 Alright, good morning everyone and welcome to this course PC212 on Christian Apologetics. Thank you all for connecting, joining and it's really good to have you all back after the long sound break. I know some people we have been in touch where it's good to reconnect after the break. So welcome back. I have turned the recording on so this entire lecture and also the next lecture will be recorded for the benefit of those who would like to go and listen to it. This recording will also be used on our e-learning portal. Recordings will be available both in the Google Classroom, in the Classwork section, as well as the e-learning portal for students who are studying on the e-learning portal. So welcome. Let's pray and pray together. Then we will get started today and look forward to joining with all of you this semester and growing together, interacting, learning with you. Okay, so I'm going to just request somebody to lead us in prayer. Who wants to pray? Who would like to pray? Just can open up. Okay, I'll pray first. Oh Dinesh, go ahead please. Thank you Father. Thank you. Thank you for this time. Thank you for this class. I know your purpose is your will is to attend these classes. I know for each one of them, each one of the students, you are making a will and opening those through many lectures like Pastor Hashish. I pray your will may be completed in our life as per the whatever ministry you have decided. Father, thank you, bless the whole class. Father, may your interpretation may not occur. May all the students be blessed in this teaching. Bless Pastor Hashish's health. Also, students health may or your will happen as per your will happen, Father. I plead you once again for protection for students, family, lecturer, this time, Father. I submit all the students, all the students and all the lecturers in your might hand, bless them, give them wisdom. Also, help us to grab the wisdom knowledge. In Jesus' mighty name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you Dinesh. Thank you. Alright, welcome everyone. Welcome back. It's good to have you all back here in class and look forward to a great time. Alright, so we're going to get started with the introduction and then get into the course that we have before us on Christian apologetics. The PDF of the course overview PDF as well as the PDF for this first lecture has been put up in the coursework section in Google Classroom. So please download it and you can use it. I will also share it from my computer as we go along. And week by week we will release the PDFs to you for the lectures on a weekly basis or each time we get into a new chapter. So chapter by chapter will release the PDFs to you so you can download it and use it as we journey to this course together. Alright, so let's just do a quick introduction, a quick overview to this course, what we are looking at, what we intend to cover, and then we will go forward from there. So our course on Christian apologetics really, what are we looking at? What are we journeying into? We want to be in a place where we could provide answers or respond to questions that people have about our Christian faith, about what we believe, about what the Bible teaches. And we want to do it in a manner that will impact their hearts, impact their hearts and minds. So we want to do it of course in love, the Bible tells us to speak the truth in love, so we want to do it lovingly. And yet we want to do it intelligently, that means we need to have reasonable answers. Now Christian apologetics as it is today in the Christian world is a very, very vast field. And you will find that there are people who take several different approaches to this whole field of Christian apologetics. There are those who take a very philosophical approach, meaning their answers, their responses will be hugely philosophical, dealing with the questions of why and what and so on, using logic and philosophy. Then there are those who are more scientific or evidence-based, you know, and so here you have people who study archaeology or study different scientific fields, streams, and their response or their approach to apologetics is evidence-based, you know, okay, we found this, we saw this, and it's based on that. That's another stream of apologetics. A third stream would be purely theological, you know, they will provide answers from Scripture, you know, the Bible says this, and this is, you know, and a purely theological or a scriptural response to questions. And fourth stream would be what we would call as a spiritual or supernatural, where we come from a purely spiritual point of view, basing our responses on spiritual or supernatural experiences. What we want to do in this course is something quite different from what, you know, generally the way apologetics is approached. We want to try and blend all of four of these. So, you know, there will be some parts of what we talk about which are philosophical in nature, some which are scientific, evidence-based, some which are theological, biblical, scriptural, and some, of course, will come from a supernatural perspective. So we want to try and blend these. So, that's our approach in this course. That's going to be our approach in this course on giving answers to questions. Now, some of the things that we are going to address now, like we said, you know, apologetics itself is a huge, huge area. So, you know, we've intentionally picked out certain things that would be of use for us. And so what we're going to do today, we will start off with just trying to understand apologetics. And one of the things that we want to impress is that true biblical apologetics is a combination or is a blending of reasoning and demonstration. In many evangelical circles, apologetics is purely, you know, words or