Defending Truth

TNG Radio, where today's culture and timeless truths come together. It's reasoned, relevant content apologetics, worldview, and answers to the questions that you need to know. From Alex McFarland Ministries, this is Truth for a New Generation Radio. And now the man who preached in 50 states in 50 days, speaker, writer, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. I'm sure you've heard the saying that the truth is stranger than fiction. The famous writer Mark Twain said that the truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Think about that. Welcome to the program, Alex McFarland here. Glad you're with us on this edition of Truth for a New Generation Radio. On the last TNG Radio, we started an apologetics series, and we're talking about truth. And truth has been defined as that which corresponds to reality. In other words, truth is the way things really are. And the Bible has a lot to say about truth. In John chapter 18, Pilate asked Jesus, what is truth? And of course, Jesus is the personification of truth, truth incarnate.

And do you know, in Proverbs 1 verse 7, it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We live in a time when a lot of people claim to be intelligent or smart, or they claim to know things, but wisdom is not the same as mere data, and knowledge is not the same thing as truth. More than ever, we need truth, and God fortunately has revealed truth to the human race, and he's raised up an organization that has existed for 2,000 years, and our calling and our duty, the Church's responsibility, our assignment, is to proclaim truth to this world. The most fundamental, most primary truth is the truth of Jesus Christ and how to be saved.

Think about this. Just as a businessman would want to know the truth about the person he's conducting business with, or the potential employee that's being interviewed, people want to know truth about God. The good news, God has made truth knowable, accessible to all people through Jesus Christ. Truth is just not some amorphous, vague idea that's abstract, impossible to really know or attain, though contemporary society would suggest this. Truth is a person. Truth is the person of Jesus Christ. John 14 verse 6, Jesus said that he is the truth, not merely a truth, but Jesus is the absolute and final truth. And people need not search any farther, or seek any other person or other concepts or creeds. Truth is Jesus Christ. And God has given the human race his truth through the Lord Jesus.

Now, to summarize what we talked about last week and to really look at where we're going to go, let's lay these things down. Anyone who claims that there are no absolute truths cannot really reasonably make an argument. You know, Christianity says God is real, the Bible is true, Jesus is authentic. And the world often pushes back and says, well, you know, there is no absolute truth applicable to all people. Or the world might say nobody really knows truth. But anyone who is denying the reality of truth is really committing themselves to a contradiction because essentially they're saying, here's the truth, there is no truth. So, truth exists and we can know it. Like we've very often quoted Thomas Aquinas who said, if anything is true, then truth exists. Well, God's creation reveals truth. Creation had to have a creator.

Design had to have a designer. Laws come from a law giver. And this is an orderly world, full of design, operating under certain very well defined laws.

And we can see this. And so creation even points to God. Our conscience reveals truth.

We know when we've done wrong. And then Jesus Christ is truth. And so in a lot of ways, God has shown us that truth exists. Now, would you believe some ten times in the Bible, the Word of God tells the church to present and even defend truth. Very famously, 1 Peter 3.15 says that we are to be ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks a reason for the hope that we have. And do you know, the early church was very, very committed to defending the faith.

In fact, I think much more so than we are today. Seems like the early church was willing to call out false doctrines. Now think about this within the pages of the New Testament. And part of the reason I bring this out is because nowadays many Christians are reticent to say that anything is wrong or false. And even ministers, even preachers, very often just don't seem to have the theological or scriptural courage to say things like, non-Christian religions are false.

Islam is false. But in the Bible, we see in a lot of places that the New Testament seems very concerned about false teaching. In 1 Timothy 1 verse 3 and 1 Timothy 6, it talks about maintaining the pattern of sound teaching. And also in 2 Timothy 1 verse 13 and 1 Timothy 6, again, there's a lot of concern to defend that which is true, call out and squelch that which is false. We are to be aware and have discernment regarding doctrinal falsehood, deception, Matthew 24.4. We're to avoid heresy and we're to preserve the pure gospel. 1 Corinthians 11 verse 2 and Galatians 1.8. In Galatians 1.9, in very strong terms, Paul says if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than that which you have received or accepted, let them be under God's curse.

In other words, let them be anathema, which is really the word for damned. 2 Peter chapter 1, 16-21. In 2 Peter 2 verse 1, it says much about the deity of Christ, the eyewitness testimony affirming that He is the Son of God, the Bible that is God's Word. And then it talks about in 2 Peter 2, bringing swift destruction. God, the Lord Himself, bringing swift destruction on those who would pervert the gospel. And so, let's talk about truth and let's talk about the church's call, our mandate to proclaim that which is true and hopefully recover some ground that we've lost when TNG, Truth for a New Generation Radio, continues.

