Q&A with Frank Turek: Ask Me Anything at @Reaching The Next Generation YouTube Channel

victim found in jerusalem and this heel bone dates to about 50 a.d so these are just two archaeological discoveries of the crucifixion of jesus found in jerusalem and there are others if i were to think about it but those are the two of the more extreme ones does it um and i mean doesn't michael lykona believe that the shroud of turin is is jesus well gary habermas who is the top scholar in the world on the resurrection he's written more than anybody else his magnum opus is over five thousand pages he's editing it editing it right now gary is also an expert on the shroud of turin and if you ask gary do you think the shroud of turin is authentic he would say i'm 80 sure it is uh and he will give you some of the reasons for that the the shroud of turin is supposedly the burial cloth of christ and you may have heard oh they carbon dated that to the middle ages yeah what they carbon dated was a piece of it that had been repaired in the middle ages due to a fire the actual shroud itself has pollen on it from the first century it appears in palestine and it has some other features that appear to be authentic to this day they don't know how the image of jesus or the crucified victim is on this particular piece of cloth they can't figure out how it could have been put on there it's not painted on there there's blood on it it's a it's a very very unique find yeah um i typically don't use that as an argument for the authentic you know for the authenticity of jesus because there are better arguments but it is very interesting in fact one of the things that gary thought was interesting is that if if you were to put a nail through the wrist which is really probably where jesus was crucified uh you would break some sort of nerve or bone or tendon or something which would cause the thumb to collapse and if you look at the shroud of torah and his thumbs are not out they're in and uh that's just one piece of evidence that this appears to be a real crucified victim and probably is the shroud that covered christ there's a when we go when i go to israel um we we go to caesarea maritime and there at the hippodrome is they found the pilot stone yes and which is a lot of a lot of scholars did not feel that pontius pilate actually was a procurator and it it's funny because where they would do the races with the with the horses and chariots and all and all of those things somebody had taken the stone of pontius pilate being the procurator and had put it as a seat in the hippodrome so they basically were putting their rear end on that stone because they hated this guy so much and as they were digging through there they lifted up and found a stone that said pontius pilate was the procurator which once again you know for many years people didn't think pontius pilate was really the procurator and and he actually was you know one archaeological discovery they've never found and that is the body of jesus that's right okay and that by the way would end christianity if you could somehow figure out that that was the body of jesus christianity would be over as paul said your faith is in vain if christ has not risen from the dead although they did do some testing recently pastor chip as you know at the church of holy sepulchre and because they they have uh renovated that area and they went in and they did discover that in their carbon dating that the tomb uh i think underneath where they where they had to renovate was from the third century which is when the church of the holy sepulchre was built so this is a very ancient uh tradition that says that that's where his burial spot was but of course in fact we were just talking earlier uh backstage about who who would want it who would want to disprove christianity and how could they have done it pastor joe they could have the day to drug the body all through the streets that's i mean that's everybody had a reason to fight they would have found that body and they would have drug it to the streets you know um and there was no body so the greatest archeological evidence is the is that there's no that's right so uh um so let's uh let's continue on here we got a ton of questions questions are coming in like crazy goodness gracious okay if god planned to if god planned to sacrifice his son for our sins was judas compelled to betray him compelled no because knowledge does not imply causality this is one of the things that i think um can be confusing when we think about what is known as predestination and free will since god is outside of time he knows the end from the beginning he knows what's going to happen before we do it but that does not mean we're compelled to do it if we were to do otherwise he would have known that too so knowledge does not imply causality every mother new mother that puts her child down for uh the night when the baby's first born that mother knows that at some point that baby's gonna wake up during the night right but because the mother knows the baby's gonna wake up during the night does that mean the mother is causing the baby to wake up during the night no knowledge does not imply causation i mean it might mean causation but not always just because god knows what we're going to do doesn't mean he's causing it doesn't mean we don't have free will now you could say yes god causes it when he creates the universe because he knows how it's going to turn out that's true but we're still freely doing what we're doing we're still free judas freely betrayed christ you're freely either accepting or rejecting christ even though god knows what you're going to do and this is why i think this is the solution to the predestination free will problem yes we are predestined but we're also free in fact my co-author dr norman geisler wrote the book chosen but free you're chosen because it's unavoidable when god chose to create he knew how it would turn out so he's elected the outcome but that doesn't mean you don't have free will you still have free will to do what you're going to do billy graham freely chose to accept christ richard dawkins freely chose not to and god always knew what they would do so they are predestined but they're all also free okay so let's uh man they just keep piling in more a scenario this is from jeremy more a scenario than a question but let's say you have a friend whose 15 year old son died in an accident and she as a non-christian comes to you for comfort you take the opportunity to tell her about jesus and in that process you learn that she and her deceased son are not saved she then asks you why should i want to worship a god that allows my son to burn in hell for eternity how could i enjoy your concept of heaven knowing people i love are eternally damned or destroyed and i'll never see them again right first of all if that has just happened this is not a time for philosophizing or or going into what you might think are rational explanations uh in fact a friend of mine lost his son to suicide and he said people would well you know who he is it's rick warren right rick warren lost his son to suicide and he said people would call him up or come over to his house and say the most insensitive things because they didn't know what to say and all he said was all i wanted was your presence i don't need an explanation i don't need rationalizations i don't need speculations i just wanted your presence your presence was enough and of course if you read through the book of job you have job's friends trying to explain everything and uh god rebukes them in the end so when emotions have subsided a little bit then maybe it's time to talk about issues like this uh first of all we don't know in the end whether somebody had a at the last second accepted christ but we do know that god is not going to force anybody into heaven against their will in fact if you give me a minute i'll explain how this worked i was in a debate at the university of michigan a number of years ago and the atheist who asked me this question his name is eddie tobot she's a beverly hills attorney and uh he said frank my mother was a survivor of the holocaust she lived a life full of pain and suffering uh toward the end of her life somebody offered her the gospel but she rejected it and then she died is she in hell right now well that's a pretty tough question in front of a secular audience so i said eddie i don't know where your mother is now i don't know if she had a death bed conversion or not but if she didn't then god is too loving to force her into heaven against her will you see because the assumption behind the question is that everybody wants to go to heaven that's not true who's in heaven jesus is in heaven there have been people running from jesus their entire lives what's he going to do in the afterlife hey where are you going you're with me now that wouldn't be fair you say what's all this business about hell then well i used an illustration with the university of michigan audience and i asked the ladies this question so ladies i'm going to ask you the same question in here ladies have you ever had a man pursue you whom you did not want to date some of you going yeah and he's sitting next to me right now he will not leave me alone now whenever i ask that question the ladies always giggle and the men look at their shoes like she looking at me right now so anyway ladies suppose this man continues to ask you out he can keeps pursuing you and he keeps asking you out and you finally say now look i like you but only as a ladies want to just stick the knife in and turn it every man has heard the dreaded friend rejection gentlemen if you ever get the dreaded friend rejection i have some advice for you move on she's not interested in fact i have some shocking news for you she doesn't even like you as a friend because if she did she she she'd be interested but she's not am i right ladies i mean you're just being nice right well suppose this doesn't deter the guy he keeps pursuing he keeps pursuing he keeps asking you out and he finally says look i love you so much i'm going to force you to love me ladies run screaming from the building can he force you to love him no if he truly did love you what would he do he would leave you alone that's what god does for us he sends us cards letters and