Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Methods XIV Unification (Part 24)

Error of those who are false Christ, false messiahs. Give us a heart for those who are misled. We do pray that you would helpful help us to be persuasive in dealing with those who follow those that turn against you in order to exalt themselves. We pray that you would give us humble hearts that we might truly give you the glory for all that you've done in our lives and what you continue to do in the lives of those that you call to yourself. Thank you for tonight's opportunity to study your word, to study your truth, to come to know you better. We pray in your precious name. Amen. Since tonight we're going to be talking about someone who calls himself the Lord of the second adventure, the Second Coming. It might be well for us to begin our reading in God's Word in Matthew the 24th chapter, Matthew 24. And I'll begin our consideration at verse three, Because there we see the disciples are interested in the subject of the Second Coming. And I want you to see how Jesus begins to exhort them what the very opening consideration from our Lord's mouth is. Verse 3. As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. Tell us, they said, when will this happen and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Jesus answered, watch out that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name claiming I am the Christ and will deceive many. And then Skip to verse 23. At that time, if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there he is, do not believe it, for false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. See, I had told you ahead of time, that's part of the reading of God's Word in our survey of the various philosophical and religious options that are available to people who do not have the worldview provided by the Bible. We've looked at secular atheism, materialism, naturalism, that which claims no spiritual reality whatsoever. And then we've looked at those worldviews that claim some kind of spiritual reality, some kind of existence for something going beyond matter. We've considered Plato's philosophy and we've considered the religions of the world. Religions of the world, whether they emphasize transcendent mysticism or they emphasize eminent moralism, or if they prove to be perversions of Christianity. Now, within that classification of perversions of Christianity, we see some which are Unitarian. And we took Islam as our example We've seen one which is polytheistic. We took the Mormons as our example. And then tonight, finally, I'm going to look at one example of a religion or a cult that falls within the category of pseudo messianic Christianity. That is a group that considers itself Christian in a vague way, but claims that there is another Christ other than Jesus. And that is the Unification Church, better known to you as the Mooney's. The Unification Church is I'm going to be using again tonight, by the way, Kenneth Boa's book to give you the summary of the essential theology and history of the Mooney's. The Unification Church, as you know, is founded and is still led today by its founder, whose name is Sun Myung Moon. Sun Myung Moon was born in January of 1920 in a small village in what is now North Korea. He had parents who were Presbyterians. His name at birth was not Sun Myung Moon but Yong Mon. And the change of name is significant. Sun Myung Moon means shining sun and Moon. He considers himself the celestial brightness. And so he changed his name to that. But that is not the way his Presbyterian parents named him. In high school he went to a Pentecostal church and he claims that on easter Sunday in 1936, he was praying on a Korean mountaintop and had a vision. And in this version, Jesus appeared to him. And Jesus commissioned Moon to carry out the unfinished task on earth that Jesus failed to accomplish. Because Jesus failed in his task as the Messiah and failed to bring salvation to the earth, Jesus called upon Moon to become the new Messiah. During the Second World War, Moon attended a Japanese university and in the year 1944 he married, but then left his wife who was pregnant at the time, to go to Seoul, Korea in order to preach and to build a following. He returned to South Korea in 1946 and spent several months with a man by the name of Pike Moon Kim. The interesting thing is that Pike Moon Kim was a self proclaimed Messiah. And so Moon obviously is influenced by the teaching of this man. And in 1948, because of the things Moon was now teaching, the Presbyterian Church excommunicated. By this time he had a growing following and pretensions. This is when he changed his name to Shining sun and Moon in 1948. He was also imprisoned in North Korea and in 1950 was able to escape what appears with the help of the United nations forces that were there. Interestingly, he claims that he was in imprisoned because of his anti communist activities. Those who were close to him at the time and who have Spoken about it, however, say that he was imprisoned because of his ritual sex practices with a number of people that were forming in his communes. They