Latest / The Immutable Word / EP044 Four Witnesses for Truth: Romans 1–4 Unpacked

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EP044 Four Witnesses for Truth: Romans 1–4 Unpacked · The Immutable Word

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  It's fascinating whenever you look at the book of Romans this way,
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  especially as a Christian, because he's not just making some arbitrary case.
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  He's not trying to appeal to emotion.
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  He's trying to appeal to the law, but he's making a very reasonable,
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  articulate case and argument of why man is guilty.
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  And then he's going to identify the three witnesses that God has utilized,
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  which is creation, conscience, and canon.
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  This is why man is guilty. Welcome back to The Immutable Word.
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  We were back in the garage for a new episode and a happy new year to those that are out there.
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  We are now in 2026 and the sky's the limit in terms of all the things that we want to talk about.
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  Obviously we have a wide range of topics that I think we have covered in the last year.
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  And we also plan to cover going into this year. We've had a couple episodes
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  about angelology, and we covered
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  a series on fallacies and a few other things, and logic in general.
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  And so we want to continue the momentum and the theme on that.
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  But today we're going to be covering what we're calling Four Witnesses for Truth.
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  It's going to be a bit of a mix of, what would you say, a little bit of expository
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  on the chapters, not verse by verse.
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  Like we've done previously but more expositing the chapters in Romans.
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  1-4 where Paul is presenting basically presenting an argument with man's rejection
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  with the premises that he's going
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  to provide so you'll see some argument structure in there I think it's.
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  Maybe a way to describe this episode is that also some apologetics will be covered.
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  I think it should be pretty interesting what we're going to cover today.
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  Did I miss anything? That's pretty much the purpose of this episode, right?
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  Yeah, I mean, it's called Four Witnesses because in Romans 1-4,
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  Paul, and it's kind of a high-level summary, expository summary of each chapter.
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  That leads to four specific witnesses that Paul uses to, one,
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  indict mankind as being sinners, and number two, show that God ultimately is the creator,
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  he is the designer, and he's the judge, and he's our savior.
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  So that's what he's doing in Romans 1-4.
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  It's a very strong, one, you know, the book of Romans, maybe not all of our
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  listeners are aware of this or maybe understand this fully, but the book of
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  Romans is the most doctrinal New Testament book for the New Testament Christian today.
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  So, you know, 2025 going into 2026, if you want to know what doctrine is,
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  if you want to know exactly what a New Testament Christian should believe as
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  far as, you know, adhere to, what they're supposed to follow,
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  what they're supposed to practice, book of Romans.
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  Spend some time in Romans and study it out. Romans, I would say anybody that
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  first gets saved, one, you would read the book of John to get to know who your
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  Savior is, because he presents him as the Son of God.
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  But Romans is the doctrinal book about salvation, justification.
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  Propitiation, atonement, like all those things are covered in.
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  Not only that, then you have practical Christianity that's covered in Romans chapter 14 and so forth.
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  And then, of course, personal sanctification, Romans 12. You can't beat the
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  book of Romans if you want to talk about a solid doctrinal foundation for the Christian.
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  Yeah, good place to get started when it comes to discipleship.
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  So, going back to the four witnesses for truth, this is going to be starting
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  with Romans 1, 2, 3, and 4, expositing those chapters.
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  The four witnesses are going to be the creation, that's the first witness.
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  The second one is conscience. The third one is canon. And the fourth one,
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  which is a variable, is going to be character.
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  It's going to be two parts. One, the character of Christ. And the second part
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  is the character of the Christian themselves. So this is how you approach it.
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  What would be the best way to witness to a lost person?
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  What's a good foundation or template to witness to a lost person?
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  You know, we covered John 4 with the woman at the well, you know,
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  as an expository outline going through verse by verse, how Christ dealt with her objections, right?
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  Right. But the other side of the coin is, okay, what do I present?
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  What would be the best thing as a Christian for me to present to a lost person?
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  Maybe you have a lost aunt or uncle or grandparent or cousin or brother,
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  sister, father, mother, whatever, that doubts Christianity.
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  What would be a good, effective approach? Using these four witnesses is a good, effective approach.
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  And you could build it however you want. You can customize it however you want.
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  But these are more like four pillars, four foundations. And what it is,
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  and the reason why I say that as a foundation or a pillar, is because this is
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  what Paul presented to a bunch of Christians at Rome he's never met.
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  He's writing to them, giving them explicit instructions in the faith.
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  He's explaining the faith, he's identifying the faith, and this is talking about pagan Rome.
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  These are people that worshipped other false gods, that were involved in lewdness,
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  idolatry. So, he was essentially giving them, the Christians there,
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  a framework to go off of to be effective witnesses. And this is what he presents.
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  Yeah, he's using these four witnesses, the three witnesses, essentially,
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  which is creation, conscience, canon, and using those three witnesses to identify
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  why God has to come and save us. That's why we need a savior.
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  And so, you know, so he's justifying this indictment towards humankind.
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  Yeah. You know, because you know how people come to you, oh, I'm not a bad person.
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  Why would God send somebody like me to hell?
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  And what he does is he identifies exactly why you deserve to go to hell in Romans 1, 2, and 3.
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  And then Romans 4, he identifies what the answer is, the solution.
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  So, Paul the lawyer is presenting this case, showing or presenting the indictment
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  of man with these witnesses.
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  I don't know if you've ever been in a jury or watched a jury show.
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  And have you ever watched, like, especially at the opening of an indictment
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  case where they're basically trying to bring an indictment?
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  They've got to basically say, hey, we have a justified case to bring to trial.
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  Well, what do you got to do? You got to identify what is this person being accused of.
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  And then you go through a legal argument. The lawyer gets up and has,
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  you know, like, you know, you know, whoever it is, you have the prosecutor saying,
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  look, this is why you're guilty.
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  We're going to bring three arguments to the table. and
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  this is my this is going to be our premise our our
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  you know which leads to our conclusion and then the
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  inference to how we got to that conclusion so all of that's going
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  to be outlined like a lawyer would because paul is a lawyer he's a pharisee
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  he's a pharisee of the pharisees which means they were doctors of the law so
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  you you would think of it as this way you have a phd in theology you know you
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  have a doctorate in theology right and that's exactly what paul was And so he argued this way.
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  It's fascinating whenever you look at the book of Romans this way,
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  especially as a Christian, because he's not just making some arbitrary case.
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  He's not trying to appeal to emotion.
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  He's trying to appeal to the law, but he's making a very reasonable.
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  Articulate case and argument of why man is guilty.
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  And then he's going to identify the three witnesses that God has utilized,
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  which is creation, conscience, and canon.
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  This is why man is guilty. You'll notice that Paul uses structure and argumentation
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  structure because he has all his premises, which, as you said,
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  leads to the conclusion about man.
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  Well, yeah, the conclusion in Romans 3 is, for all have sinned and come short with glory to God.
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  But Romans 1, 2, and 3 are his premises that lead to that.
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  Makes sense. All right, so the first one, Romans 1, where it's defined here
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  is creation, using creation.
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  So, if you're witnessing to somebody, what's the easiest thing you can do is
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  talk about, how do we even get here? Why are we here?
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  Yeah, and I did these each, I call them the four C's, so you can put them in your Bible.
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  You know, write it at the beginning of the book of Romans. If you have a small
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  wide margin or maybe at the top of it, just write creation, conscience,
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  character, I mean, creation, conscience, canon, and character.
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  And if you write that, and hopefully, you know, that'll help you kind of trigger
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  your mind when you're talking to somebody.
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  So the first one, creation, he discusses creation as a witness to God because,
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  again, the existence of design in the universe, it necessitates a designer, right? Right.
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  Paul uses this. He did it at Areopagus. He did it in Athens in Acts 17.
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  I always found it fascinating that when you read Acts 17, and of course,
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  this is several years after Paul's been saved, he's obviously,
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  by this point, he's already written a few books in the New Testament.
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  And what he did, or what he does, what he does in Acts, as he goes up and he
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  says, you know, the first thing he does is he's arguing with the two,
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  you had the Stoics and the Epicureans, right? You had two philosophical groups.
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  One was very, you know, the Stoics were like, like you're very hardcore materialistic type guys.
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  And the Epicureans were like, you're liberals, you know, just do whatever pleases
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  you. There is no such thing as absolute morality, whatever.
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  So he addresses those two. And the Bible says he argues with them and opens
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  and alleges, and he makes cases there.
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  He uses reason. He reasons from the scripture.
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  But what he does in, and towards the middle of the chapter, he goes,
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  he's going to Athens and he's up on Mars Hill and he sees this inscription that's
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  written to the unknown God.
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  And then he says, man, you guys are too superstitious. So he starts attacking
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  the religion, but he doesn't dive right into the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
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  That's the gospel. That's what Paul said the gospel was in first Corinthians 15.
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  So what does he start out with? Hmm. He goes, God created all things.
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  And he starts talking about in him, we move and live and have our being.
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  He is the, he is the creator. And you know, that's what he does.
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  That's what Paul does in the book of Acts. He starts with creation.
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  He deals with a bunch of lost pagan idolaters about creation,
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  because that is the first foundation of witnessing to somebody.
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  If And this will work in any culture.
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  It doesn't matter if you're in China, South America, Central America.
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  People aren't going to have the concept of Jesus Christ and the Old Testament
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  law and the law of sacrifices and atoning for God and so forth and so on.
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  There are, in every culture, there's a fascination with the universe.
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  There's a fascination with the sun.
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  There's a fascination with the planets. There's a fascination with these things.
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  So the Bible tells us in Psalm 19, 1, for example, the heavens declare the glory
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  of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.
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  And, of course, later on it says, the next verse, it says, day unto day uttereth speech.
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  He goes, and their line is stretched upon all their line.
