a legitimate question on a college campus — "How did God preserve millions of animals on Noah's ark?" — does it mean I should not answer them and just go right to the gospel? No, give them an answer, right? Answer the question, show them that us Christians actually have answers for all their questions. And if we don't know it now, we'll find the answer for them and get back to them. But we can answer things from our worldview. So it's okay to answer some questions.

You know, for me, two to three questions at most before I've given them the gospel. If they ask me three questions and I've answered them and they start asking me more, I wanna make sure they're not a time waster. So what I do is I say, "Hey, I will stand here as long as it takes to answer every last question you have. But if you don't mind, I'd like to share something with you first." And then I will give them the good person test and the gospel, make sure they've heard it clearly, and then I'll say, "Okay, what other questions do you have?" And it's a very effective tool that way, so that you're not trapped and never get to the gospel.

So what evidence did Jesus actually appeal to, by the way? In the gospels? "For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" So Jesus obviously felt the same way that I do today, which is His word.

How did Jesus continue to validate Himself through the gospels, not that He needed to? He used miracles, right? Sure. But it was all the same thing. He kept saying, yeah, the entire Old Testament points to me. He said it over and over and over again. So did the gospel writers. So they're doing — we're doing the exact same thing that they were doing. And this is why we need to get back to this method.

We see in the book of Acts: Peter quotes scripture, Acts 2. Stephen gives biblical history, Acts 7. Paul presupposes the truth and authority of scripture in Acts 17. You can see this all throughout the book of Acts where the Bible is presupposed from the beginning. God's existence is presupposed from the beginning. Paul is not trying to convince people of the biblical God. He starts there, the same way we ought to do.

And so I'm gonna skip these slides here for a moment. So how do we apply this?

Number one: prove God exists. How do you do that? Creation. We don't have to — everybody already knows. Everyone already knows. We don't have to. That's right. Now, David — I think it's David who said that — it is completely okay to point to creation; I have no problems whatsoever with that. But we do that as a courtesy for them. Because they already know.

So I'm gonna ask you another question here. This is an important question. How do we know the Bible is the ultimate authority? Because it was inspired by the ultimate authority. It's inspired by the ultimate authority. God's word. God's word — yep, amen to that. Do we have any Bible passages that may say this? Well, there is one. "For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself."

This should elicit the idea of going to a courtroom, putting your hand on the Bible, saying "I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God," right? Which, yeah, which nobody actually does. But this should elicit that type of thought process. So here is God saying, "I can't swear by anyone greater, because I am the greatest, so therefore I swear unto Myself." He's telling you He's the ultimate authority. He's telling us He's the ultimate authority.

And so that's who He is. Why is He the ultimate authority? He claims that. And His word claims that. Yeah, but people are going to say that you're using the Bible, which I don't believe in, to prove it.

Yeah. That's a great question. So this — I don't like to give out lots of fancy terms — this is called the infinite regress. That is, let's say that this proves God, okay? And they would say, "Well, that's not good enough." So then I'm going to provide you evidence B that's higher than A, that now proves that, right? And they're going to say, "Well, but then C can prove that." Then D can prove that. And before you know it, you have this never-ending chain of trying to prove the previous thing. The only way you can get to an ultimate authority, logically speaking, is for it to be internally consistent.

Meaning that there's no other higher authority to appeal to. Because if you could use something that could prove the higher authority, guess what? Your higher authority is not the highest authority anymore, is it? If something could prove the Bible, it's now higher than the Bible.

This is kind of the problem of the Roman Catholic Church, right, is that they say they believe the Bible, but really you have to believe the history of the church, and you have to believe the magisterium and the Pope. And so really what they've done is they've taken these authority figures above written scripture.

So that's how we get around it. We say, "Look, it's internally consistent. The Bible tells us it's the truth, and that may not satisfy you yet, and it shouldn't." Here's how we're going to satisfy you completely — because God did give us a way. And by the way, I anticipated that question.

Because it should come up. That should be the next question from somebody: how do we know that the Bible is internally consistent? How do we know the Bible is the ultimate authority? Well, first and foremost, the law and the prophets are fulfilled in Jesus.