said that Moon taught them they needed blood cleansing and the only way they could gain that is if they had sexual intercourse with him. In 1954 he established, and this is the official name of the church by the way, the Holy Spirit association for the Unification of World Christianity. The Holy Spirit association for the Unification of World Christianity. And in short, it's known as the Unification Church. That same year his wife of 10 years divorced him. In 1955 he was arrested again on moral charges involving his sexual church related rights. But in this case he escaped conviction. Three years later he published the book which then becomes the most authoritative writing in the Unification Church. The book entitled Divine Principle. In the late 50s he began to become successful financially. And by the year 1976 it was estimated that his holdings in Korea alone were between 15 and 20 million dollars. As most of you know already, he has extensive business interest in the United States. He has established many small businesses, he owns many businesses that you frequent. Probably you don't know that. And so here you have a man who has been arrested, maybe imprisoned for ritual sex acts, has learned from a self proclaimed Messiah, has been excommunicated from the Presbyterian Church, has taught communes that Jesus has appeared to him to make him the new Messiah. And he's becoming financially, well, quite wealthy. 1960, six years after he was divorced by his first wife, he married an 18 year old young lady. However, people in Korea claimed that he had two other wives in the six year interval and that the woman he married in 1960 is his fourth. Well, whether it's the second, third or fourth, the important thing is the wife. He was married in 1960 and he formed the nucleus of the new human race. Whether she's first, second, third or fourth. The important thing is she's the one. So you're glad, aren't you, that he met her. After gaining an extensive following in South Korea and Japan, Moon decided that God was leading him to come to the United States and, and he brought with him hundreds of his disciples to work for him as he began annual preaching crusades in 1972. I'm not going to talk a whole lot about the cult itself and about the Moonies, although you'd probably enjoy some of that. One of the reasons that Moon is so wealthy is because he convinces his followers to work for him for nothing. And he has thousands of people to work in factories as well as airports and street corners. And all the rest. But he has a workforce that's just incredible in this country. He brought converts to this country to work for him anyway. But he is, as you know, seen many converts. And it's crucial to a convert to Munism that they do this self sacrificial service for me. Or we could talk about the lap of luxury in which he lives, but I'll skip that. I guess if he's the Messiah, he deserves it anyway. Okay, let's talk about the future theology of the Unification Church. This is really what my interest is this evening. The final authority in the Unification Church is not the Bible, as you might expect, but the writings of Sun Myung Moon. He considers himself a Christian minister even though he's been excommunicated and though he calls his church, you know, the Unification Church, Christianity. Moon is actually very hostile to Christianity. In a book he wrote entitled Master Speaks, and I quote, he says our group is of higher dimension than the established churches. And naturally there must come vast difference between what we are and what the Christian people are. The Christianity which God has been fostering for 6,000 years is doomed up to the present. God has been with Christianity, but in Christianity things are stalemated. He goes on to say, God is now throwing Christianity away and is now establishing a new religion. And this new religion is the Unification Church. The Moon regards himself as the most important man alive and the prophet of the new age. And I'm quoting him, I am the foremost one in the whole world. Once again, out of all the saints sent by God, I think I am the most successful one. Another quote. I have parked my with many, many masters, including Jesus, on questions of life and the universe. They have subjected themselves to me in terms of wisdom. After winning the victory, they surrendered. Moon tells his followers to be open to the new truths that he reveals because he says that what he is revealing will one day make the New Testament unnecessary. And so though you'll hear Mooney sometimes give lip service through the Bible, you need to be aware of these sorts of remarks and how the New Testament will be unnecessary and how he says the Bible has a place in his church provided it is interpreted properly. And to interpret it properly means it must be interpreted in accordance with his revelations and his publications. So what that's saying is as long as you take only those parts of the Bible that can be harmonized with what I said, the Bible's fine. I will later point out what this means in terms of his epistemology. It ought to be obviously his theory of knowledge as