Apologetics group lesson Tuesday Night

Hi.

Before we get into this, I'm going to give everybody a piece of paper.

It's not to make an airplane or a crown.

We've actually got some cool stuff.

Cool stuff on there.

Then I'm going to do a little object lesson before we get into it.

Anybody wants extras?

I have extras.

I have a friend or something later.

First of all, I'm going to say to you that the world is not everything you think it is.

Most days, it's not everything that we perceive.

There's so much more going on.

Somebody else in the world looks just like you or almost like you.

Somebody else in the world might even have your same name.

Somebody just died in the last 10 seconds in a horrific way.

Here we sit peacefully in the chairs.

The world is not everything that we know that's going on.

So I'm going to just stretch your mind a little bit.

Do a little object lesson if you've ever seen this before. Don't ruin it for everybody.

I'll hold this pen up right here.

If I drop this pen, will it hit the floor?

Yeah.

Will you test this?

I'm happy.

Did it hit the floor?

It appeared in all observable phenomena.

I didn't hear it before.

It's pretty clear, right?

What if I told you that that is a mathematical impossibility?

What?

If I drop this marker from right here toward the floor, will it first pass halfway to the floor?

Yeah.

This marker will first pass halfway to the floor.

Then from that point, will it pass halfway to the floor again?

Yeah.

Sure. Then halfway to the floor again?

Yeah.

At what point will it stop passing halfway to the floor?

Oh, gosh.

When it hits the floor?

No.

What is the smallest space?

It's continuous over here.

It's infinite.

If it starts here and goes halfway to the floor first, and then halfway to the floor, and then halfway to the floor,

did you know that for the majority of the existence of mankind, zero did not exist?

It's a relatively new invention.

Okay, but if it's infinite, why does it bounce back at you?

I'd ask you the same question.

We observably know it hits the floor, and that's why it bounces back, right?

I would hypothesize, I don't want to get into this too deeply, because we're going to use it for this more than what we're talking about right now,

but I would hypothesize that eventually the space becomes infinitely small.

Does that make sense?

Right, infinitely.

If you divide it in half infinitely over time, then eventually the space becomes infinitely small.

And I would posit then, I'm making the statement that this is true, whether it's true or not, I can't prove it in this creation other than by what we observed, right?

But I would posit that infinitely small is the same as zero.

Now mathematically, that's not correct.

But if it's infinitely small, it's not the same as zero, right?

I want you to bear that in mind that as we look at a couple of things here, I've given you a handout, we're not going to go over all of this.

If there's one on here in particular in a minute, we're not going to be going that long, okay?

So if there's one on here in a minute that you particularly are interested in, then you can point out when that time comes.

And I have been hammering home in the last five minutes, three minutes, whatever it's been, is where it says Big Bang, universe begins.

So the scientists of the world, at one point in time, somebody hypothesized that the galaxy, the universe, everything that's created all matter, etc.,

expanded suddenly from an infinitely small point.

I submit to you, if you'll follow this marker for one more time, I submit to you that infinitely small is non-existent.

So their argument is that everything expanded into being from an infinitely small amount of matter, infinitely small, and I submit to you infinitely small is zero, non-existent.

And if it's infinitely small, non-existent, and then suddenly became to be, then something caused it to be, because everything that happens has an effect,

and it is an effect, and it has a cause.

So the cause was, I like what the marker fell halfway, then halfway, halfway, halfway, halfway, again,

and eventually the space became infinitely small, and the marker impacted the floor.

The cause was, I dropped the marker, or as you said, gravity.

The speed is affected by gravity.

Also, by the way, this little scientific side note, we know that the speed is affected by mass and gravity, not error resistance.

So over a period of time, the falling object falls at 32 feet per second, per second,

and that is always the case, regardless of error resistance.

Now, there's glide, there's drift, that's the difference of this paper, that kind of thing,

but if the object is not sufficiently parachuting, let's say, that's glide and drift, right?

If the object is not sufficiently parachuting, then it will fall 32 feet per second per second, which means the first feet, first second, 32 feet, second, second, 64 feet, third second, 96 feet.

So you can actually calculate, if you drop something from 500 feet, exactly how many seconds it will take to hit the ground,

and it's a lot less than you think, by the way.

Okay, I want you to do that math.

So the bottom line is, they posit that the universe all began from an infinitely small point.

I totally agree that infinitely small point is non-existence, something had to cause it, that is actually a proof for God.

You follow?

So what we're talking about today is apologetics.

Apologetics, the science of apologetics comes from the Greek word, apologia, and it means a reasoned argument.