flowers he sends his creation he sends his conscience he sends us the bible he obviously sends us christ he sends us pastor chip he sends us a mission a missionary he may send us a tv or radio broadcast if you're in a foreign country like a muslim country right now he may send you a dream or a vision because there's many reports of muslims being converted through dreams and visions of jesus appearing to them but if he does all that and you keep saying no no no i don't want you then god will give you up to your own desire paul talks about this in romans 1 right he says that he'll give you up to your own desire to go your own way because that's what a loving god does just you can't have love without free will you have to freely love and if people don't want to love god what he's going to do is pull himself away because that's what a loving being does you say well what's all this business about hell then well notice that there are people today whether they're christians or not that that experience the common grace of god they experience nature beauty love relationships hope for a future we all experience this whether we're christians or not but i want you to imagine a place where there is no beauty where there is no love where there are no relationships where there is no hope where there is no future there's just stone cold narcissistic self-absorption that is washington no i'm sorry that is hell you're separated from the ultimate source of goodness by your own choice because there is no choice for god if he if you don't want him he's not going to force himself on you he's going to leave you alone and hell is separation from god hell is a place of justice heaven is a place of grace and if you don't want grace god's not going to force you there now if you are in heaven and you know of people who are in hell by their own free choice you are going to know that that's just you are going to know that they don't want to be in heaven with jesus and as c.s lewis famously put it hell cannot veto heaven hell cannot veto heaven people are going to get justice they're actually going to get justice in heaven too because you're going to be rewarded for your good works you're going to be there on account of grace but you'll be rewarded for your good works or some rewards may be taken away for some of the evil you may have done but your admittance into heaven is based on grace and your place in heaven is based on the works you have done by the way the same thing is true in hell there are degrees of punishment in hell just like there are degrees of reward in heaven jesus implies this when he talks about luke chapter 12 or in luke chapter 12 about people who knew what uh the master wanted him to do and disobeyed anyway and people who didn't have as much knowledge they were beaten with few fewer blows as jesus said look god is a god of infinite justice he's also a god of infinite love he can't allow unjustice or injustice to go unpunished so what does he do he punishes himself in our place that's what the gospel is all about we should all be in hell without his free sacrifice without his sacrifice for us because he's an infinitely just being but even god can't force free creatures to love him because because love has to be freely given so what's god supposed to do i mean c.s lewis i think put it best at the end of or in and this may even be in uh scrutiny letters now that i think about it or maybe the great divorce where he says in the end there's only two kinds of people those who say to god thy will be done or those to whom god says thy will be done so hell basically means god is just and loving and man is free now emotionally that may not resonate especially after someone has gone through a tragedy but logically it makes perfect sense is the earth around 8 000 years old is micro and macro evolution biblically compatible i'm absolutely certain that the universe is at least 59 years old [Laughter] okay it's actually at least 83 because i saw my mom today down in fort myers so it's at least 83 okay uh as you know christians disagree over this and we could spend a lot of time talking about different views of this but i can guarantee you one thing that when you get to heaven god isn't going to say did you think it was old or young right it is not a test for orthodoxy as to whether or not you think the universe is old or young now i personally think that genesis 1 was written by moses as a polemic against the egyptian creation stories because when people are coming out of ex they're coming out of egypt they're coming across the desert they're not walking around going i wonder how old this place is right that's not what they're wondering not wondering about evolution what they're wondering is yahweh the true god or the gods that we just came from in egypt the true god gods and if you look at the egyptian stories and chip you can speak to this better than i can probably that the gods in in in egypt that supposedly created the universe somehow created themselves or were already in the universe and then ordered it and moses comes along and says no god is outside this space-time continuum he creates the space-time continuum and he orders it so i don't think genesis 1 is necessarily written to try and tell us how old the universe is although some will try and it's a perfectly legitimate interpretation to say yes but i don't think it's necessary and you see no god has written two books he's written the book called the bible and the book of nature and by the way you can't understand the book called the bible without the book of nature i mean just read the first verse in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth okay what does that imply you already know first of all it implies you know language right it also implies you know what a beginning is it implies you have some idea of what god is it implies you have some idea of what cause and effect is right some idea of what creation is these are the things you bring to the text and you have to know before you can know anything the bible says and in in as chip he's a seminary professor he knows there's a there's a there's an aspect of theology called prolegomena which means what you do before you do theology and it includes these kind of things philosophy language grammar cause and effect the reliability of your senses to know how you can ascertain truths about the real world so to just look at a text and say it must be taken in this one way particularly genesis 1 which looks like it's not hebrew poetry but it has poetic elements to it that could be the right way to text it but not take it but not necessarily would you want to say anything about the egyptians or that at all you know the egyptian sun god was their was like the most important sons created on day four it's almost like of the sun yeah forget about it you know yeah there's there's polemic there yeah i think that you know the the question is is you know if you read the text does it seem to indicate that there was a day yeah i mean that's that's the literal reading of the text the question is the hebrew word yom day what does that mean is that a period is that you know all that stuff i think and then the question becomes what are we actually reading in genesis one are we reading a scientific treatise like we think of in the world today or are we reading a theological document that's helping the you know newly found people that have come out of egyptian bondage to understand who yahweh is and in their world they did not have the same cosmology that we do they didn't have the same questions that we do um they believed that matter was eternal right so like even in the creation narrative which we believe as christians that the world was created ex-nihilo that means out of nothing hebrews 11 says that the things that we see were created of things that weren't seen but in genesis 1 the the reality is in the text god comes upon the world it's already there and it doesn't have any form it's void it needs to be put together and the word create bara in hebrew can mean to create something that was not here to something that was here but it can also mean creating me a new heart oh lord in other words arrange it in a way that's right so you you have to ask is genesis 1 ontological creation or is it functional creation um and and so you know a reading of the text you're going to have people bog down some are going to say it's functional creation god is ordering the world and he's putting things together so that the world functions properly because it's chaotic and he comes upon it others would say no this is a scientific thing you know a lot of ken ham and those types of people um i think the real thing is is that we shouldn't make the reading of genesis a test for orthodoxy because augustine did not believe the world was young um and then there's other people that do believe the earth is young i think the the the real thing is is you have to start asking what does genesis say and i do think christians can disagree on that um but i my personal feeling is is that creation is giving us the sense of how god works not only in the world but he works in our hearts paul in the corinthian correspondence talks about creation that the light shone in our hearts it's the gospel and the creation story is a wonderful gospel because it it's taking something that's chaotic and ordering it to where it's good and i think that that's what god wants to do in all of creation he wants to take things that are messed up and not right and he wants to form them in such a way that they are good and i think that romans gestures towards that in chapter eight that the whole creation is waiting to be put back together to good you know and god is working all things together for good for those you know so think that i think genesis 1 in genesis 2 can be read in in many different ways um but i would i would tend to lean towards reading genesis one and two as uh uh probably more a little bit more some some poetics um with functional um creation rather than just you know ontological creation and i think i think the world's old but i mean if i get to heaven and god goes you dummy it's ten thousand years old i mean i don't care i believed in jesus i mean that's what's important you know so uh um but some people will say if you don't take