But here is the gift that God gave us. We have 60 major messianic prophecies, over 300 total prophecies in the Old Testament, completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This is God showing that His Bible is the ultimate authority. His word is the ultimate authority because of the consistency inside. There's no appealing to anything higher — it's appealing unto itself. And so some people would claim this is evidential apologetics. This is not using evidences. This is using the Bible to show the Bible is true.

And so that's how we work through that if somebody has those legitimate questions. Most of the time people ask you that, it's not legitimate — they're doing it to trip you up. But you can easily do this.

And so what I like to do for people is I like to open up Isaiah 53 and I read it to them. And I ask them, "Who does this sound like?" Right, and they say, "Well, it sounds like Jesus of Nazareth." I mean, I walk up to people in airports — there are tons of Jewish people in airports, I don't know why — and so it's a great place to talk to Jewish people. And I literally just walk up to them. Well, it's easy. They just have the thing on their head, right? So you just walk up to them and you say, "Hey, can I ask you a question? Who is this?" And I quickly read part of Isaiah 53. And immediately they know who this is. They don't want to acknowledge it, generally speaking. It's their forbidden scroll. If they went high enough in Hebrew school, they learn about the forbidden scroll.

And so I say, "Look, this prophecy was written 700 years before Jesus walked the earth. It was written 400 years before Roman crucifixion." Well, actually the Assyrians invented it, but then the Romans kind of took it over. But 400 years before Roman crucifixion was put into place. And yet it was written and fulfilled completely in Jesus. And by the way, this is just one of many.

So this is what I will use with the unbeliever just to get them to start to think a little bit, and then continue to use God's word.

It's not my job to prove. I mean, that's the thing. I don't have to prove. Now, because every evidence we give them — where are they gonna filter it through? Their own worldview. So I can be tongue in cheek and I say, "Ever look at your calendar? Like, what year is it right now? What major event marked our calendar for today?" I mean, our entire world is built upon the birth of Jesus Christ, right? So when somebody says that to you, in general, they're being dishonest. So I don't really let that trip me up a whole lot.

So Casey, if you're okay with it, I'm gonna take five more minutes or so. What I wanna do is — that is the entire background to presuppositional apologetics. And as we get into next week, I want us to cover the first couple of slides and then I promise I will redo them. But I want us to chew on a couple of concepts here because I gave you all the background for what Eric and Andy taught here. I wanna give you just one more piece of background before we go today.

So Psalm 14 — when, again, "the fool says in his heart there is no God" — why does God say this? Because everybody knows God exists. Yep, thank you.

So think about an evolutionist now. You know, Eric used a very quick example about words in a book. I'm gonna use a different example that I think will help a little bit more.

"Prove to me God exists." This is the atheist saying this. This would be very much analogous to somebody saying, "I don't believe air exists." Okay, now this person that says, "I don't believe air exists" — as they say this to you, they're breathing to stay alive with air. They are using that air to vibrate along their vocal cords and they're counting on the air to transmit into our ears for us to be able to hear what they've said, all while trying to tell you air doesn't exist. Right, it's foolish, right? Because they're using air to try to say air doesn't exist.

This is what the unbeliever does if they're atheist or agnostic in terms of God. And so what I wanted to get to here is this concept. And this is a really, really important concept that we're gonna spend a few minutes on, and then I will spend the entire next Wednesday on it.

If the entire world was made by materialism — now, do we know what materialism is? If you don't, I'm gonna define it anyway. So materialism is that you have materials banged together with other materials and produce other materials, which produce other materials. And the evolutionist says, over billions of years, it produces more materials. All I ever get in this system is what? Materials, right? That's all I get — materials. When the materials are banged together.

So like — I was gonna do this demonstration, I'm like, it's gonna get pretty messy if I do this — but what happens in our old volcano experiments? Baking soda in a volcano, right? And then I pour some vinegar in — what happens? Chemical reaction, right? Materials banging with materials, producing materials. And they always produce materials. The evolutionist never asks why baking soda always reacts with vinegar and foams. They just know that it does, right? They don't ever ask why this happened, but they just know this happens.