I can give you a good reason why we believe everything that we believe, everything we believe about God,

everything we believe about Jesus, everything we believe about creation, everything we believe about Moses, Abraham, Adam, Jacob, Isaac.

I can give you good reasons why we believe all of those things.

I cannot anymore, anyway, I could maybe years ago, but now it's all been dispelled,

give you a good reason why anybody believes evolution.

You say, well, yeah, they have good reasons, yeah.

Well, most of the good reasons that did exist have all now drifted away, right?

They had extinct fish, and now the fish have been found to not be extinct,

or they had what they said were middle forms between one form and another,

but then they later found those middle forms existing at the same time as both the former and the latter,

a hundred or a thousand or thousands of years later.

So this didn't die out to make this, it just doesn't make any sense.

The bottom line is I can give you reasonable arguments for everything we believe. Go.

Maybe you could just give me an idea between what you think and what you think.

I just thought that I was cool.

Yeah, so there's a debate whether it's two or one.

I've heard somebody say one percent, but the bottom line is not much, is it?

Yeah. And actually, that sounds like a really big deal,

but do you know what the percentage difference in DNA between a man and a dog is?

Does somebody have their phone?

Google that, and we'll come back.

Yeah, what's the DNA difference between a man and a banana? How about that?

Okay, so it sounds like crazy that we're so close to monkeys,

but once you look those numbers up, you won't be thinking it's quite as crazy,

or you'll be thinking it's all kind of crazy.

All right, anyway, DNA is the next thing we're going to talk about on this list.

As a matter of fact, it's coming.

All right, so DNA is the language that is written in cells that determines what they do.

50%?

50%.

With a banana?

With a banana.

What?

Yeah, some have estimated more than 60%, actually.

Now, I submit to you this a great argument right there, because why on earth would the DNA,

what would make any sense if the DNA would be similar between a man and a banana?

Why would that be? Banana is a completely different thing.

Why make the DNA and the cells function the same way? Look the same way? The same kind of...

25% for a dog.

We're less DNA with a dog than we do with a man.

I guess that's good, because they breathe and stuff.

So we are all basically vegetables.

In a way, we're cellular matter, carbon-based.

There are no non-carbon-based life forms really that are prevalent anyway.

So that's part of why.

But the question is, that indicates, if there is language, if I wrote instructions out to

Solow on a piece of paper on what to do, and I wrote the same set of instructions out to Curtis

on a piece of paper, and I wrote almost the same instructions, but 1% off out to Josh

and give him a piece of paper, the three of you got together

without even knowing where those notes came from, you'd look at them and you say,

hey, these came from the same person.

The writing looks the same.

Your directions are a little bit different than mine, but clearly they still came from the same person.

That is DNA evidence.

DNA is composed of intense parts that form essentially like a pattern.

If you've probably seen that twisting helix thing that DNA makes.

And they're just in different order.

So if you take, I'll get you in one second, if you take different components

and you put them in different order to give directions, what's that called?

If I take different parts, sticks and circles and things like that,

and I put them together to give somebody directions, what's that called?

It's a sequence. Say it again?

Written language.

Written language, that's what it is, right?

Dots and spaces.

That's Morris Code.

But it represents letters. It's a language.

And people learn it like a language.

It's actually easier to learn than most languages,

but then you're still limited by your own vocabulary once you've learned it.

What words do you know?

And if you dot, dot, dot, dot in French and I only speak English,

I'm going to look, I'm going to look at what you're talking about.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Because that's how it might have been a French word when I spelled that out.

It's got funny characters.

I got that in French and you wanted it first.

So the point is, DNA is language.

Language proves intelligence.

So now between the Big Bang Theory,

we had a cause that created everything,

started from nothing. Boom! Here it is, between that.

And at the same time as the boom happened,

language was written in all of the living objects of creation

that was essentially similar,

and it proves that an intelligent designer created every living thing.

Now most scientists who are basically okay with thinking, right?

Conclude that. Some don't. Go ahead, Sola.

Do you have a question?

So you were saying about how most living names have a certain shared amount of DNA, right?

Yep.

How is it the case when we come from other humans and bananas come from trees?

So bananas get their DNA from their trees, right?

It's passed down. A banana is basically a seed, right?

It's passed down from a tree, right?

Which comes from the previous banana, seed, tree, and so on all the way back to the beginning.

And the DNA that was written in the living plant was written by God.

I think the bananas is like fingernails. You can kind of take the fingernail off.

A banana is kind of like that. I'm bringing her.

Okay. Arden?

An extremely simple explanation for how that works is that

roughly 90% of the DNA that you possess is a series of yes-no options.