such that he has. He exercises sovereignty even over what he claims was formerly the word of God. But course, God is not with Christianity anymore. He's had it with this stalemated religion. And so that's all out. What is his theology? You know, his source of authority, his own claims, his own writings, his theology? Kind of bizarre. He claims there are three Adams and three Es, or three divine couples, if you will. Were at least three Adams. There's two Eves and one that got lost somewhere along the way. But all that time, the first pair, Adam and Eve, were created by God to become the parents of a perfect humanity. But God told them not to come together sexually until a period of spiritual maturation was completed. But all this got messed up when Lucifer the archangel, seduced Eve to have sex with him. Because he did that, he became Satan, the demon. Now, this marked the spiritual fall for both Lucifer and Eve simultaneously. But now here you have sexually experienced Eve, who has fallen, and she goes and must tempt her husband Adam, who was not supposed to have sex with her until they finished their spiritual maturation. And this led then to the physical fall of the human race. So Eve's sex with Lucifer brings a spiritual fall of the human race. Her sex with Adam brings the physical fall to the human race. The fall was not due to a disobedient act of eating the forbidden fruit, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, according to the. As the Genesis account has it, but was due to Eve's sexual proclivities. Now, Eve had a baby by Lucifer. Rosemary's baby, right? Had a baby by Lucifer. And this was Cain. And Moon says Cain symbolized communism from the very beginning. Then Eve had a child by Adam, and this child was Abel, who symbolizes democracy. Okay, so there's the first Adam in each story. Now we come to the second. The second Adam was Jesus Christ. So far, so good, right? The Bible says that the second Adam Moon denies the virgin birth, however, and he denies the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. He says Jesus was not God. He was not the God man. He was merely a man. But though Jesus was the first man to be obedient to God since the first Adam fell, a number of failures marred the mission of Jesus. For instance, the three wise men were supposed to rear Jesus until the day he would take a wife, but they didn't. John the Baptist failed because he didn't recognize that Jesus was the Savior. Jesus didn't unify all the world religions and cultures. And Israel finally rejected him and murdered him on the cross before he was able to do what he was sent to this world to do, and that's to find the second Eve. If he had found that perfect woman, the second Eve, then he would have had sex with her, and they would have begun the physical restoration of the human race. Moon claims that Jesus was the bastard offspring of Zechariah and Mary who had been seduced by Zachariah, her brother in law. He claims that Christ was to find the most perfect girl in the world and have a huge family. He goes on to say that Mary Magdalene had been Judas Iscariot's lover, but she fell in love with Jesus, and that's why Judas betrayed Jesus, because he had lost Mary to him. Judas hung himself not out of remorse, but because Mary turned on him for betraying Jesus. Yeah, well, I'm sure a lot of people with horrible imaginations love this kind of stuff. Moon goes on to claim that the Holy Spirit is a female. That's got real sex problems, I'm telling you. Claims the Holy Spirit is a female. He denies the resurrection of Christ, denies the second coming. He says that the kingdom of God and the unification of all people and religions will be brought about through human effort, not through the work of Christ, but by following Sun Young moon. So anyway, with this interesting story, Jesus failed in his mission to accomplish spiritual and physical salvation. According to Moon, Jesus did not come to die on a cross and his crucifixion was contrary to the will of God. Now you say, but the Old Testament prophesies this. So much of the New Testament says it's fulfillment of the Old Testament. And according to Moon, what you have in the Old Testament is the presentation of two possible destinies for the Messiah. And they did not have to be fulfilled. One would have thought if it's divine prophecy, it would have to to be. But he says no, you have two different outcomes. And the bad one, which is what happened, did not have to be that way. It could have been the other one. Jesus was an imperfect image of God, who with the Holy Spirit, brings about spiritual but not physical salvation. When Jesus saw that he couldn't accomplish his mission, he couldn't find the most beautiful, perfect woman on earth and start the new humanity. He began to preach about his second advent. After Jesus died on the cross, he rose again spiritually, but not physically. He did not ascend to the heavenly kingdom. But Jesus instead waits in paradise until another will come along to complete his unfinished task of bringing the kingdom of God to earth. And so with the first, Adam and Eve and all that, and