Overview of Presuppositional Apologetics

So what we're going to do is this is going to be open forum. If you have questions as I'm going, raise your hand. I'll answer them. And then I will leave about 10 minutes at the end to answer any additional questions. So if they can wait till the end, let them wait till the end. If not, then we'll just do it as we go. So this is going to be an overview of teachings that I've done in the past here on different Wednesday nights over the years on presuppositional apologetics. And the hope for tonight is that as Beulah Baptist, as we are getting more and more into evangelism — as we should be — more of us are getting involved in personal evangelism, as well as evangelism out on the streets with Ken, with Michael, and others. We want to get better at what we do. And we're going to see in this presentation how much God has laid the groundwork for us in evangelism.

Now, having said all that, you should all have a piece of paper in front of you. And if you don't have one, does somebody not have one? So wherever the extras are at, if we can get them back to the back table there. So we're going to have a couple of fill-in-the-blanks as we go. So hopefully you're going to have these notes to refer back to as we go.

So, words and meanings. We've got this word presupposition from presuppositional. What does that mean? Well, we can break it down into two different roots: pre and supposition. What does the word pre mean? Before, good. What does the word supposition mean? Good. It's a belief or assumption held to be true. So this is something that we already have in our minds before we walk into a conversation. So what these presuppositions are is an assumption that something is true from the very beginning.

And why are we using this word and this terminology? Well, because we all have what are called presuppositions. We all have these pre-beliefs. That means every conversation we walk into is going to be filled with these starting points that each one of us has. And when we look at the compilation of these presuppositions, this is what makes up our worldview. And one of the ways we look at it from even a secular perspective is when we're asked to evaluate, say, what's going on in the country right now with DOGE.

Elon Musk digging up all kinds of dirt and all the stolen money that we see right now. Now, I think most of us in here — probably all of us in here — who have a biblical worldview, were against theft, were against crime. And so obviously we walk into this and we see DOGE, we're like, "This is wonderful. Thank you, Lord, for allowing this atrocity to be exposed." But what about somebody who comes from the opposite side? Somebody who doesn't have a Christian worldview, who thinks might makes right, who thinks that ends justify the means. They're like, "This is awful. I'm glad we stole a bunch of money from the government over the years and I'm glad we funded left-leaning organizations to try to gaslight the entire American people." Now, I'm using a very extreme example, but the point stands, right, is that depending on what your starting points are, you're going to look at the exact same thing and interpret it a completely different way based on your starting point.

That's what the worldview is here. And so when we look at life through a worldview, we understand this is the compilation of the pre-beliefs that causes us to think in a certain way. And that means that how we determine whether God used creation by speaking everything into existence, or He evolved things, or God wasn't involved at all, is going to depend on what our starting points are. Same thing goes for view on marriage. Do we recognize marriage to be between one man and one woman from the beginning? Yes, we do. But there are others who don't, because they don't have the correct starting points. What about pro-life versus pro-death? I'm using the correct term. You either believe that the life in the womb is a life, or you pretend it's not a life and you murder it.

And it depends on what your starting point is. So everybody has these. Now, having settled that, when we talk about worldviews, how many worldviews are there in this entire world? We have Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, atheism, evolutionism, naturalism, and the list goes on. How many worldviews biblically are there? Two. What are they? Biblical and everything else. Amen. That's right.

So, first point here: biblically, there are only two worldviews. Write that on your paper. And of course, scripture supports this, because "the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." You either have a correct mind or you have a carnal mind.

James 4:4, "Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." You are either with God or against Him. You're either for God, you're a friend of God, or you're a bitter enemy of God.

And so with these two worldviews, we have to recognize biblical and non-biblical, as Ken correctly said. On one hand, the Bible is the authority for everything that we do. This is the Christian worldview, by the way. This is how we ought to be thinking about everything in life. This is our starting point. The other starting point is man's wisdom. This is the non-biblical side. It is my opinion, my feelings, what I want to happen — that is the other side.

And so when we understand this biblical worldview, what is our foundation? It is the Bible, and it starts with the fact that God exists. This isn't something we have to prove to anybody. We're going to talk about that here in a little bit. This is assumed from the very beginning: God exists and His word is true. God exists, He has spoken. This is our starting point, and He has spoken to us through His word and by His Son. And so that is our entire starting point for everything we do.

Now, this brings up a question when we talk about different worldviews. Now, we already said there are two of them, right? Biblical and non-biblical. Now, think about something. I am, as a Christian, what am I standing on? A chair that represents God's word. Thank you. That was very good. I haven't heard that one yet. I'm standing on a chair of God's word, God's truth. Now, imagine the person here — it doesn't matter what they are, Hindu, Buddhist, whatever, atheist — and they say, "You know, Mr. Christian, I don't accept your Bible. Why don't you, instead of being there, why don't you come down and meet me on neutral ground?"