If something is triggered yes, and you have that,

somebody triggered no, and you don't.

So banana, all of that DNA that we share with the banana is those series of yes-no options.

And there, yes-no options make them look like bananas,

and our yes-no options make us look like humans.

It's looks, it's texture, it's color.

So basically what you're saying is that God was doing multiple exams with multiple choice questions

and decided to press random eyes.

Well, I mean, that's really simple because DNA is not actually all yes-no, right?

It's a lot more than that. But you're getting the basic idea.

And languages like that, that's why you can get monkeys to type complete sentences.

Because they just bang away at the keys.

And if they bang away at the keys for long enough,

it just happens to randomize into something that looks like language.

But in the case of God, it all looks like language.

There's no randomness to it. It all looks like languages.

So inside every living organism, I don't want to do all this too long,

because I have a couple more of these I want to hit.

Inside every living organism are cells.

Cells need directions on what to let in and what to not let in.

They need directions on how to replicate themselves and make more of themselves, right?

So basically birthing a new cell, how to split down.

And the way that works with DNA is they will literally replicate their DNA.

So the DNA is clenched together and it begins to come apart.

As it comes apart, the middle section is filled with the other section.

It's like if I had a right hand and a left hand clasping and as I pulled it apart,

a right hand formed here holding onto this and a left hand formed here holding onto this.

Now I've got double DNA.

Then the cell splits right down the middle between the two DNAs.

We've got two cells.

That's got to be programmed in the DNA for that to happen.

It's programmed in human DNA.

Right now, as you're sitting there, cells in your liver, cells in your bicep,

cells in your, not your hair, because technically your hair is dead,

but in your follicles, right?

But in all the parts of your body are replicating.

As you get older, they replicate less well beyond what we call time of life.

And your healing processes slow down and they don't divide as well and so on.

And things like your hair grays and your skin gets wrinkly.

Your liver stops working.

You got to go get dialysis or whatever.

You can still catch them.

You can take it off with relatively little pain, right?

Because there's no nerves in it.

The follicle that creates the hair is alive.

And it's, if I can say it this way,

your follicle is continuing to poop out your hair all day long.

Right?

I've never heard somebody de-mug science with science.

Oh, there you go.

So that's what we're doing today.

So apologetics is the reasons, arguments are reasons,

defense of what we believe.

So between DNA and Big Bang Universe begins,

you pretty well pretty much debunked evolution and all that good jazz.

You pretty well put...

Right?

So we're going to hit just one more, I think, off this top list.

I'll give you, but if you want more, if there's something there that catches your eye,

please point out because we won't be able to do all of these.

So irreducible design.

So when you're talking about evolution,

the point is that animals evolve based on their environment

and they get better at doing something and helps them survive better.

The ones that got better survived better

and the ones that didn't get better died off.

That's natural selection, right?

That's how it works.

And so then they say, this, that's how we got new species, right?

But the problem is there are species that exist that are irreducible.

There's a single-celled organism, a single-celled amoeba,

that has a tail.

I'll probably mess the exact number up, but it has a tail that has like 125 unique parts in its tail.

It's a single-cell.

How did that evolve?

What did that evolve up from?

It could not have evolved up from another living organism because it's a single-cell.

There's nothing smaller that's alive, right?

So to say that things evolved up into more complex life forms,

there it is, a single-cell organism that's super complex already.

So it didn't evolve up from something.

It was obviously created that way.

And humanized as an example of this is monstrously complex, right?

And it doesn't, nothing like it exists anywhere else in creation and so on.

So irreducible design is another argument for how, against evolution of for God's creation.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Is everything in so complex?

Not everything is complex, but go ahead.

Why am I never able to hear anything across the street,

but my dog can hear anything within a 10 mile radius?

Yeah, so dog's hearings ranges different frequencies.

Sound, all sound is in frequencies, right?

And so if you have a sound that comes from far away,

the way sound works is it travels as a wave, like this, right?

High sounds, low sounds have different waves.

So high sounds will tend to travel differently.

Like they'll, like a clacking or even a gunshot has a bit of a clacking to it, something like that.

We'll travel a long way.

Well, dogs can hear a much higher range of sound than we can.

So the bits of, like if you, if you went outside right now and you yelled, you said,

Hey, really loud, right?

You would think that's bassy and loud.

To you, it would sound bassy and loud, but your voice spans a wide range of sound.

You're just not hearing the high end.

A mile away that your dog won't hear the hey, but he might hear the that goes with it.

Right?

And you hear, Hey, your dog hears, Hey, but he also hears, huh?

So that's, that's why, that's why animals respond differently because they're,

they're range and certain sounds travel much better.

