These are Presuppositional apologetics links around the World wide web during May 15th-21st 2013.  What other links are there that you can share with us?

1.) Can You Surrender Your Worldview to “Prove” It???

2) Ultimate Collection of Free Presuppositional Apologetics Lectures

3.) John Owen on Why God Decreed the Fall

4.) Forth coming book: You Asked: Your Questions. God’s Answers. by Dr. William Edgar

5.) Presuppositional Apologetics Interview (apologetic methodology) with Razorskiss

Saw this going viral on my facebook.  If you did not know about this yet, but R.C. Sproul is making it free the booklets from his Crucial Question series.  You can have them as ebooks format for Apple or Kindle Books! This is great!

To further help Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it, from today the eBook editions of R.C. Sproul’s Crucial Questions series will be free forever.

• Can I Be Sure I’m Saved? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• Can I Have Joy in My Life? (Kindle)
• Can I Know God’s Will? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• Can I Trust the Bible? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• Does God Control Everything? (Kindle)
• Does Prayer Change Things? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• How Should I Live in this World? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• What Can I Do with My Guilt? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• What Does It Mean to be Born Again? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• What Is Baptism? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• What Is Faith? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• What Is the Trinity? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• Who Is Jesus? (Kindle) (iTunes)
• Who Is the Holy Spirit? (Kindle)

We are living in perilous times.  These perilous times indicates that there is a famine in the land.  I am not speaking about a physical famine, but a spiritual famine.  We could talk about a famine in the land in regards to Bible intake, hermeneutics, etc., but that is a topic for another day.  But the famine I am speaking of has to do with the preaching of the Gospel.  The chief errors as the author puts it, has nothing to do with emphasis or one’s approach, but more so on the heart of the Gospel.  There are many approaches or methods, but the main contention from the book is concerned with the heart of the Gospel.  To ignore the heart of the Gospel is dangerous.  In this book, he describes what is the authentic or synthetic approach towards the Gospel.

The authentic way is to to cover the attributes of God, the holy law of God, repentance, the call to bow before Christ; as well as the mishandling of biblical assurance of salvation.  Those are some of the elements that make up the heart of the Gospel.  To ignore anyone of those areas would cause one to fall into a synthetic approach towards the Gospel.

This stalwart written book addresses many of the contemporary problems that many evangelism conferences, commissions, churches, books, etc., have failed to address.  This book on the other hand, gives an expository display of the authentic expository preaching of the Gospel.  Much light is brought into the surface from the base text that makes up much of the content of the book: Mark 10:17-27.  This passage which centers around the rich young ruler, reveals how the young ruler was exposed to “character of God, preaching the law of God, preaching repentance toward God, preaching faith toward God’s Son, preaching assurance of acceptance with God, and preaching dependence upon God” (1-69).

This book was a great read and is a great book to assign for evangelism discipleship.

Some time ago two of us from Veritas Domain was witnessing on college campuses when we ran into some individuals from a religious group known as the Black Hebrew Israelites movement.  I understand there’s more than one strand of this group.  Some Christian students called us over to talk to them since they were overwheming them and we engaged in a very long conversation.  Unfortunately only towards the end after some extreme statements did we started recording.  Before and after the filming they told us more explicitly that they have the right to kill white people, who are of the devil.

I hope you guys understand why we prefer to be semi-anonymous on Veritas Domain.

It might be helpful for someone who totally never heard of Presuppositional apologetics and need a one message first time introduction.

(Hat Tip)

After watching Sye TenBruggencate’s DVD How to Answer the Fool I was very pleased about how simple and straight forward he was. He didn’t use a high degree of vocabulary. He has always spoken on a simple level where everybody could understand him. That is what I enjoy the most about Sye’s way of teaching. After listening to him repeatedly from his website I’ve taught myself how to be more direct and simple with others.