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  It's like, guess what? But there's like this witness in creation that says,
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  look, there's no way that we are a product of human evolution.
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  Before evolution, there was this philosophic idea of atomism.
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  And atomism is really that all things are created by itself.
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  The earth created itself. The universe created itself.
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  Basically, that's naturalistic materialism, which is eventually evolution.
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  So what do they teach? You know, they teach that the universe created itself.
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  Well, that's the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches,
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  no, a creator created all things.
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  And this creator is outside of time and space.
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  The Bible says in Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and
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  earth. Well, here's the thing. When you break that down, in the beginning, that's time.
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  So God created time in the beginning, right?
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  He created heaven. That's space. Earth. That's material.
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  That's matter. so earth time and matter he created that's energy see that all
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  of those things are derived from god is not defri derived from it,
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  So out goes pantheism, out goes paganism, out goes evolution,
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  right in verse one of your Bible.
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  So the first witness when you're dealing with somebody, if you can't,
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  listen, they may not understand the virgin birth.
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  They may not understand all the prophecies in the Bible.
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  They may have no clue about Old Testament law, Judaic, you know, Judaism.
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  They may not understand any of that stuff. So what do you start? Creation.
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  You cannot look at this universe and the complexity and the intricate design,
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  okay, of everything you see and say that it just all happened by accident.
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  If you come to that conclusion, you got to be forced and educated into that conclusion.
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  Indoctrinated is what I would use.
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  But you cannot say, well, if I look at the complexity of the human DNA cell,
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  and if I look at the language and the interpretive sequence of DNA letters,
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  A-T-C-G, and I could see the programming language there. Oh,
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  yeah, that happened by accident.
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  That's like me coming up, you know, I've seen it where somebody,
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  you know, they make those real beautiful sandcastles, and it's all intricate.
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  It's like if I were to walk up to this beautiful, intricate,
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  this castle in the sand that somebody took, you know, hours to construct,
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  and I go, oh, wow, look at what the wind, wave, and erosion did.
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  It created this intricate castle. Just give it enough time. Right.
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  And that's, that's their, yeah, that's their default. But, but here's the thing.
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  What's funny about it is like, you can't look at the complexity of life and
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  go, oh, that's a product of accident. That's a product of chance.
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  That's just impossible to do that. You know, you, you actually have to operate
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  outside of your mind to think that way. But, but if you look like the human
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  complexity, you'd look at the heart, the brain, you know, the kidneys, the skeletal system.
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  So you look at, you know, endocrinology, you look at the nervous system,
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  you look at the circulatory system, right?
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  All of those things, they cannot happen.
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  By gradual evolution. Because.
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  Systems don't build itself. Yeah. Something has to build a system.
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  And systems supplement each other.
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  Right? Yeah. Like if I have, you know, if I have a code, a code may help design something.
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  But if there's any broken information in that code, it's not going to be cohesive and cogent.
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  Right? It's like there's going to be a breakdown somewhere. And not only that,
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  you also have to have a mind behind that to say, well, this is how I want this
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  to operate, you know, and that's the way.
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  So, I'm actually thinking about another outline, podcast outline on,
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  you know, intelligent design plus intelligent engineering.
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  So, we always hear intelligent design, but intelligent engineering is a little bit different.
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  So, it comes after it. Yep. And so, and, and, but the point is,
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  is like, you know, the Bible says like it's Psalm 139 verse 14,
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  I will praise thee for I, mankind, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
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  One marvelous are thy works that my soul knoweth right well.
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  So, you know, like take the human eye, you know, William Paley,
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  Charles Darwin, a lot of these, these philosophers and scientists,
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  they recognize that the eye is so sophisticated.
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  It's got this extremely complex lens
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  system it's got receptor cells wiring to
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  the brain it it's closely resembles and
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  it's even more superior than a camera today like if
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  you were to take the most advanced you know digital camera that we
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  have that takes pictures that has photo recepting cells
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  that has an interpretive sequence where it
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  uses light and and all this other stuff right that didn't
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  happen by accident somebody had to design that well even
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  darwin admitted and i know that a lot of people don't like this but he
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  did say that you know that that it would be impossible in the context of his
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  his theory that the that the eye created itself or it happened by accident now
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  i know that they may have a justification for it and that's fine but the point
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  is if you just looked at creation in its most raw form.
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  It will force you to come to a conclusion that, man, there's no way this could
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  have happened by accident.
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  So, you know, like when it comes down to the circulatory system, you know, the blood.
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  I can't remember how many hundreds of thousands of cells are reproduced,
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  replicated after they die off after 70, 80, 90 days.
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  I can't remember the amount. But you talk about the amount of blood is produced,
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  that your oxygen cells, like, for example, your red versus white blood cells.
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  The fact that it has a, you have a blood clotting system, which is a process
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  in your blood. If you cut yourself, if that blood clotting system didn't exist, you'd bleed to death.
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  And the Bible says in Leviticus chapter, I think it's 17 and 11,
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  where it says the life of the flesh is in the blood.
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  You know, who would have known that, right? Number one. But two is when you
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  look at the life in the circulatory system of the blood, the fact that it replicates itself.
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  It's one thing to say, okay, I'm going to by accident produce some complex structure from accident.
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  It's another thing to where that complex structure can now replicate itself.
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  Replication to me is the monkey wrench in evolution because you cannot it's
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  one thing what if if man was created right at what point did man evolve into
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  a female who can now reproduce another human being when did that happen.
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  You see the problem? It's like, when you look at evolution and actually critically
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  look at it and think through the processes. Now, they'll have escape-isms.
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  You know, they'll come up with, you know, reasons for whatever.
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  But the problem is it doesn't explain.
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  And of course, you just, you said it earlier, is time. They need time.
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  Well, if I had billions of years, this would happen.
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  There's no way to prove that. Right, but that's called logical leap, you know what I mean?
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  So, and how much time is needed?
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  And so anyway, so the point is the Bible says this in Colossians 1,
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  16 and 17, all things were created by him and for him and by him all things consist.
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  And we see some kind of method where creation is created in its most basic sense.
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  Well, here's what Paul says, okay, kind of bringing this back to the podcast.
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  He uses creation as his first witness to the glory of God. He said, look, there's a God.
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  You think that, you know, Jupiter made the earth, or you think that the earth is a product of these,
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  faulted gods that have mistakes, that have, you know, human desires,
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  and they sin, and they have arbitrary decisions.
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  He goes, no, that's not the God of the Bible.
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  The God I'm created, I'm talking about created all things.
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  So, he's making a clarification about the God of creation in Romans 1.
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  So, Romans 1 is implicitly and explicitly is that God is a creator.
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  He says in Romans 1.20, for example, he says, for the invisible things of him
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  from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by all things
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  that are made, even as eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
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  And you know what else he says in that same chapter?
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  He says, men came to a point where they stopped worshiping the creator and they
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  started worshiping creation.
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  So they started worshiping wood, stone, which is what all their idols are.
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  And the Bible even talks about that in the book of Psalms, that all the gods
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  of the heathen are idols.
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  God identifies what an idol is. And so those idols were made by men.
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  They were fashioned by their hands. Wood, stone, metal. They made these little idol images.
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  And so God says, no, no, no, no, God. And that's what Paul argues in Acts 17.
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  He's like, God isn't a God made by your hands.
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  Matter of fact, the reason why you exist, he poses an existential dilemma for them.
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  He's like, you move and live and have your being because of this God.
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  The reason why you exist, the reason why reality even exists is because of the
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  God of creation. And that's the God of the Bible that he's arguing for.
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  So that's what he's doing in Romans 1.
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  Well, what's the end, the conclusion of Romans 1?
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  Is that man eventually, the Bible says, and they were neither thankful.
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  But they started worshiping these creatures, which eventually led to reprobation.
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  He says, eventually, men started doing those things that are not convenient
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  and started getting involved in implicit and deviant sexual,
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  you know, physical sexual deviancy and sin.
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  And they started having, you know, immoral sex, men with men,
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  women with women, and so forth and so on.
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  And then eventually, he says that they gave up to the lust of their own heart.
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  And then eventually he says they went to a reprobate mind and a reprobate mind,
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  reprobate simply means there's no more value in it. It's a.
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  Useless thing. It no longer holds any value or purpose anymore.
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  And he says that, so it got to the point where because of their sin and idolatry
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  of rejecting God as a creator, it eventually led to not only this immorality,
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  but it also led to their inability to think properly.
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  Like he says, he says that you gave him over to a reprobate mind is what he said.
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  So you're talking, he said that you basically have the inability to think correctly
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  because of your rejection of God as creator. So that's what Paul does in Romans 1.
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  So the creation is the first witness. You want to deal with a skeptic?
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  You want to deal with a lost family member or a lost coworker?
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  Start talking about creation.
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  Now, I'm going to throw this out there because, I mean, some Christians are
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  interested in this stuff.
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  Some Christians are interested in the evolution creation debate.
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  What I would recommend is this, is that more Christians get involved in the
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  creation evolution debate, that you should educate yourself.
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  You should read books on evolution and creation. You should be familiar with
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  Answers in Genesis and Institute Creation Research and creation.com.
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  You should learn the basics of what they're arguments for and you should establish
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  a good doctrinal foundation of why god is the creator Because if you can get rid of god as a creator,
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  then you can get rid of god as a judge And that's been the motive of evolution
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  for the last 250 years They want to get rid of god and.
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  And we see that, the result of that today, right?
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  So, the result of rejection in general leads to reprobate mind,
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  sharing of the conscience.
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  Yep, moral society. The deviancy, the moral depravity that we're seeing right
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  now, today, and the acceptance of it is because of rejection.
• 23:37
  Yeah, people will read Romans 1 and go, oh, you know, if we're not careful,
• 23:43
  then, you know, these things are eventually going to happen.