From I Am a Watchman Ministries, here's today's I Am a Watchman Minute. When we say we can't, God says, I can. When we say we're weary and tired, God says, come to me and I will give you rest. When we say we're frightened, God says, fear not, for I am with you. When we say we have no money or strength to accomplish the task, God says, I am able to supply all your needs. We have an enemy who wants us to feel low. He wants us to slow down or give up. When those feelings come, don't look down.

Look up. Don't listen to Satan's taunts. Focus on God's promises.

The hour is late. We must stay positive and on task for the Lord. We invite you to take advantage of the many free discipleship resources found at IAmAWatchman.com. Be bold.

Be faithful. Be a watchman. IAmAWatchman.com. As a group, millennials have more than a trillion dollars in purchasing power, so you know businesses are watching us. By 2025, we'll comprise 75 percent of the workforce, so employers are watching us. Despite these positives, millennials are losing our faith, so we know Satan is watching us. Engage Magazine is for millennials by millennials, and it speaks to faith, purpose, and a closer walk with Jesus, because above all, God is watching us.

Visit engagemagazine.net. At Liberty University, you'll earn more than a degree. You'll earn the satisfaction of seeing what you can accomplish and what God can accomplish through you. Choose from more than 600 degree options, from an associate to a PhD, and study 100 percent online more affordably than you think. Discover God's truth through every degree at Liberty University, where we train champions for Christ. Go to liberty.edu backslash explore to learn more.

That's liberty.edu backslash explore to learn more. Christians don't necessarily agree with one another when it comes to questions of religious pluralism, homosexuality, the role of government, abortion, and war. Too often we manage these disagreements by ignoring them. Yet we're called to engage the world for the sake of Christ.

How can we be effective if we avoid society's most pressing questions? In 10 Issues That Divide Christians, Alex McFarland challenges us to drill down to the biblical core of 10 current issues, such as social justice, evil and suffering, pornography, and environmentalism, as he echoes the biblical invitation, come, let us reason together. Only by engaging the scriptures deeply, thinking clearly, and speaking truthfully, can we in God's family address our differences and discover the peace that comes with unity of purpose. 10 Issues That Divide Christians.

Find this book and many others at alexmcfarland.com. In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex McFarland is a voice you can trust to speak the timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. You're listening to Truth for a New Generation Radio. It's been said that every now and then people bump into the truth, and many people dust themselves off and keep right on going.

I hope you're not like that. I hope when God reveals truth to you, you'll receive it with an open heart and an open mind. Welcome back to the program.

Alex McFarland here. And while we continue our look at truth and apologetics, defending the truth, I do want to remind everybody this is a big year for us, because in July we've got our apologetics camp for youth. It really breaks my heart when I read about young people falling away from the faith, and I've got an article this week from the Barna Research Group that says that every year a 15-23 year old will spend 153 hours under some kind of spiritual teaching.

Church, youth group, Bible study, sounds impressive maybe? 153 hours of spiritual content in a year? Guess how much screen time those same 15-23 year olds will have in a year?

Nearly 2800 hours. Now think about it. In terms of spiritual content versus screen content, it's 20 times the amount in the course of the next 12 months. And more than ever, we have got to impart truth to young people. That's why we do the TNG summer apologetics camp. We do it every year.

Last year we had kids from seven states. It's going to be phenomenal. We're going to be in Western North Carolina July 20-24. And your youth group needs to be there.

Go to my website, AlexMcFarland.com. We're going to be talking about creation, evolution, morals. We're going to be talking about America. What is the Constitution versus the idea of socialism?

So yes, we talk about God and Christianity, but we talk about America. Hey, do you know, think about this, January is the birthday of FDR. FDR was the 32nd President of the United States, and he was in office longer than any other president.

But do you know what he said one time in 1937? FDR said this, he said, quote, I hope that you reread the Constitution of the United States. Like the Bible, the Constitution must be read and reread again and again. And so we've got to tell young people about the Constitution. At our apologetics camp, we're going to go over subjects like creation and evolution, relativism, postmodernism.

What is the evidence for Jesus, the historical proof of the resurrection and the Bible? But we're going to also be talking to kids about why socialism is wrong. And your young people need to be at this, folks. It's getting dire.

