47. RFP Network Crossover Series Part 6: The Church Split, Will Hess & Brian Bode

I do not mean to be mean, I do mean to be mad. You obey your pastor. If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got, hey, you don't have a King James, you don't have a Bible. But you know, if it's so about that, well, when you get a spirit independent from the middle, so you separate the King James, I will be there for my man, please, I don't have a free generation to the man of Baptist church. I still believe if you have gold a day in hell before I get my talents from a woman, I'm a preacher. The young preachers that do love God get pulled off in the cabin is, and I'll fight it, I'll fight it. I'll fight you in the parking lot over and I'll get personal with you. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom Podcast. A podcast that is part of the RFP Network. That seeks to bring freedom in Christ. From the spiritual abuse of legalism in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. Now here are your hosts, John Holyfield and James Saifert. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from Scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in Scripture. It is a part of the Scripture. But the defining principle in Scripture is love. And now I'm not saying that all men who sit under that teaching will become abusive. But what I'm saying is the ones who are abusive will be drawn to that sort of teaching. I don't want to give people just a list of things they can start doing differently until they have a heart out of which they're going to be doing those things differently. Bitterness is different from hurt. I would say that hurt or even abuse does not have to result in bitterness. All right, guys. We are back with the For Freedom Podcast. And it is an interesting day that we are recording on. So we're recording on Sunday. And this is the day after the KJV-only debate that shot through the RFP fam. And we are actually going to be talking about apologetics today. But before we jump into that, James, how are you doing, man? I'm doing great. I'm glad to be here. And I was actually at the debate yesterday. And it was great to be there and to see Nathan throw down some fire and some mic drops. And it was definitely a well-worth experience. The worth the hour drive over to be there. And I got to talk to Nathan there in person for the first time. It was cool to be able to talk with him. I did see him signing a couple of Bibles. And he got to sign a couple of notebooks. Some people came up and had – I mean, he had a line. It was like an old-school IFB Bible signing going on on both sides. And Mitch Knuff was up there signing them, too. And I had some people that I connected with that were sitting around me. I was going in my normal attire, my T-shirt and shorts and Crocs. And so everybody that came in dressed casual was part of the Nathan fan club. And then everybody else was in their suit and tie, part of the King James only argument. And so they all sort of gravitated around me. And we were just hanging out talking a little bit. And it was cool to be able to meet people from different areas. One guy came in from Chattanooga. One guy was there from Knoxville, had a guy from Welcome, North Carolina we were talking with. So it was a great time of being able to connect a little bit. And I definitely was enjoying that. Awesome. Well, we are getting back. We've had two episodes back from our summer break. And now we're going back into our RFP Network crossover Avengers Team-Up Series. What kind of shallow person do you want to become? Recovering from fundamentalism or something. They're everywhere. And I think to myself, well, you were just stupid to begin with. And if there's such a word, you're stupider now. Don't get flubbed up like us. And all you flubbed up people, you come and we'll all flub up together. So we are excited. And you know the interesting thing, James, is I think that the past episodes we've had have been just too nice. So it's time to bring a little bit of spice into it. Today, we are excited to welcome Will Hess and Brian Bode of The Church Split. Guys, thanks for being on with us today. What is up? If we're going to be the Avengers, can I be Iron Man? No, I'm Iron Man. No, you're not. I am. I'm the Hulk. So we're good. Okay, that's fair. So hey, guys, my name is Will. I'm with The Church Split. I'm Brian. I'm the guy that he roped into this. And now here I am. I did rope you into this. So thanks for having us on. We're honored to be here. It's really exciting. Thank you guys for being flexible with our schedules as well. I know Sundays isn't usually ideal for people to record. But our lives are weird. So they usually work pretty well for us. Yeah, we're finding the exact same thing. We've moved to sort of a Sunday schedule when we came back. And I'm like, man, this is actually a lot nicer than trying to get this done during the week. So totally, totally understand. Well, one of the things that I'm excited about is, especially after we just had the debate yesterday, which is going to be about a week from now when this airs, is we're going to talk IFB and apologetics. Two things that don't normally go together. But something that you both sort of, you know, know a little bit about, apologetics and Will's background with the IFB. So we're excited about this. And let me bring up sort of where my notes went. But while we get started, why don't Will and Brian, why don't you go ahead and give us an introduction of who you are for our listeners that may not listen to y'all and sort of tell us your background, where you came out of. I know Will's out of the IFB, but Brian, you're not. Just sort of let our listeners know where you're at. Yeah, absolutely. My name is Will. I started the church split with Brian. Brian originally was just the editor and videographer, and I eventually roped him to be my co-host. Joke's on me. Joke is on you. We started this. My background is in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. I was not ever fully, fully bought in. It was one of the things where there was too many logical contradictions. And it's through a difficult home life and church life. I eventually kind of went through a crisis of faith. And that is what actually led me to my passion in apologetics, which we'll talk about what that word means here in a little bit. I pastored a church for about five years. And now I am helping out at my current church while I go through seminary. And it's been a really great time. And the church split, we focus on divisive topics in the church that split churches. Since when I was a pastor, I actually experienced church splits. One of the things we talk about a lot in the RFP network that we're a part of is abusive power, right? It's the abusive pastors, the abusive deacon boards. It's these people in the power positions. But very little were people ever talking about when the church itself, the people within it are toxic and abusive to those around them, including maybe the pastor and others. So I experienced it on a different form than a lot of people did. And so it made me passionate to talk about these things without making the body of Christ fall apart, shoot each other or hate each other, even though we might be on different theological grounds slightly. So that's a little bit about me. Brian, what about you? Yeah, so my name's Brian. I grew up Christian Reformed, which is, I guess, a smaller sect of the reform movement in general. But it's mostly centered around Michigan. But there's some places here and there that also have Christian Reformed churches. And that's all my family. My grandfather was a college professor at Calvin College. He was the first person to combine all of John Calvin's Latin translations of the Bible into one contiguous Bible. So that's kind of a cool family thing. My other grandpa was a chaplain in the military. So very much strong Christians on both sides of family. And so I married a Baptist girl and she kind of broke some of my initial biases growing up. But I was sprinkled as a kid, made a profession of faith in the Christian Reformed church, went to a very Reformed college. And then kind of after that, kind of started questioning some things as my wife and I got married. And kind of we're like, OK, which way are we going? Are we going to be more Baptist? Are we going to be more Reformed? And we both kind of came at it with an open mind and go, OK, what do you believe? What do I believe? And let's find some unity there. And let's all see what church you want to be in and where are we going to raise our kids? So eventually the Baptist side won. So that's kind of how I became more Baptist. I went to kind of a non-to-non Baptist church for a while. I ended up getting baptized again. I felt convicted for that. And then I met Will. And as a pastor, we ended up just rolling into his church one time looking for a new church. And we stayed and got to see also through that church some divisive issues that caused some problems in the church. And then I became kind of passionate about using the Bible as a way to determine real truth and trying to shed our own biases. And I had been someone who had shed a lot of my own doctrinal biases that I grew up with and just wanted to look at things with a fresh lens. And I thought that, you know, with helping Will edit this and now I'm on it is just how people kind of reset their lens, check their bias, review what scripture says. And I think there's a lot of unity once we can really focus on what the Bible says and try to remove what we think it says and really try to let the Holy Spirit answer truthfully what for us is what God's word is. And for the record, the