• 23:45
  And they don't understand that when those things happen, the depravity of society,
• 23:49
  when they do those things that are not convenient, when they have a reprobate
• 23:53
  mind, when they're involved in idolatry, hatred, variance, emulation.
• 23:57
  He lists all those things at the end of Romans 1.
• 24:00
  That's actually the consequence of judgment.
• 24:04
  When you see those things, you know, in society, that means the society's already been judged.
• 24:10
  So we see America today and we see the violence, abortion, we see homosexuality,
• 24:17
  sodomy, we see sexual immorality,
• 24:20
  pleasure and wickedness and murder and idolatry and variance and hatred and things like that.
• 24:26
  That is a judged past tense society.
• 24:30
  That's what he's saying. The consequence of rejecting God as creator is the end of Romans 1.
• 24:37
  Yeah, and speaking of conscience, so that's the next thing that's covered here
• 24:41
  is appealing to the conscience.
• 24:44
  So, if you can reach somebody with the creation, that's the first witness.
• 24:48
  You reach a person and you get a person to conclude, you know what, you're right.
• 24:53
  There's got to be more to this life than just, you know, naturalistic evolution.
• 24:57
  There's got to be more to this life than just random, you know,
• 25:00
  chemical chance that maybe there is a design or maybe there is a God.
• 25:04
  I don't necessarily know who this God is, but there must be a God.
• 25:08
  Then it leads to the second witness, which is the conscience.
• 25:12
  That's what Romans 2 is. Romans 2 is broken down in two parts.
• 25:15
  Romans in chapter 1, or you know, chapter 1, he obviously is dealing with creation.
• 25:20
  Chapter 2, he deals at the beginning of chapter 2, he deals with the Jew and the law.
• 25:25
  He says the Jew is guilty because they violated the direct law of God that was given to them.
• 25:30
  But then he says the gentile is guilty because they
• 25:34
  violated their god-given conscience now
• 25:38
  the conscience the thing about the conscience is is that it's it's kind of like
• 25:43
  a light filter it's like a filter that a man has right so how much light you
• 25:48
  receive is dependent upon how clean the filter is the dirtier the filter the
• 25:54
  less light comes through.
• 25:56
  So the dirtier the conscience, the less light and truth.
• 26:00
  The Bible says, I think it's in the book of Ephesians, or no Colossians,
• 26:04
  I think it's in Colossians where it says, whatsoever doth make manifest as light,
• 26:09
  that light reproves darkness, okay?
• 26:13
  So the more light you have, the more truth you have. The less light you have,
• 26:17
  the less truth you have, okay?
• 26:19
  So the inner law he describes in Romans chapter 2, verses 14,
• 26:23
  he says, those not having the law, do by nature the things contained in the
• 26:27
  law, which show the work of the law written in their hearts,
• 26:31
  their conscience also bearing witness.
• 26:34
  So he says this conscience is
• 26:37
  that God's given you somehow an inner moral standard of right and wrong.
• 26:43
  This is the way that I've always been. I've always used it as far as application
• 26:48
  is concerned. I preach in the prison.
• 26:50
  A lot of I'll deal with the prisoners. I'll ask them and say,
• 26:52
  hey, the first time that you, you know, took a swig of alcohol,
• 26:57
  the first time you smoked a cigarette, the first time that you,
• 27:01
  you know, snuck out of your house to go hang out with your friends at night,
• 27:04
  you didn't do it openly in front of your parents or some authority figure that you respected.
• 27:09
  You usually did it in secret behind their backs because you were,
• 27:13
  because you knew in your heart of hearts that what you were doing was wrong.
• 27:17
  So the first time you did it, there was some tension, bothered you a little bit, right?
• 27:23
  But then you did it again. And the more that you did it, the more you started
• 27:28
  searing or numbing your conscience.
• 27:31
  It doesn't feel as wrong or as shameful as it once did before.
• 27:34
  You're becoming tolerant to sin. You're acclimating to sin.
• 27:39
  So the more that a man sins against his conscience, the more a man is guilty.
• 27:45
  That's what Paul is arguing here. Go ahead. Regarding the conscience,
• 27:49
  like, what do you say to those that would say, well, that's just a result of their upbringing?
• 27:54
  Maybe they were taught that those things were wrong, not because of some universal law.
• 27:59
  And the problem is, is that there's a universal conscience. For example,
• 28:03
  there's a universal standard that man has that's inexplicable by culture and society.
• 28:09
  So, for example, you know, you can go into the deepest, darkest jungles of the
• 28:13
  Brazilian, you know, Brazilian jungle in Brazil.
• 28:16
  What is it called? what is the jungle called there?
• 28:18
  Amazon? Amazon, there you go. Just like the online store. I'm thinking,
• 28:21
  man, I order from Amazon, I should know this.
• 28:24
  But, you know, you go to the deepest, darkest jungles of Amazon,
• 28:26
  and guess what? If you steal something, what do they do? They cut your hand off.
• 28:30
  If you kill somebody, guess what they do? They'll take your life. You know what I mean?
• 28:34
  So, if you do something where you blaspheme order and misconduct,
• 28:38
  they punish you. Where did they get that from? Right.
• 28:41
  And the thing is, is this is true in the most primitive tribes that you'll find
• 28:46
  all over. And this is also true.
• 28:48
  You know who violates their conscience the most?
• 28:54
  It's usually an advanced modern society. They're the ones that have gone around
• 28:59
  to where they've numbed their conscience to the point.
• 29:01
  Or they're educated into it. Yeah, they've educated themselves out of it.
• 29:04
  But here's a perfect example in the Bible.
• 29:07
  In Genesis chapter 20, you have this king Abimelech. He's a king in Canaan.
• 29:12
  So he's not, and again, think about this. This is 400 years before the Mosaic law existed.
• 29:18
  There is no thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Doesn't exist as far as in writing, okay?
• 29:24
  But, so Abraham and Sarah, they come into Abimelech's kingdom.
• 29:28
  And of course, they think that, well, if this is what Abraham thinks,
• 29:32
  he goes, well, if I tell you that, if I tell them that you're my wife,
• 29:35
  they're going to kill me and they're going to basically take you.
• 29:38
  So his assumption is that this is a primitive society.
• 29:42
  They have no moral right and wrong. They don't understand right from wrong.
• 29:46
  And basically, they're going to basically kill me so they can take you as my
• 29:49
  wife because you're a beautiful woman. Side note, you notice the fallacy in there?
• 29:53
  Yeah. Name that fallacy. Slippery slope.
• 29:55
  But you see the problem, right? Yeah. The problem is that's his assumption that
• 30:00
  he's coming into this kingdom.
• 30:02
  So what does he do? He lies. He goes, well, that's my sister.
• 30:05
  So Abimelech says, oh, that's his sister. So he's, I'm not violating anything in his mind.
• 30:11
  What happens? He takes him, he takes her to be his wife, right?
• 30:16
  Kind of like, you know, takes her to the side and says, I want you to be my
• 30:18
  wife. Well, Abraham's not going to argue for it because he's out to save his own neck.
• 30:23
  But the problem is, is God comes to Abimelech in a dream, a lost Gentile king. Okay.
• 30:29
  And he tells him, hey, you're a dead man because you took another man's wife.
• 30:36
  And he said, and this is what Abimelech says to God. He appeals to God and says,
• 30:40
  wait a minute, God, hold on a second.
• 30:42
  He told me that that's his sister.
• 30:45
  I've done this in the innocency of my heart. I didn't mean to do this.
• 30:48
  I would have never taken another man's wife, right?
• 30:51
  Well, and we find out later on in this conversation that God had closed up the
• 30:55
  wounds of all the women of his nation.
• 30:59
  And God said, basically, he said this, I knew you did this in the innocency of your heart.
• 31:04
  Like, wait a minute. So stop. full stop where did
• 31:08
  abimelech where did he get this law that
• 31:11
  it was wrong to take another man's wife yeah maybe he grew
• 31:14
  up in church as a kid yeah maybe yeah exactly maybe
• 31:17
  he grew up that's what exactly happened he opened he grew up in an orthodox
• 31:21
  society of christianity he was you know he was brought up by white men and that's
• 31:25
  the reason why he's a christian yeah that's the argument that atheists make
• 31:29
  yeah oh well it's because your culture that's the most idiot there's nothing
• 31:33
  in the Bible that'll corroborate that argument.
• 31:35
  And so, the problem is, is here's a Gentile king that doesn't have a written law.
• 31:40
  There is no formula of code that says- How did he know?
• 31:45
  Like, how do you know it was wrong to take another man's wife?
• 31:48
  And he says, in the innocency of my heart. Right. So, there's number one,
• 31:53
  the first argument is God wrote the law in his heart.
• 31:58
  Number two, it shows you the function of his conscience. What was the function
• 32:04
  of his conscience? To obey God.
• 32:06
  Whatever light God gave him, which was just his moral conscience at that point.
• 32:10
  He didn't have the 613 laws of the Mosaic Code, but he had a conscience,
• 32:16
  which the Bible says in Romans chapter 2 that Paul's arguing is the law written in your heart.
• 32:21
  See that? So the Gentile has a conscience.
• 32:24
  What was the function of it? If he obeys his conscience, God would protect him from judgment.
• 32:29
  He says, that's why, this is what God tells Abimelech, that's why I withheld
• 32:33
  thee from sinning against me.
• 32:35
  You know, we've talked about this in another episode. He stopped a Gentile king from sinning.
• 32:43
  Like he went against his will because he obeyed his God-given conscience.
• 32:48
  So that's what Paul's arguing about. The part of the conscience is it's an inner
• 32:53
  policeman. It's a silent alarm. It's a watchdog of the soul.
• 32:56
  It is supposed to protect you. So, this is the way that the flow happens.