So big sounds cause vibrations.

So actually they travel better through surfaces, through water.

That's if you go underwater, you're going to water and you hear underwater, you hear,

you can only hear those bassy noises because big sounds, big wave sounds travel through water.

As a vibration where the little sounds just bounce off the water.

So you don't hear the little sounds.

Okay.

So back on task.

All right.

Okay, go.

I'm good for questions, bro.

This is what this time is about.

You said, um, you said that it's bassy sounds travel through the water while the high pitch

sounds travel off of the water.

Kind of, yeah.

If you're underwater, how does the high sound get the chance that I was off of the water?

Well, if you're underwater and you create a sound, you probably would only create low

sounds.

If you create high sounds, they will travel through the water.

They're just not going to travel as far, right?

All sound will vibrate anything.

Like if I play a, if I play the string on this bass guitar, you wouldn't know it, but

this paper right next to it is vibrating.

But it isn't only my sound that's vibrating, right?

But the thread, this cord is designed to vibrate and it's designed to produce a sound

so we can hear it.

That makes any sense.

So all sounds create vibration.

In fact, by the way, what you're actually hearing is the vibration that's created in

the tiny bones in your ear and then it recreates the sound inside your ear and your brain interprets

it.

Okay.

This is not a lesson about inner ear.

So we disagree about the anatomy of the inner ear, but yeah, they're very, very small.

The bones are here, here, okay.

Yeah, you can get all that kind of stuff.

All right.

So a couple of arguments.

Someone says, someone says, I just, frankly, don't believe in God unless I can see him.

Unless I can see God or experience God firsthand, I wouldn't believe in him.

Well, there's miracles.

There's testimony and there's the complexity of creation.

There's plenty of evidence.

You're not going to see God ever the way you see another person because God, as the Bible

explains, is spirit.

Can he take a physical form and do physical things?

Sure, he can, but he is spirit.

And so light does not bounce off of spirit.

So that whole idea of, oh, we're going to go in the old prison that closed down and we're

going to shine ultraviolet light and detect ghosts and whatever.

That's all a bunch of hooey.

Light doesn't bounce off of spirits.

So you might see a semi-physical form of a demon or something because that could actually

reflect light, but the bottom line is spirits are invisible to the naked eye because all

the eye is just picking up the light that's bouncing back off of stuff and making an image

in your brain.

That's all that's happening.

Okay.

People say, what about suffering?

This is one of the worst arguments that people use.

How can God be?

If God exists and he is all powerful and he is all loving, then how can there be suffering?

And the answer to that is free will.

People create the suffering.

In fact, we've been creating, we've been really, really good at it.

We're creating suffering for thousands of years now.

Probably six to 8,000 years, not millions.

The earth has probably been here for under 10,000 years, but you can do that science

on your own is really good arguments for under 10,000 years.

Yes, sir.

It brings on always bad behavior.

No.

Because before out of the need, like, you know, animals would eat trees for and stuff like

that, but then God, in His great mercy, gave us protection.

Animals had to survive.

They no longer could have what they had.

So they have to eat other animals and people had to start to fight him.

And with suffering, for instance, let's say if you would cut yourself and you were bleeding,

but you did suffer.

I mean, you really could just keep bleeding not knowing what's going on.

Yeah, actually suffering actually is actually, that's a good thing, but sometimes levels of

suffering is what allows healing, is allowed warning, allows protection.

Not to make it all good, but in a way suffering is not always the same.

Nobody likes this thought, but the truth is your suffering protects you from worse suffering.

Your suffering protects you from worse suffering.

Yeah.

So, okay, so we're going to skip down to the next slide, which I didn't grab the thing

I'm about.

Somebody's back there.

I'm not doing all these, but if you see one that I'm not doing that you really want to

talk about, that's fine because we're piling through this and you get to take paper home.

Okay, so we'll talk about the resurrection.

So someone will say, yeah, Jesus was just some famous guy that lived.

Most people do not argue that Jesus lived.

He is a historical character.

There is a gazillion points of testimony.

In fact, there's probably more testimony, more written and eyewitness recorded and that kind

of thing, testimony about Jesus having lived and most of what he did in his lifetime.

Then there is anything that happened more than 500 years ago.

Yeah, there's that.

So, there's eyewitness testimony.

There were people who saw him dead, people who saw him alive.

If you went into court, not knowing you got served on a jury and you don't know anybody

that's involved, but there was eyewitness testimony that says, yeah, I saw Bob alive.

I saw Brenda go in the room with Bob with a gun.

Brenda came out.

I looked in the room.

