2 Tim 3.16-17
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Search

Written by: David Dozier
Hits: 3702

The Humanism of Evangelistic Apologetics: Part 13.12

Review and Critique:
"Apologetics: Why your Church Needs It"
J.M. Njoroge
http://rzim.org/just-thinking/apologetics-why-your-church-needs-it/

[Key: direct quotes from author.]

Early in the author’s introduction, he recounts this exchange:

“During a conversation at a major apologetics event recently held in a large church, an attendee asked me what “apologetics” meant. I explained to her that apologetics is the branch of Christian theology that seeks to address the intellectual obstacles that keep people from taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ seriously. …  I finished my answer to her by quoting 1 Peter 3:15, which instructs us to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks for the reason for the hope that is within us.”

That last part is true: that’s what 1 Pet 3.15 commands. The problem is that regarding the typical examples listed by the author,

  • Why does evil exist if the world was created by an all-good, all-powerful God?
  • How do we know Christianity is true in light of the numerous religions that exist in the world?

none have anything to do with what Peter actually said: “… to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you …”.

Mr. Njoroge, do you expect me to believe that your “hope” is based in knowing the answer to these questions? You, like pretty much every other modern evangelistic apologist I’ve studied and critiqued reads the word “hope” in 1 Pet 3.15 but interprets it to mean all manner of extra-biblical data related to Christian truth.

These two meanings are very different; but you miss the obvious and read into Peter’s command something that isn’t there. And, in so doing, you have started the downward process to the presentation of “another gospel”, one accursed by the Bible.

But, let’s not miss the stunning biblical error made by the author in this same introduction:

“seeks to address the intellectual obstacles”

Mr. Njoroge, I have four questions for you, after which I’ll ask a follow-up question:

1. Have you never read that the lost is spiritually dead?

Eph 2.1,5
And you [lit., being] dead in your trespasses and sins, … even when we [lit., being] dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

Col 2.13
When you [lit., being] dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,

2. Have you never read that the lost is spiritually unable to understand any and all spiritual truth?

1 Cor 2.14
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

3. Have you never read that the lost is completely, thoroughly corrupt?

Rom 3.10-18
as it is written,
“There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.
Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips;
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness;
Their feet are swift to shed blood,
Destruction and misery are in their paths,
And the path of peace they have not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

4. Have you never read that the lost is actively opposed to God and actively suppresses His truth, in spite of the spectacular evidence of the glory of His creation?

Rom 1.18-20
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

The followup question is simple:  Please tell me, exactly, how “[addressing] the intellectual obstacles that keep people from taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ seriously” is even possible in the context of these four, powerful reference groups?

You, and essentially every other apologist whose work I’ve studied, continue to maintain—contrary to extremely clear Bible teaching—that the main issue with the lost is their intellect. My Bible tells me it is their dead spirit, which has no spiritual understanding but which is actively opposed to God, corrupt in every possible way.

No amount of “intellectual” persuasion of the lost will ever fix those "obstacles".

To the extent that you support this false premise you support the promulgation of “another gospel” and are under the same curse as those in Galatia who did so in the Apostle Paul’s time.

The author continues with this charade:

“Even among those who do understand what apologetics is and why it is important, there are some who suspect that it is reserved for a select minority among the elect—perhaps just for those with a questioning mind, or for an intellectual elite.”

There is something that I have learned in my review of modern apologetics: whatever the modern evangelistic apologist lacks in humility and dependence upon the Lord, His Spirit and His Word he abundantly makes up for with arrogance and intellectualism.

Without an atom of shame, he/she mitigates the true gospel with the intellectually inflated I-don’t-really-need-the-Word-of-God-to-engage-the-lost attitude.

I can assure you, Mr. Njoroge, the Lord is not impressed by, nor needs, your intellectualism or methods.