There is no neutral ground. Did you notice what happened the moment I came to meet him on neutral ground? I'm in his territory. I left my foundation and I went to his. Did he have to move off of his foundation? Nope. He's exactly where he was at from the beginning.

And so this is called the myth of neutrality: that there is no such thing — and this is your second bullet point — as neutral ground.

A quick story I'll share — I may have said this in the past here. Growing up, three doors down from us was Mrs. Fiala. Very sweet old lady, almost like a second family to us. And the neighborhood kids, like my brothers and I, all knew her as the lady who gives out lots of candy for free. And so when you were just riding your bike up and down the road, she's outside, she's got a can of candy there, she stops, she gives you some candy. We eventually got bold enough as we got older, went and knocked on her door. "Mrs. Fiala, can we have some candy? My mom says it's okay." Usually it was a lie. But so we'd get our candy and go off riding. Mrs. Fiala was the sweetest old lady, very, very kind. However, she was a Roman Catholic. As far as I know, she died as a Roman Catholic. That means the sweetest old lady who gave candy to everybody, that everybody in the neighborhood loved, ended up where? In hell, for eternity.

There is no neutral ground. If anybody was on neutral ground, it was Mrs. Fiala. But that's not what God's word says. She was an enemy of God, not a friend of Him.

Matthew 12:30, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters abroad." You are either with Him or against Him. These are just three of the multitude of scriptures that teach no neutral ground. You're either with Him or you're against Him.

So let's press forward a little bit, because our goal here is to establish a biblical worldview. There is no neutral ground. And so now what happens when we walk into an encounter with somebody? What happens when we are going out and evangelizing somebody? How many are nervous about evangelism? I've got two hands up, I notice. Believe me, even I have some nerves when I first get out on the street before I give out my first tract or before I get up and preach for the first time. It is natural for us to have this. The thing is, we have to push through. And how do we push through? Well, biblically we push through because we're being obedient to God in our evangelism. But it goes even further. See, God has set the stage for evangelism for us. He has made evangelism as easy as it could possibly be. And here's how He did it.

He has given us at least four things that we know about every person. There are actually far more, but these four are really the important ones. Every person that we walk up to — it doesn't matter what their background is — they are these four things.

Number one, Romans 1:19-20: everyone knows God exists. That should be the next line on your paper. "Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse."

Dr. Sylvester, what if somebody tells me they don't believe God exists? They're lying to you. How do I know? God's word says it. I believe God's word. I believe that that person who claims God doesn't exist, or that a false God exists, is just blocking Him out. We'll talk about that here in a few more slides.

Now, how does this work? Well, this is why I demonstrate this one on a college campus or with others. I tell people that building standing behind you — if I took it all apart piece by piece, so every door, every brick, every screw, every nail, every board, and I put it in a neat little pile — now I'm allowing you to start with all of the specifically designed pieces for the building. Right. I'm going to give you that to begin with. That's a huge leap of faith as it is — let me give that to you. Now, how many billions of years of lightning strikes, tornadoes, and earthquakes — which is what scientists say would replicate what happened billions of years ago in pond scum — let's say we have billions of years of those. How many billions of years would it take for those lightning strikes, tornadoes, and earthquakes for that building to reassemble and come fully into place? Never.

Well, you just don't have enough faith, do you? I mean, yeah, right. And the thing is, everybody knows this. Every person I've talked to recognizes that would never happen. And you've heard me say this before — and I do this to kind of be funny, but also serious — is how many of you ladies who like to do laundry would love it if you took your wet clothes and threw them in a dryer, it got done with a cycle, and then when it got done just one time in your life, they would all be folded perfectly in a pile in your dryer.

Wouldn't that be wonderful? Now, will that ever happen by randomness? No. We inherently know these things, right? And yet the scientist wants us to believe that you somehow had, in pond scum, millions of distinctly designed pieces come together, first of all at the exact same time, to make millions of distinctly designed machines. I mean, you look at a robot and you recognize that that was designed by a whole team of engineers, and it took a long time of thinking. And then you take that robot and it pales in comparison to the millions of machines that are actually in a cell. And you understand that the building can't form, but you're going to pretend the cell can? That's ridiculous.

This is what God is saying here in Romans 1 — that in the things that have been made, God is so convinced about this that He says you're without excuse. No one's going to stand in front of God on Judgment Day and say, "You know, God, you just didn't give me enough evidence for Your existence." Not at all.