it that way then you don't believe the bible and if you don't believe the bible um i i just would say that the philippian jailer when he said what do i got to do to be saved paul didn't say you got to believe the bible they didn't even have one he said believe in jesus and you'll be you'll be saved let me mention one other thing chip on this because about that um i mentioned the two books that god has written and the the book of nature and in the book called the bible through other people obviously um sometimes you side with the book of nature to tell you what the book of bible what what what the book called the bible means in fact for example sunrise and sunset right the bible says the sun rises and the sun sets so how are we to take that are we to take it that it's a literal sun that's literally rising and literally setting or is this observational language well how do we know it's observational language because we know through through nature that we're actually going around the sun the sun isn't going around us and so the bible is using observational language here's an example where you're taking what you know about nature and saying okay the bible's using observational language it's not literal language and by the way we do this today in our scientific age if you watch the news tonight the local news you're going to see the the meteorologist going to say you know sunrise tomorrow at 6 14. he's not going to say earth rotation will become apparent at 6 14. okay so observational language that's how we understand the bible and you can use things from outside the bible in fact you have to use things from outside the bible to understand what the bible says um okay what do you see is the number one challenge against the church in the next 10 years the number one challenge of the church is the number one challenge against the church oh against the church apathy that's it's apathy it's within the church yeah right we're the problem in fact by the way i know as you look around our nation and even around the world you see things just appear to be just falling apart morally and you're going how can this be you know whose fault it is it's our fault why because 100 years ago the church went anti-intellectual what do i mean by that 100 years ago the church didn't think like it could answer darwinism in these kind of philosophies so instead of engaging the culture they separated from the culture they said don't study philosophy don't study these things don't get involved in the media don't get involved in law don't get involved in in education just believe the bible and so they created their own little bible colleges their own little seminaries nothing wrong with that alone but they actually retreated from the culture they separated from the culture and when you take the godly influence out of something then whatever you've taken that godly influence out of becomes godless and so what happened was is that since we're no longer in the media and we're no longer in law and we're no longer in education john dewey in the 1930s the humanist kind of took over american education and he trained and his philosophy of humanism trained all the supreme court justices that eventually rose to the supreme court and in the early 1960s they just began throwing any expression of christianity right out of the public square and the the great cultural issues that have caused so much consternation among christians like abortion and same-sex marriage and and now sexual orientation by even by justice gorsuch a couple of years ago basically putting sexual orientation in the 1964 civil rights act all that has occurred by the court not by the people but why is the court where it is because the church extracted itself from the culture and allowed the secularists to take over in fact back in 2009 i wrote a column on our website crossexamine.org but i could have written it yesterday the title is country a mess blame the church we're the problem and we're now we're now so afraid to even say anything because somebody may cancel us on facebook or instagram or whatever no we're called to speak the truth and leave the results to god in fact if you really want to help people i love what thomas soul said i don't know if you know who thomas soul is thomas soul is a 91 year old economist who actually grew up in harlem most of his life and somehow learned to read and then became a professor at stanford and at university of chicago and at cornell and if you go to just search for him on youtube you'll be binge watching thomas soul clips and i don't even know if he's a christian but he's so bright he said this when you tell someone what they wanted or start over when you tell somebody what they need to hear you're helping them when you tell somebody what they want to hear you're helping yourself notice jesus gave us one command one new command he said here's a new command i give you love one another as i have loved you how did he love us he sacrificed himself for us so to love others we we should be sacrificing ourselves for others but when we tell them what they want to hear we're sacrificing them for us because we don't want to put up with the blowback we may get from them and so we're protecting ourselves when we tell them what they want to hear we're helping them when we're when we tell them what they need to hear look love does not require approval our culture thinks love requires approval every parent knows that love doesn't require approval if you approve of everything your kid wants to do are you loving no you're unloving same thing is true in the culture you want to love people you need to tell them what they need to hear not what they want to hear and most of that revolves around the sexual issues as you know now because that's where all the pushback is coming from well that reads us to the next to the to the you can clap we clap here grace the good thing about frank is he will tell you exactly what he thinks that's what i appreciate i appreciate about you there's you know candy code anything my wife hates that does she pray for her so so this next question goes into this when discussing the topic of homosexuality with a deconstructing christian discussion topic of homosexuality when discussing the topic of homosexuality with a deconstructing christian yes deconstructing christians or christians that are on their way out of christianity they're talking themselves out of christianity they're arguments people who are deconstructing their arguments for affirming homosexuality is that the actual word was not put in the bible until 1946 or that the meaning of unnatural relations is only referring to pedophilia how do you combat this argument with biblical truth that won't be taken as bigotry as it won't be taken as bigotry when someone calls you a bigot you don't want to say i'm not a bigot you want to say what do you mean by bigotry what does that mean i had a homosexual activist once call me that and i said well what do you mean by bigotry and he said fear and intolerance and i said that's not the definition of bigotry definition of bigotry is having a firm opinion on something that you haven't researched you have a prejudiced view and i said with all due respect if anyone is a bigot in this conversation it must be you because i've written an entire book on this topic and you haven't read it yet you don't even know why i believe what i believe so the book i had written was called correct not politically correct how same-sex marriage hurts everyone so i you can't you can't um predict necessarily how someone or let me say it differently you can't control how someone is going to take what you're going to say you should try and strive to be a hundred percent truth and a hundred percent grace all at the same time now the only person i know who does this successfully is jesus right but we have to be a hundred percent truth and a hundred percent grace at the same time ladies and gentlemen think think of the life of jesus can you remember or even the apostles can you remember one time let's just think jesus for a second can you remember any time where jesus told someone what they wanted to hear i can think of one time where an apostle did that in fact chip we were talking about it back stage the apostle was peter and he was trying to he was trying to appease the judaizers who wanted him to continue to obey the old testament laws and what did paul do paul said i told him to his face that he was wrong paul had to dope slap peter in the bible okay because he's a fallen human being like the rest of us but jesus no jesus told people what they needed to hear so the question about the word homosexuality it it appears what they said 1945 or something whether the word is a new word or not that's not the issue the act is what the is is what is at play here and in romans chapter one paul describes the act he doesn't use the word homosexuality he uses unnatural acts and the unnatural acts were not pedophilia the unnatural acts were the acts of homosexual sex and he uses men with men and women with women and the same thing happens in leviticus 18 as you know but leviticus is an old testament document and it deals with the old covenant we're in the new covenant but some of the principles in the old covenant are universal they come into the new covenant this is one of them and so when someone says that they think homosexuality is affirmed by jesus instead of going through a long dissertation as to why you think that's not the case you might want to ask them well why do you think that's true what evidence do you have for that position and if the evidence is well the word wasn't used until 1945 but the act is still described that is really what the word means the argument doesn't work doesn't matter if you use the word or not the act is described and why is the act described well you don't really even need the bible to know that same-sex relationships are not according to the natural design this is called natural law men and women are compatible they're made for one another to procreate and bring forth the next generation two men and two women are not meant for one another not if part of the goal of course is to procreate and to bring forth the next generation and natural law says that that's what at least the primary use of the sex is to procreate