But if we live in a world that is materialism — that is just materials randomly banging into other materials, doing random things — why do we ever expect chemical reactions that are consistent? It seems like there's something more than randomness that occurs in these reactions. Randomness doesn't turn into order.

Right, I often use an example — and I've used it here before too — like we take a wet bunch of clothes from the washer and we throw them into the dryer and it tumbles a bunch of times. We never expect to open up the dryer and see that all the clothes are stacked neatly in a pile, perfectly folded. I mean, I wish it would happen that way, but it doesn't. Why? Because randomness doesn't give you order, right?

Okay, so we're getting some concepts now. Materialism. Materials bang materials, bang materials, eventually you just get materials.

But we live in a world that seems to not just be about materials, don't we? I mean, we have things like morality. I mean, can I weigh, like — okay, you shall not commit adultery — can I weigh that? No, they're not material. Yeah, I mean, there's no color to those concepts. I can't feel them, I can't hold them. Morality has some type of knowledge and information and thought to it. So it's something that's beyond the material world.

How about my ability to reason? I mean, I've got a couple pounds of flesh up here, in there somewhere. And that couple pounds of flesh has all kinds of wires and chemicals, right, going through it. And I can actually somehow with these chemical reactions come up with an entire presentation today that you guys understand. I mean, that sounds like a miracle to me. Does materialism — only materials banging other materials, right? Chemicals just banging in my brain — does that lend itself to something that seems to have some type of order above and beyond random materials?

How about my senses? I mean, you guys are hearing me, right? And you're processing what I'm saying. How? I mean, if you've got a brain that's just processing random chemical reactions, how is it actually thinking right now? How are you processing what you're seeing and hearing right now into something above just random chemicals and materials?

So this is the big issue that Eric and Andy were communicating, and that we wanna bring down to a lay level between today and next week. You have materials banging materials, banging materials, banging materials.

And this is all random, right? I mean, the evolutionists will say that it was random chemical reactions — somehow we got stuff that formed the big bang, and then from the big bang, somehow randomly all these things coalesced into eventual stars and planets. And then somehow on this planet, we have other reactions randomly banging together, different chemicals into different things. And those different things now somehow coalesced into a cell. Uh-oh. Now all of a sudden something changed. Random chemical reactions that have been random for billions of years, all of a sudden somehow formed this cell wall that has function, and millions of distinctly defined machines made up of billions of parts inside the cell that do work and have information in them, completely ordered. I mean, you talk about going from randomness to something that is ordered to trillions of places — I should say trillions of places, not decimal places. I mean, the order is phenomenal. We've only touched the surface of the amount of information contained in DNA.

How does material go to something way above materials? Well, there's a word for that, and that's called the immaterial.

See, the evolutionist believes that this random banging together — which they call materialism — eventually took all random chemical reactions to something that's not material and has order to it.

Are we all following right now? Do you understand the problem that the evolutionist has? They have no way to account for what we call the immaterial — things that I can't weigh, I can't touch, I can't see, I can't feel.

That means they don't come from random chemical reactions. There's something else about them. There is information contained in that. Right, so God, who is immaterial, is able to make everything that is material, and everything that's immaterial just proceeds from Him.

Where do we get morality from? Which is immaterial, by the way — from God. Where do we get knowledge and information from? Which is immaterial. God. All of this stuff comes from God. Where do we get order from to begin with? God.

So this is the problem with the atheist, agnostic, evolutionist — they cannot account for the immaterial in this world. Only we can do this as Christians. We have the only way to explain it.

Now, I know this is a really, really heavy concept. I'm hoping that we're able to explain it kind of at a street level. And what we're gonna do next week — as you chew on this for the next week — is I'm gonna give you tons of examples, and we're gonna work through this so well that you're gonna be able to use it yourselves when you talk to other people.

So on that, do I have any questions?

Why don't we just take them off their pedestal? Because that's what they're really after. I've got the answers. Absolutely. And go straight to the wall. Do it. I have no problems with that whatsoever.