And the funny thing is, the more that scientists are diving into the science behind cell biology, the science of astronomy and space, the more they're recognizing that they've got catastrophic problems. And this is why the age of the earth has had billions of years added to it over the last 70 to 80 years. This is why when they peered through the James Webb Telescope, back in late 2022, they thought they were going to see the early stages of the universe forming at 13 and a half billion light-years away. And all of a sudden they look into this telescope and find fully formed galaxies and super-galaxies as far as they can see. The only solution they had was not to repent and bow the knee, like they should have. Their solution was, "Well, how much older should the universe be now?" And so now they're contemplating going from 14 and a half billion years to anywhere from 28 to 35 billion years right now. Before you know it, we're going to be at the national debt in years for this earth and they're still going to be making more years up. But this is how ridiculous it is, rather than just seeing the evidence for what it is.

Number two, Romans 2:14-15: God's moral law is written on everyone's heart. "For when Gentiles who do not have the law instinctively do the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them."

So this is often depicted in movies and cartoons as an angel on one shoulder, Satan on the other. How many have seen that before, right? You have this moral dilemma that you've got to think through. And so you listen to the angel first — usually you listen to Satan last, and that's the one who wins out in most of these cartoons and movies.

That is just a really awful depiction of what God says in Romans 2: that the moral law testifies to His existence. The conscience here bears witness to His existence. The fact that we have a moral law written in our hearts — an absolute sense of right from wrong — can only come from God. Now, I don't have time to get into all of that today. If you do a history search on the YouTube channel for Beulah Baptist, you can find a session I did on the problem of good and evil. And in there, I explain this concept very, very thoroughly. But hear me on this point: you cannot have absolute morality unless it comes from one above.

If morality comes from human convention, there is no absolute to it. A group of people can agree on a convention. And the moment one person dissents on that, it's no longer absolute. So you cannot have an absolute morality this way. It's got to be vertical. It has to come from One above. And that's exactly what the Bible teaches: that God, who is morally righteous, who is the definition of good, for whom anything short of Him is evil, He defines right from wrong. And that is what He wrote in our hearts, which means that murder is wrong at all times, all places, in every circumstance. It doesn't matter what culture you're brought up in — murder is wrong. And we can walk through all of the moral law in the exact same way.

Number three, Romans 1:18 and 21. And this is the third point here: unbelievers suppress the truth about God in their unrighteousness or sin. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. For even though they know God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened."

So this is the example that a lot of you remember in here. I'm going to do it again for those who haven't seen it before. What is this suppression actually talking about? Well, we're staying at a resort right now. I haven't seen a kid do that yet, but this is something most boys have done when they grow up — a lot of girls do it too. How many of you have taken a beach ball and tried to show your strength by holding it underwater for a while?

Right, most of us have done this. So think about this. You push this beach ball underwater and you're holding it. Does it just stay there nicely? No. What does it do? It wants to pop out, right? So you are holding this beach ball and you're doing your best to hold it down because it's doing everything it can to pop up in any given way. This is the suppression of the truth of the unbeliever. This is what this verse is talking about — that the unbeliever is not passive about suppressing the truth about God and sin. They're actively suppressing the truth about Him.

Now, this shouldn't be a surprise. Go back to the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3: when Adam and Eve sinned, the first thing they did was attempt works-based righteousness by covering themselves with fig leaves. God would later determine that wasn't good enough. He had the first animal sacrifice to cover them with animal skins. Right after they made fig leaves to clothe themselves, what did they do? They attempted to hide.

What do all of us do in our sin when we first sin? We attempt to hide. Let's be honest, right? Unbelievers especially do this. So we have this as a default position in our sinful natures. We attempt to hide. This is suppression of the truth in sin. The difference is that the unbeliever is suppressing this long-term. They are continuing to stick their fingers in their ears, singing la la la to themselves, pretending God doesn't exist as they go about sinning in their everyday lives. That's suppression. They know all along He exists. They have the moral law written on their heart because they know they've sinned against that same God they already know by the moral law written on their heart. The only other option besides repent is to pretend He doesn't exist. And that's what's being said here.

Number four, Romans 1:22-23 and 25: unbelievers exchange the truth about God for a lie or idols. "Professing to be wise..." I am going to do a little aside here. Most people who don't believe God — or pretend they don't believe God — claim to be very wise people. They usually fall back on their laurels, like their PhDs or their biology degrees or whatever it is. And guess what? God predicted that would happen. He says, "Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed animals and crawling creatures. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

When people suppress the truth about God and their sin, they willfully turn from God and willfully turn towards idols and lies. Hence people worship Mother Nature. They worship creation. They worship false gods. Ultimately, who are they worshiping? Themselves. Their own opinion, their own intellect, rather than God.

