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Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Apologetics or Apologies: How to Share Your Faith in Adversarial Settings

Anil Kanda

Where are all the SDA Christian Apologists?

Disarming Pharisees and Sadducees

The Apologetics of Paul

Father in heaven, we thank you again so much for an awesome first session.

And now as we proceed to the second session, we pray and ask that your Holy Spirit would lead and guide us.

Thank you, Jesus, for all your goodness, for all your kindness to us.

Thank you for bringing us here to be able to learn and to experience more.

All right, the first session we dealt with apologetics and apologetics the word is apologia which means a defense or a sort of a defense that takes place in the court of the things that you believe in, right?

A clear and precise defense of the things that you believe in.

We looked at many examples that these aren't just original SDA beliefs, but we learned that there are many scholars, from John Stott to even C.S.

Lewis, who questioned the eternal burning hellfire teaching.

And if you're part of the last seminar, I just want to say this.

The reason why it's extremely important to present what we believe when it comes to our teaching about hellfire is because the world right now has a misconception about God.

Even the devil himself probably would not burn people for all of eternity.

He himself shudders at the results of his own mistakes.

But yet he has placed an image so diabolical, so wicked, so ugly over the character of God that when people look at God, they run.

And this is why it's extremely important to understand this.

So if you missed the first session, you can listen to the audio recording, you can talk to somebody who went there.

It happened at the last evangelistic series I was preaching.

I was preaching on the weekend where I dealt with the state of the dead, and I dealt with the Hellfire, our teaching about Hellfire, annihilation.

And I was preaching, and I was so, I was deathly sick.

And I don't get sick, but when an elk kinda gets sick, I mean, I get sick.

I get bad, I mean, it's just like Ebola virus on an elk.

And so, when I got sick, I had people praying, some people did hydrotherapy.

And as I began to preach, the Spirit came upon me.

And I preached, I mean, I never probably preached a clear and greater presentation about the state of the dead and about our teachings about hellfire.

That same weekend, the pastor of the local mega church had a vision.

And I found out this by 1 of the church members.

He had this vision where he was taken to hell.

He was taken to the center of the earth and he was brought before all these people who were burning and they were moaning and they were just screaming as they were being burned.

And he came out of it and he told his congregation that Sunday morning, he said, I saw hell last night.

And I want to tell you right now, there are people who are burning there and God is, is, is tormenting them because of their sins.

At the same weekend that I was presenting that.

Folks, I want you to understand something.

When you present the truth as it is in Jesus, the devil starts targeting.

The name of this seminar is called Questioning the Questioner, Disarming Pharisees and Sadducees.

Questioning the Questioner, Disarming Pharisees and Sadducees.

And so, watch what Ellen White says right here.

In the Southern Watchmen, September 12, 1905, there are many cases where men who have defended Christianity against skeptics have afterward lost their own souls in the mazes of skepticism.

They caught the malaria and died spiritually.

And by the way, last session we learned about 1 individual like this.

Moses Hall, considered probably 1 of the best Adventist apologists was debating spiritualists, utterly destroying them in the debates.

He himself fell away and became a spiritualist.

Because he would not spend that hour in Jesus.

We need to spend an hour a day regardless of what we're studying.

By the way, you know, I was doing an apologetic seminar with 1 of my other friends, Brian Simmons, and as we were presenting it, we had done a lot of study with, we went, we visited imams, we visited Buddhist priests, we talked to a lot of these people from different religions, Hindu philosophers, and as we were talking to them, it was so easy just to feel sort of the influence that they were presenting.

And I was like, Jesus, keep me close to you.

I never forgot when I was talking to the Buddhist priest.

I mean, she was just like, I can see in your eyes right now.

And you need the rest that comes in Buddhism.

And I was just like, I just blinked and I was like, all right, I need to get going right now.

We need to spend that hour with Jesus each and every day regardless of what we're studying amen otherwise we can be influenced by the world but watch what she says right here they have strong arguments for the truth and much outside evidence but they did not have an abiding faith in Christ if you're gonna study apologetics 1 hour a day with Jesus amen oh there are thousands upon thousands of professed Christians who never study the Bible.

Study the sacred word prayerfully for your own soul's benefit.

This is extremely important when it comes to teaching apologetics, that we teach this truth above any other truth, that an hour a day with Jesus.

Not just studying, but lingering in his presence.

When it comes to people, when it comes to engaging society, we can sometimes sit with people at Starbucks, have a soy milk steamer, or we can go down to, you know, in various classrooms.

Have you ever taken a class on philosophy or religion?

Not found in our Seventh-day Adventist institutions, but found in other institutions, you will often find there are sometimes people who are very antagonistic towards the very things that you believe in.

And many times it can be very difficult when you're trying to share and you can't think at that very moment what to say You've ever been in a situation like that all the time.

Amen, you know, you've been in that situation, right?

You don't know what to say at that very moment when someone says something something right?

But what we're going to be doing today, we're going to be going over some principles of what to do when you're in situations like that.

How do you share with somebody who's very antagonistic, who's throwing all these questions, not in an attitude of genuine search and desire, but an attitude of genuine skepticism?

How do you deal with them in a productive and constructive way?

Oftentimes in our discussions and our witnessing, it can move from a time when there is just good dialogue to a time when something is said, a certain psychological prick takes place, and all of a sudden the person becomes very angry, very enraged, and they begin to show all these questions.

We're gonna find out how Jesus dealt with this issue.

Last time, last session we learned about somebody who asked the question in the philosophy class, can God make a mountain so big that he himself can't move it?

You wanna know the answer to it, listen to the recording.

Everyone take your Bible, we're going to go to a time where Jesus actually dealt with skeptics.

Where he actually dealt with Pharisees and Sadducees who were confused even about the things that they believed in.

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Series

Apologetics or Apologies: How to Share Your Faith in Adversarial Settings

Disarming Pharisees and Sadducees

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Before Royalty: Cross Etiquette

45m

The Alabaster Box- How Jesus Treated People

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Loss

41m

The Most Important Question

43m

The Mystery of God

The Mystery of God- Part 2

35m

Crisis At the Close: Gethsemane

52m

Hashtag - RelationshipGoals

29m

Creation- Genesis as the Foundation

53m

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Lessons in Warfare

Special Forces

51m

Why We Believe: Exploring the Fundamental Beliefs of the Bible

10 The Death & Resurrection of Christ

55m

Plenary

Overcoming Trials

54m

Flip the Script

02 How Bible “Buts” Change Trials Into Triumph

53m

Sound Doctrine