• 33:00
  If you accept that there's a creator, there's got to be something bigger than me. There's this God.
• 33:06
  And then you have a inner conscience that tells you, hey, man,
• 33:10
  you shouldn't touch that.
• 33:11
  You shouldn't look at that. You shouldn't engage in that. You shouldn't participate in that.
• 33:16
  And you say, you know what, maybe you're right, I shouldn't do this.
• 33:19
  And the more that you obey your conscience, guess what God does? Gives you more light.
• 33:25
  There's revelation in that. There's revelation that eventually comes.
• 33:27
  And what's interesting is that word conscience shows up in John 8.
• 33:31
  And this is when the Pharisees, the scribes and Pharisees, they brought a woman
• 33:35
  who's caught in adultery in the very act, right?
• 33:38
  And he goes, and the Bible says, you know, Jesus, whenever they heard it,
• 33:42
  which being, he goes, whenever he says, look, which of you has,
• 33:46
  you know, who has no sin, the first without sin cast the first stone, right?
• 33:50
  And, of course, they all, the Bible says, which, when they heard it,
• 33:54
  being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one.
• 33:58
  The Bible says that they caught her in the very act.
• 34:03
  Who's missing in this equation? The man, right?
• 34:08
  The Bible says in their own law that you have to bring both the man and the
• 34:14
  woman that's caught in adultery and stone them both.
• 34:17
  Well, where's the man? Interesting omission. But the Bible says they caught them in the very act.
• 34:24
  How convenient the man's not there. There's some that allege or assume that
• 34:29
  possibly the man was in the crowd.
• 34:31
  Would that be an interesting twist?
• 34:34
  So he says, which one of you being without sin? Well, why does he say that?
• 34:39
  Because it was a sin to falsely cue somebody.
• 34:42
  So it was a setup. Yeah. Jesus Christ, man, he was a genius.
• 34:46
  He got this logic stuff down.
• 34:48
  He was a genius. I'm telling you, I wish more American Christians were like Christ. Hmm.
• 34:54
  Anyway, but here's the point. The point is, is that the, the,
• 34:58
  the, the conscience is, is again, that watchdog. It's like that trigger point.
• 35:03
  It's God says, once you violate your conscience, it's just downhill from there.
• 35:08
  And so, the weakened in the conscience, of course, the Bible,
• 35:11
  you know, tells us it can be defiled, it can be seared, and so forth and so on.
• 35:16
  It can be educated, encouraged, or, you know, conversely seared,
• 35:21
  defiled, or weakened, or silenced by wrong influences or including friends.
• 35:25
  So, this is the problem with the conscience, is it's a very delicate, delicate thing.
• 35:30
  And this God-given conscience that we have, when you sin against this conscience,
• 35:34
  guess what's going to happen? it's going to lead you down to a justification
• 35:37
  for God to judge you. And that's exactly what Paul's talking about.
• 35:41
  He says the first group, they rejected God, the God of creation.
• 35:45
  And they eventually started getting involved in idolatry and then moral deviancy, right?
• 35:52
  And then basically God's going to judge them for that. Well,
• 35:55
  the second group, if they get past the God of the creation part,
• 35:59
  is eventually they're going to violate their conscience.
• 36:02
  And they've violated their God-given moral compass of doing right and wrong.
• 36:08
  There's another example of a man in the Bible who obeys his conscience and God
• 36:12
  honors it. And that's Cornelius in Acts chapter 10.
• 36:15
  The Bible says he's a Roman centurion who prayed and gave supplications to God
• 36:20
  and he's not saved. He's not even a Jew.
• 36:23
  And guess what God does? God sends Peter, and before he sends Peter,
• 36:28
  he shows Peter all these unclean animals, and he tells them to eat three times.
• 36:32
  And Peter goes, I can't eat that which is unclean.
• 36:35
  Those are unclean animals. It's against the law. And God says,
• 36:39
  what I've cleaned, I've cleansed, call thou not unclean.
• 36:43
  And later on, Peter explains the interpretation of all that,
• 36:47
  is he ordained me to go preach this message to a bunch of Gentiles.
• 36:52
  That's what he did. So here's the question. You know, somebody always say,
• 36:56
  well, God answered the prayers of a lost man.
• 36:59
  Cornelius was lost. Yeah. And he answered it because he was looking for truth.
• 37:04
  His conscience was clear. He was obeying his God-given conscience and trying
• 37:08
  to honor the God of creation.
• 37:10
  He didn't know who this God is. He didn't have any details about who this God was.
• 37:14
  But because he was sensitive to his God-given conscience, God gave him more light.
• 37:19
  See that? So this is the danger of a skeptic or an atheist.
• 37:24
  If they've convinced themselves, no matter what proof or evidence you show them,
• 37:27
  they will not believe in God.
• 37:29
  That's why I think a good, appropriate question to ask when you're dealing with a lost person is,
• 37:33
  if I can prove to you that God is who he says he is, and that Jesus Christ did
• 37:40
  die for your sins, and he is the only way to heaven, would you believe?
• 37:45
  Yeah. And then what you're doing is you're testing their conscience.
• 37:48
  Their honesty, but yeah. But that's exactly what the conscience is.
• 37:52
  Conscience, if you break the word down, con with science, knowledge, with knowledge.
• 37:58
  So there's a little bit of knowledge given. The Bible says in John 1 verses
• 38:02
  10, I think it's John 1 10.
• 38:05
  It says that he is the light of the world, that Christ is the light of the world,
• 38:08
  who lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
• 38:10
  There's a little bit of light that they're given, that light of truth.
• 38:14
  If you respond to the correct way to that light, then God will give you more
• 38:19
  light. See, that's the way it operates.
• 38:22
  There's a whole thing we can do on that. We probably should,
• 38:25
  because we see it in Jonah and Nineveh.
• 38:28
  We see it where Jesus Christ is condemning Bethsaida and the towns in Nazareth
• 38:34
  and those areas where he basically ministered and said, he said,
• 38:39
  Jonah preached to a bunch of.
• 38:43
  Assyrians who were murdering and massacring and torturing Jews.
• 38:49
  And he preached literally a 30 second message.
• 38:53
  And they got, basically they repented, sackcloth and ashes got right with God.
• 38:57
  And they had very, very, very little evidence.
• 39:01
  Jesus goes to the Bethsaida, he goes, you guys, You've seen my miracles.
• 39:05
  You've heard my preaching. You've seen the signs. And yet you still reject.
• 39:10
  You've had more light than Nineveh did.
• 39:14
  And then you know what he says? He goes, therefore, these other nations,
• 39:17
  Sodom and Gomorrah, they're going to rise up in judgment against you.
• 39:20
  And you're going to be brought down to the lowest hell.
• 39:23
  So they actually receive a worse condemnation and judgment because they had much more light than.
• 39:31
  See the problem? The problem is, is if you're given a lot of light.
• 39:34
  You have no excuse. You have no excuse. So that's what Paul is doing here with the conscience.
• 39:39
  So he's outlining that. So the weakening of the conscience is a volitional act
• 39:45
  on the autonomous responsibility of that individual.
• 39:48
  They are making that willful decision to violate their conscience.
• 39:51
  And the more they do it, the more it's seared and there's less light comes through.
• 39:56
  And eventually the Bible says in the book of Proverbs that the light of the
• 39:59
  wicked is going to be put out. No more light.
• 40:01
  It's why sometimes you can present so much truth like you
• 40:05
  you had alluded to earlier that you test
• 40:08
  somebody's conscience or their honesty by saying
• 40:11
  hey if i present a truth i was able to prove it to you would you
• 40:14
  still accept it yes or no exactly you want to test and that's why a lot of times
• 40:17
  when i'm dealing with an atheist sometimes i'll ask them that question well
• 40:20
  are you an honest atheist or dishonest of course they don't like that right
• 40:24
  because they all think they're honest and that's why i ask them i say well if
• 40:28
  i present you evidence well you need to you need to present God right here in
• 40:31
  front of my face and that's going to prove to me God.
• 40:35
  Are you telling me the standard of evidence is that you have to materially,
• 40:40
  physically see something in order for it to be true?
• 40:42
  That you reject written evidence?
• 40:45
  You reject historical evidence? You reject eyewitness evidence?
• 40:48
  Are you saying you would reject all that when a court of law will accept that
• 40:53
  and condemn a man to life in prison?
• 40:55
  So are you saying that you have a higher standard than our own legal system in America?
• 41:00
  Are you saying that you have a higher standard than most scientists have?
• 41:04
  And of course, they don't look at evidence that way. That's why I'll tell them,
• 41:07
  I said, when you say evidence, what kind of evidence are you looking for exactly?
• 41:10
  You know, because nobody can prove anything like, you know, I was telling on
• 41:15
  the other podcast with Moses, you know, if I were to ask Moses,
• 41:18
  I said, well, hey, do you believe your wife loves you?
• 41:20
  Well, yeah. OK, well, prove it to me right now. I want you right now to prove
• 41:23
  to me your wife loves you.
• 41:25
  What scientific experiment can you give me that will prove to me?
• 41:28
  There's a vial. You see the problem, right? Yeah.
• 41:31
  Well, you know, if you look at this metric and we met, there's no way you cannot.
• 41:35
  Now, everybody at some point, because there's a statement that is,
• 41:40
  you can't use it in the court of law, but you have to prove something beyond
• 41:44
  a reasonable doubt, not beyond a shadow of a doubt.
• 41:49
  The problem is, is the beyond a reasonable doubt is that you have to prove it
• 41:54
  with reasonable evidence.
• 41:56
  And reasonable evidence is historical eyewitness testimony, which is what the Bible has.
• 42:01
  For example, prove to me Washington existed right now, scientifically in a laboratory
• 42:06
  I want you to prove to me you can't.