and bring forth the next generation you can't do that when you have two men or two women you want to add anything to that well um i think that what i would add and you know you know for you where you do apologetics and you answer questions when it comes to the church i would i would say i don't think the church has done a very good job of of listening and and and caring for the homosexual groups i think we could have done a much better job than what we've done and i think we've we've almost put them into like a category of their own where it's like they're the worst and we're you know and i think that we've got to rediscover how we can minister to that community but i do think the two questions are completely separate is you know is does the bible affirm it and how do we also address and how do we deal with that type of ministry i think those are two different questions i would just say that um anybody who thinks that the word homosexuality was invented in 1946 does not understand any history at all plato's symposium that was written hundreds of years before jesus ever came about was all about homosexual relationships i mean there's no question i mean this is not something that's new um and and i i don't think i i i say because i have a lot of friends that that are gay and uh um i have some people in in my family that are that are that have same sex attraction and i have some close friends that that are that way and one of the things that i you know try to always say to them is that you know look i'm going to love you and and i care about you but the reality is is that in in romans 1 it's just the the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that people who are walking away from god are one of the things that is the categories of that is men on men and women on women and i understand that's a tough a tough sell in today's culture i understand when you say those things it offends people it gets people up in arms and we want to be able to say things in love just not just in truth too but i think that uh um you know to say that that is something that was invented in 1946 that's not true um there is a lot of data that there was pedophilia in the first century but there's no good evidence in queen a greek that what we're reading in romans 1 or or reading in the pastoral epistles as well that those are somehow men on men in terms of like men on boys i'm sure it does take into effect some of those things but but but the the the idea is um unnatural sexual relationships and i think that you have to go all the way back to creation god created a man and a woman for that intimate relationship and in marriage and that's just the way god created it and we have a fundamental issue here when we say jesus is lord we have to make a decision do i follow what jesus wants me to do or do i want to do my own thing there's plenty of things in my life in chip bennett's life that if i just wanted to go do what i wanted to do would not match up with the bible and i could say but this is the way i feel this is what's within me this is whatever but at the end of the day i've decided that jesus is lord and that means that he gets to decide what the rules are not chip bennett and and that's tough and it's it's tough for me it's probably tough for you at times to say jesus your lord but uh i think that those are the those are the things that we've got to struggle through but from a pastoral standpoint i'm always looking at how can how can we reach the gay community how can we reach the lesbian community in a way where they where they feel like that they know that they have value and dignity and worth and they come in here and sit on the front row and we will be glad to have anybody here because we that that's that's the gospel um but uh but then trying to also teach and to talk through those issues become very complicated because because you get pushed away sure because you're you're you're not you're intolerant you're you're whatever and i'm like the most tolerant person in the world i mean i'll sit down with anybody and have a conversation but it's tough because these are issues that are so um emotional right now i don't know if it was you chip or another pastor told me this that um some folks from the gay community came to the church and uh afterwards they came up to the pastor and said are you gay affirming which of course means do you agree with same-sex behavior and the pastor said no and they said good because we want you to tell us the truth we owe people the truth again you're only helping yourself when you tell them what they want to hear you're not really helping them and uh jesus and the apostles are the standard as you just said chip we don't make up the rules i remember i got a question once on a college campus they said what do you think about homosexuality i said it doesn't matter what i think i'm not the moral arbiter of the universe okay i don't i didn't make human beings i didn't make the purpose of life god did and if there is no god then you don't then no one has any rights because all rights come from god they don't come from people so the only way you can validate a right is to ground it in the nature of god and that can be a problem quite obviously for people who are claiming that they have a right to same-sex marriage or same-sex behavior because they would need to somehow justify that from god otherwise it's just an opinion it's just a preference okay let's uh um if atheism is atheism on the rise in christianity on decline or can we expect a revival and reformation is atheism on the rise in christianity and decline or can we is atheism on the rise in christianity decline or could we expect a revival in reformation what they're saying is is if atheism's on the rise in christianity do we expect a revival or a reformation well i'm not a prophet i i sure hope we get a a revival uh but worldwide christianity is on the rise it's only here in our cloistered western you know here in europe that we think christianity is dying around the world it's flourishing uh we see now that the group known as nuns not nuns nuns these are people that claim no religious affiliation and this number has has risen quite a bit in recent years i think part of that has risen because it's unfashionable now to be a christian you know 30 40 years ago are you a christian everyone would say yes right now there may be some cultural baggage by saying i'm a christian and so fewer people are claiming to be christians and they're going you know i'm really nothing i'm a nun uh so in this country christianity not uh is fading particularly the the mainline denominations the the churches like this one here grace community church here in sarasota is growing because it's vibrant and it's preaching the truth but the mainline ones that hardly believe the bible is true hardly believe in god in fact my co-author dr norman geiser used to call some of these denominations nothing more than him singing rotary clubs because they just come together to so-called see one another and quote unquote do good works but they don't really believe the bible is true they hardly even believe in god in fact i think our culture today is best explained not by theology but by me ology whatever i want that's my that's my faith i'm going to create a god in my image god hasn't created me in his image i'm going to create a god in my image so it's all about me ology i get to have sex with whoever i want to have sex with and god approves i get to do what i want to do when i want to do it and god approves god is all about pleasing me i'm really god's pet his he is under um he's under obligation to take care of me that's what people think god is like so it's really more meology than theology except for the conservative churches in my view anyway that are preaching the truth i think that uh but i think i think the american church has had a lot to do with creating a theology um there's been a lot of you know god's for you he's your co-pilot you're just but you know you know your best life it's you know it's almost like jesus is a life coach right rather than lord and i think a lot of stuff we've done to create some of those things um here's a good one what's up with the book of leviticus where god where god calls for the gruesome deaths of almost everyone for a variety of reasons but generally for either not believing in him for or living an alternative lifestyle and daring to have children with a widow or sex out of wedlock what's up with the book of leviticus he may be referring to whoever may refer to capital crimes is that right i'm guessing so capital crimes i think they're about 19 or 14 and i can't remember how many total capital crimes are in the old testament but the old testament the old covenant i should say was just between god and israel god was their king and there were capital crimes for things today we wouldn't consider to be capital crimes because god is trying to get the promised people in the promised land to bring forth the promised messiah and he has to do so through free creatures so he has a higher standard of judgment on these people than he does the rest of the world and that's where those laws come from now you get to the book of hebrews hebrews 8 13 says the old covenant is obsolete it no longer applies in fact where you might have had say um you might have had a death penalty for a particular offense in the old testament in the new testament it might be you're disfellowshipped or you're kicked out of the church or there's some other kind of of problem uh or punishment i should say for the crime so in the old testament god's judgment comes down quite hard on these issues because he's trying to bring the promised people in the promised land to bring forth the promised messiah in the new testament you don't have those as many of those capital crimes he get he delegates that to government as paul says in romans 13 he says the ruler does not bear the sword for nothing what is the purpose of government the main purpose is to prevent innocent people from being hurt to protect innocent people from evil and god can use the sword to execute justice paul says and that can include capital punishment as punishment and to protect innocent people from evil but those capital offenses no longer apply in the new testament anything to