church split, obviously it's an ironic name. People seem to think our name instantly causes controversy. And it's not because we want to split churches because we actually want to unite the church and prevent church splits. That's what we call it, the church split. It's like an event that took place within someone's church histories when our church went through the church split. So that's why we named it the way we did. And now ever since then, it's been a little spicy because when you deal with divisive topics, there's only one of two ways you can really handle it. You can either handle it in a way that is mean and angry and grumpy, or you can do it with a little bit of sass and a little bit of digs and kind of make it a little spicy, but have a good time with it. So that's, we try to go with number two more than number one. Gotcha. Well, and you guys started this prior to the RFP guys starting theirs, right? You're a precursor. You were the OG, right? You were before them. Yeah, that's right. We were before them. And don't let anyone forget about it. All right. Just making sure. Just making sure. I wanted to make sure you put that in there to make sure that the original Brian and Will were on before Brian, JC, and Nathan. That's right. Now, granted, they exploded and we did not, but that's okay. Yeah. We were more of a slow burn. Well, they had Brian Edwards on there. They've got the old man on there that was able to lead with passion and charisma, I guess. There you go. Well, we're going to talk today about the IFB or the absence of apologetics in the IFB. And I guess to get started with, you know, I only heard this word. I remember the first time I heard this word, believe it or not, was while I was at Bible college and Tony Hudson was at there preaching and talking about, you know, we're not going to have an apologetics department because we ain't got nothing to apologize for, which seems to be sort of the main idea with that term. So, guys, define apologetics. What is it? Apologetics is half of what I do on the show. I do. I haven't gone into rigorous proofs of God, but apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia. Apologia means to make a defense, to proclaim or to defend. And it comes from the word apologetics with apologia comes from 1 Peter 3 15, which it says, I'm going to pull up in my CSB right here. It says, but in your hearts regard Christ, the Lord is holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do so with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience. That right there was a make a defense is the Greek word apologia. So when people say, I got nothing to apologize for, I actually had a guy say that when I was pastoring the church. I said, we're going to do an apologetics course on Wednesday nights. And we're going to talk about how we defend the Christian faith and how we make proofs for God's existence. And he goes, oh, I'm a pastor. I want to talk to you. I was like, I don't like that idea. I don't want to apologize for my faith. I'm like, did you listen to my sermon? Because I defined the term. It's my sermon. It has nothing to do with apologizing. It has everything to do with the reason and reasoning with one another. Because one of the biggest issues we have is people take Christianity in that weird blind faith. Jesus is my boyfriend kind of approach, right? Like, well, I just, I just know because there's that burning in my bosom. And they make that like Mormon almost argument. Like, I just feel him there. I just know. And it's a blind faith. And if you understand biblical faith, what it meant to have faith, it means to trust and have good reason to trust. So why do we have good reasons to be Christians? That's the point. So that is what apologetics is. It is not apologizing for your faith. Yeah, Brian, you have anything to add on that? Yeah, I just, I remember that when that guy said that to me, I'd never heard that response. What's funny that you heard Tony Hudson say the same thing is I was just looked at him like, wait, no, that's not what that word means at all. What are you talking about? But I think we all do apologetics in one way or another. Some people just want to redefine it or want to make it into this evil thing. But we've done a couple of videos regarding like famous musicians that have stepped away from the faith. And we see the lack of apologetics. It's a reason for that, right? They had this, like Will said, kind of a blind faith in Christ. And they're like, okay, I think I believe this. But then without any foundation of arguments for why the truth of Christ and resurrection and everything that goes with the gospel has great evidence behind it. If you don't have that, you have no foundation. And the second someone questions you about it, you go, I don't really have a good answer to that. And all of a sudden you're like, wait, do I have a good answer or anything? Is any of this true? And then made a shipwreck of your faith. Right, which is why the truth, but we have focused so much on apologetics, reasoning the faith, correcting false teaching that can lead people astray, give Christianity a bad name, bad reasons, bad defense. Because, Brian, you made a great point. We all make an apologetic. We all make a defense for the faith. We all make apologetics. The question is, is it a good one? You might give a defense, but it can be a very bad defense, like a bad lawyer in a really bad court case. Are you almost referring to like what happened on Saturday? Like what happened yesterday? Absolutely. That was an abysmal. I'm going to talk about that as we go forward. I will be referencing that debate. And I hope anyone who's listening to this has at least listened to part of the debate so they understand what I'm referencing throughout. We are huge debate fans for many different topics, religious ones, political ones, just really anything. If there's a good argument on both sides, it's kind of fun to listen to. And it honestly wasn't that fun to listen to because it really – there wasn't a good exchange. And let's face it, there was only one side that was giving any good arguments and the other side was not. And it was – that left me disappointed. I've been in this search for the best King James only argument because I want to hear the best. So I want to know if there's a great argument against it. And I just have not heard a good one. And I was hoping for one yesterday and there was none. Yeah, and I think you guys – the next thing I was going to go to, which is sort of – I think you've already covered. So I'm going to link these next two together and just sort of see where it goes. But the next question was going to be, is apologetics a biblical practice? Which I think just by defining it from the book of Peter, I think it is. And then is apologetics taught in IFP circles? I think what Brian alluded to is sort of like, well, it's not – is it taught? But are they doing it? Maybe not good. You know what I'm saying? It's really not. It's mostly absent in the IFP circles. So it is a biblical practice because if you go to Acts chapter 17, it says that Paul reasons with them every day in the synagogue. So that – yeah, exactly. Or when he was on Mars Hill, hey, the unknown God is he whom I speak of. He's making an apologetic. He's making a defense. And the entirety of Romans chapter 1 and 2 is an apologetic. The entire – you were going to bring this up. Yeah, all of Hebrews is an apologetic. It's an apologetic sermon convincing Jewish Christians that Jesus was the true Messiah and do not walk away from this faith. Exactly. So now it is absent mostly in the IFP. A lot of the stuff that they teach in the IFP as an apologetic is a lot of revisionist history, like revising historical claims, twisting of facts, or cherry picking. I remember seeing this. I remember seeing this a lot because, I mean, how many of us have heard in the IFP with the textual issue? Well, it comes down to the Alexandrian text and the majority text. And that is a false dichotomy in and of itself. And it's a lie because there's so much more than the Alexandrian text and the majority text. There are probably around six major classifications of text types, and they only bring it down to two. So they ignore the four of them. And so that is one lie alone. Or they take a – I don't want to cause too much controversy on your show, but like young earth creationism, for example, they'll bring one person in who brings only one argument. And I'm not saying young earth creationism is even wrong. I'm saying that they do a bad job at representing it because I've actually heard way better young earth creationists give better examples and better rigorous arguments than I've heard at some – I had one guy. I remember one guy came in. He was a dinosaur expert at our church. He came in, and he came up with so many weird theories. And it was very bizarre. And I just remember even sitting there going, that doesn't make sense. And I can't even pull them all out. But all I know is that apparently dinosaurs were definitely in existence today in a forest in Africa. That was a whole thing. And I'm like, yeah, it seems legit. Let's go. Definitely feel like there's a Jurassic Park going on over there, dude. Yeah, absolutely. Just like a lot of stuff like that where it was a lot of conspiracy theories behind most all the beliefs, which means by nature you are going to cherry pick when there's a lot of conspiracy theory around something. Well, I think one of the things that's antithetical to the IFB is I understand it. Now, I've kind of learned a lot of it in the last year and a half. But as I understand it, it seems like there's really a distaste for understanding the opposing view. They mostly want to shout down the opposing view, condemn it, make fun of it. But they don't actually want to understand it. And I think the key to having a good apologetic is actually understanding the best arguments against your position. And that's why I want to know the best King James version only arguments, because that only helps either tell me that I'm right or tells me that I need a better argument or that they're right. So if you don't have a great understanding of the opposing viewpoint, like we talk a lot about pro-life, pro-choice. And I think I could argue pro-choice very, very well as a pro-lifer because I understand their argument. And when I understand their argument, I know how to discuss and interact and give a good defense for what I believe as a pro-life person. I was going to bring up the pro-life thing, too. We spent many episodes on the church split on the topic of abortion and the morality of it. And that's because it's such a hot topic today that it's, of course, a moral topic that's been politicized. And that's actually how we kind of made our first breakthrough in the podcast world was we did a rebuttal to a very progressive left Christian. And I'm using Christian kind of lightly here. OK, with Brenda, with God is great. We did a rebuttal to her pro-choice Christian rebuttal. And then she had us on her channel to discuss it. And she has like, I don't know, 120,000 subscribers. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, we are this is going to be so bad because we're going to get like shouted down by over 100,000 people. So this is going to get the overwhelming. But after our three hour conversation, luckily, we recorded on our end. It is posted on the church split. She didn't post it because some of the things were challenged in there pretty, pretty strongly. So anyway, it is a thing. We have to make a defense. And I think there's a lot of reasons why the IFB doesn't have it. We were theorizing about this beforehand. And I'd be curious your guys' interaction on this. Let me know what you guys think. One of the first things I thought about is that the IFB really wants what I was calling conformity and control. So you want so it's not just controlling, but everyone has to conform. Right. Everyone has to agree on these things. If you do not agree with these, you can't be part of it. So it's a very exclusive. And because of that, what ends up happening is that you only surround yourself with people who agree with you, which means you never hear an opposing argument ever. And when someone does have an opposing argument, you kick them out before you even give them a chance. So what happens is that you build this really loud and a very emotionally driven echo chamber. And once you have this gigantic echo chamber, where that's all emotionalism, you have completely lost any ability to have rigorous discourse. And therefore, no one has really good reasons. So everyone who is raised up in it better take the brainwashing and adapt and conform, or they're going to defect and get kicked out. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that. I think that, you know, very much so when you go to the IFP Bible College, they really push that conformity. And like you guys did on the RFP show, when you guys filled in for them, the control side of it, of saying you have to be in by 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock. If you're out past this town, you have to have permission to be out. You have to have a work pass. You know, all these things that you have to do. You can't show any type of affection. You have to get permission for those things. Just so much stuff that is done in the IFP that they want to conform. But then that control is very much there as well. Yeah, John, what's your thoughts on that? And I've got a question for you guys as well. Well, when we think about why do they intend to, why do they end up ignoring or not really doing apologetics? I think, I think, of course, the control factor is there, right? Because if you don't, if you can control your people and not let them hear the other side, then you can keep sort of that group herd mentality type of thing. I think a simpler, well, not a simpler, but one reason is a very simple reason. I would say laziness. You know, it takes effort. It takes work to find out what the other side is. But, see, as a counselor, I'm always going to the heart of the issue. What's the heart of the issue? What's the heart of the issue? And I'd say the heart of the issue is pride. Oh, yeah. It's that exclusive thing, right? We are better than everybody else. We're exclusive. We're an exclusive club. We are better than the other Christians. We know better than the other Christians. And it is pride, but it's masquerading as we protect the truth. And it's not that. And by the way, whenever a group of people says, you can't research this. I have a friend of mine who is a missionary right now who might be getting dropped as a missionary from his church. That is IFB. And he was saying, well, I just want to look into these topics because these are the first time they've been brought to light. And I'd like to know about them. And they said, you cannot research those topics without express permission from us where we can walk you and guide you through it. What they mean is I'm going to control your brain the entire time as you read that book. Yeah. It's like cult, cult, cult. Yes. And it's like, that's a cult. That is literally the watchtower. We actually make jokes on the church split all the time whenever we talk about IFB that it is just like the watchtower with the Jehovah's Witnesses. As opposed, you cannot read anything that's not IFB. Well, you can't read anything that's watchtower. Well, you can't use another Bible besides the New World Translation. Well, you can't use another Bible besides the KJV. You can't, unless we give you permission, you can't do it. And if you disagree, we will shun you and eventually excommunicate you. Yeah. And yet it's funny because the IFB will call them a cult and you're like, it's funny because kind of the same cloth there you guys are cut from. Hi, pot. I'm kettle. Yeah. You know, it is funny. Also, one of the things I was thinking of as well is, so the church split, we're about uniting the divided body, right? So I'm about the fundamentals of the faith. I'm about the very fundamentals. So I'm okay with having disagreement on simple things. The five fundamentals for me are the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, the blood atonement, bodily resurrection, and the inerrancy of scriptures. Or the scriptural authority, I should say. And that's because there are different views of each one of those, like the blood atonement. Certain people are what we call the penal substitutionary theory versus the ransom theory. But either way, the blood atonement, right? We can agree that there's a blood atonement. And so we're very much on those fundamentals. And thus, another reason why apologetics, I think, is not discussed in the IFB is not just because, like you said, it takes work. But also, you have to start realizing that you can't control people's minds and that you're going to get people who land in different areas. And you have to be okay with that. You have to be okay with somebody disagreeing with you. There was a period of time where Brian and I were kind of debating for a few weeks our view of God's foreknowledge and God's all-encompassing knowledge of sovereignty versus our free will. And Brian and I were kind of like, there was tension in our conversations around that as you and I were wrestling the topic. And it wasn't bad. It was just, well, we're two friends trying to get to the heart of the issue. So anyway, that's some of the big reasons why I think that with IFB, because also they're very, for them, knowledge is fear, right? It's all, everything is scare tactics. So knowledge is fearful. So stay here. It's safe. Stay here where you know you're okay. You go out there and look what happened to these people. And they always use the worst example, right? They always use the example of the one guy who defected from the church, got hooked on drugs, got completely into like a sexually debased relationship. And then he died. Yeah. And then dies. It always ends with death. It always ends with death. Every time. It has to end with death. Because we don't want to die. Fear goes back to fear. Yeah, man, that's great. Hey, a couple of things. When I was in Bible college, I never had a class where they would bring in the opposing thought. So if we're talking King James only, this is why we use the King James. They never brought in anyone that was against the King James. They just told us why. It goes even, you know, rapture, pre-trib, post. They always talked about what they thought. They never gave the opposing side of it. And me and John, we had talked about that once. And I went and took a kid on a tour at Southeastern. And a kid was walking through. And he said, man, one of the things I love about here is they, if we're talking about tribulation, rapture, whatever, he said, we'll bring someone in from an opposite side. Pro-choice, pro-life. We'll bring in those other sides just to have a debate in class so you can hear both sides of the argument. And I thought, man, that's so great because I never got any of that. It was just, this is what you have to believe. And you had to wait until you got out to even look at it. Exactly. But let me go back just a minute. When you guys, and you both can answer this, because you're both from different backgrounds. But when you guys were in church growing up, did you ever have a time where Sunday school, small