• 42:09
  Well, we can dig up his bones. Well, how do you know that's not the bones of
• 42:12
  somebody else that claimed to be Washington? You can't.
• 42:16
  All the evidence we have for any historical figure is historical evidence, right?
• 42:23
  So you see the problem is that argument starts to fall apart.
• 42:26
  Anyway, so that's why the conscience is, what light have you been given?
• 42:31
  And how are you responding to that light? Right. So, what Paul does in Romans
• 42:35
  1, he says, look, you're guilty because you've rejected God as creator,
• 42:39
  and you weren't thankful, and you started worshiping the creation.
• 42:43
  Romans 2, you started violating your God-given conscience. The Jew violated
• 42:47
  the law, but the Gentile violated their conscience.
• 42:50
  And this is what we consider general revelation.
• 42:54
  Yep. Right. Now— It becomes more specific, like a spectrum, right?
• 42:58
  General is going to be creation. So, it's like a funnel, right?
• 43:01
  So, from top to bottom, that's the sequence.
• 43:03
  And the conscience is going to be more detailed than the creation would be.
• 43:07
  Because now it's an inner witness.
• 43:09
  External witness is creation. Creation, everything around us,
• 43:12
  and then our conscience within us.
• 43:14
  And then you've got more specific revelation, which is what we're going to shift
• 43:17
  into. And then Romans 3, the very first verse, you know, he says,
• 43:21
  what advantage hath the Jews?
• 43:22
  Because unto them, verses 2, unto them were committed the oracles of God.
• 43:28
  So the third witness, it's initially committed to the Jews as was given to them,
• 43:32
  right? But he says the Bible is not just a historical text, it is a living book.
• 43:36
  Stephen calls it the lively oracles in Acts 7.38. Hebrews 4.12 affirms that
• 43:41
  the word of God is quick and powerful.
• 43:42
  So what happens is that now I have very specific revelation from God.
• 43:48
  I have an actual book I can hold in my hands that claims to be the product of
• 43:52
  divine inspiration and preservation.
• 43:55
  This claims to be the self-stated words of the living God. And there's plenty
• 44:00
  of times where they attest to this.
• 44:02
  Paul attests to this. He goes, look, he even says in 1 Corinthians 7,
• 44:06
  for example, he starts talking about marriage.
• 44:08
  And he says, look, he goes, I'm not speaking by commandment.
• 44:11
  I'm not talking about, you know, being driven.
• 44:15
  Of course, God still puts that in his Bible, right? But what does that allude to?
• 44:19
  That means everything Paul was writing up to that point, he assumes was written
• 44:22
  by influence of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit of God.
• 44:26
  Peter does the same thing. He says, hey, the things that we're writing,
• 44:29
  he goes, even the things that Paul wrote, scripture, they're hard to be understood.
• 44:33
  They admitted apostolic succession of writing the scriptures,
• 44:38
  which is a proof of the New Testament canon, by the way, that's another episode we have to do.
• 44:43
  But the point is this, the Bible, it exists as the specific revelation of this
• 44:50
  same God who's the creator in Romans chapter one, who is the same God that gave
• 44:55
  us a conscience in Romans chapter two.
• 44:57
  And then Romans three, we start to see the explicit will of God.
• 45:01
  You know, when we talked about revelatory epistemology, you know,
• 45:04
  first Corinthians two, what did we say? We said that we have the mind of Christ
• 45:08
  because we have the Bible in our hands.
• 45:10
  We have the very evidence and the very will and the directive will of God in
• 45:16
  written form in a way that we can understand and comprehend, right?
• 45:20
  So that's the final witness as far as God's witnesses are concerned.
• 45:25
  So the first one is creation. The second one is conscience.
• 45:28
  And the third one is the canon, is the scripture.
• 45:31
  And obviously that's our final authority and should be our final authority.
• 45:35
  John 17, 17 says, sanctify them by thy word
• 45:37
  thy word is truth so the belief in absolute truth is is obviously crucial and
• 45:43
  those who deny you know they have to be challenged by asking you know the denial
• 45:47
  you know like for example i don't think there's anything there's no such thing
• 45:51
  as absolute truth well you just made a truth claim is that that true claim you
• 45:55
  made is that absolutely true.
• 45:57
  They're alluding to it. That's called a self-defeating argument,
• 46:01
  right? And that's exactly the problem is, is they have a final authority of some sort.
• 46:05
  Even an atheist has a final authority. It may be his own mind,
• 46:09
  his own education, but even atheists, they make self-defeating arguments like
• 46:15
  you can't even trust your own mind because it's just a bunch of chemicals that
• 46:19
  are working inside your body.
• 46:22
  So how do you know? He goes, you can't even trust your own thoughts.
• 46:25
  How do you know it's just some kind of reaction to some weird chemical?
• 46:28
  You don't know. You can't prove it.
• 46:31
  So, you know, everybody has a final authority, but the Christians,
• 46:34
  the final authority should be the word of God.
• 46:36
  And so the wrath of God, the Bible says, he says it in Romans 1.25,
• 46:40
  but it's poured out on those who reject and change the truth of God into a lie.
• 46:46
  And so the know the truth and live is if you don't, you know,
• 46:48
  is an insult to God and is considered idolatry.
• 46:51
  That's what he says in Romans 1, 2, and then eventually 3, because we've rejected the canon.
• 46:56
  But here's what's interesting that Paul makes in Romans 3.
• 47:00
  He tells him, look, God is just because of what scripture is written.
• 47:05
  And then he says, therefore, verses 10, you know, there's none righteous,
• 47:10
  there's none that seeketh after God. And then verse 23 in Romans 3,
• 47:14
  he says, for all of a son and him show the glory of God, and so forth and so on.
• 47:17
  He comes to this conclusion because what he's proving in Romans 1,
• 47:21
  2, and 3 is that man has rejected God's creator, man has rejected their God-given
• 47:24
  conscience, and then ultimately Romans 3, they reject the word of God.
• 47:28
  So if you're dealing with somebody
• 47:30
  and witnessing to them, that's the sequence you want to try to use.
• 47:34
  Use creation. You understand that God created you, right?
• 47:37
  That you have a purpose for this life. And this purpose is to please God, Revelation 4.11.
• 47:43
  The purpose is to glorify your creator.
• 47:46
  That's your purpose. Your purpose is not to worship the creation instead of the creator.
• 47:51
  So people will worship the earth and nature and everything else but God.
• 47:56
  Then, of course, you have your conscience. You have a good—that's the moral
• 48:01
  argument, that there is an objective moral standard that exists.
• 48:05
  The argument, the moral argument for the existence of God is one of the most powerful.
• 48:09
  Even atheists, they worry about that because they said it's a very tough argument to argue.
• 48:15
  Now, they come up with their arguments, but the point is they're very weak arguments
• 48:20
  when it boils down to it because they have no absolute standard.
• 48:24
  So here's an evolutionist saying that there's no such thing as an objective
• 48:27
  moral standard, and yet they're trying to give you objective moral standards.
• 48:32
  You know what an evolutionist will argue for? That a woman has a right to abort and murder her child.
• 48:37
  Why does she have that right? Well, human decency. How do you define human decency?
• 48:42
  Where do you get that from?
• 48:44
  Well, you know, it's wrong to rob her of her rights. Really? According to what law?
• 48:49
  What's wrong about it? Where do you get that wrong from? Yeah.
• 48:52
  How do you justify wrong and right exactly?
• 48:55
  When you say it's wrong to steal from another man, oh, society comes out.
• 48:59
  So, are you saying if society changed that law and said it's okay to steal from
• 49:03
  every man, now it's right? Is that what you're saying?
• 49:06
  Yeah, if it's right to society, then yes. That's usually that logical conclusion.
• 49:10
  And then, it's like, well, what about Hitler's society? Right.
• 49:14
  Mao's society. Yeah, you can't.
• 49:16
  Stalin's society. Yeah, societies do not determine moral right. No, can't.
• 49:20
  You're not going to have it. So, they have no way to justify true moral right
• 49:24
  and wrong. So, you know, so that's what, you know, you get down to the conscience is violated.
• 49:28
  Well, now you got the word of God. Now you have the explicit will of God.
• 49:31
  You explicit moral standards are laid out in the word of God.
• 49:35
  I can tell you what's true because God is true and whatever he says is true.
• 49:41
  That's the nature of God. So, that's the three witnesses of God,
• 49:45
  again, is the creation, the conscience, and then the canon.
• 49:49
  You want to deal with somebody, deal with them in that order.
• 49:51
  Now, if you get somebody that does accept God as creator, that does have a sensitive
• 49:56
  conscience about right and wrong, and it actually bothers them, right?
• 50:00
  Then deal with them about the word of God. You see what I mean?
• 50:03
  But if you have a person, let's say, before you get to the word of God,
• 50:06
  they do believe there's some kind of God, you may have to deal with them on
• 50:09
  the case of the conscience, that there is a moral argument to be made for the existence of God.
• 50:15
  It's like different people are going to be at different levels of understanding or revelation, right?
• 50:20
  So, it's like, well, I'm sort of agnostic. I believe that there's something
• 50:23
  else out there. I don't think we came from nothing. They're open.
• 50:27
  And so, then you can start dealing with them about their conscience.
• 50:31
  You need to do a little bit of investigation, right? Yeah, asking them questions.
• 50:34
  Yeah, you need to do some interrogation a little bit and find out exactly where they stand.
• 50:38
  But the key is, is if you, if you can reduce your, your conversation with a
• 50:44
  lost person to these three witnesses, it'll really, really help you and give you some, some,
• 50:51
  you know, a good foundation to talk from and.
• 50:54
  You know, that's why I would just encourage people, you know,
• 50:58
  memorize the structure. What are your arguments for God as creator?
• 51:02
  What are your arguments for the conscience, the moral argument for God?