So quickly state four things that we know of every person according to Romans 1 and 2. Everyone knows God exists. Everyone knows God's moral law written in their hearts. The unbeliever is suppressing the truth. The unbeliever exchanges the truth about God for a lie or idols.

Now think about this. We walk into evangelistic encounters. Do I have to prove to somebody God exists? No. God's already done it. Do I have to teach them the moral law? No, they already know. And then we automatically know they've suppressed the truth about Him and their sin, and that they've turned to a false idol.

God has made it so easy for us. That's why — and while we don't have time to get into this today, I do have those trainings already on previous Wednesday nights on the YouTube channel — this is why Ray Comfort style evangelism works so well. Because we walk up to people asking them, "If you die today, would you go to heaven or hell?" Everybody, or almost everybody, says heaven. You ask them why and almost everyone says, "Because I'm a good person," or "I do good things," or "I help ladies across the street," or whatever it is that they do. And we can easily ask them, "Hey, would you mind taking a good person test with me? See how good you actually are." And you can walk through a few of the Ten Commandments that are already written where? On their heart. So we're not giving them anything they don't already know deep down. We walk them through some of the Ten Commandments. They see their sin, and hopefully at that point the Holy Spirit is working on their heart that they see their need for a Savior, to which we give them the gospel.

This is how easy evangelism ought to work. Because God has prepared the ground. The only thing He's expecting us to do is what? Open our mouths, give some Bible verses, give the gospel. That's what we're required to do.

And so the reality is, do I need apologetics? Well, yeah, apologetics is good. I have no problems with answering people's questions and challenges they have to the Christian worldview. But what is the goal of our apologetics? Well, this is the goal. The power of God is in what? Is it in our wisdom? Is it in our kindness? Is it in our knowledge of scientific facts? Is it in our ability to reason? No. Romans 1:16 says the power of God unto salvation is the gospel. That's what we have to give to the world.

And God will use the gospel to change hearts as time goes on. And that gospel is this: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. That He was buried. That He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. This, by the way, would be a great memory verse or two for some time this year. Because this is, I would argue, the most important memory verse for us to have in evangelism. We need to go out and be able to give this. And in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, it's the clearest, most succinct presentation possible.

Now, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this — I've done this in the past — but I at least want you to be aware that most books on apologetics out there talk about three different types: evidential, classical, and presuppositional. The vast majority of books — 98% of them most likely — are evidential or classical. Very few, other than my own and some others, are presuppositional.

What does that mean? Well, evidential and classical apologetics recognize that there are a bunch of evidences that support the Christian worldview: archaeological digs, scientific evidences, philosophical arguments. There are plenty of them that support the Christian faith. And we recognize that those are relevant evidences for the Christian faith. We also recognize that these are things that can help pull down strongholds for people. So when I'm on a college campus and somebody comes up to me and just has a total hang-up — "Well, how did God fit millions of animals on the ark?" — I say, "Time out, I'll answer that question for you. He didn't have to have millions. He just had to have a pair of every kind of animal and they could reproduce, and they came off the ark and speciated all over again, like they did at the beginning of creation. So we needed actually only a few thousand animals on the ark to produce all the species we have today. We didn't need millions of them." So we can answer these questions pretty easily with people, but in the end, all this does is break down strongholds. That's not the gospel. That doesn't change hearts. It just may soften them a little bit.

So classical and evidential — here's the weakness. They believe that everybody should be started as an atheist. When you walk up to somebody, you start with them as, "I believe you're an atheist. So now what I'm going to do is give you a bunch of evidences and philosophical arguments and hopefully get you to the point of theism — that now I've taken you from atheism to believing a God exists." And now I hope to take more evidences and philosophical arguments and get you to the point that the Creator God is the most likely God of all the other gods.

And notice what I said there: the most likely God of all the other gods. How many evidences does it take to get to 100% certainty of God's existence? An infinite amount. I can tell you on the streets, I've had people tell me, "Well, just give me a few evidences." Give them a few, and it's "Just one more." You give them another one, and it's "Just one more." And it never ends. This doesn't get anybody to 100% certainty. And that's one of the problems with this method. On top of that, it puts the onus on the apologist to try to prove God. Does anybody see anything wrong with that? What's wrong with that? We don't have to prove God. Why? He has already proven Himself through creation. We don't have that burden to prove.

Almost all of your well-known apologists, both dead and alive, are evidential and classicists. This is the way they argue. It's not a biblical method of arguing.

Something that I have real issues with — I know Ken, you saw this pretty recently in a presentation I did a few weeks ago — but Sean McDowell is considered the number one youth apologist in America today for Christianity. When the rock band Hawk Nelson broke apart and the drummer, I think it was, who went astray and apostatized from the faith, this was the response Sean McDowell gave regarding that apostasy. He said, "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's what's awful. "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."