groups, I don't know how you had your structure set up. Most likely Sunday school for Will. I don't know about Brian. But did you ever have a time where y'all went through what you believed and why you believed it and the process there? Or was there ever like an apologetics time? They didn't call it apologetics, but why you believe what you believed. Was there ever that when you guys were growing up? I had a little bit of that in church, a little bit. And it was kind of late in high school years. I had actually quite a bit of it in college. I had one as an interim class where they actually, it was on the topic of gay marriage. And that was, I'm a little bit older. So that was kind of the kind of taboo topic at the time. But they brought in a pastor who was gay. And they're like, here's his position. And it was kind of interesting to listen to. And, you know, at the time I was very much more IFB and just how I disagree with people. And I would just go, well, I'm right. And I'm going to talk louder. I'm going to talk faster. And you're going to have to agree with me because I know I'm right. And I kind of found myself in a lot of problems where I chose a side, sometimes at random, and then found out I was wrong. And I wasn't going to admit that. So I would just fight harder. Now I'm a little bit more cautious. And when I take a side, but that was one of the classes in college where I was like, oh, I'm confronted with the position that I don't believe in by a person that holds us very fervently. And here's his arguments. And the class was pretty much like you just described, James, of, okay, what is your position? Here's their position. And it was actually quite enlightening. I actually grew quite a bit because I was very much more of a zealot on that topic at the time. I, for us, my youth pastor, who is weird because my youth pastor was pretty IFB. It's actually where I got a lot of my IFB indoctrinations from our youth ministry. Because my pastor himself wasn't as IFB, but our church was like IFB friendly. So we had a lot of crazy like extremism within the church. It was very weird. But it's weird because come to find out he listens to RFP now and he even listens to me. And I'm like, the student has become the master. And I'm just kidding. Come on. It is so weird, though. It is weird, though. But the thing is, when he did try, but it was more like a doctrinal class, you know, where it was like, all right, we're going to talk about why we believe what we believe. And then it was just doctrines. Well, and for me, I was in there going, okay, but why are the doctrines even true? Why do we even know the Bible is authoritative? How do we know Jesus rose from the dead? I haven't seen anyone raised from the dead. So how can I even know that? And so as I just kind of got older, it was these things that I was like accepted on faith. And by the time I got to Bible college, again, they never brought in the opposing viewpoints. And I was hungry for knowledge. I am a brainy kind of guy. I have to, I literally am not happy if I'm not pursuing something. I have to be munching on something intellectually. And it was driving me nuts because I was tired of hearing the same answers. And the answers weren't really answers. And so that's when I dug in for myself. So that was a big thing. You know, and I actually, so for me, I mean, I think my youth pastor tried. That was the only one time. He tried through a whole series during one summer in high school. But it was more the doctrines. And I think it was him trying because he didn't really know about it either because he was raised IFB. So, you know, he's, he's regurgitating what he's been told. And now it's funny because he's not as much that way because he has been exposed to new information. And it is funny how the truth will do that. Truth and proper information will get people out. You know what I'm saying? So, anyway, that's, yeah, not really. Yeah, James was talking about, like, I think that the only way that any type of opposing view would ever be presented in an IFB culture is in the form of gaslighting. Yes. You know, and what I mean by that is like, you know, case in point would have been sort of how Cody Zorn was setting up his people the week before the debate. You know, basically, this is what the other people say. If you believe that, you're a doofus. Yeah. Now, that's, that's a pure definition of gaslighting. It's like, it's setting them up of, oh, no, you definitely don't want to be anything that this person believes. And, yeah. And then, are you the worst in the world? And then you're like, you call, but you said that. Like, this is what you're doing. Then they, then they deny it. No, that's not what I'm doing. That's completely gaslighting. In fact, you actually brought it up as well a minute ago. I meant to mention it. So, there's, they depend on a few things. The IFB depends on a few things. And there's a reason why, and I've told Brian this, it's like, name one, name one apologist, one person who goes around, travels the world, defending the Christian faith and formal debates. Name one from an IFB background. I'll wait. Ooh. You can't. There's not a singular one. And there's a reason why. It's because their arguments actually cannot stand under rigorous discourse between philosophy, academia, historical evidence, everything else. So, what they depend on is gaslighting, which is a manipulative tactic that we saw Zorn do. Then they also do false equivalencies, right? Well, if you're not a King James Onias, then you don't believe that God can preserve his word. You're not a Bible believer. And that is a. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Or ad hominem. Well, they're just, you're just stupid. They're a foolish. You're a sodomite, reprobate, whatever. Liberal. And ad hominem is insulting your character and not the idea. And then the other one is straw manning. You know, like, I am no Calvinist. I'm actually wearing a shirt right now that says Molinism, like Calvinism, but for intellectuals, okay? I'm literally poking fun at Calvinism. And I have friends of mine that are Calvinists. But one of the things that they'll say is like, well, Calvinists, they're a bunch of heretics because they believe that God created sin and that he chooses people to go to hell and he chooses some to come to grace. And that's it. That's, and that is a misrepresentation straw man. That's the Calvinist doctrine. There's more to it that leads to different, of course, I could say at least to certain logical conclusions. But if you just straw man, which you misrepresent them, just knock down a false argument that they don't even make, you are manipulating people into thinking that, wow, the opposing argument's really stupid if that's what they believe. And it's just not. So they don't, because they don't understand the other doctrines. Or even just the preaching against other churches and people. It's like, that was never, that was never something that they did from the pulpit in the New Testament. And it's just some weird thing. It's like such a distraction from the gospel. Just, all right, this person did something I didn't like on Twitter this week. So I'm going to preach about that. And we've been even the subject of that a few times. It's kind of, it's actually just kind of sad. Yeah, you're kind of like, wow, that's kind of pathetic. But to the, like, to the debate yesterday, I think it's a great example of all this stuff. You'll notice that Mitch, he said so many things that were wrong. But notice how he doubled down on the emotionalism. He didn't make arguments. There's actually, I had a huge problem. I told you guys this would come up in this today. I had a huge problem with just even the framing of the questions. I mean, good on Nathan for agreeing, I guess, to those questions. I personally would not have agreed to the questions. I would have requested that we have a balance of the questions, at least. Because the questions were instantaneously framed in such a way to lean everyone into one direction. Right? Like, for example, if we were in a pro-life, pro-choice debate, it would be like having the moderator ask the question, well, Will, don't you believe that a woman has a choice to do with her body? Yeah. Okay. You were clearly trying to guide the audience with your own question to your conclusion. And already making me start 10 yards behind the starting line. Because now what I have to do is I have to spend the next five minutes clarifying my position before I can even get to my argument because of the way you framed the question. That's really a fundamental thing of apologetics is being able to properly steel man your opponent. Being able to actually describe their position accurately in its best form so that you can then argue against that. If you're setting up as a straw man, something that can be easily torn down, that's not actually a great representation or maybe a simplified version of what they believe. So that you can easily tear it down. That's not a proper way to debate. That's not a proper way to show that you're right. And that's why it is one of the logical fallacies. And so what he ended up doing, Mitch, throughout the debate was instead of engaging any of the, well, also it was the format, right? So the questions were wrong and the format was bad. The format was just five minutes, seven minutes of you speaking, five minutes, seven minutes of you speaking, back and forth, repeat until two and a half hours later, we're in a Q&A time. There was no, and a standard debate would have had you guys both, would have had them both make an opening statement about their positions, then make a 20 minute call to what they