His DVD covers basically everything you need to know about defending your faith properly and biblically. He points out the dangers of using evidence to put God on trial, and how we need to stick to biblical authority when dealing with unbelievers. We simply need to believe the Bible when it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and that everybody knows God exists (Proverbs 1:7, Romans 1:18-21).

I thought Sye did a wonderful job explaining this apologetic through conversations with other people, including proclaimed Christians. Along with partly giving lecture to a class. In my personal opinion around the last 20 minutes was the best demonstration of this apologetic. Sye simply kept asking for a foundation for truth when the people couldn’t present it. Most people would try just move on without addressing the epistemology or standard of truth but Sye stayed on the issue before any further discussion and of course nothing followed. He definitely uses scripture as well for his points.

Regardless if your new to the TAG or have been using it for awhile, this DVD is a great demonstration of how to defend your faith and teaching yourself how to speak on a simple level.

You can order your copy of the DVD by clickin HERE

Reblogged from Truth2Freedom's Blog:

Taking Obama at his word, what does this administration’s Bengazi cover-up, the Justice department AP phone record grab, the IRS political targeting and the Gun-running for the Mexican drug cartels have in common? A president that didn’t know his own administration were doing these things.  And that really doesn’t help him either.   If it’s true then this is a sign of leadership failure.  This is true of any area, be it the corporate world, the military, law enforcement, etc.  How much more so is it for the highest office in the land.

I think this picture from Fox News is appropriate with all the scandal in the news the last week or so.

Very symbolic.  The political storms are coming and Obama is seeking shelter.  And he’s not going to be responsible for it while others take the fall (and I’m not talking about raindrops).

This was from a White House press conference today with the president of Turkey as you can see from this youtube clip.

You know the Memes are coming so I thought I make some myself.

As a former Marine, I can’t resist making this one:

And a theologically appropriate for our blog.

The last one reminds me of the context of Matthew 5:45 begins with verse 44:

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may ^[a]be sons of your Father who is in heaven;

Even if you see Obama as the enemy (seeing his policy alienate and demonize Christian conservatives, even as potential terrorists), we ought to pray for him appropriately that he does the right thing.

For our memes by Veritas Domain, like us on our facebook page.  We just started Twitter too.

Three months ago I refuted a frequent Muslim argument that the Bible in Deuteronomy 18 is a prediction about Muhammad, specifically as it was presented in A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam.   In today’s post, I want to revisit a quote from the book in order to reinforce the Christian claim that Deuteronomy 18 is a predication about Jesus Christ and not Muhammad.  According to the booklet:

So, this prophecy refers to Muhammad
and not to Jesus, because Muhammad
is more like Moses than Jesus.” (Page 34)

One of course has to ask, “In what ways is Jesus like Moses?”  Rather than point out trivial similarities  between the two (something I think A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam commits in trying to “prove” Muhammad), I think a better way is to ask how the Bible in the New Testament presents Jesus as the paralleling “New Moses” (while remembering that the Quran obligates the Muslim to believe in the veracity of the New Testament as I have argued elsewhere on our blog).

Here it would be appropriate to read the account of Moses in Exodus, and Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.  Both were originally written for a Jewish audience.  Thus it would be reasonable to expect Matthew to make allusions and echoes of events of Moses’ life recorded in Exodus if Jesus was the one predicted in Deuteronomy 18.  It turns out that the Gospel of Matthew intentionally presents Jesus as the New Moses.  The following are ways Jesus was like Moses.

1. Born during the reign of an oppressive king (Moses with Pharoah in Exodus 1:8-14; Jesus with King Herod in Matthew 2:1)
2. The evil ruler decree the killing of children that threaten the newborn’s life (Exodus 1:15-16; Matthew 2:16-18)
3. The witnesses of the birth of the child obeyed God and therefore disobeyed the ruler (Midwives in Exodus 1:17-22; Magi in Matthew 2:12, 16)
4. God protects the witnesses (Midwives in Exodus 1:17-22; Magi in Matthew 2:12)
5. The newborn survived by hiding in Egypt (Exodus 2; Matthew 2:13-15)
6. When the child grew older, God leads them to depart from Egypt (Exodus 13-14; Matthew 2:19-23)
7. After leaving Egypt, water around them symbolizes a new era (the parting of the sea Exodus 14:13-31; Baptism, Matthew 3:13-17)
8. Both enter the Wilderness for a considerable time of testing (Forty years, Exodus 16:35; Forty days, Matthew 4:1-11)
9. Both expounds on God’s law to God’s people in a mountain (Mount Sinai, Exodus 19-20ff; Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7)