add to that no that's good i want to keep you good literally i can just scroll this question i want to try to go is when discussing with a progressive christian what are your one or two go-to points that you bring up okay let me just say one thing about progressive christianity these are people that claim that traditional christian beliefs are not true even including to the atonement they think the atonement was cosmic child abuse well if you don't have the atonement you don't have christianity they're very pro-lgbtq in terms of behavior okay they don't think the bible's inerrant they don't think jesus was god they basically deny many of the essentials of the faith so in my view a progressive christian is neither progressive nor christian because if you're disagreeing with jesus how can you be a christian and if you're disagreeing with jesus you're not progressing you're regressing but the one or two points i would want to make i would want to ask them i would want to ask them why they believe what they believe first i wouldn't want to make any points i would try and discover why they believe what they believe and you mentioned deconstruction or a question or did deconstruction meaning you're deconstructing your faith and you're actually you're actually constructing a new faith a lot of it is just what you you want to be true when you do that i've i haven't seen any major deconstructions that did not in some way revolve around the issue of sex it always somehow has to do with sex people are giving up christianity because they want to have more freedom to do what they want to do sexually hey i get that but basically what you're doing is you're trading the eternal god who sacrificed himself for you for a temporal pleasurable activity and it's going to end in eternity so what happens when the sex ends i would want to ask them why they believe what they believe first and and to be fair not all progressive christians who say they're progressive christians believe every single thing there's because because i i've got people that would say they don't believe certain things that maybe i would see the bible saying a certain thing but they still believe that jesus is god and rose again on the third day but they're they're they're questioning a lot of the fundamental things like is the bible the inerrant word of god they've got a hold of a book that makes them question yeah i think questioning is fine but then saying the bible is not the word and the atonement is not true sure and jesus is not god then they're out of the well the very first the very first question that's presented in the bible is did god really say that's right once you throw god's word out you're done yeah yeah can i just say that as the pastor of this church once you throw god's word out we're done we're done i mean there's there's nothing to stand on we're done you know um hey chip can i say which weather i mean that's why i teach the bible here and try my best to go through the bible because i think once that's out then you can believe whatever you want it's okay to want evidence that the bible's true i mean that's predominantly what our ministry does cross-examine.org is provide evidence that the bible's true but if you're claiming to be a christian and you're claiming the bible isn't true well what's your standard then what is it sure all right somebody they're mad at you um let's continue on here um do you think we're in the end times sorry do you think we're in the end times we've been in the end time since paul that's right so jesus could come at any minute he said i come like a thief in the night no one knows the day nor the hour the times nor the season so nobody on tv knows when he's coming back if jesus himself as a man didn't know as god he didn't know but not as a man and by the way let me say one thing i think that part of the ambiguity about the end times is similar to the ambiguity that came when the messiah came paul says in first corinthians 2 that it basically if he said this mystery has been hidden until the present time because if the powers of this world knew they never would have killed the lord of glory if you go through the old testament prophecy without the new testament you wouldn't figure out when the messiah was going to come not in one place anyway you have to piece together a whole bunch of stuff to figure it out it looks much much clearer after it happens and you go oh now i see how isaiah 55 and daniel 9 and micah 5 2 and all these passages come together i didn't see it if i was just in the old testament and maybe part of the reason is is because if you could see it too clearly if it wasn't failed they never would have killed christ and maybe the same thing is happening going forward if jesus was too clear if we we knew he was coming back in 2032 how would that change how we live today it might it might yeah i got time right by the way that's what people always go what's what's the line that i if i step over then i'm no longer in or out or whatever like well if if he gave us that line you'd be playing this number all day long you know um it is so uh um and i think the whole end times thing is this is just me you don't have to i just think that the end times in the um obsession that we have is a very american thing like a lot of a lot of christians around the world do not have the same true thoughts that we do about it they're like you guys are crazy like you guys are crazy you know i mean you're looking for everything you're like the big vacuum cleaners getting ready to suck everybody up you know you're just like you guys are crazy um yeah i think we don't understand the idea of the end times the last days started when jesus rose and so that that's just not even a the question maybe are we close to jesus's return we're closer today than we were five minutes ago yeah that's the answer and think about it this way too all of us are more certain about when jesus is going to come for us then when jesus is going to come for the world what do i mean by that everyone in this room knows you're going to be dead probably within years decades some younger people maybe a couple of scores of decades maybe 40 50 years everyone in this room will be gone these young guys maybe we can give them 60 70 years right we're more certain when we're gonna see jesus then when we're gonna see him come back so that's the real that's the more important coming isn't it okay um how do you respond to someone who says because jesus died for my sins then there's nothing stopping me from sinning we have a free pass romans six take it away pastor roman shall we continue in sin that grace may abound god forbid god forbid megan is the greek word may that thought never enter into your mind that's right that's right no that's and if you look at first uh john 3 people who stay in known sin are probably not saved stay in known sin meaning they don't want to get out of it scary okay i really struggle in understanding the ontological argument for the existence of god what is your take on this argument do you think it is sound so do i okay the ontological argument for the existence of god i don't use because it is so controversial and whenever you're trying to present someone good arguments you don't want to use weaker arguments because then they're going to ignore your good arguments and harp on your weaker argument if they're a skeptic so i don't use the ontological argument i use arguments like the cosmological argument which says the universe had a beginning therefore it must have had a beginner the teleological argument which is a design argument which says that there's design in the universe and design in life there must be a designer the moral argument which says if there's one thing morally wrong out there just one like say it's wrong to torture babies for fun or it's wrong to murder 6 million people in a holocaust then there has to be a god why because if there's no standard beyond us then everything's just a matter of opinion and we know those things aren't just a matter of opinion they're really wrong so there must be a standard beyond us that we're obligated to obey god's nature god's nature is good and we're obligated to obey it we're his creatures okay so i don't use the ontological argument but if you want to see a pretty good positive depiction of the ontological argument go to reasonablefaith.org that's william lane craig's website and he's got these actually his youtube channel he's got short little animated videos on all the major arguments for god and he does a fair job on the ontological argument so go there and you can also watch one on the cosmological teleological and moral arguments as well so this is a good one because this rolls right in here um adam says uh um atheists use moral judgment just like christians yes how do you know that god is good didn't you use a moral judgment or do you think god is good because you think he told you he's good well the concept of morality is a positive concept not a negative one um satan is a fallen angel in other words evil can't exist unless good exists evil is a privation in good in other words when people say there's too much evil in the world you want to ask them what do you mean by evil because they will have a difficult time explaining what evil is without referring to good evil is like cancer if you take all the cancer out of a good body you got a better body what happens if you take all the body out of the cancer it doesn't exist right it can't exist uh evil is like rust in a car if you take all the rust out of the car you got a better car if you take all the car out of the rust what do you have nothing it doesn't exist in other words evil can only exist as a parasite in a good thing so ultimate reality can't be evil ultimate reality can only be good and this is why c.s lewis and mere christianity points this out he says strict dualism can't be true what's strict dualism that there are equal and opposite forces a good force in an evil force that can't or the yin yang you see in uh in the new age right that can't be ultimate reality because the bad force has to borrow from the good force to even exist in order for satan to exist he has to have being which is good he has to have free will which is good in fact satan metaphysically is good because he has these