Bob was dead.

I looked in the room.

You would assume Brenda killed Bob, right?

Because there's eyewitness testimony that makes it fit.

It's just logical, right?

So you have, in order to not believe in the resurrection, people have to be willing to

throw out eyewitness testimony.

They might do that based on the fact that it's so old.

That doesn't work in a court of law, right?

So a reasonable, in a court of law, you're looking for a reasonable belief that the person is not guilty.

If there's any reasonable reason, any logical reasonable reason that he could not be guilty,

then you find him not guilty, right?

Murder has no limits.

There's no, what do you call it, statute of limitations on murder, right?

So if somebody murdered 200 years ago and they had eyewitness testimony from 200 years ago,

nobody's alive anymore, or even a thousand years ago, right?

They could convict somebody and say, yeah, he murdered them based on that, but they have no problem with that,

because eyewitness testimony does not fade.

And we have eyewitness testimony to the fact that Jesus was alive, he was crucified,

and then later, on the third day, he was alive again, right?

The reliability of the witnesses in Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection are better than you'll ever get.

In a court of law, they will look at the witnesses and they will say,

does this person have a reason to be telling the truth?

Does this person have a reason to lie, right?

So the disciples, testifying about Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection,

were immediately in danger of being put to death.

So what should they have done?

They, by all rights, should have shut up.

This is called adversarial testimony.

It means they testified, no it's not, I got that wrong, I apologize,

it's the other one, I'm about to talk about it with that.

Anyway, they testified that Jesus lived, was crucified, and rose again, and they died for it.

People will die for a lie, but only if they truly believe it, right?

If they don't believe it, they would have to have some very, like, for the life of their family.

Like, if you don't die for this lie, then I'm going to slit your daughter's throat or something, right?

Those would be the kind of, only those kinds of things where people die for a lie.

They have to really believe it, or they have to really something to be at stake.

And for them, it was nothing, they were fishermen, they could have went back to fishing, right?

Or they were tax collectors, they could have gone back to tax, collecting taxes.

But they stayed to the end, and they died to a man, despite the fact they would be put to death,

because they knew it was true.

Because if I'm put to death for this, I'm going to come back to life, just like I saw Jesus do.

See?

So the reliability of the witnesses in that case is amazing.

The adversarial witness, the people who hated Jesus.

There were people alive in Jesus' day who hated him.

And yet, they wrote in journals, they recorded in history, they spoke publicly about the fact that he lived and died and rose again.

People that would never have admitted it.

Admitted it.

Josephus, who was a non-Christian Jewish historian, recorded,

about that time there was a man named Jesus Christ, people thought he was the Messiah, he lived,

they eventually crucified him, and then later he was seen again amongst his disciples doing miracles.

That's the recorded history that Josephus wrote, and he was not a believer.

And so if you can get every kind of reliable eyewitness testimony, then it happened.

That's the bottom line.

Also, Jesus' life, death, burial, resurrection was confirmed by prophecy.

There are hundreds of Old Testament prophecies.

Does anybody know one Old Testament prophecy, solo?

Solo.

Do you know one Old Testament prophecy?

Anything in the Old Testament that was told about Jesus that actually happened.

You said Old Testament?

Yep.

How great that happened to you?

That happened.

That has nothing to do with Jesus.

Oh.

Well, that's not true.

Jesus was there and had everything to do with him, but I'm talking about Jesus' life.

Was there something in Old Testament that you know that the prophets said would happen that happened in Jesus?

Yeah.

How did he have to say it?

RJ?

Born of a virgin.

Born of a virgin.

Classic, right?

Okay.

And then the easy ones on the paper, he would be crucified.

Did you know that when he was prophesied over 500 years before Jesus' birth that he would be crucified,

that at that time crucifixion had not yet been invented?

So before Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, the method of his death had not yet been put in place.

Is that not amazing?

He was hung on a tree.

Now, you could say, well, they just meant hanging by a rope, right?

But that's not what it says.

All right.

Also, it says his bones would not be broken.

No bones would be broken.

I also said he'd come back to life specifically on the third day.

And the list just goes on.

There are over 300.

This is what's cool.

If to just fulfill a very small amount of those prophecies, for one person, we'll fill them all, right?

What's the number?

Let's say a dozen.

To fulfill a dozen of those prophecies perfectly, which Jesus fulfilled over 300 of them,

but to fulfill a dozen of them would be impossible.

The odds of that are crazy.

Astronomical, right?

They did a mathematical calculation for Jesus to fulfill 40, 40, not 400, but 40, 40 of those prophecies,

would be the same as if you took quarters, stacked them on the state of Texas, big state, state of Texas.

