Evangelism Class 1.

“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, exhort you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you were called. With all humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with another in love, be eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1-3)

1. Breaking down the charter verse of Apologetics. 1Peter 3:15.

• Written shortly before Nero killed Peter. With Peter essentially on his death bed, here he is giving the “charter verse” for Christian Apologetics. The irony of this being… Peter is most famously known as the disciple who denied knowing/being associated with Christ standing just an earshot away from Jesus before his crucifixion. It’s evident that the decision to do that has weighed heavily on his heart and mind through his life.     
• “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always ready to give an answer to every man who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
• Notice how perfectly laid out the verse is. He prefaces having a defense by putting your love for Christ our Lord first. That ought to be reflected in how we approach our defenses for the Lord. 
• We can pose arguments without being argumentative and offer defenses without being defensive. The more grounded we become in scripture and these arguments, the less likely you’ll find yourself in a heated exchange. There is a stillness that comes along with it. 

2. Why are we doing this?

• As the culture around us slips further towards secularism we need to arm ourselves and more importantly the younger generations with the logically sound arguments for the truth of Christianity.
• Feel comfortable not having ALL the answers, (I for sure do not) but, simply saying ‘That’s just the way God works’ is not/ has not been winning peoples hearts over to Jesus. You’re much more likely to open someone’s mind up to when you can be personable and have some reasonable and logically sound articulated points. 
• “When Apologetics is used in a persuasive manner and combined fluidly and sensitively with the gospel and some personal testimony, the spirit of God is pleased to use it to bring people to himself.” (Dr. William Lane Craig)

3. Evangelism 

• It is not something we do to feel a sense or moral superiority.          
• It is not something we need to check off a list so that we can receive salvation. That’s difference with our religion, it is something we do because of the love we have for him and the love he has for us which was proved through his sacrifice. 
• We don’t only Evangelize due to a sense of duty, but a sense of love. Love for God and love for neighbor.
• When someone falls overboard, although they find the water refreshing for the moment, it will inevitably drown them. We can no longer hesitate to throw them a life ring. 
• Love isn’t letting those around you live willfully in their sin that will ultimately lead to their tribulations. A true friend and loved one is one who is willing to have those difficult conversations and tell you to your face when you are messing up. Who wants to be surrounded by a bunch of ‘Yes Men’ anyway? 

4. How it relates to Apologetics.

• Apologetics comes from the Greek word Apologia; meaning a defense such as in a court of law. 
• Don’t let the atheist assume that the burden of proof is solely on us to prove the Claim that Christianity is true. They are equally burdened to prove their claim that Christianity is not true. By simply posing questions to the theist, nothing has been done to further prove their claim. No successful argument exists that inherently disproves Gods existence. There are several arguments that help prove that the Christian God is the one true God of the universe…

(Brief intro to some of the more popular arguments. All will be fully covered in blogs separately)

The Cosmological Argument

• Can something come from nothing?
• This argument covers how and why does anything exists at all. 
• Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, there is a cause to the existence of the universe. 
• There is a distinct moment at which the universe came into existence. 
• The being capable of accomplishing this must be spaceless, timeless, uncaused, immaterial in nature, powerful enough to do it, and possess a personal conscious. 

The Teleological Argument

• Commonly known as the fine tuning of the universe.
• The near infinite number of constants and values assigned to forces that hold the world together and are specifically engineered to produce and sustain life. For example, weak force, gravity, electromagnetism, and strong force.
• Chance vs. design
• The incomprehensibility of the odds that all those very finely tuned values came into existence at the exact same time.

The Moral Argument

• If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Objective moral values do exist. Therefore, God exists.  
• Without having an objective standard to appeal to, how can you know if something is good or not? How do you know a line is curved with the knowledge of a straight line to compare it to?
• It’s not to say that you can’t be a ‘good person’ or do good without believing in God, it’s that without him, the distinction between good and bad doesn’t exist.
• Who is to decide why doing good is morally right and doing bad is morally wrong? And why is one better than the other if all we are as humans are simply matter in motion? If we are just bags of stardust that happened by chance, one person hitting another person is no different than two rocks colliding in a stream. 
• Unchanging standards of goodness is different than a societies interpretation of the standard. The only way to tell if something is getting better or worse is if you have a standard to appeal to. 
• For Moral Law to exist, there must be a Moral Law giver. 

Resurrection of Jesus 

• An empty tomb was discovered. The romans guarding the tomb had nothing to gain from the story other than punishment.
• The tomb was discovered empty by a group of female followers. Back then if you wanted to conjure up a big lie, you absolutely would not start by saying it were a group of females who made the initial discovery. As they had very little societal merit. 
• Group and individual post-mortem sighting of a resurrected Christ by followers, skeptics, and enemies alike. Witnessed by over 500 people.  
• His very Jewish disciple’s willingness to die for what they knew to be true. They had no reason to believe in Christ unless he were truly the Messiah. Being very coherent in the Torah, they understood how the Jews were already Gods ‘chosen people.’ They were met with nothing but suffering for their beliefs. 

Experiencing God

• Not necessarily an argument for his existence, but a belief in God through a direct and intimate experience with him. 
• While the other arguments can be used to draw people towards the idea of the possible existence of God, we can know he exists because we have a personal relationship and experience with him. 
• Often, we may focus too much on the external arguments for Gods existence that we forget to stop and listen to him speaking to our own hearts.