The parallels are astounding.  A Muslim might say that the above are “trivial” parallels.  I would say look up the passages and let the Holy Spirit bear witness through His Word.  Moreover, if these parallel are insignificant and trivial, what do we have to say about the Muslim’s case for Muhammad being like Moses?  However, readers must not forget the conclusion made in the previous post on Deuteronomy 18 that the New Testament explicitly teach in direct didactic passages of epistolary literary forms, that Jesus is the Prophet of Deuteronomy 18.  Muslims are in a dilemma here when their own Qur’an affirm the authority and textual reliability of the Bible while the parallel of Jesus to Moses is much more greater than the parallel of Muhammad to Moses.  The right thing to do would be to surrender to Jesus, and start hearing Him speak as a Prophet about Himself in the Bible.  Then by the grace of God, may any reading this who do not know Him come to the saving knowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.

The following are some of the links on Presuppositional apologetics around the internet between May 8th through May 14th 2013.  Enjoy! Are there other links you know of?

1.) Plato’s Forms and Atheism: an Implausible Union

Theology in Conflict: Remembering Barth and Van Til

3.) Walking on water: An objection to an atheist by Steve Hays.

4.) NEW Van Til PDF Added: Collection of Reviews From 1940 – 1949

5.) Brains, bodies and babies…machines made of meat

Our next installment will be on May 22nd 2013.

So why is it important for a Christian apologist to read a book on ministering to those who are ill?  As a Christian apologist, our end goal is not just to give a defense of the faith but to glorify God.  And part of glorifying God is to situate apologetics in the context of evangelism.  To see the good news gets shared in an winsome, intelligent and godly fashion.  We want to see people hear the gospel, to know it and to know it’s true so that they can experience the realities of eternal life and forgiveness of sin.  With that note, I like this book’s quotation of Richard Baxter, that “Even the stoutest sinner will hear us on their death-bed, though they scorned us before” (41).  Thus an apologist should not only  merely be ready to give the hope that is within him or her, but be ready to do this in various situations.  It’s not enough that a young man knows how to rehearse a philosophical treatment of the problem of evil–he must be able to minister correctly with God’s Word accurately and pastorally.  It’s not enough to be Biblical in apologetics methodology (Presuppositional apologetics!) but also in counseling.

This is a very practical book for pastors and non-pastors on Christian visitation ministry towards the sick. Visiting the sick and caring for those who are ill is an important function of the church and as I pastor a congregation that is fairly young, I have not had much experience with regular visitation of the sick so I got this book to get me thinking about this not so much for it’s theological foundation but the practical wisdom. This work is helpful for the laity. The book begins by letting readers know that some of the pointers will be common sense that one should already know–but he rightly points out how it’s never a bad thing to be reminded of them. Some of the things I found helpful to think about is consider praying the gospel; in the instance of a visitation that didn’t go according to plan and you are not able to see the sick, you should leave a hand written note for the individual and their family. Hand written notes will also stick more strongly in terms of impression than just talking. Makes a good point not to overstay one’s welcome during visitation especially if the patient is under extreme pain; it’s always better to err on the side of staying too short than staying too long. I appreciated Croft sharing how he brings up the Gospel and spiritual matters during his visitation. My only complaint about this book is that it was too short–the biblical and theological foundation I found lacking in the sense that it was too brief and I would love to see more practical pointers and wise principle.