believe, why they believe it, make a presentation, so to speak. And then have a 10 minute rebuttal period. And then you would have a cross examination where they both can roast each other if need be to get to the bottom of the issue. Or you can see somebody dodge the question if they can't answer the question and then have a Q&A. Yeah, which I'll say, I don't mean to interrupt, but I'll say in the debates that I've seen in my years of, from the time I came out of IFB, the debates I've seen that have had the most impact on me is the moments of the cross examination. Because you get to see them interact with each other and they will take notes on their statements, either their opening statements or their 20 minute remarks, and they say, well, can you clarify this? And whether they can or can't really is a deciding factor of whether their argument holds up. Yeah, exactly. And I agree with that as well. I mean, I, you know, because the way it was, Mitch never had to ever say anything that Nathan said. He never had to give an account for anything that Nathan accused him of or had said. He could get up and say whatever he wanted. Now, Nathan called out a couple of times, hey, you said this. And some of the questions from the floor were, Nathan, you made this statement. You know, how would you clarify it? But that should have been done from the, from the, from the stage, not from the floor in the question and answer time. Well, yeah, it didn't allow Nathan to respond to accusations being made against him. It didn't allow Mitch to respond to accusations against him. Therefore, it doesn't allow good dialogue. But I think that was by design because you can't allow that because what if, what if Mitch doesn't do a good job of defending my position and then we lose people? You know, so again, conformity, control. Those are the two main things. Then the other thing that bothered me about that as well. Then you'll notice that he shifted. He didn't, Mitch wasn't making arguments. So you'll notice that Nathan's case, he builds his case throughout his statements. So that's one of the things because the format was weird. So instead they were given like seven minutes to keep building their case. Nathan builds his case throughout properly. I felt like the meat of the debate was the middle because that's when finally Nathan had set up enough stuff where he's actually able to engage. And then he like shows like some of Mitch's inconsistencies and his own podcast, things like that. What Mitch did, he resorted to what I would almost call home field advantage. I already know these people agree with me. So I don't need to respond to his arguments. I just need to get these people hyped up so much that they don't listen to the other argument. So instead what he starts to do is he appeals to emotionalism, right? I'm not a Baptist by birth. I'm a Baptist by conviction. Well, that's, that's a statement. That's not an argument. Yeah, he preached. We're saying amen with a question mark that you're just asking people to go. Yeah, exactly. He preached that. He put it perfectly. He preached and got interrupted. And then just picked up his message where he left off. But I mean, and that's exactly how he got sidetracked on vaccines and, you know, the Calvinism and that kind of stuff. Because. I don't know what he brought up. Calvinism, like what does Calvinism have to do with this? This is a, this is a textual debate, not a soteriology debate. Well, I thought one of the worst parts was whenever, I think Nathan made an allusion. He was talking about the translators. He made an allusion about King James translating, actually doing translation work on the Psalms. That's all he said about King James. And the guy spends the next three to five minutes talking about how King James was maligned for being a homosexual. Nathan never said that. He never brought it up. And this guy thinks that he's got to give this big retort on whether King James was a homosexual. Dude, that's not what we're here for. Yeah, that was a straw man. He was tearing down literally something Nathan never claimed. Exactly. Another one of their other tactics. And it's funny because when he did bring that up, I'm like, I think he misses the point of why people bring up the questions with the King James. Like, people really actually miss why people bring up his sexuality. Their point is, is because what people say, when people bring that up, it's like, okay, you say that because so-and-so didn't like what Westcott and Hort said because of what the questionable X, Y, and Z that happened with this reputation and that reputation. Because of this, that you can't trust modern translations. People's point on that is there is questionable things that have been said about King James, yet you're okay with him. That's the point of that argument. So again, he was a straw man to that even. So first off, Nathan didn't bring up the sexual affiliation of King James. But then the guy completely misunderstands why people might even bring that up in the first place. Because I've brought it up a few times where I'm like, okay, great. Because they're like, well, this homosexual or this possible homosexual or this was ever on this translation committee working for this place. I'm like, okay, great. Same things were said about King James. Now, I know it was said by an enemy. It was enemy attestation. But it's still something that was said. So by your logic, you're supposed to be, quote, unquote, above reproach in everything in the IFB. Is that not a reproach? At least something that should have been addressed? If he had the internet, he would have been able to know that. Yes, yes. He does some elaborate for that. Well, would that be called a, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't that sort of like what they call a bait and switch? Where he said the ESV translators were all Calvinists. And then Nathan says, well, the King James translators were Anglicans. Well, I didn't say that they all had to be Baptists. You know, isn't that like sort of what was considered a bait and switch? Yep. Okay. Yep. Or, yeah, it was a bait and switch. And then you could also say it was a shifting the goalpost. Okay. Because suddenly he's like, all right, here's the goal, right? Calvinists are bad. That's the goal. And then Nathan goes, but the Anglicans were Calvinists. He goes, well, I didn't say they have to be Baptists. So suddenly the goalpost went from Calvinists to, well, not that. Just to deflect. Anything to deflect. You can't admit you're wrong. And it is so hard. These are all signs of a cult, by the way. All signs of a cult. Now I have decided more and more. I'm sure you guys are saying, because now that you guys have a platform too and a podcast, I go to rigorous discourse. I want to know what the academics say. I don't care what Pastor Joe Schmo says. And I'm not saying God can't use pastors. And I'm not saying pastors can't be right. I'm a pastor. Okay. But a lot of pastors don't know things. Pastors are more shepherds by nature. And less academic. You might be lucky. You might have like a more academic pastor, right? John. Yeah. Well, and that's what we push for. And right. The topic of apologetics is we think pastors should be more into apologetics because we think that's part of the shepherding and should be arming their flock to be able to make a good defense. And if you don't have that good defense, you end up with people walking into church because they don't know how to explain their faith. They do go on to college and they get confronted with an atheist and they've never even had these in-house debates on small things in order to practice. So when they actually get in the real world where someone goes, well, here's this, this, this. And they're like, I never heard this information before. I guess I'm wrong. And that should not be the conclusion, especially when you have the deepest well of philosophical and apologetical truth in Christianity. You should never be wrong in that debate because you have it all on your side. You literally have the truth of God on your side. So you shouldn't be losing those arguments. If you are, you are completely ill-equipped by people that were leading you in your faith. And to that point, I wanted to mention rigorous discourse is literally a Christian tradition. Okay. Debate is Christian tradition, man. You want to talk about the traditions. Let's talk about that. Like you go through Acts chapter 15 is a huge debate. What do we do with the Gentiles? Do they have to become like us and become circumcised to follow the Torah? Do they not? What do we, how do we handle them? Do they have to proselytize like before? And there's this huge debate. And it says there was quote, no small disagreements. It was huge. Then there's this whole, how many guys have ever heard? Also, there's a very strong anti-Semitic strain in the IFB, by the way, as much as they say that Israel's God's chosen people, they'll whip it around and discount anything. The Jews say, like how many of you guys have ever heard them to say that the Talmud says that Jesus is a horrible person and burning in hell and hot semen and things like that. They quote. So yeah, that's some hot, that's some hot language right there, guys. And what the Talmud is, is literally a compilation of debates of multiple rabbis throughout eons. So it's this huge collection of volumes of people arguing with each other, different rabbis throughout the eons arguing with each other. And some of them did not like Jesus. And some of them did like Jesus. So it's a complete misrepresentation when I hear the IFB quote. Nathan Rager did it on our program. He quoted parts of the Talmud about the negative