This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled
In a prior post, I summarized the studies and publications that describe the flight of young people from the Church. A compelling cumulative circumstantial case can be made to support the fact that young college aged Christians are walking away from Christianity in record numbers. What can we do about it? What can be done?
Blame it on God. God could have given them a road-to-Damascus experience like he did with Saul who wasn't even a Christian at the time, but very anti-Christian (Acts 9, 22, 26). If such a spectacle succeeded with such a violent anti-Christian, such experience has even more likelihood of persuading when the people to be convinced are already Christians. When God doesn't do his best, it demonstrates real limitations of his love. Just like if you could have saved a drowning child by putting more effort into it, but you solely by choice refrained from exercising all of your ability to save the child, this necessarily implies there was a limit to the amount of love you had for that child.
When you trifle that maybe God knew better than us, then you are admitting that the reason God doesn't do anything about young people leaving the church is because he knows what's best. If God isn't doing his best to prevent young people from leaving the church, you cannot be more godly than to follow God's lead. NO, you are not following God's lead with your apologetics bullshit. In the bible, God's "leading" of somebody caused them to speak infallibly...that's how you got your inerrant bible, remember? Having fun trying to show anything in the bible saying God in the last days will only inspire his followers to a less intensive extent than he did the original followers. it doesn't exist. Therefore, if in fact you carry on Christianity without possessing infallible teaching authority, we have to seriously consider that this is because God wants unbelievers to classify you as a heretic.
Whenever people ask me this question, I always say the same thing. STOP TEACHING YOUNG CHRISTIANS. Just stop it. Whatever Christendom is doing in its effort to teach it’s young, the effort appears to largely be a failure.
Is this the part where the atheist reminds you that god's ways are mysterious, and if you can survive a debate with a "well maybe god....", so can the anthesit? Like, maybe God is working great wonders through the youth in the church of today, but for his own sovereign mysterious reasons, he doesn't want you to detect it? How is that any less persuasive than "well maybe god has a sovereign mysterious purpose for allowing evil and we just can't see it yet"?
In fact, Ken Ham (in his book, Already Gone:Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do To Stop It) found that young Christians who faithfully attended Bible classes were actually more likely to question the authority of Scripture, more likely to defend the legality of abortion, same-sex marriage, and premarital sex, and more likely to leave the church! What’s going on here? I think I know. It’s time to stop teaching our young people; it’s time to start training them. There’s a difference between teaching and training. Training is teaching in preparation for a battle. Boxers train for upcoming fights. In fact, boxers are sometimes known to get fat and lazy until the next fight is scheduled. Once the date has been signed, fighters begin to train in earnest. Why? Because they know that they are going to eventually get in the ring and face an aggressive opponent. We train when we know we are about to encounter a battle. Imagine for a moment that you are enrolled in an algebra class. If the teacher assured you that you would never, ever be required to take a test, and that you would pass the class regardless of your level of understanding, how hard do you think you would study? How deeply do you think you would come to understand the material? How committed do you think you would be to the material? The problem we have in the Church today is not that we lack good teachers. There are many excellent teachers in the Church. The problem is that none of these teachers are scheduling battles.
Then none of those teachers are filled with the Holy Spirit, a perfect reason for atheists to generalize that such teachers are too suspect to justify listening to them on any biblical subject, including evangelism.
Make no mistake about it, there are battles looming for each and every young Christian in the Church today, but church leaders are not involved in the scheduling of these battles.
Because they are not filled with the Holy Spirit, a perfect reason for unbelievers to steer entirely clear of them. If they cannot even know what God wants them to do with young Christians, we are reasonable to avoid trifling about what they do know, and to view them with enough suspicion to justify absolute apathy toward every other bit of biblical bullshit they spout. Did Paul ever tell anybody to avoid the parts of a heretic's theology that are wrong, and to pay attention to those parts that are correct? no. if they are heretics, they are to be ENTIRELY disregarded, regardless of whether some of their teachings are "correct". A lot of things Mormons teach about the bible are correct...would you suggest that people disregard the Mormons entirely? Or would you recommend they put forward effort to disregard Mormon errors and only pay attention to Mormon truth?
The battles are waiting for our sons and daughters when they get to University (or enter the secular workplace). The Church needs to be in the business of scheduling battles and training our young people for these battles.
Wow, J. Warner Wallace wants young spiritually immature Christians to train for "battle"? Doesn't your religion teach that spiritually immature people are not supposed to directly battle the devil? You've shown multiple times that you have no more of the Holy Spirit than any Roman Catholic, and yet you are going to train spiritually immature people for spiritual battle? LOL.
Teaching without a planned battle is little more than “blah, blah blah.”
