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There's one other thing to keep in mind, and I'll let you go. There's one other thing to be kept in mind.

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This has tremendous apologetic application as well. It's not just because of Jehovah's Witnesses or anything else.

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It has tremendous apologetic application. Here's why.

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Most Christian apologists present a method of defending the faith that basically says what you do is you get together with the unbeliever and you say,

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I'll tell you what, let's stand on this neutral ground and let's just reason together.

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I will lay aside my presuppositions. You lay aside your presuppositions.

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Let's just come together on neutral ground and we'll just reason with one another.

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And I will demonstrate to you the reasonableness of believing that there is a God.

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That's a very, very common perspective, a very, very common approach.

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But think about it for just a moment. If this is true, if Jesus Christ as the Son, the eternal Son of God, created all things,

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could someone explain to me how you can find anything that's neutral ground in what He Himself has created?

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Because if it exists, it exists because He made it. If it's a fact, it's a fact because He defines it.

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And so any Christian who pretends there's such a thing as a neutral ground upon which to stand is actually being deceptive.

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I mean, if I follow that through, what I'm saying is, okay, we'll stand on this neutral ground, but I really don't believe there is any neutral ground.

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But I'm going to try to bring you along and pretend that there is, but eventually somewhere we're going to get down the road

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and I'm going to have to start telling you about who Jesus really is. And you might end up actually reading this.

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And if you read this, you're going to go, wait a minute. If this is the Jesus you're trying to convince me I need to bow the knee to and believe in,

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you lied to me back at the start because you said, oh yeah, I can lay aside my presuppositions.

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Here's some neutral ground, but you don't believe there is such a thing as neutral ground because if Jesus is actually the creator of all things,

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there is no neutral ground and you lied to me. And I don't ever want to have that happen.

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I don't ever want to be in a situation where someone comes to me and says, you deceived me.

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You held back part of what you actually believe just to try to get me to come along.

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That's why I can't engage in that kind of apologetic.

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And that's why the Bible actually says in Romans chapter 1, what is mankind doing?

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Is mankind really in a situation where, well, I don't know if God exists. I'm not sure. There's this and there's that.

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What does Romans 1 say? God has made his existence clearly known through what has been made so that man is unapologetus, without an apologetic,

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and that man is suppressing that truth. He's holding that truth down.

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That doesn't mean every person has as clear an understanding or suppresses in the same way.

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There's religious suppression. There's pagan suppression. There's elitist scientific suppression.

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There's different ways of holding the truth down.

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But the fact is when you bring facts to a rebel who's already holding other facts down, they're just going to suppress that fact as well.

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You've got to be dealing with their rebellion first and foremost.

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And so there's a lot of implications. There's a lot of results from understanding the radical nature of the Christian claim.