I believe that in the long run, gay marriage activism does have serious legal difficulties for Bible Believing churches sometime in the near future.  Of course, many supporters would deny this because they don’t see it coming, since they are engulfed with seeing the issue of gay marriage as a civil right.  An individual on facebook wrote the following concerning gay marriage in light of a discussion about California’s Prop 8 going to the Supreme Court:

 But it is at its core denying civil liberties. No one is saying your church should be forced to go against its faith. If your church does not believe in marrying same sex couples then that is its right protected by the first amendment to practice your religious faith. But to tell an individual that they cannot have the same liberties as others based on a religious faith outside of the church is a civil rights issues.

My response:

I hope this would not seem like I want to attack you or anyone personally. I think legally one must also recognize the distinction between two separate institutions (church and state) and from there realize that it was the people via the state that passed prop 8 and not the church that implemented it; hence any discussion about what the church imposes would seem to me to be an inaccurate assessment of what’s going on. Remember the important legal distinction that the church as an institution is not the same thing as a bloc of voters who hapen to be Christian, religious, what have you. Furthermore I also think your citation of the No Religious Test Clause in the Constitution has no bearing concerning the Supreme Court debate about the definition of marriage since that is in regards to the protective rights of those in political office and not what a people of a state can and cannot decide in an election; ironically, if someone wants to make the case that voters being voters are in some sense serving in a legal capacity of a “political office,” I think to forbid religious people to vote on their religious conviction concerning the definition of marriage would be to violate the spirit of the No Religious Test Clause because now you are saying that legally one should not vote that way if one has that particular religious conviction. I think the scary thing for me is the greater legal ramification and precedence set if Prop 8 gets struck down by SCOTUS, since as a part of the State Constitution it could be struck down despite following correct Constitutional procedure; it would undermined the very process of the people being involve with political decision-making if the court is able to do this; and the rights of the people of California would then be violated. I think if people want to pass gay marriage they should not do it via the courts but rather legislatively via people’s voting for a referendum and elected legislative body (I am speaking about the legal procedure though of course, I would be opposed to gay marriage on the other side of this political process). The court is not the place to do it. I also don’t think Gay marriage is a civil’s right issue since I don’t think any actual concrete substantive right is being violated given the current legal recognition of civil unions.  Homosexual already have their civil unions; but moving a homosexual union to the status of marriage opens up a legal can of worm and religious intolerance for it sets up a dangerous ground for legal standing against churches and clerics that are involved with marriage ceremony who religious conviction is that they believe it is wrong.

After listening to lectures over at Mises Institute on the economics of the Civil War I became more intrigued with the role of the Navy and the embargo’s contribution to the defeat of the South by the North. This book is more of the operational side of the Naval war between the south and the North. Since I am reading this book in light of my Christian worldview, I can’t help but to realize that the outcome of any battle is never certain even if on paper it looks good–victory of any battle truly rest in the hands of the Lord as the book of Proverbs teaches. Nevertheless I did appreciate this work and it’s profile of the men who served on both sides, their bravery, leadership, motivation and skill in Naval warfare. The most intriguing part of the book was the author’s observation of how the US Navy had more percentage of African Americans than the Army and of course in contrast with their Southern counterpart; the book goes on to say that due to the condition of fighting on ship that makes segregation difficult, one see among those in the Navy experiencing a change of heart where service members began seeing African Americans more favorably than those in the other services (since units were often segregated). The author even had accounts of Northern Naval Officers who were pro-slavery and Aristocratic shifting their views after serving alongside “Contrabands” (the term during the war for freed slaves). Reading this as a Christian, one is reminded of the fact that though there are different ethnicity yet God has made us all as humans–and that being human the human condition we share with those of other groups are at times surprisingly the same though the context might differ.  The other fascinating part of the book is the fact that I’m reminded of how the human condition is still the same back then as it is now: every era has their incompetent officers, leaders who exercise poor judgement in warfare, hardships, fog of war, etc. At the end of the day this was a good recreational read that takes my mind off of ministry reading and apologetics.