And it goes three feet deep, right?

Then flew over Texas in a jet at 5,000 feet or whatever, and dropped a coin out the window, a quarter out the window.

Then flew back home, got a good night's sleep, and then flew back to Texas and picked up one quarter, and it was the one you dropped.

That's the odds.

It's impossible, right?

So Jesus was who he said he was, and he did claim to be God while he was alive.

God in the flesh died, was buried, rose again on the third day, walked with his disciples for 40 days after that,

and initiated the church of which we are a part, if you have accepted Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior.

People say Jesus did not claim to be God.

Jesus said, I and the Father are one.

Right?

And another number of statements he made basically saying, in fact, what they said, what they eventually wanted to kill him for,

he claimed to be God, and then that's when they picked up stones and tried to stone him, but then he walked away at that time and later was killed.

Right?

So the bottom line is if Jesus claimed to be God, he's either Lord, he is God, he deserves to be Lord, liar, or lunatic.

You're going to look at his life and the things that he did, and he's no liar, and he clearly wasn't nuts.

Therefore, he deserves to be Lord.

Okay?

And then if you look to the right at the truth, if you want to talk about truth, this really, so 20 years ago, started something called the postmodern movement in the world.

30 years ago.

And people began to question truth.

Is truth relevant?

Is your truth my truth?

Whatever.

Do we agree?

Do we have to agree?

We're all going to disagree to disagree.

I think there's gravity.

I don't think there is gravity.

Well, I dropped the pen.

I think it hits the floor.

I don't think it does hit the floor.

Everybody has different truths.

Right?

That began.

And it created a ripple that is now going on today.

The bottom line is this.

The truth is an absolute.

By definition.

We got up in the dictionary.

It is what it is.

It's true.

You know, it's testable.

It's reasonable.

It's examable.

It's true.

It's true.

So then they say it's offensive to claim that Jesus is the only way.

Right?

Except that that's pretty much what all religions say.

They tell you how to get to God.

The nature of a religion.

A religion is a thing that tells you how to get to God.

Jesus said, I am the way and the truth.

No man comes over the Father except by me.

Jesus said, I didn't say it.

Jesus said it.

So we're just quoting Jesus when we say he's the only way to heaven.

Right?

So all religions tell you they're the way.

Even atheism.

Just try to argue with an atheist about whether or not there is a God or not.

They're pretty stubborn.

They want you to believe there is no God.

Right?

And they know they're right and they're the only one that's right.

Right?

But then they'll in another context, we're not talking about whether there's a God or

not, they'll debate your truth.

They'll say, well, your truth is fine for you, but it's not fine for me.

Okay.

But they'll adamantly say you're wrong if you're not agreeing with their atheism.

And all truth is exclusive.

The bottom line is if something is true, its opposite is untrue.

But more so than that, if something is true, any variant of it is untrue.

If I would say to you, my car is in the parking lot.

It's a 2010 Dodge Caravan white with a slightly painted fender in the front left.

Because I had to patch it because I already bumped the dumpster.

And it's got some dirt on the top that I've been cleaning off because it's like from the

tree to the fraudster.

And I did all of that.

Is what I just said true, does anybody know my vehicle?

What?

Is it true?

It's wrong.

It's not.

Because I said the damage was on the front left bumper, but it's on the front right.

It only takes one aspect.

The difference is you may not know the one aspect, right?

You didn't know it was on the front right, so the front left, whatever.

But that's it.

Jesus didn't do that.

Jesus didn't play around.

And they killed him for it.

The bottom line is it's true.

He's true.

And truth is exclusive.

It only takes one little thing to be different and you're out.

So my assertion and the assertion of any Christian really should be that upon close and personal

open-minded examination of the facts surrounding and including in the Gospel, any person might

conclude that Jesus is indeed the way, the truth, and the life.

If you refuse, you are not refusing on grounds of logic.

Don't play with me.

All right?

We'll figure it out.

If we're still discussing it, that's one thing.

But if you won't believe the truth, that's on you, right?

It's the truth.

It is what it is and you won't believe it.

That's on you.

So, same way with your friends, same way with your family, same with your coworkers where

if they won't believe the truth, there's something more going on there.

Unfortunately, because of this whole post-modern era that started, people started taking the

Christian truth, the truth that Jesus taught, and tweak it a little bit.

Like I love Jesus.

Jesus is my Lord, I'm living for Jesus, but it's okay that I insert whatever that thing

is that you do that you really shouldn't do.

Sleep with my girlfriend, steal money from my mother's purse.

Because Jesus is my Lord and I'm going to heaven anyway.