the second Adam failing. The world has been waiting for the third Adam and the third Eve, who will now bring physical salvation. The third Adam, according to Sun, Young Moon is the Lord of the second adventure. Who do you think that might be? It's interesting. Moon gets a little coy here. He won't come right out and say that it is him, but he'll do things like he can tell us based on the numerology he applies to biblical prophecy and other prophecies as to geography in the Bible. This is incredible that the. The New Adam, the third Adam, the Lord of the second advent, was born in Korea in 1920. Well, Moon was born in Korea in 1920. He says that the new Messiah will become the true Messiah, will become the physical father and with Eve the mother of the new human race. And he requires his disciples to address him and his wife from 1960 as the true parents. He does say a number of things about himself that would suggest he's the incarnation of God. And I'm quoting again now. The time will come without my seeking it, when my words will almost serve as law. If I ask a certain thing, it will be done. If I don't want something done, it will not be done again. The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world. This one's interesting. I am a thinker. I am your brain. Then again, there is no complaint, objection against anything being done here. Until we have established the kingdom of God on earth. Up until the very end, there can never be any complaint. And then up until now, Jesus has appeared in the spirit world to his Father. From now on, I will appear. He considers the United States God's chosen kingdom with Korea. Because, you see, east and west have to be unified. And what happened is the Roman Empire failed, Britain failed to unify the world, and now it comes to the United States and Korea to do it. But they will need a guiding light for the new civilization. They will need the teachings of Moon. He says he must usher in the messianic age whether he proves to be the Messiah or not. He says the churches are doomed. The United States is in need of spiritual revival. It's declining. It will soon fail if it doesn't turn to him. And then one more thing about his doctrine of salvation. Moon claims that his followers can reach a level of sinless perfection through him, and they have no need to turn to Jesus Christ. In fact, forgiveness of sins is not necessary because you can indemnify yourself against judgment for your sins by doing good works. You can atone for your own sins then in a sense, by constant effort. And not only can you build up through your merit an indemnity for your sins, but you can do so for your ancestors as well. And a Dracula fresher has put on the followers of Moon that if they question him or disobedient any way, their ancestors, their own parents, may suffer many thousands of years more in hell for having done so. Moon tells us that God is to be pitied. God is a sad being because he is surrounded by the forces of Satan. Satan. And God is now isolated from his children. God is imprisoned and God is looking to Moon to provide hope and restoration. Moon claims he is the only man who truly knows and loves God. And that's why people must follow him. Well, enough of this. We don't even go into the practices of the munis and the way he uses his disciples and so forth. That's a pitiable sight in itself. But now, when we boil this all down, what do you think of a man like this? He is either what he says he is, or he is the most blasphemous man of effrontery to the holiness of God. Imagine. So now what are we going to do? If Mooney were sitting here and talking to Dr. Bonson, Mooney would say, well, you're right, but he is who he says he is. And I'm saying, you're wrong. He's not. How are we going to settle this difference between us? I want to point out a few things about Moon and also other pseudo messianic religions. First of all, I want you to notice that Moon must give his credence to the Bible. He wants to defer to the Bible or show deference to the Bible, Provided however, it's interpreted in accordance with his own teachings. Secondly, Moon wants to defer to Jesus Christ. As a great religious leader. But of course, remembering that Jesus failed. Okay, forgetting the provisos at the end here that the Bible has to be filtered through Moon and that Jesus failed, I want you to pay attention to the fact that Moon must in some way acknowledge the Bible and its importance and in some way acknowledge Jesus and his importance. And the reason I'm pointing this out is because you will find in virtually every pseudo messianic cult or religion the very same thing. I mean, go through the Baha' I faith, go through any number of other pseudo messianic religions, and you will find none of them are willing to say out with the Bible, Jesus was a fraud. They always have got to in some way bow down to Jesus. In some way show deference for the Bible. And then of course, they write their provisos about, well, of course the Christians are wrong about this, that and the other, or can't follow Jesus in everything. But none of them. Well, I won't say none because I