After noting the typical modern church’s lack of a proper “department of apologetics” (my term), he continues:

“The explosion of knowledge has made it possible for different people legitimately to focus on specific areas at the exclusion of others. This has complicated the process of cooperation among experts in different fields of study, the result being that often the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Thus, for example, it is possible for a local church to function without apologetics. In what follows, I hope to demonstrate why I believe apologetics is absolutely crucial to both the health and the witness of the church and why it is a serious mistake for followers of Jesus to ignore it.”

I’ve shown in this series that there is no NT example of the type of “witness” pushed by the modern evangelistic apologist.

The author closes his introduction:

"Unless the Gospel is understood at the worldview level, its impact upon those who accept it as well as its ability to change the structures of their societies will always fall short of God’s best for his people. But, as I will argue, the Gospel cannot be understood at the worldview level without apologetics."

Wow, this is quite a claim! “the Gospel cannot be understood …  without apologetics.” I guess that no one shared this gem of wisdom with the Lord Christ, Who

Mat 4.17
From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

or as the Apostle Paul put it:

1 Cor 15.1-5
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received [that is, believed], in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

The Lord Himself did not bother with apologetics in his first message (Mat 4.17); He simply started preaching the gospel. And Paul considered the gospel—not apologetics—of “first importance”.

[Mr. Njoroge: if Paul’s premise that the gospel of “first importance” is true, then it is also true that nothing would come between his preaching the gospel and those who heard.

So, I invite you to add a reply to this article with an exposition of 1 Cor 15.1-5 and how to resolve it with your claim to the implicit priority of apologetics over the gospel (“the Gospel cannot be understood …  without apologetics.”). I will happily reproduce that reply on my site, along with my reply and likely rebuttal.]

[EDIT Apr 2023: This article was originally posted on Sep 2017, nearly 6 years ago. So, either Mr. Njoroge has never seen this article or has never responded.]

Please note that neither the Lord Christ nor the Apostle Paul engaged in any of the type of apologetics claimed by Mr. Njoroge at any time in all the inspired record of the NT.

Spoiler alert: in spite of the wonderful introduction (please excuse my sarcasm!) the author provided to set up the remainder of this treatise, he presented no biblical support for the use of apologetics in evangelism (which, as I’ve just shown in my clips from the author’s article, is its clear context).

Of the very few prior Bible references marshaled as “support”, they fall into two categories:

  • they say nothing relative to the point the author attempts to make (they would therefore be classified as non-sequitur); or,
  • they are used out of context.

 

Regarding Orders to Prepare

Now, the author sets out to prove his premise that “the Gospel cannot be understood …  without apologetics.”

“The first reason why believers cannot ignore the life of the mind is that the Bible itself is opposed to anti-intellectualism”

A very uniform, common and glaring characteristic that I’ve observed among the modern evangelistic apologist is their inability to understand the difference that opposing—biblically—an intellectual approach to sharing the gospel with the lost (based on a clear understanding of 1 Cor 2.14) and rather presenting the simple, pure gospel to the lost is somehow anti-intellectualism.

No, not by any means.

But you, modern apologist, continue to maintain that you, essentially, can reason the lost into the kingdom. Yes, I’ve read the disclaimer by pretty much every modern apologist against such a notion; but it is equally true that from the tenor and texture of what they write in the bulk of their articles that this is exactly what they believe and practice, in spite of their verbal disclaimers. They simply are unwilling to actually, accurately characterize their mechanistic methodologies.

The author continues into another very common abuse of a well-known passage from Acts:

“For example, within the context of apologetics, Paul’s practice of reasoning from the Scriptures when in discussion with Jews about the identity of Jesus is well known. But as we see in Acts 17, Paul was willing to depart from this practice when he debated the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens: he started from where they were in order to introduce the Gospel to them. He could not reason from the Scriptures with them since they, unlike the Jews, did not accept the authority of the Scriptures.”

Since the author appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually happened with Paul in Athens, I here quote from myself:

Did Paul actually preach an OT-free message (because he didn’t reference chapter and verse!), building his message instead on a short phrase from a pagan poet to present the gospel? Not by any means:

I believe that Paul, with his encyclopedic knowledge of both the OT and everything that existed at that time of the beginnings of the NT canon, had many, many other references in mind! (For example, virtually the entire message could have been preached directly from the rich content of the book of Isaiah!)