qualities he has mind emotion and will and in order for him to do evil he has to have those good qualities but you can't imagine a completely evil thing it doesn't exist it has to borrow or steal from good so ultimate reality is good and that's how one way we know that god is the source of goodness he is ultimate reality it's not arbitrary he is the standard of goodness okay um if god and heaven is so majestic why are we living in such a predictable and natural world why don't we see miracles around the world well what is the purpose of a miracle according to the bible the purpose of a miracle is to [Music] point back to god in some way the primary purpose is to point back to god uh moses goes to pharaoh and says let my people go well why is he gonna trust me god i'm just i'm just a sheepherder why is the great pharaoh gonna trust that he ought to listen to me god says you'd be able to do miracles right so he goes to pharaoh and he can he does miracles by the way one of the interesting miracles that occurs as you know is when pharaoh i mean when moses throws down his staff it turns into a snake and then the egyptian magicians do the same thing apparently you can actually take a a serpent a snake of some kind and if you paralyze it just right you can when you throw it down it'll it'll wake up now i've never tried this myself right i've heard of this okay so there are tricks to do this but what happens after they have that showdown moses's snake eats pharaoh's snake why is that important what is the symbol of egypt it's on the sarcophagus of king tut what do you see up there a cobra right basically this little incident shows that god's that god is the true god that yahweh beats up the gods of israel and all of the plagues if you look at the plagues there are slams on the egyptian gods they worship frogs you want frogs we'll give it to you they worship the nile we'll turn it to blood they worship the firstborn or they worship pharaoh he's god we'll kill the firstborn they worship the sun we'll blot it out right these miracles finally show pharaoh you are the true god now he has a change of heart later as you know but the point here is is that miracles are showing the truth about god and miracles like the resurrection have to be rare events if they occurred all the time they would lose what we call their apologetic value imagine if resurrections occurred routinely what would the resurrection of christ mean nothing i mean you go to somebody and you go jesus rose from the dead to prove he was god and the guy goes so what uncle leroy just rose from the dead two weeks ago you know now i got to give the inheritance back no it's gotta be a rare event it can't be a regular event in fact the only way you could recognize miracles is against the backdrop of natural events occurring over and over again why is this world so regular well one way if it wasn't regular you couldn't live you've got to have a natural loss doing the same thing over and over again so our bodies could function but secondly without that backdrop of natural laws of things happening over and over again the same way you would never be able to recognize a miracle and or an act of god unless you saw it was an exception to that regular event now again i'm not saying miracles can't occur today i think they do occur today in fact a mutual uh scholar that both dr bennett and i know craig keener has written a hernia-inducing two-volume set called miracles where he goes in and he goes around the world and actually gets documented evidence of miracles occurring but these things occur normally in places that don't have the kind of access that we have to the bible and other things but i don't know if craig i can't remember dr bennett if he's if he found any resurrections resurrections are extremely rare if at all no but there there are you know and again we don't have it's you know it's hard to tell but there are there do seem to be people that have died and resurrected but but it's hard to to determine you know i think we would be best to be skeptical right on on on things that we you know and we should jesus always said go show yourself to the priest right if you've been healed you should be able to show yourself and it should be healed um but the question though um and i think this he was asking about um the the natural world and it's so predictable i don't know that the world is really that predictable i mean there is majesty in the world today there there's beauty in the world i mean i was driving me and mindy went on a date night last night and we were driving shoes i want to go on an adventure i want to just be awed by nature you know and and i'm like where do you want to go she goes just somewhere you know and she's like i'm odd every day i see things and whatever i think that the way we whatever these are that we put on we tend to see what we want to see you know our attitude determines the way we see things i think the world's incredible i don't think that it's i mean i know that there are natural laws but but i don't think that there's not majesty in the world and there's not like beauty in the world i mean you know you go sit out on the beach and watch the sun go down and you're just like wow but there's people that'll sit on the beach and go ain't nothing i don't play my play my phone well so one person saw beauty one person played on their phone i think that sometimes that beauty depends on how we're looking for but i don't know that the world that we're in is just doesn't really show because the heavens declare the glory of the lord the heavens are pretty incredible oh they are the heavens declare the glory of god that's right last time i had the opportunity to be here we talked about how awesome the heavens are uh we mentioned that the number of stars in the universe are about equivalent to the number of grains of sand on all the beaches on all the earth times one hundred thousand and to go from one star to another star just in our galaxy going space shuttle speed of five miles a second would take you over 200 000 years and the bible says the heavens declare the glory of god and as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those that fear him and as high as the heavens are above the earth so are my ways higher than your ways or my moral ways higher than your immoral ways i mean this is the kind of being we're dealing with so it's beyond the majestic and let me let's just briefly look at one simple thing as well it's not simple but we've all experienced it because we're all here we've all been born how many people have seen someone else born every mother should go yes i've seen someone else born men you've seen someone else born when you see your own flesh and blood come out of another human being you don't go evolution right you go this is amazing how does this happen but it happens every day and yet it causes just become basically jaundiced about it like oh it's no big deal what credible that is human biology reproduction how can you say there's no mind behind that that takes a lot more faith than saying there's some mind behind this this is incredible all right next one we don't stone people to death anymore because we as a society realize it's needlessly cruel but at one point in history god was cool with it what's up with that i i didn't catch the first one we don't stone people to death anymore because we as a society realize it's needlessly cruel but at one point in history god was cool with it what's up with that well today we do something far worse we actually dismember children in the womb and we call it a moral right you know i had a situation on a college campus not long ago where um a young woman brought up the god killing people in the old testament and i went through my answer to it and then i said to her hey you mind if i ask you a question you she had a real problem with god killing people so i said where are you on the abortion issue and she said oh i'm pro-choice let's ask you a question when god decides who dies in the old testament you call him immoral but when you decide who lives and dies here today you call that a moral right can you justify that for me god can't play god but you can god can take life anytime he wants he's the author of life in fact if christianity is true people don't really die they just change location right they just go from this life to the next life and it's up to god when that happens he's under no obligation to give us 80 health healthy years here on earth he could take us out at 2 years old or 82 years old that's up to him but we don't have that same right yet we claim we have that same right to do so so i don't know the um the process of stoning chip i don't know how long it takes you to die when you're stoned they said that they would look to see uh um a brain when they crush the skull it could be instant i don't know which is crazy because if that happened to paul you know it which is interesting because in first corinthians 2 he says that he was with them in weakness and fear and much trembling there's there's thoughts that paul because he had been stoned and had been you know been alive that that he he suffered from like uh um seizures yes and so he might be preaching and fall into a seizure into the corinthians they thought this guy's whack you know and paul's like no i bear in my body the scars of jesus and weakness god uses me so but the idea is maybe stoning was i don't know you know it's it's all by the way the the the question is a moral question as you notice i don't know who's asking the question but if an atheist is asking the question i always ask by what moral standard are you judging this to be wrong because if you're an atheist you don't have a moral standard exactly that's just your opinion now it's fair for an atheist to say okay i might not have a moral standard but you as a christian claim this is a god of love so how do you explain this particular uh problem so to speak that's a fair question but i see atheists all the time stealing from god while they're arguing against him which is the subject of a book we have on the book table called stealing from god why atheists need god to make their case they're actually stealing a standard of morality to complain about god which is odd because as you know richard dawkins the famous atheist