A post over at Justin Taylor’s blog on The Loss of Historical Adam and the Death of Exegesis has generated a lot of comments and discussion, some of it being rather tense.  I also had an exchange with a guy name Hank who was going around trolling against those who believe in the historical Adam.  For those who are interested, the thread of that brief exchange (thus far) can be found here, and he began commenting after he said he read my essay critical of Peter Enns’ methodology.  To spare the blow by blow details, my latest response follows below.  What else could you add?

Hank,

3.) “I’m just saying you seem like a young amateur in biblical studies–perhaps an MDiv–but certainly not someone who has written and exposed his ideas to learned and critical scrutiny.”

 Response: Let’s say I’m a young amateur.  To think this is a refutation is simply to commit an ad hominem fallacy and doesn’t prove your assertion that I’m just recycling others’ criticisms, that my arguments are wrong, etc.  Let’s say hypothethically you are older and more knowledgeable than I with your condescending tone towards me.  As the older and knowledgeable man, I would appreciate it if you not make a false appeal to authority but teach a younger man such as myself of how one interact with others fairly and reasonably: Please LOGICALLY DEMONSTRATE how my critique was wrong rather than merely asserting it and straw-man it. Ironically this whole time you have only been making assertions, and not offer critical scrutiny and interactions.  Show an amateur like me how someone in the major leagues like you behave and engage in reasonable and charitable interactions, intead of acting like a juvenile Enns’ fan boy.

 Truth be told, I have been following Enns for a few years now and I don’t know what the big deal with him is since Enns problem is more philosophically basic than how to weigh ANE evidences–if you recall in the essay that you said you read, I argue that the precommitments behind his bibliology would make rational discourse unintelligible and meaningless such as the very ones you expect others to engage in.  Can you resolve this dilemma of Enns’ methodological precommitments?

4.) “That is not ad hominem, but from what I see a reasonable conclusion.”

Response: You might want to brush up on logic.  You are committing a logical fallacy of ad hominem since you fail to address anything substantial in our exchange but simply shift the topic to something concerning the other person.

5.) ” I do see, though, that you are versed in the rhetoric of apologists: never answer questions only ask them.”

Response: It’s flat out incorrect for you to say this since I have answered your questions.  Read it again.  If you disagree, can you point out which one of your questions that I have not answered ?  There was a question that I asked of you for further explanation so that I can answer it which ironically, you did not answer.  Just looking at our exchange I find it ironic (yet once again) that the very thing you said about me is actually true about yourself in our exchange.  It is you who never answer questions or inquiry.  If I can remind you of what my inquiries you leave unanswered:

(a) Can you be more specific of what it is in my post that is merely “repeating the reactions of others”?

(b) Can you (1) show something I said (2)that  has been stated by someone else before (links and book citation would be nice)?

(c) I’m curious to see how Enns deal with the methodological problems driving his position. Or how you would answer for that matter.

(d)What constitute for you a “serious background” in Biblical studies?

(e) I think it’s legitimate also as well to ask whether your credentials is up to par with the standard you are putting me through concerning “SERIOUS Background” in the mentioned areas of study.

One last thing:  I finally looked at other comments on here and seeing your comments to others I just wanted to point out that you have the rhethoric of an Enns’ troll.

Central Seminary recently asked Old Testament professor Dr. William Barrick to speak for their MacDonald Lecture series on the topic of Biblical creationism and Biblical authority.

These are hot topics today during a time where people attack the subject of Biblical creation, the historicity of Adam and the hermeneutics of Genesis.

Listen to them, follow along with the PDF document, enjoy it and be equipped!

General Sessions

Creation Outside Genesis   PDF

The Historicity of Adam    PDF

The Problem of Death       PDF

The Creation Record: Is It Poetry?     PDF

Question and Answer Sessions

Monday Q & A

Tuesday Q & A

UPDATE: To have this save on your device as a podcast, click HERE.