If you count the number of references, you’ll find that the Apostle had more than 50 Bible texts in mind. Mr. Njoroge, are you really going to maintain “He could not reason from the Scriptures with them …” in the face of this text and its implicit references?

Mr. Njoroge, I am compelled to ask: did you actually read Paul’s sermon? Perhaps its actual content was missing in whatever translation you happen to be using due to some translation, editing and/or printing errors? Or, if online, perhaps the online version has been hacked or otherwise corrupted?

The author continues with (general) examples from Mat 22. What the author fails to note is that the “apologetics” used by the Lord Christ were simply His calling out the repeated and consistent errors of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

[This, as I demonstrated here, is the essence of true, biblical apologetics: the presentation of the truth of the Word of God within a (real or so-called) believing community against the claims of false teachers. What I am doing now in this rebuttal of Mr. Njoroge is an example of the biblical implementation of apologetics in the general venue of Christianity.]

So, yes, Mat 22 is an example of apologetics—just not the type of evangelistic apologetics espoused by the author. So, as I mentioned above, here is an example of a portion of Scripture used out-of-context by the author relative to his claims regarding apologetics.

The remainder of this section (Orders to Prepare) is mostly irrelevant and useless information; I won’t waste the time with a formal critique. It was enough of a waste of time to wade through it...

 

Regarding Spiritual Warfare

As I read through this section, I was impressed by the fact that the author approaches a text that actually touches on biblical apologetics (2 Cor 10.3-5), but nevertheless draws inferences from it that are consistent with his narrative rather than what the Holy Spirit, through Paul, taught.

It truly is a case of “closer, but still so far ...”.

Yes, Mr. Njoroge, ideas are powerful weapons, both when used by the saints and by the Adversary, Apollyon. And, yes, Paul actually does say “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God …”.

However, you make a subtle change to the actual text of the passage:

“In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, the Apostle Paul says, For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.”

The actual text says:

2 Cor. 10.3-4
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

These are not equivalent terms! Your change is biblical distortion!

Perhaps another example, also from the Apostle, will help to make this clear from a passage that uses both in juxtaposition:

2 Cor 1.12
For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you.

The world is where Christians (and everyone else) live; the flesh is the nature of the lost man (and that which is to be shunned in 2 Cor 10).

Rom 6.8-14
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Christians are commanded (and expected) to avail themselves of the fact that the Lord Christ overcame sin and death, with the result that we (Christians) are no longer mastered by the lost nature, the flesh even though we continue to walk in (exist within) the world.

Let me show you something from where the author is going with his idiotic and utterly misguided use of 2 Cor 10.3-5

“We are to take thoughts captive to make them obedient to Christ. The word Paul uses for arguments is the Greek word logismous, which refers to “the product of a cognitive process.” If that is true, it is hard to imagine Paul ignoring the claims of those who would today argue that we cannot really “know” God in any meaningful sense. He did not shy away from engaging the Athenian philosophers in discussions on such matters.”

The author implies that from the fact that Paul noted the Greek altar to an “unknown god”, that this was—somehow—a tacit indication that a “true God” couldn’t be known (and this therefore places us into the typical intellectual and self-declared territory of the modern evangelistic apologist).

No, the Greeks were polytheists—the logical inverse, really, of Mr. Njoroge’s claim. The altar to the “unknown god” is nothing more or less than the very humanistic and feeble attempt by the Greeks to make sure they didn’t accidentally and/or ignorantly leave out one of their perceived multiplicity of gods.

The Apostle hardly had “discussions on such matters” with the Athenians; he simply used the opportunity to re-apply the title to an altar to the One to Whom it really belonged. Paul portrayed this “unknown god” as the only true God, the true God to whom they (the Athenians) would give an account. Their “unknown god” was not one god of many—No! Paul turned their intellectual/religious safety net back onto themselves.