As I stated a few times today, apologetics is to break down strongholds. We should never get into apologetics battles just to get into apologetics battles. I can stump any atheist using presuppositional apologetics within minutes. Anyone here can do the same thing once you learn it. But the goal is not to do that. The goal is to get to the law and the gospel as quickly as possible. So what this is good for is the smart-mouthed atheist college student, and he's challenging you on the existence of God, to which I'm gonna say, "Okay, you think you're that smart, let's talk. How do you have an ability to reason right now?" And I'll show you next week how I work through this issue. And so what my goal is is that apologetics, tongue in cheek, is used to close the mouth of the unbeliever. The smart-aleck kid, the one who just thinks they know everything, and they're gonna prove to you God doesn't exist — and you're just gonna give him a showstopper and then get to the law and the gospel.

But there are times I never use apologetics at all. I've got all this armamentarium right behind me. But my goal, if I can get to the law and the gospel every time and not use any apologetics at all, that's what I'll do.

Great question. Any others? What are the biblical passages that the other two types of apologists source their beliefs from, and how do those fall apart? Yeah, they don't. There are no passages that give them that — there are no passages you can find, both commands nor any examples in scripture where you see evangelists going out and giving evidences or classical arguments to people.

Like, they don't exist. It is literally the same thing that this church and other churches have fought in the SBC for years — the terrible pragmatism that has occurred, right? The pragmatism that puts man's ideas before God's in how we are to do worship music and how we're to evangelize and how we're to fill in the blank. That's the same thing that evidentialists and classicists are doing. These are man-made ways to do apologetics.

Surely they have to have something they're taking out of context, really? I've never heard a single one. And if you find them, I would love to hear them so that I can include them in presentations. But I've never seen them. Even in the books I've read, they are all about the idea of proving to people God exists through the evidences. And so guys like Lee Strobel, who has a movie on this, right, A Case for Christ — he talks about how he came to God through the evidences. And what I find interesting is that his whole movie is talking about this. But yet, in the movie itself, what converted him? God. Reading the Bible, coming to an understanding of sin as he's reading the Bible — he's trying to read the Bible just to prove his wife wrong, right? He reads the Bible, comes to an understanding of his sin, and gets converted. It was not about the evidences. It was God's work that did it, right? And he mistakenly believes that it was the evidences he was digging through. So I really think it's pragmatism that is at the source of all that.

Great question. Any other questions?

What if you're dealing with someone who's not giving you pushback? Like, they're nice, and they're like, "Yeah, I wanna listen to whatever it is that you wanna say." So what's the best way to kinda get to the point about sharing the gospel with them? — You're not being challenged. Like, they're like, "Yeah, can I hear what you have to say?" And if it's about God — is that what you have? Yep, absolutely. So I think our videos should be up from January. I cover this in our first two Wednesdays of January here. So those will be on the website. But I'm a big fan of Ray Comfort, and using Ray Comfort style. So you give the law. I ask the opening question to almost everybody, which is, "If you die today, would you go to heaven or hell? What do you think?" And then let them answer, and then work through the good person test and give them the gospel.

And the vast majority of people, that's all I ever have to do. This comes up when you are on the streets, typically evangelizing, or really on college campuses. It comes up a lot. People are openly opposing you because of their terrible belief system. Yeah, that's right. And that's when I will turn to presuppositional apologetics for just a few minutes. Again, with the goal not to confound them — though it will do that — but with the goal of getting into the law and the gospel. So apologetics like this attempts to humble that unbeliever.

Yeah, great question. Any other questions? We should never get into arguing with the unbeliever and start really getting into the weeds. Yeah, you're right. We should not be arguing from that perspective. Now, we can be sincere and we can have some good dialogue — firm dialogue — but yeah, we should never get into an argument with somebody.

Would you say, or is it fair to say, that apologetics is a good thing for Christians who are already Christians to continue to study on because it gives us an awe of God? Yeah. Is that an ample way to put it, to witness in this way? That's right. So yeah, to be perfectly fair, yeah, especially new Christians — I mean, I still really enjoyed my time when, after I first got saved, the first book I read was Josh McDowell's book, More Than a Carpenter. The second one I read was Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. And so I enjoyed those books, because yeah, especially new in the faith, it really helps to build you up. And by all means, they're great books to read from that perspective. The problem is when we take that and we try to go out to unbelievers and try to prove to them God's existence using those evidences. So yeah, as long as we have it properly understood, no problem with the books.