He'll forgive it.

He'll forget it.

It'll be fine.

I can do these bad things.

That's not Christianity.

Jesus said, if you love me, you follow my commands.

So you do what it is that Jesus has to do.

That's why it's such a problem, right?

And Jesus said, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, we'll get into heaven.

But those who follow the commands of my Father, who is in heaven.

You want to go be with God?

Follow God's rules.

Not his rules, but his pattern for your life, which he's willing to walk through with you.

So the bottom line is, I submit to you and I would like you to take this opinion that

if any person wants to talk about it, and they really honestly, and I'm going to give

you one story to close on, they really honestly want to look at it, then they will come to

a logical conclusion that Jesus is real.

And if they don't, it's okay.

Their personhood should be respected.

Their opinions are respected.

You don't have to be mad at them.

You don't have to argue with them.

You present it like it is, and if they won't accept it, then they just won't accept it.

But sometime later on in life, maybe they will.

I'll share this one story and then we'll be done.

So back years ago, I taught youth vacation Bible school at East Lidl Baptist Church,

and there was a young lady there who was coming and she invited a bunch of friends from high

school.

She was a popular cheerleader, so she got a bunch of friends to come.

And one of the guys that came, a young man who was 15 I think, and he was a devout Muslim.

And he come to Christian vacation Bible school for the youth.

And we're sitting there afterwards and we had had our lesson and we had had our ice

cream, I think we're having for snack.

He said, he's sitting across the table from me.

And he just started asking me, he said, you know, how do you know that what you're talking

about is true?

How do you know it's true?

And I said, well, I can tell you how I know it's true.

And I listed off a whole bunch of things like I, for the Holy Spirit, speak to me.

I felt his presence in my heart.

I turned my life over to the Lord.

The experience I had when I became a Christian, I had to walk away from so many things that

I was doing or who I was before and being somebody new and miracles that I had seen.

I could tell you stories of miracles.

I mean, we'll do that another time.

But even then, I had seen enough to know, these are all, it's how I know it's true.

He said, but I haven't seen any of that.

I haven't experienced any of that.

God wants me to believe and I haven't experienced any of that.

And he said, if God would, this is what he said, if God would only send somebody to talk

to me about Jesus, I would believe.

And I said, well, what am I, a chopped liver?

When we sit here talking for 20 minutes, and he goes, oh, you mean God said you to talk

to me about Jesus?

And he goes, yeah, I see what you're saying.

I guess that's kind of true.

He said, but here's the thing, if I had said Jesus, my family, you know, they'll kick me

out of there.

My dad would never have it.

I'd have to hide it and steal it.

I wouldn't be able to sleep in my bed at night, whatever.

He said, it's really going to be rough.

You just don't understand how hard it can be.

I said, no, I do, but I don't.

I mean, I don't know your personal situation, but I know how bad it will be.

I got an inkling of how bad it will be if you don't accept Jesus.

And he said, well, if God would just show me something, God would just do something in

me, affect me, then I would accept Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.

And I said, to which I would say back to you, the moment you just sink, you're ready to

believe, just believe the littlest bit, God will do something in you.

And then you'll know, and you'll never have to look back.

I said, but I'll tell you what, you're afraid to believe that least little bit because then

when God does something in you, you'll have to run with it.

And you don't want to have to run with it because of all those things you just said.

But here's the reality.

People are not, not following God for any good reason.

They're not, not believing for any logical reason, right?

Because there is a reasoned defense for every kind of question about why God is the way

He is, how, how did He do it, what did He do, when did He do it?

It's all that most of it's in the Bible.

And people are just digesting what's already there.

There is a reasoned defense.

This makes sense.

But you can't reason your way to heaven.

You have to believe.

And if you believe, then you shouldn't be afraid of people who won't, right?

Who are, quite have questions.

You should be like, okay, I'm here.

I'm not saying I have answers.

I'll tell you your questions.

I'm going to try.

I'll try to come up with, I'll try to figure it out.

I'll walk with you until you can figure out.

And then, you know, you might spend a couple of years with them talking back and forth

and whatever, and they might finally say, no, I'm not going to follow Jesus.

And it won't matter in your life.

It'll be sad.

But you did what you were supposed to do.

And you'll get the blessings and the reward for that because you did what you were supposed

to do.

And you've so indoctrinated them with the basic understanding of what you believe and

your reasons behind it.

Someday they'll have everything they need.

And on their deathbed, they may wait until they're dying.

On their deathbed, they may accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

So whatever it takes.

Did you have a statement or a question?

Yeah.

And I'm going to ask you to pray for us because we're going to be done.