reason, and it's confined to that. But we want to see from scripture that the defense of the gospel is not only reason, it's also demonstration. It's both wisdom and power. So Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God. So biblical apologetics is really a combination or it's a blending of wisdom and power, reason and demonstration. And that's the way we should be doing it. We don't have the option of, okay, I will only do reason or only demonstrate. You need to blend both. And that's what we will emphasize. Then we'll talk about questions like on the existence of God, creation. We will talk a little bit about science and faith. We'll explore some things about Darwin's theory. We'll look at the Big Bang theory of cosmology. We will then shift to, you know, the Bible is authenticity and accuracy. Why do we believe the Bible is true? We'll also talk about the uniqueness of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus. Then we'll talk about, you know, how it's the fact that salvation is Jesus. Why do we say salvation is only through Jesus Christ? Then we talk about how do we communicate our faith with Hindu, Hindus, Muslims, and we will take a look at other worldviews. How do we interact with people of other worldviews? We will also address a few contemporary cults. How do we respond to them? And then we will talk about responding to certain social challenges that we all are confronted with in our modern world. And then lastly, we will talk about a little understanding of suffering and then get into some time for answering common questions along these lines. So really, we try to cover a lot of ground. We're going to try to balance width and depth, but obviously we're not going to be able to delve in one subject too long because we also want to cover other topics, as you can see. But what I hope is that you would get an understanding of how to think, how to respond, and then if there are areas that you are interested in, you can delve further into those areas. We'll have three simple assessments as we go along based on the content we cover and our grading scheme. Exams are easy here, so don't worry. We will be giving you course material as we go along chapter by chapter, but of course there are a lot of online resources that you could go to to look at, to listen, videos, a lot of content is available online. There are also good books, authors available, some we've mentioned in our course overview. You could get them for free and I think some of these PDFs we will make this, we'll put it up on the coursework section if you're interested in reading. Of course there's a lot to read. I do not expect you to be able to read everything in the next four months, but hopefully the PDFs we give you will condense content from various sources and will be useful to you as we go along. Alright, so before I go further, I just want to pause for a moment and see if there are any questions people have about the course, things we're going to cover or things that we are not going to cover any questions. Okay, so let's get started with our first chapter. I'm just going to share the PDF so that we could all follow along. And so an introduction here to biblical apologetics and what I really want to emphasize in this first chapter for us is that biblical apologetics is a combination of reasoning and demonstration. It's a combination of word or wisdom and power, so we have to blend the two. But let's take a look at the Greek word apologia itself, from where we get the English word apologetics. Alright, so if you kind of just and I've just picked up some of these scriptures and just to have a quick look at how was this word translated, how was it used in the New Testament. If you go with me to these scriptures that we see, we will quickly trace these scriptures through. Acts chapter 22, Paul, Acts 22 verse 1, Paul is standing before, he's just been apprehended now, this is when Paul has returned to Jerusalem after his third missionary journey. This is somewhere around 8057 or somewhere around that time he's, you know, he's, he just goes from, you know, he finishes his third missionary journey travels back to Jerusalem as soon as he gets there. He, you know, he actually makes a visit to the temple, but then he is apprehended there as a somebody who is a violator of, you know, the of the temple and so, you know, Paul is before a very hostile crowd. And so there he stands up and, you know, very interestingly, although there very interestingly it is the Jewish people who at that time have come and apprehended Paul, you know, they've, you know, blamed him as a as a desecrator of the temple and so on. The Jewish people, the Hebrew people. So very interestingly, at that time, now Paul is a man who can speak Greek. The Romans are the one, the Roman soldiers are the ones who are defending him, you know, they're keeping him safe. He could have spoken in Greek, but he chooses to speak in Hebrew. He really gets the attention of his audience. I mean, these are the people are against him and he's not speaking pure Hebrew, it shocks them, you know, hey, he's one of us, you know. And so he begins Acts 22 verse one, you know, brethren and fathers, hear my defense before you now. So that's the word apology. So try to picture the situation, right? Paul is facing a hostile crowd of Jewish people who have caught him. They want to get rid of him. And he is defending. He's doing an apology before them. Okay. Acts 25 and the verse 16. Acts 25 verse 16. Does somebody want to read that for us loud please? You can unmute your mic and read it. Acts 25, 16. I told them that it is not the Roman custom to hand over anyone before they have faced their accusers and have had an opportunity to defend themselves against the charges. Thank