Then Paul's epistle to the Corinthians was "blah blah blah" because not only did he refuse to train them for battle, he was determined to know nothing among them except Christ and him crucified. 1st Cor. 2:1-2. Knowing nothing but Jesus and him crucified does not constitute "battle teacher". And yet the fucking fool also told them how to more properly present themselves when manifesting spiritual gifts (ch. 14), never dreaming for a single second that the fact that they were presenting themselves improperly during this Voodoo was a good argument that the Holy Spirit had nothing to do with their manifestations in the first place.
This is the problem with traditional Sunday School programs.
Then unbelievers have been reasonable every single time they denied an invitation to attend a traditional Sunday School. What fool would trifle that merely because they err about battle doesn't necessarily mean they err about salvation? It is not your prerogative to decide what an unbeliever should be satisfied with. If the unbeliever is unwilling to take any chances on a Christian who manifests no in-filling of the Spirit, that does not represent unreasonableness on her part, that is YOUR problem. You can refute this argument when you take a razor and slice out of your bible all of those bigoted paranoid statements about how perilously risky it is to become a Christian (viz. you might get a nasty surprise on judgment day, Matt. 7:22-23; just because you start out converting to Paul's gospel is not the slightest guarantee against God cursing you in the future for denying the true gospel (Gal. 1:6-9). No infallibility? No obligation to give a fuck.
They are often well-intended, informative and powerfully delivered. But they are impotent, because our young people have no sense of urgency or necessity.
Did Jesus exhibit a sense of urgency or necessity when he reclined in that chair as the center of attention at the party Levi threw for him (Matt. 9:10)? Probably not. Your hype that Christians need to push evangelism and apologetics as urgent is every bit as much of the marketing gimmick today as it was for any fool preaching the same in the NT.
There is no planned battle looming on the horizon and the battle of University life is simply too far away to be palpable. It’s time to address the problem not with our classes but with our calendar. It’s time to start scheduling battles so our teaching becomes training. Years ago, as a youth pastor, I started taking annual trips to Salt Lake City and Berkeley. Why? I was scheduling theological and philosophical battles to help prepare my young Christians for the larger looming battle they would someday face on their own.
Then why have you put so much effort into avoiding the challenges that skeptics like myself have been confronting you with for years? Let me know when you are ready to engage with me in a debate just as live as those debates you now claim to have attended in Salt Lake City. You've deleted my responses for so many years, you know perfectly well who I am and how to get a hold of me. So accept this battle-challenge, or shut the fuck up, you duplicitous pussy.
If you want to teach your young people theology, there is no better method than to put them in direct contact with people who believe in a very sophisticated heresy.
And if you want to test the skills and knowledge of your chosen apologetics teacher, there is no better method than to put them in direct contact with skeptics who have been challenging such apologists for years.
Mormons use the same terminology as Christians but deny the basic tenants of our faith.
And Arminians use the same terminology as Calvinists (freewill, divine sovereignty, atonement, preservation, etc) but deny the basic tenants of Calvinism. You will never explain how it is that somebody could be filled with the Holy Spirit sufficiently to be "saved" but at the same also lack the Spirit sufficiently to remain deceived about such important doctrines as Jesus' atonement and God's sovereignty.
And you couldn't justify "essential doctrine" from the bible anyway. Neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor any NT author, expressed or implied that belief in several doctrines were "essential to salvation". That is merely the by-product of the canonization of the NT, therefore, your "essential doctrine" doctrine is no less an exercise in elevating human tradition to the level of scripture, than Roman Catholicism is.
In order to dialogue with Mormons effectively, we first have to understand what we believe.
If you were filled with the Holy Spirit, you wouldn't have to understand:
19 "But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say.
20 "For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. (Matt. 10:19-20 NAU)
Was that intended only for first century Christians? Gee, I wonder how many other teaching of Jesus he did not intend to be mirrored by modern Christians? How crooked of a road will we encounter if we start trying to answer that question? Or did I forget that doctrinal division in the body of Christ on what Jesus meant with his sayings, is no more significant to you than division in the church on how to make pancakes?
Or maybe you suddenly discovered that 1st Cor. 14:25 is false? Gee, how will Wallace ever correctly balance the magical fantasyland of the 1st century with the undeniably naturalistic reality of the 21st century? Jesus not only told his original followers to perform miracles as part of their evangelism efforts (Matthew 10:8), he also said future believers were to obey everything he had commanded of the original disciples (28:20). So because you have never raised the dead nor done a single miracle in your entire life, I have solid biblical basis to say it's probably because God is refusing to bless your efforts (which implies you are a false teacher), or this whole bible-fronting lifestyle is total bullshit.
No, there is nothing in the NT clearly and unequivocally asserting that in the last days, God will pour out his Spirit upon true believers to a lesser extent than he did the original believers. You merely speculate otherwise because such speculation is the only basis you have to 'explain' why it is that nobody today can do what the bible says the original disciples did. And Paul's speculations about "when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part will be done away" do not bother me in the least: the fact that he was far less clear than he could have been tells me he intended this solely for the originally intended recipients, and you will NEVER make a convincing case that anything in the NT "applies to us today". FUCK YOU.