haven't studied every single one of them. But the vast majority of them, the ones that I know of, will not just come right out and say the Bible's wrong, Jesus was wrong. And I think that calls for some reflection. Why not? Why do we feel this tug of the Bible and this tug of Jesus that we can't just cut it off altogether and say it's fraudulent? Out with it. Well, you know why? Because they're true and they grip the heart and people would not dare. They may want to piggyback on Jesus reputation. But now I want you to look at the other side here. What did Jesus say about those who didn't agree with him? He said they're all wrong. He said, if a man doesn't follow me, he can't approach the Father. Jesus said of all the Jewish authorities that came before him, you've heard it said by them of old. But I say to you, and Jesus said that he was the only way to the Father. He didn't say nice, courteous things about a Confucius or a Gautama or any of these others. Jesus didn't bother to give deference to any other religions of the world. Now I suggest that's also what's so offensive about Christianity. It's not democratic. You know, it claims to be the only way, but you've got to philosophically account for that. All the other ones want to include Jesus in their team. Somehow the Bible's got to be there among our respected books somehow. But the Bible doesn't bother with any of the others. Jesus doesn't either away with them. In fact, as I read at the beginning of our lesson tonight, he said, I told you ahead of time, there are going to be false Christs who come, false prophets who come, and they'll come in my name, claiming that they are the Messiah. I told you ahead of time, don't believe them. So if a follower of Moon were here, I think I would really want to stress that antithesis. You want to incorporate Jesus into your religion somehow. He doesn't want anything to do with you. Moon wants to be. He wants to say, Jesus brought spiritual salvation, but he didn't finish the job. And now Moon's got to come along. Jesus says, I don't need you. In fact, Jesus said, when someone comes claiming to be the Christ, don't believe him, It's a false Christ, he's a liar. I say that because hopefully in the case of some followers, they begin to see that they can't have it the way that it's been fed to them. They can't have this synthesized religion, a little bit of Christianity and a whole bunch of sexual rituals, weirdness from moon making up the new physical human race and salvation. They've got to make a choice. And beyond this, why is it that the false messiahs and the false teachers, be it a Joseph Smith or a sun moon, why is it that they always require God's people to give up their Bibles and, and filter the teaching of the Bible through the individual leader? That should make you suspicious. When the claims of the new Messiah are not publicly verifiable, I want you to think about that expression, it's well chosen, publicly verifiable, then we must suspect that those claims are not objectively true at all. By publicly verifiable, I mean that anyone can come along, anyone in the public, and they can look at the documents, they can look at the evidence and they can see. That's why this person is the Messiah. Isn't that what Jesus said? Jesus always challenged those who opposed him to go to the Bible and disprove him. He said, read Moses. If you read Moses, you'd read about me. You know, if you don't follow Jesus, that may seem like megalomania. But the point is he didn't say, if you read Moses the way I tell you to read Moses, you'll find me. He said, just go read Moses. You've all got it, you've all heard it. Jesus said that he would do things which would be publicly verifiable. He worked miracles. He rose from the dead, and he does not send his followers into the world saying, if you just have the very special translation of the Bible, then you can see that we're right. In fact, some of the leading experts in terms of textual criticism of the Bible are not even Christians. And that's fine, because what they are doing in terms of looking at the documents and the grammar and all that is open even to unbelievers to see. You don't need some kind of special grammar or special insight or special interpreter to filter the Bible to you. There are things that have been written on pieces of paper in history and if you go find those things one way or another, even with the slight differences between the documents, you're going to see the message of Christianity for what it is. Now, you may not like it, you may reject it, but it's publicly verifiable. It's objective. Not in the case of the pseudo messiahs. It always comes down. Trust me. Why? Because I tell you to trust me. But the Bible seems to say things against you. Master Moon, trust me, the Bible is wrong. Your reading of the Bible is wrong. Okay, third point. In the case of Moon in particular, I want you to notice what kind of God he is talking about. That is, look at the nature of God. Up to this point, we have been talking about the nature of authority in these pseudo messianic religions, particularly munism. But now look at the nature