It's getting late in the hour. And our window of opportunity to spread the gospel, defend the faith, and save this nation is growing shorter and shorter. So go to my website, AlexMcFarland.com, and we would love for your teens, the young adults in your life to experience a summer they'll never forget. A lot of fun stuff, ropes course, all that, the good camp stuff. But 15 sessions on apologetics and worldview. I also want to make you aware that at the end of July, July 27-31, oh my goodness, what a privilege. I'm going to be back at the COVE, the Billy Graham Training Center at the COVE, and their website is theCOVE.org. I'll be doing Daniel and Revelation. At the end of July, Bible prophecy, how God writes history in advance. You don't want to miss it. I was just talking to some of my dear friends at the COVE today, and the sign-ups are growing, people are coming from across the country, and we want you to be there too. The best lodging, the best food, good fellowship, you'll make friends, you'll meet people, and together we'll go through what the Bible says about prophecy.

So we'd love to see you at the COVE in July, and the website is theCOVE.org. You know, talking about FDR and truth, America was birthed as a Christian nation, and FDR said this in November of 1940, and listen to this, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, quote, Those two forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. And he was talking about the forces, you know, during World War II, the forces of communism and Nazism, and just the battle for our freedom that we enjoy today. But they hate democracy and Christianity, because they're two phases of the same civilization. FDR said later, Democracy is the birthright of every citizen, the white and the colored, that was the word he used, the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew. And so he understood that we were based on Christianity, the Judeo-Christian moral code, that's the Ten Commandments, and yet this moral truth, this conscience, it's also called natural law.

And it's what Jefferson was referring to in the Declaration when he said we hold these truths to be self-evident. They understood that this was not a secular nation, this was not an atheistic nation, certainly was not an Islamic Sharia nation, it was a nation that was predicated on the truth of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Understand this folks, religion and morality are not the same thing.

The government is not going to start a church or denomination. But that doesn't mean that we abolish morality. And part of the reason that we are a culture that is just in danger of digressing into lawlessness and anarchy is because a lot of people don't understand that the freedom of conscience, freedom of religious expression, freedom of religion, the idea that the government will not give preference to one religion, we understand that.

But that doesn't mean that in America we abolish morality. And so at this relativistic time, more than ever, we must understand truth, be willing to explain it, and that includes the truth about our Constitution and our representative republic. And preachers, let me say this, it is up to you from the pulpit to talk about civics, citizenship, and to help and equip your congregation and help preserve our freedoms. Now in the New Testament's swift condemnation of false teaching, the Bible was very clear that there is one God, there is one Savior, all people apart from Christ really are lost. And in the early church, misunderstandings and willful distortions did arise. There was, it seems like no sooner than Pentecost had come, and then by Acts 9, the conversion of Saul and the spread of the gospel, and Peter was preaching and Paul was preaching and planting churches and the gospel spread. By 40 years after the cross, really more like about 37 years after the cross, Titus 2.11, the gospel had been taken to much of the civilized world.

However, there were false teachings. Now when we come back, I'm going to go over about a half dozen of the most pernicious, insidious distortions of the gospel message when we come back on TNG radio. If you're a Christian parent, you of course want to instill a biblical view of life in the hearts of your children. If you're a pastor, you want to offer ministry that draws young families to your church. This is Alex McFarland encouraging you to check out my new book and video curriculum, The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask About Christianity. Why do bad things happen? I interviewed hundreds of children, ages 5 to 12, and we address actual questions from actual children, the spiritual issues that are on the minds of your kids.

Did Jesus ever sin? The book and video lessons are great for groups of any size and was produced with the goal of equipping kids to stand strong for Christ in any situation. The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask, the book, study guide and video series. You'll find it at afastore.net.

That's afastore.net. You know, Alex has been writing for many years, and one of his classic books is still great today as a basic introduction to the Christian faith. It's called Stand, Core Truths You Must Know for an Unshakable Faith. This book will help you help your teens get off the roller coaster of doubt and onto solid ground. You'll read about the six pillars of biblical Christianity. They are one, inspiration of the Bible, two, the virgin birth, three, the deity of Christ, four, atonement, five, Christ's resurrection, and six, Christ's return. You know, Alex mixes it up with humor and stories he gleaned from decades of working with youth and encourages teens to build a foundation of faith that will stabilize their lives and help them take a stand for Christ. Simple and straightforward, Stand, Core Truths You Must Know for an Unshakable Faith, available wherever Christian books are sold.

C.S. Lewis once wrote an essay called The Case for Reading Old Books, and he was talking about how, you know, truth is always something that has to be defended in every age. There are battles for truth. But one thing about the 20th century that kind of concerned Lewis and keep in mind he died in 1963. But I just wonder what he would think today, this great Christian scholar and apologist. He understood that by the mid-20th century people were beginning to deny that truth exists. They were denying that Jesus was the Son of God, and they were denying even that there was a God. And that unbelief and that denial of God, truth, Jesus, the Bible, it's more pronounced than ever, such that even many churches and denominations today don't even accept the authority of the Word of God.