Mr. Njoroge, I invite you to consider this (especially if you actually took the time to check the references above!): Paul’s sermon (as recorded in Acts 17) takes less than 90 seconds to read. Since the sermons consists of at least 50 passages of Scripture, Paul presents approximately 1.8 references to the OT Scriptures per second.

This doesn’t leave much time for "discussion"! This was a sermon—short and to-the-point! Moreover, a few were saved as a result.

Mr. Njoroge, how could you possibly miss this fact? Did you actually read and think about Paul's sermons to the Athenians, or did you hear about it from someone else who was just as ignorant of its real content as you are?

Perhaps you read the "Reader's Digest" version?

It was, however, more than enough time to convict the Athenians of their idolatry, tell them of their moral culpability and call them to repentance as a result of the fact of the resurrection of Christ.

Before leaving this section: the true context of 2 Cor 10.3-5 is much narrower than you are led to believe by Mr. Njoroge. If he had bothered to immerse himself in that context, he’d have seen that Paul was referring to the false teachers and apostles who had infested the Corinthian assembly. Paul nowhere applied his words to an intellectual battle with the ideas of a lost world.

[Please note that I have patterned my series on apologetics to match Paul’s activity in Corinth and Philippi (where he uses these terms) and is the same as that which Jude referred to: the defense of the true faith within the Christian community and the local assembly. In this series, I challenge each of the unbiblical claims and reasoning of the modern evangelistic apologist by comparing them to the Scriptures, then call out their error.]

I wonder that modern apologists can say things like this without any observable sense of shame:

“God has given us the ability to make real decisions with eternal consequences. When we exercise our freedom to choose, we affirm our true humanity. But if we were created by God in order to have a personal relationship with Him, then to choose against Him is to dethrone the essence of our humanity.”

“Freedom to choose…”   “we affirm our true humanity”   “dethrone the essence of our humanity” !?!?

Mr. Njoroge, are you serious!?!? I can't resolve the biblical contradiction of such words from the pen of someone who claims to be a Christian!

What is the genesis of such reasonings? Are you even remotely aware of what the Lord teaches us through His word on the true nature of “humanity”? Have you never read these:

Gen 6.5
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Rom 8.5-8
For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

1 Cor 2.14
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

Are you actually saying that our humanity needs to be or should be “enthroned”!?!?

I have observed generous and stunning servings of humanism, intellectualism and arrogance by the modern evangelistic apologist, but I must say that this appears to have reached a new low (biblically speaking).

The author continues:

“As ambassadors of Christ in a hurting world, we play a dangerous game when we ignore the life of the mind. The fact that the mind is an intensely active spiritual battlefield is seen in the large number of young people whose faith is shaken when they encounter ideas that challenge the truth of God’s Word. This is a familiar story on many university campuses. Biblical thinking can only regain the respectability it once had by making its case in the marketplace of ideas. When reasoned discourse takes a backseat in any culture (and reasoned discourse in turn is only possible in the context of a shared assumption that truth exists and can be discerned), the only alternative is the exercise of raw power. This is clearly seen in the priority given to court cases in the so-called culture wars without an equal emphasis on shaping public opinion through a reasoned defense of biblically sound positions. While court cases have their legitimate role, real victory will only come when Christianity is once again recognized to be a legitimate option in public discourse.”

It is evident that Mr. Njoroge believes that this is essentially an intellectual battle that can be won if only the lost are exposed to the “right” ideas presented rationally, with the tacit assumption that they (and their “public opinion” and “public discourse”) are actually willing and able to give Christianity a fair opportunity to compete in the cultural field of ideas and morality.

This is unbiblical lunacy and irresponsible foolishness of the highest order.

Did you notice that little phrase “… shared assumption that truth exists and can be discerned”? The author evidently does not really believe this critical text:

1 Cor 2.14
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

Mr. Njoroge, the responsibility of the Lord’s heralds of the gospel is simply to preach the gospel—not to assume that the lost are able to understand it (which they won’t and can’t). Then, when the Lord alone grants the “birth from above” and opens the lost’s understanding to spiritual truth (because they now are alive!), then the glory for that salvation will rest where it should—on the grace of the sovereign God and not on the messenger.