called god unjust many times and yet on the other hand he will say there is no justice there is no right and wrong there is there is nothing good or bad we're just dancing to our dna well look you can't have it both ways right you can't have something be unjust and at the same time say there's no such thing as justice either justice exists and that means god exists or justice doesn't exist and god doesn't exist and your complaint is irrelevant because there's no such thing as justice or unjustice they're all self-defeating it's like people go well truth can't be known really how do you know that's true yeah how do you know that's true you know it's true there's no truth um the question here why did the protestant reformers remove the deuterocanonical books they didn't um the the apocrypha was added um 15 46 1547 at the council of trent by the catholic church because they had a problem with purgatory with martin luther and they needed to have some biblical support to support it they didn't have it so they added it at the council of trent so the reformers did not remove it it was added by the catholic church um what's up with many evangelical christians tendency this is a good question i like this question what's up with many evangelical christians tennessee to move further to the right becoming more militant less loving towards the least fortunate and more demanding of our christian rights is this just not a return to constantine where they wanted the state to force christianity on everyone are the nuns reacting to this form of selfish christianity yeah i can't speak to what other people are doing chris jesus is our standard and i will say that you don't judge any religion by its heretics okay you don't judge you don't judge any philosophy by its abuse either you judge it by its proper use i do see probably more of a kind of a a natural human nature when you are being somewhat persecuted to want to lash out and try and grab your rights back i get that and i personally believe that we christians should seek the truth in politics like we do everywhere else in fact um if i had an opportunity i would show you a satellite photo of the korean peninsula and if you ever you google korea satellite night on your iphone you'll see this image of south korea being full of light in north korea being almost completely dark and the the reason that these two countries are different is one thing politics you have political freedom in the south you don't have any in the north the north is a concentration camp my question to people is which country would you rather live in south korea or north korea where do you think the gospel is spreading more south korea or north korea well south korea and if we care about religious freedom and we care about the ability to live and preach the gospel we have to care about the laws that are made in washington tallahassee and you're a local saratoga of city council or whatever that is right now that doesn't mean that's your primary calling but you have to care about it and but but you have to do it in a way that brings honor to christ you don't you know you don't get all ornery and ugly with people in fact what does peter say about this he says that if you treat people well who treat you well well you know better than anybody else but if you treat people well who are mean to you then you can show them the love of christ and that's what we ought to do did jesus ever say that he was the second person in the godhead um i'll answer this real quickly jesus over and over and over again did things and said things that would that would the jews picked up stones to stone him because they said that he was god and he didn't go hold on don't stone me because i didn't really claim that i was god you know um so the the reason we call it the second person in the godhead is because we say well jesus was god and we have father so um yes jesus is got what do you think of andy stanley's book irresistible so what book what his book irresistible andy stanley oh irresistible i reviewed andy's book i don't agree with everything in andy i don't look andy is a friend of mine i've known andy for over 20 years i don't agree with everything andy says or does i agree with about 95 percent of what he says and does and i don't even agree with 95 of what i say and do okay so uh but i i did review the book irresistible and the main point of irresistible is that he was trying to say that our apologetic ought to be the resurrection uh to get people to become christians and that that was the apologetic of the first century christians and it's our apologetic should be our apologetic today in other words when [Music] matthew mark luke john and the other paul and the other uh other apostles are going around trying to get gentiles to become christians they didn't say you've got to believe this in aaron old testament right what they said was jesus rose from the dead he's the savior now after they became christians then the bible the old testament and the promised new testament was the conclusion that they came to it wasn't a premise in other words inerrancy of the bible is not a premise when you're going out trying to witness to people you know it would be like walking up to a muslim and saying you ought to believe the uh uh you ought to believe in christianity because the bible says so what's he gonna say no you ought to believe in islam because the quran says so well you're at a stalemate then right how do you know that how do you know the bible's true how do you know the quran's true remember christianity did not originate with a book christianity originated with an event the resurrection do you realize there were thousands of christians before a line of the new testament was ever written i mean paul wrote romans why not because he read something in a book but because the risen jesus appeared to him john wrote john because there is jesus the risen jesus appeared to him et cetera you get the idea in other words the new testament writers did not create the resurrection the resurrection created the new testament writers thankfully they did write it down so we could know about it and orient our lives toward it but the reason christianity is true is not because a series of documents we call the bible says it's true the reason christianity is true is because an event occurred the resurrection and from that event then we can ascertain that the bible's true because if jesus rose from the dead whatever he teaches is true jesus taught the entire old testament is the word of god and he promised the new testament look i just have a personal policy if somebody rises from the dead i just trust whatever the guy says okay so this is the main point that andy's trying to get a point get across in irresistible he's trying to say that jesus is our standard and you can arrive at inerrancy later you don't start there i mean imagine imagine if a muslim came to you and said you ought to be a muslim because the koran says says islam is true what are you going to say well i don't believe in the quran you got to give me evidence the quran is true right same thing is true when an unbeliever is going to say to you why would i believe the bible got to give me evidence it's true how is it just to expect a human who has an average of 70 to 80 years to make an eternal decision what if i'm humanity what if humanity they wanted to be separated from god but to be absent from the body do they get another chance is it just for somebody who has seven eighty years to make an eternal decision okay uh first of all it's a moral question so it's saying that somehow god would be immoral for only given a 70 to 80 years to make a decision i don't know why that would be the case i think that's plenty of time to make a decision and you know there's an age of accountability and it seems i don't know what you think about this pastor chip but it seems like people who die before the age of accountability like for example david's baby are in heaven after the age of accountability then you have to make a choice because god will not force you into heaven against your will now what is the age of accountability well back then who knows 6 7 today 36 37 i don't know um so uh i would say that god is going to be just he's not going to be unjust secondly the eternal the act is or sometimes the question's asked this way how can somebody go to hell for a temporal sin right well the length of the time it took to commit a crime is not the length of the time you're going to serve your punishment it could take three seconds to murder somebody but your punishment's not going to be for three seconds right it's going to be a lot longer secondly if you've sinned against an infinite being just like if you murder a police officer you're probably going to get a stiffer sentence in most states anyway then you would if you murder anybody else because there's an added punishment when you try and murder somebody who's out there trying to protect people so the sin against the infinite being is the ultimate sin thirdly who said you stop sinning when you get to hell you're still willing against god in hell so i think the time allotted is enough and god is going to be just no one in the afterlife is going to go oh god if i only had more time oh god if you are only giving me more evidence going back to the these because these are the questions the sexual questions they're the ones you get them on college campuses more anything don't you how do you deal with homosexuality within the church sharing christ with someone who identifies as a homosexual and dealing with your own conflicting feelings in the wake of scientific research showing genetic disposition to homosexuality so i think what the christian's asking um how do you deal with it in the church if you're sharing jesus to someone who says they're homosexual and you're struggling on the inside of how to deal with that because you're convinced the scientific research shows that they may have a genetic disposition towards it okay first of all i i don't want to say anything until i hear their story i want to sit down and talk to them and say how did you get to where you are i'm just going to tell you something a person i know who's a pastor who has thousands of people in his church said to me once he said i've never met a lesbian who