Is this the best we have for youth apologists? It's sad. He himself isn't even certain. Why? Because he believes, as a classical apologist, that he has the burden of proof for all this rather than it being God's. What's that? It's an oxymoron. How can he rest in God's grace if he has doubt? Amen. That's exactly the problem. What I would do is ask, if I had a chance to ask him a question, "Do you know you're saved?" Because if you doubt, my kids can all tell you what happens if you doubt. That's right — unstable in all your ways. You can't know you're saved, you can't be 100% sure you're saved based on this type of belief system. That's what's so scary about it.

Here's one more that I'll let you listen to. So this is a debate between William Lane Craig, who's considered by some to be the best adult Christian apologist out there, versus Lawrence Krauss. The guy I had a chance to meet at an atheist rally years ago in Harriman Gospel Act. Didn't get a chance to talk to him a whole lot, but this is a debate between them. And you're going to hear this question asked: "Are you 100% certain God exists?" Listen for his answer here.

You just lost the debate. Yep. "You, Christian, are you 100% certain God exists?" "No." Great.

Sorry, this is wrong. This is not the way we do apologetics. This is not the way we do evangelism.

Of course, we have examples. I don't have time to get into all this today, but Luke 16 — the rich man and Lazarus — will evidence convince people? We get through this whole dialogue in Luke 16 and what's said at the end: "But Abraham 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.'" The law and the prophets is code for the entirety of the Old Testament. And so what Abraham says is, "Look, if they don't believe the Old Testament, if they don't believe God's revealed word, they're not even going to believe if someone rises from the dead." This is talking about Christ, of course.

And so that leaves us with one last method of apologetics — the one that I subscribe to, the one that I teach exclusively on, the one that my book is about: presuppositionalism. I would call it the biblical method for defending the faith. There are classicists and apologists who cannot stand it every time I say that statement, even in my audiences. And I say, tough. Show me from scripture why I'm wrong.

In preparing to defend the Christian faith, the believer must understand that the conflict is a total war between opposing worldviews. From a biblical standpoint, as we established earlier, the battle we have in apologetics is that we have a Christian worldview and they have the non-Christian worldview. It is a battle of worldviews, it is a battle of interpretation of all the evidences. This is why, by the way, evidential and classical apologetics don't work. I can throw every great evidence at them that I want, that I think proves Christianity. They take that same evidence and interpret it a whole different way based on their worldview. They don't see it the same way we do. That's why they don't work.

Question. It's a statement more than a question. I ran into a guy out there one time and he was asking questions. And I was answering him with presuppositional apologetics. And another thing that they'll do is, if they can't give you a reply that's logical, he just said, "Well, I don't need to know that," or "I don't know the answer to that, and that's okay." Yep. They have every out possible, which is why I tell people: don't get into evidential sword fights with people. Get to the gospel in these situations.

And so, again, let's go back to scripture on this. How should we do our apologetics? How should we do our witnessing? What are the four things we know about every unbeliever? Everyone knows God exists. Everyone knows God's moral law. The unbeliever is suppressing the truth. And the unbeliever exchanges the truth about God for a lie or idols. Good.

So what is presuppositionalism? Well, presuppositionalism, unlike the evidential where it's a ground-up movement — it's atheism up — ours is a top-down movement. Ours is: we start with Creator God. Why? Because the Bible says so. Because natural revelation is evidence to every single person that He exists, whether they admit it or not.

That's right. And that natural revelation is the grace of God. Great Bible verse there. I might have to pull that in one of these days. Thank you. So we start with Creator God, and notice the arrow down says Bible verses. Our job is to use Bible verses, to use the sword of the Spirit, in order to see people's lives be changed. And so Creator God exists — that means everyone knows God exists, which means everyone starts as a theist. The presuppositionalist starts here. They know God exists. The God of the Bible, they know He exists. And so we call people to repent and believe the gospel. We use Bible verses to contradict their nonsense.

Biblical marriage versus homosexuality — we use Bible verses. When they speak about transgenderism — we use Bible verses. Look, I've got all the science too, it's easy. But we can use Bible verses and be confident that it's going to work. And eventually we call them to repent and believe the gospel. This is presuppositionalism in a nutshell. We are doing it God's way through the Bible, using the gospel, and it takes all the onus off of us.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 talks about this in destroying strongholds. We talked about this earlier, and it's the word of God that we should be using. Apologetics helps. But it's the word of God that is what we're to use.

And why is that? Well, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." The Bible is all we need. Can we use apologetics? Sure. Fine. I enjoy it sometimes. But the Bible is sufficient. So use it.