you, Samuel. So here again is the word apology and the word apology has been translated in the New King James. It says to answer for himself, to answer for himself. And once again, Paul is in a very tight situation. He's standing before King Agrippa and he's defending charges against him. So basically he went through three kings. He went through Felix, Festus and Agrippa. He had to stand before them. In fact, you know, it's very interesting to see each king's response. You know, one says, Paul, you are mad. One says, Paul, I will think about what you're saying. Meet me at a later time. And another one says, Paul, you always, you almost convinced me to become a Christian. You know, so it's very interesting as Paul presents his defense before these three leaders to see the leaders' response. But here's one of that instance where Paul has to apologize for himself. He has to speak up and defend himself before these leaders. So, verse Corinthians 9 and verse 3. Somebody could read that verse. Verse Corinthians 9 verse 3. My defense to those who examine me is this. Okay, so here's a different situation. Thank you for the silence. The situation here is the Corinthians. I think I'm going to mute your mic please. The situation here. Okay, I'm looking at my PDF. So I hope students will be let in. Okay. So the situation for Corinthians 9 is a little different. Paul, the people in Corinth have been made to question Paul's apostleship, you know, because of various people have come in and sown seeds of doubt and so on. Paul's apostleship is in question. This is not by people outside the church. It's people inside the church. The question is apostleship and so Paul says in verse 3, verse Corinthians 9, my apology to those who are questioning my apostleship. So one second he's defending. He's giving an answer. He's explaining to those who are questioning his apostleship. Second Corinthians 7 verse 11. Can I read? Please go ahead Charles. Second Corinthians 7 verse 11. For observe this very thing that you swallowed in a godly manner. What diligence it produced in you? What clearing of your slaves? What indignation that what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication. All things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter. So here the word apology is used in a very interesting way. It is translated here as clearing of yourselves. So what is the scenario? The Corinthian church has a lot of problems happening. And so Paul has written his first episode. And then he has written his second episode. And really his first episode has a strong rebuke to them that they've been tolerating sin and all these things going on. You know, so it's been a while. It's been an instructive letters also been everybody rebuking later. And in response to the apostles rebuked to them. They have done apology. That means they have tried their best to clear themselves of the wrong of things that were not right. And so Paul is addressing that and says, hey, you know, you saw it in a godly manner when you received my letter, you know, you responded to it well. And you cleared yourself in your apology of or the wrong that was happening. We look at a few more. And that's got to Philippines one will look at verse seven. Somebody could read that. Let's go ahead. Just as one verse seven, just as it is right for me to think this of you all because I have you in my heart in as much as in my chain and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. You all are particle with me of grace and verse 17, but the later out of love, knowing that I'm appointed for the defense of the gospel. Thank you. So here the context is the gospel. The good news of Jesus. And Paul is saying, I am called or yes, he has the sense of responsibility. It is calling that he is engaged in the defense, the apology of the gospel. Right. And the context of what's happening in Paul's life. This must be around AD. I think somewhere on AD 64 to 66 when Paul is in Rome. He's under house arrest. And he's writing his, you know, his prison episodes to the Philippines, the Colossians. Now he's writing from there. He's actually in prison. And he's writing from Rome. And he's saying, look, I am defending the gospel. That's my call. Right. I'm presenting an apology for the gospel. Second Timothy 416. Can somebody read that for us? Thank you Timothy 416. At my first defense, no one stood with me. But all forsook me. May it not be charged against me. Not useful. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So here the context is Paul having to deal with somebody who was really against him. He's talking about Alexander the coppersmith and who opposed Paul. This was likely have this happened in Ephesias. When Paul had come there, you know, here on his third missionary journey. Of course, Paul was there in a second missionary journey. And in his third missionary journey, Paul spent three years in Ephesias. And so it's very likely somewhere around that time there was the master of this man was really against Paul. Now, if you look in the background, it's the first missionary journey at Ephesias. The goddess Diana, her influence on the city was broken. And so a lot of these coppersmiths and people who made these things. The images of goddess Diana was really against Paul. They all got angry because. And this is an axe 19 the influence of this goddess or Ephesias was broken. Subsequently, Paul comes and spends three years in Ephesias. He's nurturing up the next generation of leaders there. And now later on around 1868, Paul is writing to Timothy, his final episode, and he's remembering all those things. He says, you know, when I went through all those things. When I made my defense, and I stood up apologia, I stood up and spoke, you know, I had to do it all alone. So this I think is an X 20, only part of X 20. I said, I had to do it all alone. No, I had to defend myself. And he says, so the context was again defending the gospel standing up for the preaching of the gospel. Last is for speed Peter 315. Somebody could read that for us. This is Peter speaking. One Peter. Go ahead. Go ahead, I think you're ready. Okay, thank you. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. So this is Peter, the apostle speaking, right. Peter is saying he's instructing the people on this word. He is writing to the Jews who have been dispersed. They are spread out in very responsive Asia minus. He's writing to the, the dispersion, the Jews who have been spread around. And they are going through a lot of difficulty. They're facing a lot of persecution. And many of them are not necessarily in well to do positions. And they are, you know, what they are, you know, what we would call maybe, I don't know, what's the right term to use blue collar workers or working sometimes even as slaves. You know, in those kinds of situations, Peter is writing to those people. And he's saying, I want you to do something. I want you to hold sanctify the Lord God in your heart, hold God, you know, with reference, hold him sacred in your heart and be ready to make an apology. To everyone who asks you, why do you carry this hope in you. So the context is a persecuted people. People who don't have too much in life, who, you know, we would say are in lower rungs of society in some ways. We don't have too much going for them. But yet they are holding on to Jesus in their hearts. I mean, people see that they're asking, why do you have this hope? And Paul says, give them an apology. Give them an answer. Give them a defense of why you do this, but do it with meekness and fear. Okay. So we've gone through several scriptures here, you know, starting from acts 22 all the way to first Peter three, just to give us a little flavor of how the word apology is used. And I want to just listen to you. Okay. You know, we've, we've all looked at these verses. What can you make of the meaning of the word apology? And you got to put all this together. Right. So we've looked at about seven, eight scriptures, different places. What do you make of the word apology? What does it mean to you having seen how it's being used in the New Testament? Just feel free to share your thoughts. I would see the humbleness. Okay. Dinesh says humility. Anita says to stand up for the gospel with meekness. Okay. Anyone else? What, you know, when you look at all of these scriptures and how the word apology is used, what do you see? Go ahead, Samuel. As I see a lot of defense. And I think, so when I look at the context around there where Christianity was just coming up, Jesus Christ was crucified. I, I, I understand that, you know, I think mainly, you know, the, I mean, with the great commission, I think apostles were going out and spreading the good news and and at the same time, they had to defend. So I see a lot of that. I think, but when I, when I look at our current context, the world around us, I feel the word guide should be there somewhere as an apology. You know, right now it's like, we don't need to defend Christianity as much as probably we had to do then the apostles had to do that. But I feel, I see, look around and I see more people being lost, even people born in the Christian family being lost. And I see a policy of being more like a guide to those who are lost. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. I'm seeing other responses here in the chat. Kennedy says, there's a difference of your faith. Rupa says, being ready to answer anyone who asks a reason. And Mano says, giving a strong defense for what we believe. Good, good. Let me ask you, what kind of an audience was being addressed? Was it, you know, a very, very supportive audience? Or would you say, in all these cases, there was a hostile audience? What do you see? Yeah. So, you know, that's a very, that's a common denominator in all of these cases. Yeah. In all of these cases, the audiences were hostile. I mean, they're not like, Hey, Paul, we're supporting you. Come and explain to us what you believe. No, no, no, no, no. They were like, we are against you. You want you to give us, you know, here against you, you know, you've got to defend yourself. So it is, you know, in all of these cases, it's really an audience or a people who are against, who are questioning, who are very hostile in nature. So that's a common thing we're seeing in all of these scriptures. And in all of, in those environments, Paul, the others, mostly Paul, and then even Peter's saying, okay, hey, you need to do an apology. Yeah. So, so. Apology. Yeah. While, you know, it is useful for us as believers. So let's example is this class that we are having. Most of I and I, I trust that all of you are very, you know, supportive. None of, there's nobody here who's hostile. And we're learning apologetics. We are learning, you know, how to give a defense to the faith. So this environment is very supportive. And what really apology is done in an environment that is hostile. You know, people who see, like Anita saying, people who see Christian is a threat or, you know, now people are not supportive. They're very opposed to what is happening. So that's one, one thing to take away from all these scriptures. Secondly, we see that apology. As you see in all of these contacts is an attempt to reason with your audience. The person doing the apology is doing it as we saw with love, with meekness and with reference. So it is not a, you know, it's not a debate as such. It's not an argument, but rather it is an explanation that's being done with love, meekness and reverence. That's something to take away. Sometimes