Something else that I've heard a lot of people say on why they don't want to come to Christ

and why it's hard to follow these because they're afraid of change.

Oh yeah.

And for my own personal experience, I guess that's better.

But the reason we're afraid of change is because we're comfortable.

And I'd say most people don't like stepping out of that comfort zone because it makes

them feel awkward.

And they have to do something different or do stuff they don't like.

But what I've noticed just like I said in my own life is the fact that change is usually

a good thing.

There's been a lot of times where I've changed things and it's worked out very beneficial

even though I thought it was going to be completely the opposite.

Yeah.

I would take that with you in one step.

I agree with you.

Everything you said.

And I would take it even one step further.

Change feels like, yeah.

That's what it feels like.

Just try this.

Say, I'm going to lose 20 pounds and gain 10 pounds of muscle and get up tomorrow morning

and do 1,000 anything.

Push up, sit up, whatever.

And then do that before you go to bed tomorrow night and every day morning and night for

the next week.

You won't feel dead.

It's going to hurt.

Now you may get stronger but you might hurt yourself in the process if you do too much.

That's what it's like.

You start going, oh.

But if I have to say this, then they might say this.

You worry, you regret.

It feels like death.

And with Jesus it is exactly that.

Paul wrote, 2 Corinthians 5, he died for us and if he died for us then we all died.

So the moment you gave your life over to Jesus and earn us, you died.

He owed you died.

It really was death.

And that's the change that we're looking for.

But when you're in the world and you start thinking about, like people go, well I think

I'm going to start going to church.

And then one thing after another gets in the way and you have to really overcome or drop

things.

What if you have to not watch football on Sundays to be able to go to church or not sleep in

to be able to go to church.

It feels like death.

It feels like it's all falling apart.

And the truth is we are dying.

Our cells are dying off and they're being renewed.

And the older you get the more you do the dying off and the less you get the renewed.

You feel like you're dying.

And so as we get older and we're a little more comfortable with a hard decision, it is a

little easier to go, well I'm going to follow Jesus no matter what it costs.

Or if you're real poor.

Or if your health is real bad and so your outlook isn't very good, then it's a little

easier to say I'm going to let all that slide.

I'm going to turn it all over to Jesus and just see what he does.

I talked to a man today, he said 1145, December 31st, 2017.

He was at a crossroads.

He wasn't thinking about taking his life.

But basically he was either going to go back into his old way to live and do all these

things that he had done before which was basically be a con man, scammer, lie and even whatever

he could do to keep his success.

Or he was going to live for Jesus.

And he had to make a choice.

And he'd done all that before.

So it was go back to being everything he'd done before which had landed in the spot that he was in.

Or choose Jesus.

So he chose Jesus.

And he said it's the best decision he ever made.

Because he got beyond what your uncomfortable feeling of change, the feeling of death, that

feeling of oh no panic or whatever.

And he just said you know what?

What's worse for me is if I would not change.

What's worse for me if I would go back and be what I was before?

I already tried that.

Real quick, word of encouragement.

So intelligence design, we design something.

We create something even though it's not selfish.

We create something for others.

But the design itself, it'll rust and fail.

We don't actually put that into it.

When God creates something, His design is not to use it, misuse it so that we're just talking about the banana.

There are three fun facts about banana one.

They have to be born out there.

They have to be in a special place for the twilight of the tree.

Because humidity itself is what helps it grow.

Because heat rises.

If you put it down low it never grow.

Also when you look at banana it looks weird.

But when you pick it up the first thing you notice is that it bends towards you.

So you can eat it.

No other fruit do you open where it actually comes right to the mouth.

It's made for that reason.

And then three is it's a brown banana which is called plantines.

They're good for the brain.

Brown is good for I think, green is for the brain.

So different stages of the banana is nutrients for different parts of God.

And so our amazing God, I've always told people, and I want to let them know.

Because it's okay not to believe.

I mean it's okay to feel that, to freely think that.

Because it forgots the love of the world that he gave his one only son.

And so when we have this idea that I got to put it all in God.

I got to believe in God.

It's that God put it all in.

It's that God truly believes in what he says he is.

It's that God who he is is nothing like us.

He recreated himself as human.

None of us can recreate ourselves.

We go through things, we think of things, but God himself came in flesh.

He recreated himself so that he could be a servant, so he could be love,

so he could be hope, so he could be the Word.

For any person, even today, through his flesh, through his Word, he speaks to us.

Just the Word of encouragement, as I always told people,

it's really not about what you believe, it's that God believes in us.

Yeah, man, RJ would be close to some prayer then.