• 51:06
  You know, do you know how to handle the objections? What are some of the typical objections?
• 51:10
  What would be your 30-second response to each one of those? You see what I mean?
• 51:14
  It's like what you said earlier, that there is a necessity for Christians to
• 51:18
  study this out, study creation, study the science behind it,
• 51:22
  the philosophy. I mean, obviously, Paul knew about it when he was reasoning
• 51:26
  with them. That's right.
• 51:27
  So, he had knowledge. And that's exactly what Paul knew. Paul was,
• 51:30
  I mean, he was a genius. Smart guy.
• 51:31
  Yeah. And, of course, now it comes down to, like I would say,
• 51:35
  if you have, you know, you have good arguments for the creation,
• 51:38
  you have good arguments for the conscience, you have good arguments around the
• 51:40
  Bible, you can respond to the biblical objections, you can highlight the right
• 51:45
  scripture in its context and so forth and so on.
• 51:47
  There's one final witness that can destroy your entire, you know,
• 51:53
  effort to win somebody's Lord and that is character.
• 51:56
  Now, the first part I said of the character argument is that we're talking about
• 52:00
  the character of Christ.
• 52:01
  He establishes the reason why we can be saved in the first place,
• 52:04
  because he's the one that saves us. It's his faith.
• 52:08
  It's his life that we now live by Galatians 2, 20, so forth and so on,
• 52:12
  that we're saved by his life.
• 52:14
  It's not our works that save us, right? It has nothing to do with our individual effort.
• 52:19
  However, after we get saved, there's a sanctification process of living and
• 52:24
  growing and maturing in Christ.
• 52:27
  Well, guess what? If you are an expert at the creation arguments.
• 52:31
  And you can bring up all the evolutionary arguments, the creation arguments, the rebuttals.
• 52:37
  You can identify the fallacies, the logical inerrancies, right?
• 52:41
  And then, of course, the conscience issue, you know how to bring up the moral argument.
• 52:45
  You can identify the right and wrongs, absolute objective moral standards and
• 52:50
  so forth. And you know how to deal with the objections.
• 52:53
  And then, of course, then you can go there and show them the authority and the
• 52:57
  veracity of the word of God and how it's absolutely perfect.
• 53:00
  It's a, you know, it's a prophetic book. It's divinely inspired,
• 53:03
  but you're doing this all while you're drinking a beer with him and looking at pornography.
• 53:09
  You've just destroyed your entire witness. And so that's why in this particular
• 53:15
  episode that we, you know, we left the witness of the character as the final
• 53:20
  one because the greatest,
• 53:22
  the greatest and most powerful witness.
• 53:27
  Especially to a skeptic or an atheist or somebody that doesn't believe the Bible, is a changed life.
• 53:33
  At the end of the day, you know that 1 Peter 3, 15 verse where it says that
• 53:39
  we ought to give an answer to every man, the reason, the hope,
• 53:41
  the limitless, meekness, right?
• 53:43
  Do you know that the first 14 verses in context of verse 15,
• 53:49
  verse 15 is the apologetic verse.
• 53:51
  That's where all your apologists say, hey, you have a responsibility and an
• 53:55
  obligation to use and defend the faith through apologetics. I agree.
• 54:01
  But what is the context of verse 15?
• 54:05
  The context of verse 15 is 1 through 14, which is the suffering Christian,
• 54:11
  the Christian that suffers in this life and goes through things that the normal
• 54:18
  human life cannot answer, that leads somebody to ask them, what do you have that I don't have?
• 54:27
  Why is it that you can deal with personal tragedy and I can't?
• 54:31
  Why is it that you can deal with loss or persecution or ridicule?
• 54:37
  Why is it that you can have such patience in dealing with this kind of persecution
• 54:43
  and tribulation in your life and I can't?
• 54:47
  Evidence of the first three that we just covered, right? Guess what though?
• 54:51
  That person, well, this is in the respect of a personal, like say, for example,
• 54:57
  you know, you go through a personal life, loss in your life,
• 55:00
  and you show grace and patience, and you don't go to the bottle,
• 55:05
  you don't quit church, you're still serving God.
• 55:08
  Guess what that's eventually going to lead a person to do? What is it that you
• 55:12
  have that I don't? There's a question.
• 55:14
  So guess what does verse 15 say? Be ready always to give an answer for the reason
• 55:20
  of the hope that's within us with all meekness and fear.
• 55:24
  Right? So, he tells you, verse 15, the reason why they're going to ask you a
• 55:30
  question and you need to be ready to give an answer to that question is because
• 55:35
  they see consistency in your life. And that's your testimony.
• 55:38
  They see character in your life.
• 55:39
  Exactly. That is your personal testimony and your walk with the Lord.
• 55:43
  That's why we said the last witness is character.
• 55:47
  That is your personal walk with the Lord will open up a door for a witness.
• 55:55
  You know, and this is pretty broad because the application is broad.
• 55:59
  I remember you told me about your boss, like, hey, what makes you such,
• 56:02
  why are you so principled as a manager, you know, at your work, for example?
• 56:07
  And, you know, what do you say? Well, I'm a Christian. There are principles
• 56:10
  that are derived from the Bible that I adhere to.
• 56:12
  I want to put this in practice because I want to be a witness for Christ.
• 56:16
  Yep. At work, I've got to strive to be the best employee that my boss has. Yeah.
• 56:21
  People think that, well, witnessing is, you know, going and knocking on doors,
• 56:25
  which it is, and street preaching, which it is, being a missionary again,
• 56:30
  which it is, but people watch you.
• 56:32
  That's right. They see how you act.
• 56:35
  They see that you're separated from the general crowd, and I'm sure they wonder
• 56:40
  why. Like, hey, why don't you ever cuss?
• 56:43
  Like, you never cuss. You don't go drinking with us. You don't hang out with
• 56:47
  us. You don't do this and that. better?
• 56:48
  It's like, well, no, I'm a Christian. Boom. Doors open.
• 56:52
  So, so for example, like looking at first Peter three,
• 56:56
  And it's about godly living. You know, like, for example, verse 1,
• 56:59
  Likewise, ye wives be in subjection to your own husbands, that if they obey
• 57:03
  not the word, they also may, without the word, be won by the conversation of
• 57:08
  the wives, your character.
• 57:10
  Watch. While they behold your chaste conversation, coupled with fear,
• 57:14
  whose adorning, let it not be without word adorning, and plating the hair,
• 57:17
  and wearing of gold, or putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man
• 57:21
  of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.
• 57:28
  Listen, ladies, which is in the sight of God of great price.
• 57:33
  Why does that have such great value to God? Because he can use your meek and
• 57:38
  quiet spirit to win a lost husband.
• 57:41
  He says, for after this manner of the old time, the holy women also,
• 57:44
  who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection under their own husbands.
• 57:48
  Why? Because they're lesser human beings? No.
• 57:51
  He said, because it was a great price of God that he can use a faithful,
• 57:57
  godly wife to win a husband that had no interest in serving God.
• 58:02
  He says, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters are
• 58:05
  ye, as long as you do well and not afraid with any amazement.
• 58:09
  Likewise, ye husbands. So he just dealt with the wives. Now he said the husbands.
• 58:13
  Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge.
• 58:16
  Right? Giving honor unto the wife.
• 58:19
  Why do you have to honor her? because as far as you're concerned,
• 58:22
  Bible says she's a weaker vessel.
• 58:24
  That means that there's going to be weaknesses in her emotional stability.
• 58:29
  There's going to be weaknesses in her ability to deal with life the way a man can.
• 58:34
  And you have to honor her and protect her and dwell with her according to knowledge.
• 58:38
  That means you have to know your wife.
• 58:40
  Knowing her as far as emotionally, intellectually, psychologically.
• 58:43
  And be there for her, support her.
• 58:45
  And so he says, as a weaker vessel, as heirs together, the grace of life,
• 58:49
  that your prayers not be hindered.
• 58:50
  Then he says, verse 8, finally, be all of one mind, having compassion one of
• 58:54
  another, love his brethren.
• 58:55
  Be pitiful, be courteous, not rendering evil for evil.
• 59:00
  You don't get revenge, railing for railing, but contrary wise blessing.
• 59:03
  You bless those that curse you.
• 59:05
  He says, knowing that you're thereunto called, that you should inherit a blessing.
• 59:09
  For he that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from
• 59:14
  evil and his lips that they speak no guile.
• 59:17
  You're not being sarcastic. You're not being manipulative. You're not trying to trick people.
• 59:22
  He says, let them eschew evil, run from it, hide from it, get away from evil
• 59:27
  and do good. Let him seek peace and ensue it.
• 59:29
  For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and his ears are open unto their prayers.
• 59:33
  But the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. Again,
• 59:36
  it's their behavior, right? It's a godly life.
• 59:39
  Verse 13, and who is he that will harm you if you be followers of that which is good?
• 59:43
  But, and if you suffer for righteousness sake,
• 59:47
  You suffer for the right reasons. Happy are ye, and be not afraid of their terror,
• 59:53
  neither be troubled. But then you get to verse 14.
• 59:57
  But sanctify, prioritize, put God first, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts,
• 1:00:02
  and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason
• 1:00:08
  of the hope that's in you with meekness and fear.
• 1:00:11
  What are they asking for? Well, because you have a good marriage,
• 1:00:14
  because you honor your wife. because you have a good marriage,
• 1:00:18
  because you respect and submit to your husband, because you have meekness of
• 1:00:23
  fear. You don't speak evil things.
• 1:00:25
  See that? He says, now that's how you're going to sanctify the Lord God in your
• 1:00:30
  heart and be ready to give an answer.
• 1:00:32
  The reason why I have a good marriage is because I obey God.