is not sexually abused so you can understand why someone like that would not want to be with a man so i wanna i wanna try and find out why they believe or feel the way they feel okay only after that might i try and bring up some points to the conversation and one of the points might be we all have attractions we ought not act on there's a difference between attractions and actions every one of us have attractions that we ought not act on if you acted on every one of your attractions you'd be dead already i know i would and one of the most important verses in the entire bible for our culture right now is proverbs 4 23. proverbs 4 23 says guard your heart because everything you do flows from it in fact it says above all else guard your heart what does our culture say guard your heart or follow your heart bible says guard your heart don't follow your heart because your heart is deceitful and wicked who can know it and if you think your heart is good let me just give you one quick illustration as to why it's not let's suppose before you came here tonight you went into the bathroom to get ready you looked in the mirror and you saw there was a sign attached to your head and it transmitted every single thought you had you couldn't cover it you couldn't turn it off everybody who saw you could read what you were thinking would you be here right now i wouldn't be here because our thoughts are evil aren't they it's easy to be bad it's hard to be good we need to resist many times what we want to do because if you follow your heart many times it's going to end in disaster and our culture says no follow your heart the truth is we have to follow the truth we have to follow the savior and i know this is a difficult you know what this is like abortion i think in this sense pastor chip this issue is not difficult intellectually it's difficult emotionally because we all know people and we want what's best for them and we say well um who are you how are you going to find companionship if you don't find somebody to the same sex because you're not attracted to the opposite sex so we're like we we want you to find companionship we want you to find a mate so emotionally it's difficult but intellectually it's not difficult intellectually god has made us men and women and yet we live in a fallen world and we have tendencies and hearts that want to go the wrong way and actually our goal is not to find a mate as much as we want to it our goal is to become like jesus our goal is to know christ and to make him known that's why we're here and tragically unfortunately one of the most well it's not tragic that sex is one of the most powerful and love is one of the most powerful um events or it's not the right word sex is a powerful endeavor that we want to engage in yet because it's so powerful it could also be so dangerous sex is like fire if you put it in your fireplace it's wonderful it'll warm you you get it anywhere else in your house it will burn your house down and our culture wants to treat us or wants to call sex just physical oh sex is just physical no sex is not just physical and we all know it's not if sex if sex is just physical why is it worse if somebody rapes you than if somebody just physically assaults you if sex is just physical physical why is it that if your spouse has sex with somebody else you don't go oh that's just like a workout because sex is not just physical it's emotional it's moral it's spiritual it transcends the physical and we want to treat it like it's just physical oh did you score tonight what is it a game it's incredibly beautiful but also incredibly dangerous because of that and if you read paul in romans 1. there's not a more relevant passage in the scriptures with this if we suppress the truth about god to go our own way we're going to wind up with a futile mind futile thinking and a depraved mind where we are cheering on other people who are doing evil and i think illicit sex can do that to all of us do you know people right now who are involved in illicit sexual relationships who are just acting irrationally you know she's not for you look at the signs she's blinded to it you know you shouldn't be with him look at the sign blinded to it they're suppressing it because it is so powerful and that's how many times in the scriptures does it say flee sexual immorality we don't like that today but it's for our own good they're guard rails actually first corinthians 6 18 doesn't say flee it says continually be fleeing sexual immorality they're guard rails yeah it's not just one time in fact god's uh commands are guardrails to us you know you can drive down the highway and get anywhere you want if you stay between the guard rails right but if you start going through the guardrails or into the median you're not going to make it question when you buy a new car and you read the manual and it says do this but don't do this do this if you want to flourish with this card don't do this if you don't want to flourish don't do this if you want to get hurt don't do this or if you want to not get hurt please don't do this or you'll destroy yourself in the car do we get mad at hyundai or ford or chevy or whoever when they tell us don't do these things well why do we get mad at god when he writes a manual for us and says don't do these things why are we mad at them they're guardrails yeah his law is always for our best interests and the one who created us knows us better than ourselves question one on one of your podcast this is somebody asked this question you said there was a book that had proof for the exodus from egypt is there do you recall that uh yes listen to our um on our youtube channel the cross-examine youtube channel every thursday night we'll do one tomorrow night too lord willing but every thursday night we do a live stream and about a year or so ago we did one with titus kennedy and stephen meyer on 10 evidences from egypt for the exodus titus kennedy is a uh archaeologist who has done excavations all over the world in fact he personally went to egypt actually sudan it was egypt during exodus times and found or refound confirmed the oldest inscription of yahweh in the world and it it is in sudan at the time it was egypt and this inscription comes from 1400 bc when was the exodus 1406. i'm sorry 1446. if you take the biblical dating and there are many other evidences for this so take a look at that on our youtube channel well we're four minutes past the time um and i want to honor people's um time have you enjoyed tonight um there are literally so many questions i mean i can just scroll and scroll so we because we're online as well and um i know we didn't get to answer all of them but we continue to do these things because we want to be a church that that that answers questions you know and you may be here tonight go out and agree with everything or whatever that's fine but aren't you at least proud that we're a church that's willing to take whatever question comes and and try our best to to uh to to answer it um i i also want to say this is important please hear this um we we really value this type of stuff um if you are interested in in some of this in a more intimate level we do have a small group that's called hardest questions answered and that small group starts september 8th at 7 30 and go online and sign up for it but that's an apologetics type of small group so if you're wanting maybe some more questions answered it's a great place to go we've got some real competent leaders for that but this is a value that we have at grace is that we want to make sure that if you go here if you have questions if you have things that you just want to know the answer to we want you to know that this is a safe place to ask those questions because uh we we do believe and i think frank you would agree with me that we have every reason in the world to throw christianity out there in the arena of truth because it wins thank you for inviting me yeah i'm sorry we're out of time but if anyone wants to talk privately i have a question i'll go out by the book table yeah he's got books out here if you'd like to get books dvds he'll um somebody asked questions would you be signing books you'll sign books they'll sign rocky balboa whatever you want uh um but uh he'll uh he'll be out there frank awesome can we give frank a uh um thank you thank you thank you come on man to the man um and i will i'm gonna hang out here in the sanctuary if you have any questions you'd like to ask um i'll hang out something that was burning you know um in your mind i'll hang out a little bit too frank's going to hang out there we do have to leave at 8 15. so so we got that real quickly lord thank you for this time thank you for the ability to do this thank you for that we live in a country that we do have the freedoms to do these things we take that uh um we do not take that lightly we're appreciative of that um i pray that you would continue to bless our church as we continue to try to answer the tough questions and lord i pray for any of those that have doubt or struggles or whatever lord that um eventually we could maybe get to them and help them process through that maybe we don't have the answer immediately but we will do our best to be with them and to struggle with them through those issues um because we do believe lord that ultimately that jesus did rise from the dead and that is the reason christianity exists and why it's so true and lord i pray that if anybody here or online does not know you as lord and savior lord i pray that they would make that decision to turn their heart to you and ask for forgiveness of sins and believe that you died on the cross for their sins and rose again on the third day we love you and thank you for everything in jesus name and everybody said amen one last announcement getting your church on on wednesday night does not absolve you from being in church on saturday or sunday so god bless everybody have a great evening um frank you on going out front and all the way i'll hang out god bless everybody be safe going home you

Channel: Cross Examined

Views: 94,900

Rating: 4.9166665 out of 5

Keywords: Frank Turek, Christianity, Atheism, Apologetics, God, Theology, Bible, Religion

Id: q_WKft3BpqQ

Length: 90min 5sec (5405 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021