parts of Jesus. I'm like, the Talmud isn't one author. It is literally a compilation of arguments. Then you get into the early church fathers. And the early church fathers debated all the time too. That is part of it. So which means that we should probably be more inclusive in our thought processes in the church. I'm not saying welcome a heresy, but we also have to be careful what we call heresy. There is fundamentals. The fundamentals are the non-compromisables. These have been addressed throughout Christian history. These are the ones that no Christian has ever, who calls themselves Christian, could never really move on because these are the fundamentals to be a Christian. And now we're at the point now where people are like, well, if you disagree with the King James only, you're a heretic. Or if you're a Calvinist, you're a heretic. Or if you deny penal substitution, you're a ransom theory guy, you're a heretic. And it's just gotten ridiculous. We throw the heretic world around like it's Skittles at Halloween. Yeah, completely. And I think that sort of answers that you guys have both just answered pretty much to that last question, which is should every Christian practice apologetics? And I think not only should we, but like Will just said, it is a tradition of the church to do so. I mean, what you were talking reminded me of even what is considered the apologist fathers in church history, which the most known one is Justin Martyr, who was seeking to help his brethren and fellow Christians not have such severe persecution under the Roman Empire by writing a defense of the faith on why Christians are the best citizens to Marcus Aurelius. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I actually, so it's funny, my pastor at Frontline, he wants me to start teaching a Bible class. And I was like, okay, I think, and I told him today, I was like, we're getting breakfast together on Thursday. I was like, it needs to be an apologetics class. He's like, well, can we just not call it apologetics? Because I feel like people are going to think it's a snooze. I'm like, no, it needs to be called apologetics because one of the biggest things is that we call each other. Think about it. People are told that Christians are stupid, right? We're dumb. They're just dumb. They have blind faith. They're stupid. Well, no. How about we actually use technical terms? How about when we talk about the study of knowledge and how do you know something? We use the word epistemology. How about when we're talking about the very structure of the universe? We call, we say it ontology. How come we don't say hermeneutics, we're dealing with exegesis, eisegesis. Be rigorous. Use proper vocabulary. That will instantly make people take you a bit more seriously because it shows that you're credible. It shows that you've studied something when you're using words properly. And I was like, so therefore, it needs to be called apologetics because I don't want people coming in like, we're at defend Jesus conference today. No, we're at apologetics conference. Put on your thinking cap. Let's get to work. We are commanded to. It says, be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks for that reason of the hope that is within you. Anyone. It's a command. And of course, do so with gentleness and respect. You don't have to be a jerk about it. But I mean, at the same time, there's a quote that Brian now quotes for me. It's a little weird that you're like, that quote you made that one time was awesome. I'm like, it's weird when you say that, but all right, cool. I said just once on the program, if you can't defend it, don't be surprised if people don't believe it. And it's just the facts. Like, you can't sit there and just, well, it is what it is. No, it's not. Tell me why. One of the biggest things when I was at Crown College, they got so frustrated because like, well, why don't you just, this is what the administration says. Why don't you do it? And I had literally the D. As soon as I said, when we jump, you say how high. And I said, no. When you say jump, I'm going to ask why. Because I need to know. I need to know the reason. If you give me a good reason, I'll jump all day. But if I don't have a good reason, I'm going to walk away because that's a lot of energy to jump. And we're talking about, you know, should Christians do it? Yes, they should. How should Christians do it? Well, I think one way is just debating with your friends. You know, first safe area. If you disagree with your friend on something, have a good debate. And for fun, choose the opposite side and see if you can actually reasonably defend it. Then, you know, this isn't for everyone, but try debating some of those things in open forums online with strangers and see if you can actually defend it. That's some of the new ideas that I'm thinking of that I'm like, I don't know if I have this right or maybe I'm trying to reinforce it. I'll take it online after I think I have a pretty good understanding of it and see if I have some holes. Neither am I going to find, oh, yeah, I guess I was wrong. That was a great argument. Or, yeah, now I have even the better arguments on the other side and now I know how to defend them. Just practice it. And I think, too, once you, especially with the defense of the faith, like the existence of God, some of the basic ones, I think once you have those under your belt, I think you'll be shocked how often those questions will come up to you. I know what happened for me once I did a full study of the defense of God. I had two times in a week where that came up with someone. They just asked me the question outright. And I was like, wow, what an opportunity that I now have such a great apologetic for this that I can give this to this other person. And I know what they're going to say. And I can defend it thoroughly. And actually, I'm a big fan of online debates. I know people don't like it. People are like, oh, you never changed anyone's mind on the Facebook. But actually, I'll say this. I have. I have changed people's minds online. I have messages. But I say this all the time. When I'm debating online, I'm debating for two reasons. One, to practice my thoughts. Because the best part about online debate is you don't have to respond right away. You can take time to think about it. Consider it. Even research it over 48 hours and then respond. It's the best. You don't need it right off the bat. It's great. It's a good practice for people starting to get their feet wet. But also, it's like, what about the people who watch? We've all done it. We've all scrolled through countless paragraphs of text of an argument. Well, what if somebody's on the fence? Do they find that? They go, oh, my gosh, these two people are arguing about this. And I've had people message me, complete strangers. I'm not even friends with them. And they never even friended me afterwards. But they just pop in and go, wow, that actually made so much sense. Thank you so much for clarifying that today. So it's cool because it allows you to practice and it gives you a ministry. But otherwise, yeah, there are some great resources out there for apologetics as well. So if you guys want to give some recommendations. Yeah, go ahead. Absolutely. Boom. Okay. Brian already knew this was going to come up. I'm a student at Trinity College of the Bible, a theological seminary down in Evansville, Indiana. The president there, Dr. Braxton. Is that near Howes Anderson, the great theological iron horse up there? No, it is more to the west. Okay. Okay. More to the left. Okay. More to the left. Okay. Gotcha. Exactly. So the president of my seminary, Dr. Braxton Hunter and Dr. Jonathan Pritchett, they have a podcast and a YouTube channel called Trinity Radio, where it is exclusively apologetics. And the best part about it is that they both have different theological leanings. So it's a lot of fun. Braxton has a very traditional Southern Baptist background. And then Jonathan Pritchett is a little bit more. I don't know. He's what we call paleo-orthodox. And then he's also like, when it comes to ministry and stuff, he's what we call an egalitarian in that sense instead of complementarian. Things like that. So it's a lot of fun hearing these two discuss these issues with atheists, do responses. But then also, when it comes to just things to look up and people to engage in, Dr. William Lane Craig is probably the most well-known Christian apologist in the world. I would definitely recommend his book, On Guard, for anyone wanting to start. Also, Frank Turek with Cross-Examined. Check him out. His stuff is very down-to-earth, very, very digestible for people. Then I have also Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church or Apologia Church. I do like Jeff Durbin when he's discussing things with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. He does a great job, I think, there. And then I did want to definitely plug Gary Habermas. His Defense of the Resurrection is legendary. And then same with the McGrews. Lydia McGrew has a great book on that. Totally recommend the McGrews. Both of them are PhDs, which is a little absurd. But I guess when one PhD in the family is not enough, why not get two? So I highly recommend. There's so many great apologists out there. And for those of you guys who want a little bit more spice in your life when you want to do apologetics, 1 Act 17 Apologetics with Dr. David Wood is a great time. Just a little quick blurb about him. He literally, at 18 years old, went to prison for attacking his father with a ball-peen hammer and got saved in prison. But he was diagnosed as a psychopath. He actually, to this day, has a hard time with that because