 So I wandered out of my house, something kind of unusual for me being an introvert and homebody, but I wandered out of my house to have a good conversation with my friend, but something crazy happened. But before I get to that, I just want to give a huge shout out to my patrons on Patreon. Patreon is a way that people can support me and this ministry monthly. If you want to head on over to patreon.com slash daily underscore disciple to help support me monthly. That would be amazing. Thank you to all the people that are there. Link in bio if you want to join. So like I said, I had gone out with my friend for coffee. We were sitting outside and just talking about life, talking about Christianity and whatever, you know, it was a good conversation. I hadn't seen him in a long time. And all of a sudden a biker of like somebody in a motorcycle pulled up in the parking lot and went inside. We were sitting on the outside patio. We thought nothing of it. At that point, I guess we were talking about say, you know, how people get saved and evangelism and all that. And so it was interesting because he came out and you know, it's kind of an older guy. He's got a big beard. He's got one of those kind of biker vests on with all the different patches and the things on the back and he came out and he looked right at us and he said, so you guys are the converters, which, you know, caught me off guard a little bit, but I said, you were just Christians. You know, and he said, well, I used to be a Christian for 25 years and I was very involved with the church. I was very, very highly ranked in the church. I'm like, okay, dude, this is not the masons here. Okay. This is not Mormonism. You're not ranked anyway. So he's like, yeah, I'm highly ranked in the church for 25 years, but six years ago I left Christianity and now I'm a devout atheist and he began to walk away. And I was thinking, well, you can't just come up and say that to us and expect to get away with it. So I wanted to draw him back into the conversation. So I said, okay, what led you to become an atheist? And he came back. It seemed like he didn't expect the question, but he was very hostile. This was something that he was very angry about and he basically got real close to both, you know, our table and he said, God is evil. God is hateful. God is a murderer. God is just wicked. I would never serve an evil God like that. And to me, that's a telltale sign that there's some there's some other stuff going on in his heart. Like an atheist that says, oh, I don't believe that God exists and all of a sudden start saying how terrible and evil and hateful God is. That tells me that some other things are at work because you'd expect an atheist to say, oh, well, I just don't believe God to be, you know, here. I don't think he exists. I don't think, you know, the evidence shows that, but it's not that it goes right to accusations against God. So where do we go from here? So one of his accusations against God was that God condoned slavery. And so, you know, I could get into, I was thinking, oh, maybe I'll get into kind of the argument about bond servants and how it was more in the, at least in terms of that relationship between master and slave, it was, it was like, so you can get in on a job, basically. And yes, there was absolutely like forced slavery and all that, but God did not condone any of that. I was thinking about all these different things that I could say to him, but then I wanted to, then I was thinking, you know, let's get to the heart of what he's saying. He's making these accusations against God. He's using his moral standard to make accusations against God where God has the foundation of morality, what is right and wrong. He's abandoned God and now he's still making these accusations against God because why? I don't know. So I asked him, what's your foundation for right and wrong? That's the foundation of what he's saying. He said, oh, you know what? It's kind of just in you. You just kind of know. And I said, okay, well, did God put that in you? He's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, God, no, God, no, no, no. And so I was like, okay, where do you, where do you get this morality? You're making all these accusations against God. You've abandoned the Bible, abandoned the 10 commandments, any standard that, that would be, that would be foundational there. You've abandoned. So what do you left with? And he said, oh, well, you kind of find it from culture. In that moment, he kind of looked at me and I could see that he wasn't ready to make that argument. He knew that it was not a really, a particularly good argument. And he abandoned it very quickly. He said, he kind of reverted it back to, well, but look at all the evil stuff that God did. He didn't want to answer the question because he knew without God from an atheistic worldview, you're really left with nothing to stand on from a moral sense. If we're just primordial ooze, if we're just stardust or evolved animals, that doesn't produce any kind of should or should not. Morality from an atheistic worldview is just completely subjective. I love the way Douglas Wilson puts it, and I've actually stated this in a video before, but he put two soda cans on a table, a debate stage, and he opened them both and he said, which one is right? And you've got to think about it from an atheistic worldview. We as people, we are just chemical reactions. There's no soul. There's no, we're not made in the image of God. It's just chemicals and all that. And so we're just chemical reactions. So if two chemical reactions are fizzing against each other, which one is right? It's nonsensical. It doesn't make any sense. But what got into my mind, what I was thinking about is that this atheist, he had some sense of morality. He had some sense that, look, like death is wrong and there needs to be accountability and there needs to be justice. But yet he was looking at God and he was distorting God's character. And so I just had so much compassion for this guy as we were talking. But it was one of those things where he didn't want to answer the question of where he got his morality because he knew, look, without God, he can't account for right and wrong. And ultimately, he just said, you know, do you, he looked right at me and he said, Oh, you know, God wanted a child sacrifice in the Old Testament and he brought up some verse or whatever. Actually, he didn't bring up a specific verse. He said, Oh, it was like in Hezekiah or something like that. And I was just like literally in that moment, I've never heard that before. And he said, Oh, you know, you just don't know your Bible like most Christians and he walked away. And in those kind of encounters, sometimes it can be disappointing. Like, you know, I would have loved if this guy was, you know, receptive to hearing the law and the gospel and repenting and trusting Christ in that moment, right? Like, that would be amazing. But ultimately, I was just thankful that God gave me an opportunity to talk to this guy. Don't be scared of atheists. Don't be scared of even public interactions. What I found is just stay calm. Like I've noticed that when I do have conversations with atheists, and oftentimes they engage, I'm like not necessarily the one that goes especially in this instance, I was not the one that engaged in the conversation, but they can be really hostile and sometimes get physical. Like this guy kind of playfully punched me in the shoulder. But it but with the intention, you know, he was very hostile, very angry. You kind of like, oh, I don't know. And for me as a big guy, I'm like, I'm not concerned about that. But just deescalating any of those debates, it's just good. And it's just good to just stay calm. And just to know, look, it's not up to you to have all the answers. It's not up to you to know all the verses. It's up to you, right? To represent Jesus in both your character and in the truths that you're saying. But know this, like, you don't have to be an apologist to say to an atheist, look, where are you getting? Why are you so angry at God? Why are you so accusatory at God? Right? Where are you getting that standard from? You know, and then from there, I would love to share the gospel with him if he was, you know, seem truly convicted of his sin. But the Bible talks about not throwing curls before swine. And so this idea that, look, he was not ready for the gospel. He was, you know, you don't need a savior unless you think you need a savior, unless you believe that you're actually guilty before God. But if you're just proud, right? Then you get law. And James, it talks about law to the proud and grace to the humble. And I think that's an important thing to remember in evangelism, engaging people, not everybody needs the gospel while everybody needs the gospel, but not everybody gets the gospel right away. Sometimes it's just law. Sometimes it's just, look who God is, look how holy God is, and look how you have fallen short. And sometimes the Holy Spirit just needs to, you know, work on them in that. And that's okay. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and enjoyed this story and got something from it. This just happened to me recently, so I thought I'd pop on here and share that with you and subscribe down below, putting out new videos every single Thursday. If you have any suggestions or questions for future videos, put that in the comments down below. Give this video a like if you enjoyed it, and I'll see you next time. God bless, guys. See you later.