• 1:00:37
  The reason why is not because I'm a good man. It's because I obey what God said
• 1:00:41
  about a marriage. And then verse 16 says, having a good conscience.
• 1:00:46
  I wonder how you have a good conscience. Because you are obeying God's word.
• 1:00:51
  You are living a godly life that honors and glorifies the Lord.
• 1:00:56
  He says, verse 16, having a good conscience that whereas they speak evil of
• 1:01:00
  you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation.
• 1:01:08
  For it is better if the will of God be so that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing.
• 1:01:15
  So Paul, or Paul, you know, Peter's writing, I'm sorry.
• 1:01:19
  Peter's writing here. He says, look, you need to live a good godly life.
• 1:01:22
  You need to be, you need to be above reproach.
• 1:01:27
  You need to live a life that people don't point at you and say, you're a big hypocrite.
• 1:01:31
  You talk down to your wife. You make fun of your wife. You look at things you shouldn't.
• 1:01:36
  You speak in a way, Like I've, I have, there's guys I work with that claim to
• 1:01:39
  be Christians and they will cuss and talk about women all day long.
• 1:01:43
  And I've told, you know, some of these guys, I've said, man,
• 1:01:46
  please don't tell anybody you're a Christian.
• 1:01:48
  Don't tell anybody you're saved. Don't, you know, you pray in front before you
• 1:01:53
  eat and then you turn around and have a filthy, you know, wicked mouth.
• 1:01:57
  That's why we say the fourth witness is probably the most powerful.
• 1:02:02
  You can convince somebody that God's a creator. You might be able to,
• 1:02:06
  through argumentation, debate, and apologetics, and prove the moral argument.
• 1:02:11
  And you may be able to identify how accurate and how superior the word of God
• 1:02:16
  is as far as the revelation of God.
• 1:02:19
  But if you're a hypocrite, you've undermined that entire witness.
• 1:02:23
  You've destroyed that opportunity to reach that particular person,
• 1:02:27
  that skeptic or whoever might be right on the fringe of believing.
• 1:02:30
  That's why I thought, that's the reason why I thought about this podcast,
• 1:02:35
  the four witnesses of Christ is obviously the creation, the conscience,
• 1:02:41
  the canon, and the character.
• 1:02:42
  Those four things, if a Christian can learn to master those things,
• 1:02:47
  can learn how to balance those things out and to, you know, because here's the
• 1:02:52
  thing, you can be a good, compassionate Christian, right?
• 1:02:55
  You have a great character, great moral upbringing, and that would in itself
• 1:03:00
  is going to speak for itself.
• 1:03:01
  But if you're unable to respond to the objections of the Bible,
• 1:03:05
  where people say there's mistakes in it, it was written by man,
• 1:03:08
  that's going to weaken your ability to witness to somebody.
• 1:03:11
  That in itself is a witness, not being able to answer.
• 1:03:14
  Or if you run into an evolutionist or maybe a student that's in college that's
• 1:03:18
  learning about evolution or they're in high school and they're learning about
• 1:03:20
  evolution and they go, there's no way that God could be creator when evolution
• 1:03:25
  is science and this is truth and this is reality.
• 1:03:27
  If you don't know how to respond to those things, you're going to weaken your
• 1:03:31
  opportunity to witness.
• 1:03:33
  It's one thing if you're in that, if we're looking at the sequence, right?
• 1:03:37
  Starting with creation, you're an unsafe person, but you're open or maybe you
• 1:03:41
  have the conscience just like a bimelech,
• 1:03:43
  you know, between right and wrong but a Christian who's already who has that
• 1:03:48
  very specific truth already in hand who are saved.
• 1:03:53
  They have a huge, I wouldn't call it a burden, but a huge responsibility because they know the truth.
• 1:03:59
  They ought to be able to answer those people that are in stages one or two,
• 1:04:03
  you know, creation or conscience.
• 1:04:05
  You should know enough of those subjects to be dangerous. I mean, you should.
• 1:04:09
  I remember a pastor, Brother Donovan, down in Pensacola.
• 1:04:13
  He said this. He said that he was talking to a very, very smart,
• 1:04:18
  intelligent Christian scientist.
• 1:04:21
  He was a scientist. I think he was a neurosurgeon or a nuclear engineer. I can't remember.
• 1:04:26
  Oh, not Christian science. He was actually a Christian. A scientist who was a believer. Okay.
• 1:04:32
  And he asked him, he says, why do you suppose that more Christians don't reach scientists?
• 1:04:38
  And he said, well, the problem is reciprocal. This is what the scientist said, the believer.
• 1:04:43
  He said this, he goes, the reason why most Christians can't reach scientists
• 1:04:47
  is they know nothing of science.
• 1:04:50
  And the reason why scientists don't read Christians is because they know nothing about the Bible.
• 1:04:55
  He goes, balance is the key. Know enough science. Because there is false science
• 1:05:00
  and true science. And God is a God of silence.
• 1:05:03
  The word of God is never going to violate the world of God. So,
• 1:05:07
  you know what you need to do is you need to have a balance, a healthy balance.
• 1:05:11
  Understand what DNA structure is. Understand the complexities of life.
• 1:05:15
  Understand the biogenesis argument that life comes from life and so forth and
• 1:05:20
  so on or the argument of morality right the more argument apologetics hello
• 1:05:24
  but that's the key the better that you get at responding to those things if
• 1:05:29
  i talk to a scientist and i start breaking down you know the,
• 1:05:33
  reductio absurd absurdum argument of naturalism and materialism maybe it'll
• 1:05:40
  make that scientist think about things.
• 1:05:43
  Right? If I know enough about gradual progressive evolution to know that it's
• 1:05:48
  impossible for the complexity,
• 1:05:50
  you know, they call it the irreducible complexity argument that like,
• 1:05:54
  say, for example, the eye, we talked about how intricate and complex the eye is.
• 1:05:58
  If you were to take one part of the eye away, like say the lens,
• 1:06:02
  or you were to take the image receptors away,
• 1:06:05
  or you were to take some of the cells in some
• 1:06:08
  of the structure away that eye is completely totally
• 1:06:12
  useless so how does
• 1:06:15
  an organism that has
• 1:06:18
  an eyeball how does it how does that
• 1:06:21
  benefit that organism if it's going to take millions of
• 1:06:24
  years to evolve all he has is this useless ball in
• 1:06:27
  his face that has no ability to see
• 1:06:30
  light it has no light receptors it has no lenses
• 1:06:34
  it doesn't have a reflective lens there's no depth per
• 1:06:37
  se you know what i'm saying it's like what's the use of that you
• 1:06:41
  have this useless appendage that eventually become
• 1:06:44
  this complex organism that's an
• 1:06:47
  eyeball with the thousands and millions of photoreceptors like wait a minute
• 1:06:52
  how does that and you talk to a scientist that way and force him to explain
• 1:06:57
  it from an evolutionary concept you know what you're going to do you're going
• 1:07:01
  to start to undermine his own authority and he's going to start to say man i'd
• 1:07:05
  never thought of it that way.
• 1:07:07
  So a Christian that has that ability just to have a little bit of knowledge,
• 1:07:12
  right, you know, about that.
• 1:07:15
  So anyway, the point is this.
• 1:07:17
  Learn the sequence. Learn enough about creation to argue for it and defend it.
• 1:07:23
  Learn enough about, you know, the conscience and the moral argument and the
• 1:07:27
  presuppositional argument as far as, you know, where does objective morality
• 1:07:31
  come from if there is no God?
• 1:07:33
  What's the problem of evil and so forth and so on? learn those arguments.
• 1:07:38
  Learn how to defend your Bible. Why is the King James Bible the perfect preserved words of God?
• 1:07:43
  Why do we believe that it's absolutely infallible and that we can trust it completely
• 1:07:48
  as the divine revelation of God?
• 1:07:51
  What's the historical argument, the philosophical argument behind the King James Bible?
• 1:07:55
  What is the fruit that it's born over the last 400 years?
• 1:07:58
  If you don't know how to answer these things, now I'm not saying you're going
• 1:08:01
  to learn this stuff overnight, but you should have an effort,
• 1:08:05
  an intellectual effort to learn and resolve these things as a Christian,
• 1:08:09
  you know, because here's the thing.
• 1:08:11
  The bottom line is the more effective you get at being able to identify and
• 1:08:16
  argue for and defend the creation,
• 1:08:19
  the conscience, and the canon, that is much more beneficial to you at the end
• 1:08:25
  of the day when you're witnessing to somebody, right?
• 1:08:27
  Yep. And then for the Lord's sake, for God's sake, have good character and testimony.
• 1:08:33
  Be careful, you know, how you act that, you know, control your spirit,
• 1:08:38
  ask God to give you patience about things that you don't have patience for and
• 1:08:42
  ask God to give you, you know, the Bible says, like in Colossians, it says, look,
• 1:08:46
  that you're supposed to, your great, your speech should always be seasoned with
• 1:08:51
  salt, but always with grace so that you know how to answer them that come to you.
• 1:08:58
  You should know how to, because you have, you have grace in your heart,
• 1:09:01
  you have patience And this is why I stress apologetics so much.
• 1:09:06
  The better you get at learning apologetics, the more confidence you have in your witness ability.
• 1:09:13
  Yeah. So, just the last thing I want to drive home is that responsibility for
• 1:09:20
  a Christian to be a good testimony.
• 1:09:22
  We have to be very, very careful, like you said, and what we do,
• 1:09:29
  what we say, people are watching us, that's a very powerful way to witness to
• 1:09:34
  somebody indirectly. Yeah, some will argue, right?
• 1:09:36
  Some will argue, well, you know, you need to learn how to take people out for
• 1:09:39
  lunch and breakfast and all this other stuff, right? Some people will argue that. Sure.
• 1:09:43
  But that's not it. That's not just it. It doesn't end there.