The author has some fundamental misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches regarding how the lost is saved.

“When biblical Christianity is understood at the worldview level, it has the power not only to change the hearts and minds of individual adherents but also to influence the ideas that shape the opinions of a culture.”

What Mr. Njoroge fails to note is that that “biblical Christianity” is effectual only once the lost has been gifted the “birth from above” by God’s own Spirit. Only when that previously, spiritually dead one has been raised to new life does the truth of the gospel and God’s Word have meaning and do its powerful work.

No, Mr. Njoroge: you need to return to Bible 101, Salvation 101 and Gospel 101 and begin studying them anew before you do any more damage within the Christian community.

As it stands now, your “contribution” to Christianity is a wrecking ball, a veritable engine of destruction and an epic fail. I assure you, on the basis of 1 Cor 3.10-15 that your "ministry" will be lost in the fires of judgment.

 

Regarding Borrowing a Page in English

The usefulness of this section eludes me: the author appears to vacillate between social morality and true Christianity:

“The process of Christianization did not occur by accident but as the result of a careful understanding of the Scriptures and the application of God’s Word to all of life. The Christian leaders who had laid the foundation for the moral rebuilding of their nation understood what a community of committed believers should produce: people of deepseated character and integrity who can discern the times in which they live and who can influence others, including their leaders, not only to become believers but also to live their lives and conduct their Christian witness with biblical wisdom in spite of cultural pressure to the contrary.”

But, then again, we return to the now familiar intellectual engagement of the lost (as if that really was effectual):

“Unfortunately, his warning increasingly went unheeded as the English Evangelicals began to abandon the life of the mind and to retreat instead into an agenda which prioritized personal piety over a scholarly engagement with ideas that opposed a biblical view of the world.”

Mr. Njoroge, the lost attain a “biblical view of the world” only when they are gifted with the "birth from above", coincident to being exposed to the true gospel of grace preached by a godly, consistent, and faithful Christian witness.

The author concludes this section:

“What your mind rejects, your life will eventually reject also, however close it may be to your heart. It is often said that ideas have consequences. Such a maxim can only benefit us as we determine not to allow it to degenerate into a meaningless cliché. If we lose the next generation to secularism, other religions, and paganism, it is not going to be because we fought and lost the battle, but because we never entered the battlefield in the first place. God has given us all we need in order to serve Him effectively in this world, and our minds are an integral part of the process.”

It is not obvious how the "mind", "life" and "heart" of a person can operate independently. But, no matter: we have the ultimate victory of modern evangelistic apologetics is proclaimed!

[In fact, that first sentence is nonsense. How does a "life" reject anything? From the sound of it, the "life" has a "mind" of its own which is somehow separate from the "mind" of the person!? But then, what does the person do with his/her "heart"? Where does that fit.]

Mr. Njoroge: I agree that there is the very real possibility that “we never entered the battle”. However, the truth of the matter is that the battle is fought with the Word of God, not the humanistic word of the humanistic apologist. If the battle is lost, it will be because those who should have known better (such as you, the evangelistic apologist) fought with their weapons (their considerably misguided intellectualism and humanism) rather than the gospel of grace.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten that the only offensive weapon in the Christian’s arsenal is:

Eph 6.17
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

When the Lord amends this powerful text to say

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, along with the intellectual arguments of the apologist whose work needs to introduce the gospel.

then you will have a strong position from which to proceed (and I'll personalize apologize to you for my comments here).

Until then, please stay home and stay out of the way! Don’t attempt a witness to the lost. Let those who truly fear God and His Word do their work in proclaiming the gospel of grace to the lost. We don't want or need your "help".

My view of your "ministry", based on this article, would be tantamount to this:

Eze 32.11-14
For thus says the Lord God,
“The sword of the king of Babylon will come upon you. By the swords of the mighty ones I will cause your hordes to fall; all of them are tyrants of the nations, and they will devastate the pride of Egypt, and all its hordes will be destroyed.
               “I will also destroy all its cattle from beside many waters; and the foot of man will not muddy them anymore and the hoofs of beasts will not muddy them.
               Then I will make their waters settle and will cause their rivers to run like oil,”
Declares the Lord God.