we think, you know, apology means let's go debate, let's argue with people. And, you know, that's not what the Bible is encouraging us to do. In fact, we will see scripture in the Bible tells us not to get into those kinds of situations. What we need to understand is that even though the crowd is very hostile, Paul is not being hostile to them. In fact, in all of these situations, there's a crowd that's very angry. There's a crowd that's very hostile, but Paul is, you know, if you look at how he presents in each of these cases, you can see compassion, you can see meekness, you can see reverence coming through his explanation of what God has done in his life or his explanation of the gospel and what he's going through for the sake of the gospel. That's again a common thing you see in all these scriptures and Peter emphasizes that. Okay, so our takeaway is, apology is us in the midst of a hostile environment presenting an explanation, not a debate or an argument, but an explanation of what we believe, why we believe it, and we do it in love, meekness, humility and reverence, reverence to God, reverence to the truth that we are handling. Okay, now I'll just go forward here and this is not in your notes. It's just a little side journey. We'll come back to the notes. You know, we read about the ministry of Jesus and, you know, whenever we read about the ministry of Jesus and the gospels, our focus is on the demonstrations, the healings, the miracles, the mighty things he did. But I want to ask a question. Do you think Jesus, you know what, in a modern language, you would say, do you think Jesus was an apologist? That means, do you think he explained or defended what he was doing? And can you think of some examples? Anybody? Okay, I see your responses. Anita says, yes. Rose says, always. Shekwan says, yes, good. Rose, why don't you share? Charles, go ahead. See, I recognize your voices even though it's been three months. Okay, he was an apologist. He was an apologist. Watch like he is talking to Nicodemus and that night and Nicodemus is like, can I go back into my mother's womb and be born again? He's explaining, he's telling him what he knows from within. Nicodemus doesn't know, but now he is telling him how that being born again can be. But we also see, even other times when he is faced with, especially the high priestess, and they are telling him, why are you doing this? And he's like, but now, Chek, come on. If I am doing this because of Zerbebou, how can this send away, how can Zerbeb send himself away? So he has a matter, he has a content that he has within himself and he's talking to the people who do not understand what he has. Therefore, he is defending, if I would put it in this way, that like Peter says it in 1 Peter, that he is defending what is in him so that those who are listening to him are able to understand it. That's what I think. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Good thoughts Charles. Good, good. Pastor, can I share? Go ahead please. Pastor, for me, I'm just thinking of John chapter 10 verse 38, where he's talking to them and to the Pharisees and he's just saying like, you know, to them, if you're not going to believe me that I'm in the Father and the Father is in me and the works that I'm doing is of the Father. So he's telling them like that even at least see the works that I'm doing and you believe that I'm in the Father and the Father is in me. So in that portion of the scriptures, I just see like he has been teaching and he's also been demonstrating and in that place he's just, I feel that he's like, you know, defending by saying, see, look at my teaching and if you're not believing in the teaching that I'm doing, look at my works. So he's demonstrating both the teaching and the works and saying, see, this is who I am. I am the Son of God and I'm being sent from the Father. So I feel that portion of the scripture kind of speaks strongly concerning this pastor. So good. So Jesus is defending and he's defending not only by what he is saying, but he's also defending by pointing to the works. And so he's presenting a defense for who he is. Good. Good. Anyone else? I'm just looking at the chat here. Let's see what's happening here. Christopher says Jesus defended in parables. Samuel says, Jesus spoke about the kingdom of heaven and how things are. Anita says, when he encountered the Pharisees, Rebus says with the Samaritan woman, Alice says a scenario healing on the Sabbath and he defended why he did that. Right. So, yes. So the answer, I think there is a consensus here that, you know, Jesus, while he truly was the Anointed Son of God and worked many miracles and healings and all of that, he also defended, you know, he was also an apologist, like in the definition we are putting together, that he defended who he was, what he did, what he did, what he did, and so on. And it's also interesting to kind of study his approach in apology and in defense, you know, and you can look at this in the Gospels. For instance, you know, when this was, I just mentioned a few instances. This is actually a side trip, no charge, completely free. We'll come back. It's a little excursion we are making. When you think about Jesus in Matthew 17, the Pharisees come and they say, you know, the question Jesus and Peter says, hey, don't you pay taxes? So really their intent is to find fault with Jesus and his disciples. And then Jesus, you know, of course, he tells Peter to go catch a coin and so on. But what do you find Jesus doing? Okay, sorry, the Pharisees come and ask Jesus, is it right to pay taxes? I got my scenarios mixed up, but they ask, is it right to pay taxes? And how does Jesus respond? It's very, very, you know, it's just God's, the wisdom of God, right? He says, bring me a coin. He says, on whose inscription is it on the coin? And they say, Caesar's. And Jesus says, give to Caesar, what is Caesar's, and give to God, what is God's? Now, it's really amazing because they're trying to catch him. They're very hostile. They actually want to trap him because if he said, yes, you have to give money to Caesar, they will think he is supporting the Romans. If he said no, then they will turn him over to the Romans. So either way, if he said yes or no, he's going to get in trouble. But look at the wisdom. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's. They couldn't catch him, you know. And so there's another time in the Gospel of Mark, it says, these Pharisees came to him and they tried to catch him with his words. You know, they like to, you know, they like to hold him with his words and then they couldn't. They went away. They said like, there's never a man who spoke like this. They couldn't find fault with him in his words. So his works were very powerful. They couldn't deny it. But even his words, they couldn't find fault. And with his words, he explained with his words, he defended. So you see that Jesus was, you know, according to our definition, like, you know, he's the great apologist because he did the works and his words were full of wisdom. His works were works of power, his words were words of wisdom. And both ways people couldn't question. So we can set Jesus up as our model, as the great apologist. Who's the great apologist? Jesus, because we want to be like him. His works were works of power, his words or words of wisdom to the point that they could not catch him with his words. In fact, even the Roman soldiers, this is in John 7, you know, they had been sent by, of course, there was this interaction going on between the Pharisees and the Roman soldiers. They sent the soldiers to capture Jesus. And then they go back without apprehending Jesus and they ask, what happened? And you know, the soldiers say, never a man spoke like this man. You know, so the soldiers were sent to capture him, were so amazed by what Jesus was teaching in the temple. They went back and said, we've never heard anybody speak like him. The man spoke like this man. And they just didn't even apprehend Jesus, you know. So, you know, we can say, you know, Jesus is the great apologist, although, you know, not many tend to look at him that way. But if you look very closely in the Gospels, you find that, wow, this is, you know, the man that we want to be like. In works and in words. Okay, so now let's go back to the notes, the course notes. I don't know if I'm going to finish this today. All right. But in the course notes, I want us to think a little bit just before we go for a break. I want us to think a little bit about the Apostle Peter. So we read that we read first Peter 315. But Peter says, you know, he's telling the Jewish people, the believers. He says first Peter 315, always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that in you. Now, let's think through on this, because first Peter 315 is a key verse for apology for the ministry of apologetics and in many Christian circles. But I want us to think about this. Would first Peter 315 necessarily mean intelligent, brilliant answers? Or does it from Peter's context also include something more? Because, you know, many times people take first Peter 315. So okay, we have to give a defense. So then, you know, a lot of emphasis is placed on the philosophy or the scientific or the, you know, the great theological things. But who was writing first Peter 315? It was Peter. Who was Peter? He was an uneducated fisherman. How likely is Peter thinking about strong philosophical arguments? How likely is it that Peter's thinking of some great scientific evidence based response? How likely is it that Peter's thinking about some theological argument? Or is Peter thinking of something else when he says give a defense of the gospel? Because he is an uneducated fisherman. What would Peter's defense most likely be? I wanted to point us to is an Acts 4. And you think about what kind of a defense Peter gave when he was questioned in Jerusalem for his faith in Christ. You go to Acts 4 and we look at verses 13 and 14. Could somebody read this and then we'll go for a break please? Acts 4, 13 and 14. Somebody could read this for us. Shall I read first? Yes, go ahead. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled and they realized that they had been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. Amen. Thank you. Think about this. Peter and John and several of the other apostles were essentially uneducated and untrained men. So for them, apology at does not necessarily or does not always mean great philosophical arguments or great scientific evidence-based responses or great theological responses. For them, the best apology would be what happened in verse 14. A man healed. Do you want to argue about that? Do you want to question that? So what I want to impress on our hearts is that for us, while we are people who are educated and had the opportunity to learn and continue to learn and so on, I'm not against philosophical responses. We are going to learn that. I'm not against scientific evidence-based responses. We are going to learn that. I'm not against theological responses. We are against that. But I want us to keep very importantly, there are times when philosophy, science, theology may not convince somebody, but a miracle, a work of God cannot be questioned. And sometimes that is the best defense for the gospel that we are preaching. All right. So we're going to take a little break. I will come back after the break. And if you have any questions, we will pick it up and then move forward. We'll be back in 10 minutes. God bless. Thank you.