• 1:09:45
  I'm not saying you don't do those things. I'm not saying those things wouldn't help.
• 1:09:49
  What I'm saying is, is if all you do is rely on hospitality and nothing else,
• 1:09:54
  what are you going to do with the person that's on the verge of skepticism?
• 1:09:57
  Yeah. That has some serious questions about the veracity of the Bible.
• 1:10:02
  That have some serious questions about evolution and creation.
• 1:10:05
  What are you going to do with those people?
• 1:10:07
  Yep. You know? They still have that responsibility to be able to... That is an obligation.
• 1:10:11
  Yeah. Nobody's saying that you need to be an intellectual expert day one.
• 1:10:15
  But if the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman...
• 1:10:21
  That means you're working, there's an effort on your part to study and learn that Bible.
• 1:10:27
  If all you do, you know, we heard a message not too long ago about this endless
• 1:10:32
  doom scrolling, that's all that social media is. Nobody learns that way.
• 1:10:36
  You have to learn how to learn.
• 1:10:40
  The Christian is obligated. Listen, I've known preachers that,
• 1:10:44
  there's one preacher that, you know, he went to a Bible college,
• 1:10:47
  and I think the highest education he has was a third grade.
• 1:10:51
  And that's it. He didn't know how to read. He learned how to read with the King James Bible.
• 1:10:56
  And then he ended up becoming a pastor up in Minnesota for, man,
• 1:11:00
  I want to say almost 30 or 40 years.
• 1:11:03
  Pastoring a full congregation, actively involved, training and teaching his people.
• 1:11:08
  And I remember somebody, a brother said one time that he saw his Bible,
• 1:11:12
  that guy that couldn't read third grade, beyond the third grade.
• 1:11:17
  He didn't know how to read and write. And he says that he looked at his Bible
• 1:11:21
  that he used his entire life, and it was so chock-full of notes,
• 1:11:25
  you couldn't even see the text of the Bible anymore.
• 1:11:27
  But he had learned and studied and understood the context, rightly divided that
• 1:11:34
  Bible to the point where he could minister to an entire congregation for almost
• 1:11:37
  40 years. Third-graded education.
• 1:11:40
  So, education is not the excuse. Effort is the excuse.
• 1:11:45
  That's, you know, and there's an old saying that the maximum effective range
• 1:11:49
  of an excuse is zero centimeters.
• 1:11:51
  I had to say, I had to put that in there. But honestly, that's really,
• 1:11:55
  at the end of the day, for a Christian, your responsibility.
• 1:11:58
  The Bible says that, you know, he that's called you to be a soldier,
• 1:12:03
  you can't be entangled with the things of this life, the affairs of this life.
• 1:12:07
  But he said to endure hardness. Yeah.
• 1:12:10
  Too many Christians are taught that the Christian church is a hospital.
• 1:12:14
  It's actually a training ground. It's a boot ground. You're supposed to train
• 1:12:19
  on how to train your mind to be more intellectual.
• 1:12:22
  Train your mind to understand these arguments. Train your mind to be a better
• 1:12:26
  witness. So I don't have any excuse.
• 1:12:29
  And I can't put up with people's excuses that say, well, I just can't understand evolution.
• 1:12:34
  Then learn it. Read some books. How about, you know, turn off Netflix for a
• 1:12:38
  few hours and pick up a book on creation and evolution?
• 1:12:42
  Turn off YouTube. Yep. But yeah, I'd say that's the one thing you touched upon
• 1:12:47
  is just the reasoning process of a Christian should be sharpened.
• 1:12:51
  Absolutely. There's no excuse. And so, that's an area of focus there.
• 1:12:55
  But yeah, so four witnesses for truth, creation, conscience,
• 1:13:00
  canon. So, just remember CCC.
• 1:13:02
  That's right. I think that's a difficult message. Never mind. CCC.
• 1:13:06
  But then your character. So I thought that was a good thing.
• 1:13:09
  Yeah, the character, I would say, is like the umbrella around those three. Out of everything.
• 1:13:13
  But if you want to visualize it, like the way I've been visualizing as we've
• 1:13:17
  been going through it, it's a funnel system, like the sequence.
• 1:13:21
  It's wider at the top, and then it starts to narrow down all the way down to
• 1:13:25
  your character through God's word and your character.
• 1:13:28
  I would say the character governs the funnel.
• 1:13:32
  So the funnel would be creation, conscience, canon. And then the character.
• 1:13:36
  But the character is like, that's the, that's basically governs how you handle that funnel.
• 1:13:42
  Right. That makes sense. At the end of the day, whether you're arguing for the
• 1:13:45
  creation, arguing for the conscience or arguing for the canon,
• 1:13:48
  you need to have, you know, unreproachable character. Yeah. Basically.
• 1:13:54
  Makes sense. All right. Well, another one in the bag. I thought that was a good
• 1:13:59
  one. Good exposition, a little bit of argumentation in there.
• 1:14:02
  And just something for Christians to have written in their Bibles to think about
• 1:14:06
  the sequence, you know, a good approach or methodology or framework or whatever you want to call it.
• 1:14:13
  It's really a good way to go about it. All in Romans 1 through 4.
• 1:14:16
  And again, I would just encourage, you know, our listeners, open up your Bible and write the four C's.
• 1:14:22
  Write those four things at the beginning of Romans, or write them over the header of each chapter.
• 1:14:27
  You know what I mean? And just highlight or underline the verses that pertain
• 1:14:31
  to each one of those witnesses.
• 1:14:32
  It's a powerful way. I challenge folks just to go through Romans 1 through 4,
• 1:14:36
  knowing this with that mindset, you know, what is the creation,
• 1:14:40
  Romans 1, conscious and so on.
• 1:14:42
  Yep. And, you know. One of these days we need to do, you know,
• 1:14:46
  I, you know, I plan on, you know, putting some.
• 1:14:48
  Some lessons around studying your Bible. Yeah. But I always recommend every
• 1:14:53
  Christian to have at least four types of Bibles, four types.
• 1:14:56
  And that is, number one is a reading Bible. That's just a Bible that won't distract you.
• 1:15:01
  No notes, no cross-references, just something you can read, you know,
• 1:15:04
  and just stick to reading consistently.
• 1:15:07
  And then write your own notes based off of it. And then a note Bible,
• 1:15:12
  you know, or a note Bible would be like a wide margin or something where you
• 1:15:17
  can actually write in that Bible, highlight, underline, do things like that.
• 1:15:22
  And then I would say, you know, I say a travel Bible or a carry Bible.
• 1:15:26
  It might be like a personal size Bible, something that you can take with you,
• 1:15:29
  put in your car, take with you if you're traveling.
• 1:15:31
  You know what I mean? You don't have to bring some big Bible with you,
• 1:15:34
  but something that whenever you're traveling, you always have something.
• 1:15:36
  And then I would say a study Bible. Study Bible would be a Bible that actually
• 1:15:41
  has a cross-reference system and or a commentary system.
• 1:15:44
  So like a Schofield, a Ruckman Bible, or something like that, Dake Sanitated,
• 1:15:49
  basically where you have, or even like the Nelson or Holman Study Bibles,
• 1:15:53
  where you can actually do some academic study in addition to the text of the
• 1:16:00
  Bible. So I always recommend those four.
• 1:16:02
  I'm not saying you have to have those four, but it's just a good way to balance
• 1:16:05
  and to prioritize the Bible and a Christian's life.
• 1:16:09
  And so topics like this, the four witnesses, I mean, it's an easy concept, right?
• 1:16:14
  You know, we think of mnemonics and things like that, that trigger our memory
• 1:16:18
  ability to memorize things, you know, and I know you and I have been,
• 1:16:22
  the more we read physical books, we're trying to get in the habit of writing
• 1:16:25
  and underlining and highlighting, you know, because we have terrible,
• 1:16:28
  horrible memories. Right.
• 1:16:29
  Our dad used to tell us, 60% of Think is ink.
• 1:16:33
  Write it down, right? Well, that's what I say a note-taking Bible where you
• 1:16:38
  have wide margin is so essential.
• 1:16:40
  But at the same time, you also want to have a separate time where you can read
• 1:16:44
  the Bible with no distractions.
• 1:16:46
  And if all you do is like that brother that has his Bible is almost replaced
• 1:16:50
  with the text of his own notes, it may be almost impossible to read your Bible like that.
• 1:16:54
  Because all you do is constantly read your notes.
• 1:16:57
  Hey, read a Bible that has no notes, no cross-references, no distractions,
• 1:17:01
  where you're just, it's the pure unadulterated Word of God speaking to you through
• 1:17:05
  the power of the Holy Spirit, right?
• 1:17:07
  So anyway, I always recommend that, but there's an advantage to having,
• 1:17:11
  you know, Bibles for a specific purpose.
• 1:17:14
  Like even our pastor mentioned, he has a preaching Bible, and what he does is
• 1:17:17
  he highlights the passages that he's preached.
• 1:17:19
  So anytime he's preaching, he can open up and he knows whether he's covered
• 1:17:23
  that verse or not because it's highlighted.
• 1:17:26
  Simple, practical use. And I think it's good. That's a great practical idea.
• 1:17:31
  So anyway, it's just something that maybe our listeners to help.
• 1:17:34
  We want to educate you. We want to empower you.
• 1:17:36
  We want to get you a point where you have confidence in the Word of God and your witness.
• 1:17:40
  So these four C's is just another tool in your toolbox, basically. Yep. Yeah, perfect.
• 1:17:48
  All right, man. Well, another good one. Appreciate you tuning in and listening.
• 1:17:54
  If there's any questions, again, you know where to find us.
• 1:17:56
  If you want the show notes, email us, and we'll be happy to share that and any
• 1:18:00
  other tools, anything that we've gone through so far. So, until the next one.