he knows he has a mental disability in that sense. But through the apologetics and through reason, he has accepted Christianity as true and now lives a Christian life. He's married, has children. And he does an apologetics channel going purely, mostly after Islam. And it is spicy because the guy does not care. Something about being a psychopath would do that to you. And so it's a really good time to go there and check that out. And he's got a PhD in philosophy. He's no joke. And then, of course, if you guys just want to have a really great time in apologetics, and, of course, the superb best place to go is the church split, obviously. That's why we're having our own here. I think most people you mentioned to have great debates online. I know Braxton has a fantastic debate with Matt Dillahunty. It will make you angry, some of the things that Dillahunty says. William Lane Craig is said to literally put the fear of God in atheists because he is so well-rounded in his defenses of Christianity. And Frank Turek is great. James White. And what's Dr. Brown's first name? Michael Brown. Michael Brown. They have a fantastic debate that's a two-part regarding Trinity versus monotheism. It's really fantastic. They're both Jews, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're arguing against Unitarianism versus Trinitarianism. So Dr. Michael Brown, we're on the same side versus two Messianic Jews who believe in Unitarianism. It's always funny when you get Michael Brown and James White on the same side, too, because one's a Calvinist, one's not. And they usually have debates with each other, even though they're friends. So there's a lot out there. And it also goes to show, guys, stop being – I always say it. Stop being afraid of other viewpoints. They're not scary. So there's only two things that could possibly happen with another viewpoint. Either you can be proved wrong, which isn't scary because it brings you closer to truth. It means that you are now learning something new. That's good. I'm closer to truth. I should – I want my wrong ideas to be defeated. Or if they're wrong, you get to prove them wrong. And it feels super good to prove them wrong as opposed to being proved wrong. So it's a win-win no matter what. Either you're learning or you're crushing somebody. And it's a wonderful time. I thought you were going to say either you – what was the first thing you said? Oh, well, either you get closer to truth and you learn something new. Yeah, either you get proved wrong and you grow closer to the truth or your defense – your belief and your position gets strengthened and bolstered. You said, or you get to prove them wrong. Let's face it. That is fun to do. There's a great moment. It's like you have to stop yourself from being prideful. But like that moment when you shut it down, you're like, yeah, I was right. Or at least I think I am. I think that was Mitch's whole argument yesterday. He just sat there because he knew he was right. Oh, yeah. So all you had to do was preach a message as opposed to engage. Exactly. I definitely felt convicted by what – after Mitch was done, I was like, wow, I now question all of the thousands of manuscripts of church history and all our orthodox positions for the last 2,000 years. Yep. Crushed it, Mitch. I am now questioning everything. I just question numerology more than I ever have in the past. No, no. Not numerology. Numerology is a cult. What did he say it was? Numerics. Numerics. Numerics. New term. I want to come back to that question real quick because I just have like an off-the-wall matters to nothing about the subject. The question I wanted to see you guys point on. But one book, and I don't want to catch a lot of – I'm afraid to say this because I know in the apologetics world, presuppositional apologetics is like the redheaded stepchild of apologetics. Everybody has – totally disrespects it. But one book that I have found that I think is really good is Greg Bonson's Always Ready. I have found it is from a presuppositional position, but I think that there's some good things in there. And – but if – did you guys catch the question and answer part of that debate yesterday where the guy – Okay, there's a part, Will, where the guy asks Mitch about the numerics, I guess you could say, about them being the verse things being added in 1555, and then he goes around and spends all this time correcting him that it was actually 1551. But the guy was making the point of does that mean that truth was added in 1551 to Scripture? And he finally got it. He like he pressed into it. Have you seen that part? I saw that part. That was fantastic because I was like the only back and forth question and answer part. That's the only guy that Cody Zorn didn't know that he asked Mitch a question on. But here's one of the things that he said that I was wondering if you guys caught. He said, are you talking about like advanced revelation? He's like, because of that? Yeah, that's there. And then he goes into his answer after he sort of like carries on. He says this thing. There's three interpretations to any given passage. Did you catch that? I did. Yeah, I haven't gotten to that part yet. I was like, did he did he just say that? Doesn't it kill you? Yeah. No. And by the way, as far as I have to touch on this, there are three thoughts as far as apologetic methods are concerned. There's presuppositional that John brought up. There's classical apologetics. And there's evidential apologetics. Presuppositional apologetics has a different reputation depending on what side. It's either the end all be all best way ever. No hand. No doubt about it. Absolutely crushing. Dominant view of apologetics, which presuppositional view is you presuppose God's existence when arguing with somebody. Or that everyone else, all the other versions go presuppositional is garbage and trash and they should never be taken seriously. Those are the two. So it's the extreme on both sides. That's really funny. I enjoy watching the divide. I will say I'm what we call a classical apologist. I believe evidentialism is good because it's providing evidence. It means that evidence changes minds. So evidential apologetics is good. I'm a classical apologist, which means I like to give a case for God's existence, like the moral argument or the Kalam cosmological argument or teleological argument for God's existence. And then a case for the resurrection. So it means that, all right, we need a good reason for God. We need a good reason for Jesus. And that's that's a classical apologetics. Presupp, of course, just, hey, God exists. Deal with it. This is why. And like, how do you know that anything's true? And they go by that. Go that route. So I say this. I think that the divide is kind of a little overemphasized in the apologetics community because I've literally used all three methods. I shift depending on who I'm talking to. Yeah, exactly. You can presuppose God in certain situations. And at times you're proving him. Yeah, I think because maybe I'm a preacher or a pastor, I tend to lean towards the presuppose. But I guess I would be I would really technically be sort of what you would call a cast. What's the word? An eclectic. Because I think that anybody that does any type of presuppositional apologetics is benefiting from classical and evidentiary apologetics because they're going to be using their stuff regardless. Or it's not going to be a conversation at all. It's going to be like, oh, this is what I am. And they're not going to you're not going to engage with anybody. But if you you have to engage with those types of things. And of course, one of my favorite reformed voices of all time is R.C. Sproul, who was who actually made this statement at one of his conference. Sproul actually made this made this statement. He said he said there's there's two kinds of apologetics. There's classical and evidential and presuppositional is not. I mean, he just he had no respect for presuppositional apologetics. He was a classical person himself as well. That's funny because he's his his theology would would disagree with his own apologetic method. But I won't get into that. I won't get into that. But I think of the presuppositional part, I think, too, you have to presuppose some things in order to have a discussion with someone. And usually at the very least, the thing that you're presupposing is that two people discussing a differing point of view can try to find truth. You're essentially presupposing that logic is true. You're presupposing that there are things as truths. And I think sometimes when we debate people that don't believe there's such thing as absolute truth, which is kind of funny because their position is is self-defeating because they it's an absolute truth to say that there's no such thing as absolute truth. So even in their own statement, it is self-defeating. But I think it's something to bring that up. You can. Oh, I always like to talk about what are we what do we agree on? Like in yesterday's debate with Nathan, they agreed that God exists. They agreed that Scripture is the word of God. So there's a lot of things that they're agreeing on. OK, now we're focusing on this piece of the apologetic argument. In this case, it was King James only ism. Yeah, exactly. And Bonson says the sort of this that was that sort of Bonson's main point is like, you know, when you come to whatever it's whatever your debate, if it's if it's another religion, if it's atheism, they're coming with their presuppositions already. So getting them to the point where they're honest about their presuppositions is sort of their goal to get there. Oh, yeah, that's a big one. Well, the big thing, too, is like to do the same thing with atheists. I say this all the time that the hardcore presuppers and atheists have more in common than they think because they both presuppose their positions correct. And it's really funny to watch take place. Yeah, right. Like, it's true. And what's funny with the atheists, though, is that like the neo-atheist movement, the new atheist movement by people like Matt Dillahunty is a great example. He's awful. And I'm not just saying that because he's an atheist. I'm saying he's literally awful at debate. He's a joke of a philosopher. He literally says that he's not convinced of God's existence. And God would convince him if it was true. And it's like so. And you could give like and people have asked him like, so if the moon shattered right now and all of the like debris landed and says God is real, you wouldn't believe it. And someone did that in Jesus name. You wouldn't believe it. And he goes, nope, I'd have no good reason to. And we're like, what? That is a joke, right? Or then there's Dr. Sam Harris, who is equally a joke. It is really funny because he says that free will is an illusion. Meanwhile, he says that any religion is toxic. And I'm like, well, if you say that free will is an illusion and he says it's an illusion, but we must act like it's true. Well, then why would you call religion toxic? Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr. Sam Harris, Dr around a corner here we've taken a kind of a break on the church split and we're going to start getting into deep theological discussions and we want to steal man the opposing side mainly because you and i are going to be in a minority in a lot of the views that we're going to be talking about yep um and we just know that that's just going to be the case and that's okay but we want to make sure we represent everyone properly and then you'll also notice that you'll be able to be friends with people when you do that because people don't like to usually be with friends with people who misrepresent them that's great that's great james go ahead well i appreciate you guys coming on and uh it's been a great time talking i've got a whole paper things are written down and i like to write as people talk so um i'm writing down things and i'm i've already ordered a couple of books just now as you guys were talking on amazon so they'll be uh we're dope yeah as uh i'm doing a uh i'm starting a study with our college class um here at church they're wanting to know uh what other religions believe and so i've already started reading atheism buddhism i'm starting to compile some things uh to help them understand and bring some things in so this has definitely been a help for me and uh i appreciate what you guys have done and what are y'all are doing so i appreciate that and for your listeners i want to just recommend three books okay and i know if you're not if you're not a reader do it anyway i do not care or get them an audio i actually no actually honestly i'm gonna be honest read it i get tired of people saying oh well i just i i just not a reader look man no one starts off as a reader that's right you become one and it's a discipline like anything else you if you want to learn you have to read because a podcast will not be able to tell you everything a book can yeah uh books are systematic and approach differently and bring your highlighters anyway moeller just said on his briefing he did a question answer i think it was and one guy said are you a speed reader do you have a special way to read because he's reading all these books and moeller just said listen i i don't speed read i read every word of every sentence of every paragraph he said i've just read for many many years and so i'm able to read faster than the normal person he said but it didn't start that way and i'm still frustrated that i can't read as fast as i want to read he said but start somewhere and as you go you'll get better and better and better and you'll be able to read faster and you'll be able to retain he said i'm able to retain a whole lot of information at one time he said some people can't they have to reread and reread and reread he said so i'm just blessed in that area uh he said but your goal is not to be like me in the reading area it's to be whatever you are designed to be um and i thought it was it was really powerful so i agree with that 100 so the three books and they all have people with different theological leanings and i'm going to first recommend someone who's a calvinist so ha there john just this bump there yeah so uh by greg kalkal it is called tactics great book i w i read that like way later in my apologetics career and i'm like i should have started here this would have made my life so much easier tactics start there number two i don't have enough faith to be an atheist by frank turek and norman geisler great book uh it covers the surface of most every argument from intelligent design to morality to design to all sorts of to the uh historical validity of the new testament and then third this one has to be the third is on guard by dr william lane craig and this book i'm going to warn you guys now you're going to start a chapter and you're going to get lost for a lot of people at first because it's very technical but then he clarifies it as the chapter goes on but he does it on purpose because he doesn't want to baby it down to you he's uh he has two phds um and he's very strong on the idea of you speak intelligently so i'm going to be technical then i'm going to dumb it down technical dumb it down i'm not going to dumb it down and bring it to the technical um he takes a different approach and it's a little you it might take a little bit to get used to but it's a great book and of course basically anything by those authors and others but those are the three books i recommend everyone to start off with tactics i don't have enough faith to be an atheist and on guard and then you'll be well on your way to be able to defend the faith at least to most people brian you got any close comments i just think it's great that you guys want to have this discussion i think more and more christians need to be focused on apologetics i think a lot of people like we said are already doing it they're just doing it poorly or call it by something else um but i think if you can if you can defend your faith well especially youth pastors that are listening you guys need to be doing apologetics in with the youth you need to prepare them before they're going to college so that they understand well why they believe what they believe not because you told them but because they have great great examples of why they have evidence for why they believe what they believe they can defend it and then when they go to college they're not coming back questioning their faith they're bringing new people to the church absolutely absolutely well guys thank you so much church split for uh joining us today and this this topic we had some fun and enjoyed sort of also given some uh commentary to what happened yesterday's debate uh this has been a great time and guys i believe uh this is the last time uh the family will hear us before bourbon missouri so uh you know i think we'll have an episode airing that thursday and it is sort of sad and disappointing that will and brian are not going to be there come on guys plot twist oh brian is i will be there let's go whatever i think about you guys when i think about you guys this show i always remember for some reason this comment was ingrained in my mind somebody i don't even know who posted but somebody posted whether publicly or in the family page about start picking up the church split and loving brian and they made this statement they said came for will stayed for brian i've been telling brian i'm like i was like get your fans away from here this was my show before you took over uh no it's actually funny that was uh it's a daily wire reference because him and i are are conservative politically and uh people all the times there came for ben like ben shapiro stayed for michael uh michael knolls because michael knows show is awesome and so that became a thing with people who know us like ah stay for came for will stay for brian i listen to i listen to ben shapiro every day i'm a i'm a shapiro fan so uh do you have the tumbler the tumbler's great i need it i have i bought my tumbler first but i'm getting the let's just hear tumbler soon there you go now that's that's a big thing though so with uh with our group that's actually one of the changes we have coming down the pipe here uh because of our schedules it has been very difficult for me and brian to film every episode together so there's a lot with just me uh covering a particular theological topic but i think i have one more topic i'm going to cover solo that's music which uh i know other people have actually covered we actually have not covered music yet which is weird because we've covered so many other controversial topics but uh i plan to do that as a musician break it down musically and then i think we're going to try to make the shift for brian's on for every episode which will be all the time y'all gonna get sick of me full time baby full time yeah well guys thank you so much thank you and and thank you everybody for listening today and uh we'll we're excited to see everybody in bourbon missouri on uh august 26th 27th and the 28th for the rfp meetup and um until next time to god not the pastor be the glory thanks for listening to the for freedom podcast to find more content like this please visit rfp network.org to find more podcasts like this one resources and meetups to encourage you on your journeyrewrew

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