All you are doing is “muddying the waters” of the proclamation of the gospel for those who truly desire and labor to present it as they've been commanded by the Lord Christ.

 

Regarding Out of Africa

The author uses the continent of Africa as an example of the results of anti-intellectualism; these include “Drought, famine, poverty, and disease …”. His claim is “… that the biggest problem Africa faces is ideological.”

He then makes a surprising and uncharacteristically valid statement:

“God’s Word properly applied is the only hope for the world.”

but then promptly ruins it with:

“Winter refers to this as “the nightmare of a thought that our vast global, hard-won expansion of Christianity is falling to pieces before our eyes.” His conclusion is worth pondering: A Christianity that does not teach the Bible points the way nowhere but to New Age groping, ambiguity and relativism. However, a Christianity that only teaches the Bible is blind to all the other knowledge God wants us to discover and value. A full examination of how we got where we are goes well beyond the scope of this short article. Suffice it to say that the church, for the most part, did not respond well to the assaults on the faith that gained prominence in the intellectual centers of the world in the nineteenth century. Philosopher J.P. Moreland identifies three principal areas in which the Gospel was poorly defended against intellectual attacks: philosophy, science, and German “higher criticism.””

And so we have the inevitable return to intellectualism and its presumed value of “validating” the Word of God. This well-known text comes to mind:

Pro 26.11
Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.

If only the missionaries that proclaimed the gospel to Africa’s lost would have rounded out their work with copious lessons in apologetics as well! (Again, I’m being sarcastic.)

I wonder, Mr. Njoroge: did you consider that Africa’s plight is due more to the predominance of Islam than to the lack of your version of “Christianity” (quotes deliberate)?

This section, in my opinion, was nothing less than a verbal train wreck, an anti-Bible rant expressed with “high-sounding” words.

 

Regarding What It Will Take

The author starts out very well:

“The first thing it will take in order for the followers of Jesus to turn this ship around is a sacrificial commitment to the course of truth. The church must produce gifted men and women who are not ashamed of the Gospel and who will serve God with their minds as historians, artists, moral philosophers, scientists, politicians, business entrepreneurs, university professors, media personalities, etc. In other words, we must strive to raise a generation of believers who are not just professionals who happen to be Christians but diligent Christians who understand that their professions are a means to glorify God.”

Well said! But, then (big surprise!), he completely ruins it (again!) in the summary and conclusion of the article:

“The one Bible verse that comes close to giving us a definition of eternal life is John 17:3. It says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Eternal life is not just something that will happen some day after we die; it is knowing God through Christ, and it begins the moment we believe. Thus apologetics is necessary for the health of the church because it helps the believer to overcome intellectual obstacles in the course of the believer’s spiritual growth. It is necessary for the witness of the church since it helps clear away the obstacles that can keep the non-believer from taking an honest look at his or her true spiritual condition.”

Did you notice the conflation of “knowing God and Christ” (the essence of eternal life) and “apologetics”!?!? That is, in the author’s mind, knowing the Lord and Christ is apologetics—an apologetics, though, that also

“… helps clear away the obstacles that can keep the non-believer from taking an honest look at his or her true spiritual condition.”

And so we return once again to an important facet of the author’s preconceived notion of apologetics: by means of intellectualism and rational argumentation somehow, magically, the lost will be reasoned into the kingdom.

Mr. Njoroge: I end by repeating my sincere plea: please return to Bible 101 for instruction. You have some fundamental and serious misconceptions about what it teaches. Until you do and have been transformed by real Bible knowledge, your march of destruction of Bible truth will continue and the souls to whom you witness will think they are saved (by virtue of the virus of your apologetics) but will actually remain self-deceived and lost. You are creating souls destined for Hades.

You may be sure that the Lord Christ is not pleased with your attempts at “evangelism”.

Comments powered by CComment