What evidence did Jesus appeal to? What did Jesus do? "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 when Jesus was validating Himself, how did He do it? Old Testament. "These things testify of me." And by the way, He did this over and over and over and over again. "It is written," "as it is said" — this is all over all four gospels.

We also see this in other areas. Book of Acts. Peter quotes from scripture in Acts 2 in his famous sermon. Stephen gives biblical history in Acts 7, as he's giving his farewell speech — his swan song — for which he gets stoned to death. He goes through scriptural history. Paul presupposes the truth and authority of scripture all throughout Acts, but Acts 17 is an absolute masterpiece. "Oh yeah, you've got a statue of an unknown God. Let me tell you about that God. It's Jesus Christ. He's the only true God." That's how we ought to be acting. By the way, did he try to prove God's existence there? No, he just told them. Nowhere in scripture will you find somebody trying to prove God's existence. It is always assumed.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5. This is Paul speaking to the church of Corinth. Now listen to these words here. "And when I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come as someone superior in speaking ability or wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." So Paul acknowledged he wasn't coming in with lofty speech. It wasn't by his own wisdom. It was by the word of God he was coming.

"I also was with you in weakness and fear and in great trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of mankind, but on the power of God."

I'm sorry, evidentialism, classicism — that's not a scriptural way to go about this. We are to be biblical in how we go about it.

Now I'm going to cover this here and then I'll stop for questions. There are some other things I've covered in times past, and I want to make sure we have some time for questions here. How do we know the Bible is the ultimate authority? Good. It's the word of God, right? It is the word of God. That is the answer we give. Now we can use scripture to show this as well. And one of the ways we can do this is: "For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear an oath by no one greater, He swore unto Himself." See, if God could swear on an authority higher than Him, then He wouldn't be the ultimate authority, would He? So the only option God had was to swear unto Himself.

This should bring up a picture for people — at least back in the day when they used to do this more — of when you go up to testify in court. What do they have you do? Hand on a Bible. "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God." Now, why are they doing that? Because you're swearing an oath on someone greater than you as testimony to your truthfulness. That's the picture here, is that God is saying, "Well, there's nothing else that I can swear upon, so I swear upon Myself. I'm the proof." That's a pretty remarkable statement here. And it's often overlooked as we read through this, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

So as Ken said, how do we know the Bible is the ultimate authority? God said it is. It's the word of God. Now, there's one other thing that's helpful to use, and that's internal consistency. So again, with the same concept, there's nothing outside the Bible that can prove the Bible. Because if something outside the Bible could prove the Bible, guess what would now become the ultimate authority? The proof. Right? And then if I wanted to try to prove the proof, I'd need something even higher, and eventually this would never end.

And so the way you know something is an ultimate authority is that there's nothing on the outside that can prove it. Rather, it's internally consistent — it proves itself. And so how did God have it prove itself? God has given us 60 major Messianic prophecies of the first coming of the Messiah, over 300 prophecies of the first coming of the Messiah. It would be absolutely impossible for all of these to be fulfilled completely in Jesus Christ — in one person — except that it was. And the only way that it could have happened is if God knows the end from the beginning and already had this written out for Jesus to fulfill.

What's really astounding about this — just to give you some numbers for those of you who like some math — if I took just eight of the Messianic prophecies, the statistical significance would be one chance in 10 with another 15 zeroes after it. That's a really large number. By the way, NASA's improbability constant is one divided by one with 50 zeroes. NASA says if something happens less frequently than that, it's never going to happen — that is impossible. If I would take even 16 of these prophecies, all fulfilled in one person, statistically it's higher than the improbability constant of NASA. Let alone all 300. If we're being honest with the text, if unbelievers are being honest with this, they would recognize this is impossible unless God Himself wrote this book.

And so there are times I actually like to read these. If I have a Jewish person in front of me, you better believe I'm going to read Isaiah 52 and 53. If I have others, you better believe I'm going to read Psalm 22. You go through Psalm 22 and you're going to see these are things that Jesus was fulfilling while He's on the cross. He couldn't hop off — He didn't hop off the cross to fulfill these things. They were being fulfilled right there.

And by the way, when Jesus said about His Father forsaking Him — "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — the main point of that is not that God the Father is forsaking Him. Sure, that's a meaning to it. But the understanding of this is that we today, when we want to reference Psalms, we reference them by number: "Open up Psalm 21, open up Psalm 50, open up Psalm 37." But about a thousand years ago, there were no chapter numbers, there were no chapters, there were no verse numbers. And so when you wanted the scroll of something, you said, "I want the scroll of Isaiah. I want the scroll of this Psalm with this first line."