of God. What does Moon say about God? It's to be pitied. Indeed. God is surrounded by the forces of Satan. Right now, God's hoping Moon doesn't fail. Well, first of all, let's do some contrast. Did Jesus come saying God's in bad shape, I came into this world to help him out. Jesus made some big claims for himself, but in none of them did he call for us to deprecate God. In fact, Jesus turned his soul, his life over to the hands of his heavenly father. He said, the words that I speak, they come from at the commandment of my heavenly father. I do and I say what he tells me to do. So Jesus, messiah, as big as his claims were, were always deferential to the authority of God in the place of God. Whereas Moon comes not only to be better than Jesus, but Moon comes to save God. I mean, isn't that incredible? What kind of God is worth following if he needs to be saved? Again, we have our disciple of Moon sitting here. We've got to press that upon him. Say, well, even on your theology, on your claim, when Moon gets done, what are you going to have left? You're going to have a God that has been saved by this human being, Moon. I mean, we haven't even talked about whether it's credible that a man who's in prison for tax evasion and engages in all these sexual rituals and so forth is a credible messiah. But even if he were, what kind of God would you have? See, these religions always end up contradicting themselves. Because when you think about it, if God is not sovereign and God needs to be saved, then in the end, God is not God. Who is God? It's going to be Moon. Ultimately. See, Moon's not just trying to take the place of Jesus the son. In the end, by inference, he would have to take the place of God the Father too. Why not just say, if God's in that bad of shape, let him go? You see, once you buy into this, God is less than God. You don't need the theology of Moon. If God's surrounded by the forces of Satan, God's in bad shape. Then why should we worry about him? Why don't we all have our own religion? Why don't we all start our own sexual rituals and create our new human race? What's so special about Moon? The answer. Well, Jesus appeared to him and chose him to be the third Adam. But you get this dialectic. Are you getting what I'm. Every positive claim is countered by the negative claim they've already given. Jesus chose you, Moon. So what? Jesus is a loser. He failed. What good is it to be chosen by somebody who couldn't do the work God gave him to do? You see, it just doesn't make sense. You try to put together another theology and the pieces don't comport with each other. You can tell a story, but when you're all done and you try to put a worldview together, you say, wait a minute. This isn't fit. Why move? What's so special about Moon? Has he done any miracles? He says he's conquered all the divine masters. They all have been subjugated by him. I'd like to know about that. I'd like to hear about these conversations. I'd like to know about the debate he had with Jesus and Buddha and others that he conquered them. We don't learn. All we are told is that he's better than them. But what has he done to demonstrate his claims? Jesus raised the dead. Jesus was raised from the dead. What has Moon done? He's gone to prison. Now, in all honesty, we have to say that might be his period of humiliation. Maybe his period of ascendancy is yet to come. But at this point, we haven't seen anything to indicate that. So why Moon? You have to be able to do a little bit of, not just reduct you ad absurdum, but also playing a facetious role. When you talk to some of these followers of the cults, if you had a disciple of Moon, I think you need to say, why should it be Moon and not me? Now, you know they're going to have some kind of an answer ready for you. They're going to say something like, jesus appeared to him, this, that and the other. But you see, every one of those claims is unverifiable. Every one of those claims is not open to public scrutiny. And so what do you do? You're being facetious. Remember, every time a person makes an arbitrary claim, you counter it with what? Your own arbitrary claim. Oh, Jesus appeared to him. Jesus appeared to me too. Jesus told him he's the third Adam. Jesus told me, takes the fourth and I'm the fourth. Now then you can do this and we can shackle because we have our own convictions. We're united. What do you think the disciple of Moon's going to do? Eventually he's going to get real tired. He says you're just making it up as you go along. And then you've got. You say, and what makes you think Moon wasn't making it up as he went along? Since you. Since. But. And then you have to say, you've exposed me. You're right. I was making it all up. Why do you not see that the Moon should be exposed in the same way? What is the difference? Okay. The overall point for your apologetical learning though is that even when you have a cult that goes as far as having a divine revelation and their own messiah, if you'll just let them tell the story, they'll put the noose around their own neck. When you oppose the truth of God, it's just inherent in the nature of the case