Any other questions? Don't you think that the other two — evidential and classical — like if you're constantly talking to the same person, a family member, that is also a good tool? Because to me it all starts with the Bible. You don't think the Bible, you're nowhere. So just to give evidential arguments for why the Bible is evidently true — don't you think that could be a better tool, or a means of witnessing to somebody you've already presented the gospel to? Yeah, yeah, great question. I have no problems with myself using evidences with people. Here's the issue: I never wanna use evidences like I'm trying to convince them of God.

If I'm using evidences from the perspective of, "Look, you've got questions, I've got answers in my worldview — you're not gonna stump me on these things. And if you think you've stumped me, I'll call somebody and get the answer for you. But the point is that the Christian worldview can answer all of these questions for you" — so if we use it from that perspective, absolutely use them. There's nothing wrong with it from that perspective. Just don't use it to prove God, because then you're superseding scripture at that point. So great question there.

Any others? I'm dealing with a very stubborn friend of mine, a brother like a brother, but he has all these questions. He likes to talk, you know, about confidence stuff. And I would consider him to be agnostic. He says, like, "Yeah, you know, there might be a God, but, you know, it's out of my control. You know, even with all the stuff that's going on..." And I'll show him stuff, like, you know, "The Bible talks about some of this stuff." And he'll be like, "Oh yeah, well..." and then he refuses the Bible. Like, I'll say, "Listen, you just asked a question. I can show you exactly what the Bible says. We're able to directly answer you." "Yeah, but you need to answer without the Bible." With those types of people, how do you bring down that struggle? Because honestly, I don't have — I mean, this is the best thing we can speak about.

All right, so let me ask you a question. Who changes the heart? It's God. It's true, it's true. Yeah, so it's easy. See, it's easy to fall into pragmatism, right? And look, you love your friend, you want to see your friend get converted, right? We all have those people in our lives. And so we desperately want to do everything in our power. The problem is we don't have the power.

Like, that's what it comes down to. We just don't have the power for it. That's what I told them — I was like, "Listen, at this point, God's gonna deal with you the way He's gonna deal with you. He'll show you." You know, that's what happened with me too, because remember when I was an unbeliever, I was like, I want nothing to do with this. And then, you know, God brought me to the point where I had nothing else. Like, I was literally broken down to where I had no option but to turn to God. And I needed answers. So I agree with you in that statement, that you could literally show them Jesus, and they'll still say no. They'll still say no. That's right.

I can't even tell you — and actually, this happened with Casey and I back in, oh, I think it was last year in February in our famous hot tub evangelism. There, yeah, it's true — you can do evangelism there. So remember the guy that came in? That was the one day we had one after another. And there was one guy, an older guy, who sat in there, and we started the conversation with him. And he was kind of like, "Well, I don't care what you tell me, I just don't believe God exists." And I asked him a question like, "You know, if I could satisfy all of your questions, give you answers to everything that you've asked, will that cause you to repent and believe in Jesus then?" He said, no.

And that is common. Almost everybody I've talked to that has question after question after question — and they say, "I just need proof" — when you ask them that question, you'll find it's not about the proof. It's a heart issue, always.

I know. They're without excuse, though. That's right. Yeah, any other questions?

Okay, so let's close in prayer. And we'll continue next week. Lord, just thank You for gathering us together today again, and just ask that You allow this information, Lord, to just continue to simmer on our minds and hearts tonight, the rest of the week, Lord, as we continue into next Wednesday. Lord, just thank You for this church. Thank You for Pastor Casey, and all the leading he's been doing here at the church. It's been absolutely amazing to watch the transformation here, Lord. And it's all You, Lord. It's just Pastor Casey and the church being faithful to the Holy Scriptures, to Your word, Lord. We praise You so much for that. Lord, we ask You to do the same thing for us in our own lives, in how we conduct ourselves, and in the context of today, for us to go out and use Your word in our evangelism and our apologetics in the exact same way. In Your holy and precious name we pray, amen.