Guess what the first line of Psalm 22 is? "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus was literally on the cross saying, "If you still haven't figured out it's me. If you still haven't seen all the prophecies that point to me. If you still can't understand the entire Old Testament that testifies to me, here's one more. Psalm 22 — open up the scroll. These are the things that are happening literally right now." That was His farewell song. That's incredible. No unbeliever can deny this if they're actually being honest with the text.

And just in case there are some naysayers out there on this, there were some prophecies Jesus could have fulfilled — I admit that. He could have irked the Jews enough to get Himself hung or put on a cross, and He pretty much did that. There are other prophecies He couldn't fulfill unless He was God, like being born from the tribe of Judah, being born from King David's line, being born in Bethlehem but being called a Nazarene because His family moved to Nazareth. There were a lot of prophecies that were only fulfilled because He is God and the end was known from the beginning. That's a really, really important concept to get.

And so we're going to end here. Psalm 14:1: "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" Why does God say this in scripture multiple times? Because everybody knows. That's why.

So on that, I thank you and I'm just going to open up to questions for a few minutes. Now we can't go unless we have at least one. So you guys better think fast.

All right. I'll turn my mic on so that you don't have to repeat this question to everyone. So we're going to hear it. What would you say, being a prior Catholic? Correct. Correct. Okay. What would you say about the Presbyterian approach to evangelism that says the Catholics have the gospel and it's just gospel plus works? So we should apologetically break down their church tradition and expose the true gospel. Yeah, great question. And here's how to answer it. Galatians 1 and 2 answers that question. It's really clear in Ephesians, Ephesians 2:8-9. We see it in Galatians. This is addressed. This is a faith-alone gospel. So there is no such thing as gospel plus — there is the gospel. Anything added to it is not the gospel anymore. And in fact, their Council of Trent — and another council I can't remember — they actually stated in that Council of Trent, and they stand behind it in their catechism, that anyone who believes in faith alone is anathema.

So they go as far as to say we're wrong. We as Protestants are going to hell, based on faith alone. So when Presbyterians say that, I think it's downright silly. And I have a huge problem with the Presbyterians who have that type of view, and there are a number of them that do, unfortunately, today.

Question. Well, that's right. "Woe to you who adds or subtracts from this word." We see that throughout the scriptures — that warning about adding or subtracting from His word — and that's what the Catholics have done over the years. I have gone through the Roman Catholic catechism myself and have seen all the errors that they have. The error of faith plus works is all over their catechism. And if you don't want to read it yourself, you can go to Matt Slick's website carm.org, and he's cataloged every one of these by paragraph number. And he's been so sharp at it that even if you get into a dialogue online with somebody, he tells you exactly how to answer those dialogues just by cutting and pasting from his website. So it is laid out really, really well. But anybody who wants to learn more can learn on that website very easily.

Mike Gendron is also great. If you have a heart towards Catholics, Mike Gendron is a great resource on YouTube to go listen to and to get some of his books. And if there's someone — and this happens a lot in our context — that you say something to and they say, "I'm good, I said the prayer correctly." Oh boy. Well, there are a number of ways you could go about it. I would ask them, "Hey, can you tell me what the gospel is then?" And just ask an open-ended question. You could also press a little bit and say, "What prayer is that?" Because there is no sinner's prayer in the Bible that saves you. So those would be my two go-tos. But usually I try to get into a conversation and ask what the gospel is, what saved them. And that usually will open it up. Some people just say that because they don't want to hear from you and they just keep going. So recognize that that is sometimes used in that way.

Any other questions at all? This makes me think — when he said, "I'm good" — he says no answer? Well, it's funny you say that. Ray Comfort would answer that question that way. He would say, "Nobody is good, no, not one, according to the Bible." And he's got a funny way of doing it to capture people. I don't have that, so I do it a different way. Maybe you could learn Ray Comfort style on that. But yeah, that is how he does it.

Any other questions at all?

Well, that's exactly what the issue is, right? So when people — when you ask the person that question, "If you died today, would you go to heaven or hell?" and they say, "I think heaven," you ask why and they say, "Yes, because I'm a good person" or "I do good things" — they are absolutely using a worldly view of good. They're defining good by their own standard, or a worldly standard, and not by God's. And this is the way it works, by the way. If I am trying to justify my goodness, I'm going to compare myself to somebody who I view as worse than me. "So yeah, I'm a pretty good person. I haven't murdered anybody." Yeah, I don't think.