that you're going to make a fool out of yourself. The fact that there are thousands of people paying big money and giving lots of time self sacrificially to follow this man doesn't change the fact that what he's told us is a really foolish story. It's arbitrary, it's contradictory. And then again, under Y moon you could put sub point B. Look at the life of this man. Is this what you'd expect of a man that you claim to be virtually God incarnate? I wouldn't think so. So presuppositional approach to defending the faith. Whether you're talking to an atheist or to Plato or to a Hindu or a Buddhist or someone following the Quran or someone following Joseph Smith or Sun. Moon always comes down to tell me the whole story. Let's see if you've got a worldview that will hold together and they don't. Any questions on tonight's lesson? Mike? Interpretations of the Bible. Oh, I mean, similar to Joseph Smith's. I'm not aware of any. That doesn't mean there isn't any because I don't know all the literature having to do with it, but I'm not aware of any. Yes, Martha, I think that's the kind of question which you're not going to get an answer to because his followers were protect him from anything that might seem embarrassing. And Moon is not going to tell his followers anything that would make him seem weak. After all, he's supposed to save God. If he's going to save God, how could he die? And so forth. The Messiah was born in Korea the same year that Moon was born in Korea. And I think the assumption here is that he's going to keep bearing children and they are going to form a new humanity which is going to live forever in sinless perfection. Yes. They actually think of the intellect as being miracle to true belief man, true piety. So there's that in the Christian side for. Any of these. Yeah, you know what I might do is I might give a lesson where half of it is given to this very thing where how do you deal with somebody who says I don't have to be reasonable at all? And then the second half, what do you do with someone who says, well, truth is relative. These are too biggie we run into now. You need to be aware of the fact. However, I think I will go ahead and give such a lesson, Lord willing. But when people say that they've given up apologetics, and my course is technically on apologetics, apologetics assumes, well, assumes a lot of things, but at least two things. It assumes one, that we have to be reasonable, truth is objective and there have to be reasons for what we believe. That's what apologetics is offering reasons to verify this religion over against that. So when someone comes along and says the intellect's not important, I just have faith in faith. Whether he's a Mooney or a fundamentalist Christian, they have the same problem, and that's that they really don't believe in apologetics at all. But this is of course unapologetic, so I don't really deal with those people. But I say, well, then you, of course, you've lost already. And then a relativist can't do apologetics either because apologetics assumes that there's a truth here which stands over against error. And it's not just true for those who happen to like it, it's true whether you like it or not, it's objectively true. And so those two approaches that we hear so often, it's not important to have reason or well, it's true for you, but it's not for me, are really an abandoning of apologetics. Do you all understand what I'm saying? You can't. When someone says that, you have to point out, well, you're not Doing apologetics. You've abandoned apologetics now. There is no defense to that position. And then, of course, if you're really a pietist who's caught up in that, you say, and isn't that glorious? There's no defense for this. It's just sheer faith. Isn't God proud of me? And so I'll have a longer lesson, I guess, that deals with that. But that's my answer for right now. It's kind of like, you know, telling the person, speak up into the microphone. If a Mooney says to me, I just have faith in him, I don't need reasons. I don't have to deal with you. I say, just speak up. Because what you're saying is you don't know that it's true and you can't offer a reason for it. Or if someone says, well, well, evangelical Christianity is good for you, but it's not good for me. And so it's true for whatever I'm saying, okay, speak up. You're admitting you can't say you're right and I'm wrong, but my religion says I'm right and you're wrong. What I would like to do, Lord willing, in our next lesson, is to take the possibility that has been posed that someone would accept biblical Christianity, Christianity, and then start editing it and come up with a worldview that gives only those things that are necessary for logic and ethics and so forth. But we can get rid of the things we don't want, such as maybe blood atonement or the deity of Christ or something like that. And I'd like to spend some time showing why you can't have an edited version of Christianity. And then maybe the week after that, I'll deal with Elder these questions in a more full fashion. Anything else tonight? Okay, let's take five minutes and come back for prayer.