Lewis said this, Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we would now absolutely deny. They had misunderstandings about Jesus, but I meet people that claim to be churchgoers who nowadays do not have an accurate understanding of what it's meant by the Son of God or the atonement on the cross. I meet church people that don't even believe Jesus was the Son of God. I dialogue with college professors that don't even believe that Jesus existed, despite the fact that the life of Christ and the ministry of Jesus and what he did dying on the cross is one of the most well authenticated lives in all of antiquity.

In fact, even Jewish, Greek and Roman sources, contemporary with the times, recognize that Jesus was real. And when it comes to truth applicable to all people, absolute truth, like truth on morality, and the truth that life is sacred, and no one has the right to murder another person, and that would include self-murder, suicide, and that would include abortion, infanticide. But nowadays people recoil at the idea that there's truth applicable to all people. And then the idea that truth is connected to the eternal nature of God.

Well, how can you defend that point without first helping some people be persuaded that there even is a God? So we're in a culture that before we can share the gospel of salvation, very often we have to do remedial work, what Francis Schaeffer called pre-evangelism, and help people understand that there is truth to be known, a God before whom we humble ourselves, and sin to be saved from, and salvation to be experienced. Now in the early church, talking about how committed they were to defending truth, there were heresies. One was the heresy called Marcionism, and that was the belief that the God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New Testament were two different gods. There was a heresy called Docetism, and it denied the humanity of Jesus. Jesus only appeared to be human. Now in true orthodox Christology, a true biblically informed view of Jesus, we understand that he's fully God, yet fully man, but not fallen man. But Docetism denies the humanity of Jesus. Arius said the Son of God was a created being lower than the Father.

This is much like Jehovah's Witnesses today. They don't believe that Jesus is the second member of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, but God the Son. In fact, Arius and cults like that today would deny the Trinity itself. There was a belief set forth by one called Apollinarius, and they basically said that Jesus' divine nature, or the Logos, replaced the human rational soul in the Incarnation. In other words, it was like this, Jesus' divine nature replaced or supplanted the fallen, filthy nature of a human. Now the filthy mind, the filthy nature, there was the belief by Apollinarius that humanity was inherently evil or dirty. Now are we sinners that need to be saved?

Yes. But life is sacred. Humanity and the physical world itself is not necessarily evil or vile. Now our soul needs to be redeemed, and we're dead in our trespasses and sins apart from Christ. But Christianity says the bad news is we're sinners, but the good news is we're valuable to God and He loves us. There was a person named Sibelius who very much influenced what would later become Islam, and they denied the Trinity, but that Jesus and the Father are not distinct, they're the same, but that they're different modes of being. And really another philosophy that would later influence Muhammad and contribute to the creation of Islam would be Nestorianism. Nestorius said that Jesus was composed of two different persons, one divine and one human.

And I'll grant you, it's complicated. The hypostatic union, that there's one in seamless harmony, unblemished, no defect, but absolute union, the divine and the human. And one person in history alone could lay claim to that, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why Jesus could say in John 8, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. He didn't say I am the Father, but he said I and the Father are one.

Read John 8 and John 10. And you know, I quoted C.S. Lewis earlier. C.S. Lewis was a brilliant thinker, and he talked about the fact that the church has this obligation. We have this biblical mandate, like 1 Peter 3.15 and Jude verse 3, and many other scriptures, to defend the faith.

C.S. Lewis said, if we throw down our weapons and throw up our hands, and if we're silent in the face of the intellectual attacks of the heathen, we betray our less educated brethren who have before God no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the atheist and the heathen. And then Lewis said the learned life is then for some a duty. And it is something we must do, because the souls of people hang in the balance, the future of the country hangs in the balance.

But you know what also hangs in the balance? The account that you'll give to Jesus one day. Did you respond to truth, follow truth, believe truth, embrace truth, model truth, proclaim truth? And did you defend truth? Because the Word of God and the need of the hour calls us to do these things. We're going to continue talking about apologetics and how we can take this eternal, perfect, infallible message of the Son of God to a needy world. Keep listening to TNG Radio, and we'll talk more about getting equipped to stand for the defense of the Gospel like Paul did in Philippians 1.16.

TNG Radio is made possible by the friends of Alex McFarland Ministries, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. That's P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. Call us at 877-Yes-God-1.

That's 877-Yes-God and the number 1. Or give online at AlexMcFarland.com. While you're there, listen to Program Archives, read Alex's blog, invite Alex to speak at your event, or contact Alex with a question or comment, AlexMcFarland.com. Thanks for listening today and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG Radio.