But think about the one person who's in jail right now, who went on one fit of rage. They lived a pretty good life. They had one fit of rage. They murdered one person. And they say, "You know, I'm a pretty good person. I had one mistake in my life. The guy next to me killed 14 people on purpose. I'm a pretty good person." So no matter what we do from a human perspective, we're always going to take a worldly view on the word good and we're going to compare ourselves to somebody worse than us. And that's why we have to bring somebody back to the biblical standard of good. How do we define good? God. And that's why in Romans 3, "All fall short of the glory of God. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None is righteous, no, not one." Paul has an entire discourse in Romans 3 on this.

Any other questions at all? Oh yeah. Okay. So let me pull up this slide here — and do you mind if I go like two more minutes, Casey, on this? Okay. So this is a concept I covered two years ago, I believe, at the end of February on presuppositionalism, and we walked into some detail on this. And here's a really important concept.

Somebody says, "Prove to me God exists." This would be analogous to somebody who says, "I don't believe air exists." I don't believe air exists. Something as absurd as "I don't believe air exists" — and they're doing this as they're vibrating air across their vocal cords. They're breathing to stay alive to do this. They need the air for their words to travel across. They need the air for those words to go into the other person's ears. The other person has to breathe air to hear it and understand it — all while saying, "I don't believe air exists." The foolishness of that is plain.

This is how God views people when they say, "I don't believe God exists," because we are using our mental faculties that we can't explain in a materialistic worldview. So what do I mean by that? The materialist — somebody who removes God from the equation — thinks that you magically had materials appear in the Big Bang. Now that's dumb. Materials don't just appear. Scientific law demonstrates this. So they have to break scientific law to think that something appeared out of nothing. Then this something has to bang, bang, bang, bang through random chemical reactions over millions of years to finally produce all the planets and stars and eventually pond scum. And then through more random chemical reactions, bang, bang, bang back and forth, you eventually get people. And so what they believe is this materialism — that it's just materials banging together, making more materials. In the end, everything is materials.

So I ask a person, "Look, you believe that you're a bag of random chemical reactions doing nothing but obeying laws of chemistry and physics. Is that correct?" And they'll say, "Well, yeah, just chemical reactions." To which I would respond, "Well, are we having a conversation right now? Are we talking right now?" And they'll answer. "Okay. Are you hearing what I'm saying? Trusting your ears? You're thinking to yourself about what I'm saying. You're thinking of a response to say back. And then you actually are controlling your mouth, controlling your intelligence, controlling your reason, and speaking back to me a response. Is that correct?" And they'll say, "Well, yeah." Like, you have a problem.

If you're just random chemical reactions banging together, that means everything coming out of your mouth should be gibberish. It should just be random. Everything you do is random — it's just reactions. But the bottom line is you know that that's not the case. You have a conscience that's immaterial. You have an ability to reason that's immaterial. We use by convention laws of logic that are immaterial. We have a moral law that's immaterial — an absolute moral law. We have all kinds of things. So when it comes to this blank, it's that it's only with the omniscient and omnipotent Creator God that we can get the preconditions of intelligibility. And so these preconditions of intelligibility are all the things that are immaterial in the world that cannot be explained without God.

Materialism only gives more materialism. God, who is immaterial, can bring about materialism, and by His nature is immaterial, and everything that's immaterial flows from Him. Morality flows from Him. Laws of logic flow from Him. Intelligence flows from Him. Knowledge flows from Him. Ability to reason flows from Him. All those things are consistent with His nature. So again, it's only with the omniscient and omnipotent Creator God that we can get the preconditions of intelligibility, such as absolute morality, the ability to reason, knowledge, reliability of our senses, and the laws of logic. And by the way, this is just a partial list of hundreds of things we could talk about that are immaterial and that cannot be explained from a materialistic worldview.

And so there's more on this teaching. I think I did an entire hour on this section alone two years ago. So you can go find that online if you want to know more.

So as I'm finishing up here, we decided as a gift for the church — anybody who does not have a copy of my book, you are free to take one. It's in the box with Anthony and Julie there on the table. My only thing I want you to promise me is you're going to read it. I want you to learn it, but at least read it and get this information into your heads. There are homeschooling families around the country that have used this on children as young as late elementary school. And this is written at a very lay level. They may not get every concept at that age, but they'll get all the important concepts. I wrote it on purpose to be very, very simple for people. And the average adult can run through this book in just a few hours. If you want to learn it, it takes a little bit more. But that gift is for you on that back table.

And I'll close in prayer and then Casey can come on up. Lord, just thank You for today. And I know it's a lot of information, Lord, and I just pray that You use it and You allow it to simmer in everybody's mind in here, and give them the confidence and the strength to go out and be confident in Your word and who You are and Your attributes, to be able to go out and share the gospel with people unashamedly, without any fear whatsoever. And to do it the way that we're called to do it, which is according to scripture. In Your holy and precious name we pray, amen.