When we train young people in preparation for an evangelism trip to Salt Lake City, we give meaning and purpose to the content of our teaching. In a similar way, our evangelistic trips to Berkeley (where we contact notable atheist speakers and atheist groups on campus) require us to prepare ourselves to answer the myriad of atheistic objections we will inevitably encounter.
Except that you've never even bothered to try answering ME. I have more powerful arguments against your religion than you'd normally get from college atheists. Put up or shut up.
Once again, the content of our teaching in preparation for this trip takes on purpose and meaning when we know the level of our understanding will eventually be tested. If we want to do our young people a service, we need to stop teaching them. It’s time to start scheduling battles so we can turn teaching into training.
What would you say to the Christian couple who want their 6 year old daughter to perform exorcisms? Wouldn't that qualify as "training"? or did you suddenly discover that your absolutist language is errant, and there are plenty of exceptions where teaching without training would be preferable?
CLICK TO TWEET These trips are not easy, but they are essential.
No, nothing in the bible requires Christians to take their children to battles with unbelievers. Fool.
They require us, as leaders, to become good apologists.
Then you need to step down, because your "apologetics" are laughably weak, as I've demonstrated countless times at this blog.
They require us, as pastors, to prioritize our calendars to make room for the trip and for the important training that will take place for months prior to the trips.
Can you produce a New Testament verse that tells pastors to take their followers to secular learning centers to train them for battle? No. YOU are the heretic. You cannot manifest miracles, yet you still want 1st century Christianity to be true and applicable in this modern age, when the bible has absolutely nothing to say about whether Christianity would remain binding upon people 1900 years after the first century.
One last thing; I’ve learned the importance of this approach first-hand.
It doesn't matter, your approach contravenes the biblical model. What you found in your own experience does not have biblical authority.
My first year as a youth pastor was perhaps my toughest. As a former designer with a strong interest in the arts, I spent my first year focusing on the artistic nature of the Sunday gathering. I incorporated music, video, art and drama to create compelling Sunday experiences that were more entertainment than content.
Then your level of spiritual immaturity was so great, we'd be reasonable to say its probably because you had never gotten "saved" in the first place.
The kids who graduated from my ministry that first year were not prepared for what they encountered in college and all but one walked away from their faith. This impacted the way I did ministry from that time on. I began to schedule battles and train young people for these important tests. I don’t think I’ve lost a student since.
You don't have the first clue how many of those who read your Cold Case Christianity crap subsequently fell away from the faith. But my exposure of the weakness of your apologetics suggests there were probably thousands. Your repackaging of the "historical reliability of the NT" stuff is nothing but marketing scam run amok, just like your "crime scene" stuff that never answers the question of what makes you think Jesus or Paul wanted their religions to continue applying to people after the 1st century, a question you cannot answer with the bible. And if you tried to answer it with some NT "prophecy" you think is coming true today, I'd sic the Christian "preterists" on you, and presto, whether any biblical "prophecy" predicted anything happening today, is yet another division in the body of Christ.
If we want to do our young people a service, we need to stop teaching them.
You are a false teacher. The bible could not be clearer that the job of the Christian pastor is to "teach":
1 Tim. 3:2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
1 Tim. 4:11 Prescribe and teach these things.
1 Tim. 6:2 Those who have believers as their masters must not be disrespectful to them because they are brethren, but must serve them all the more, because those who partake of the benefit are believers and beloved. Teach and preach these principles.
2 Tim. 2:2 The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
2 Tim. 2:24 The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged,
Heb. 5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
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It’s time to start scheduling battles so we can turn teaching into training.
And you couldn't produce a NT verse to justify that methodology, to save your life, you scheming mass-marketing heretic. Why don't we find Paul scheduling battles for his churches to participate in? Are you a liberal who thinks Paul should have scheduled the Galatians to do battle with the Judaizers rather than merely "teach" the Galatians through an epistle? FOOL.
The NT authors whom you believe wrote infallibly, have never done anything for the church after the first century except "teach", and yet you, despite denying you yourself possess infallible teaching authority, demand that your followers do better than the NT authors did? FUCK YOU.
For more information about strategies to help you teach Christian worldview to the next generation, please read So the Next Generation Will Know: Training Young Christians in a Challenging World.
Yeah, because the Holy Spirit's work in the mind of the sincere authentically born again person who is reading the bible, is not enough. But try to remember that although my books are not the bible, still, you "need" them. And remember, your "needing" my books doesn't conflict with your sola scriptura belief that the bible is ALONE sufficient for faith and practice.
This book teaches parents, youth pastors and Christian educators practical, accessible strategies and principles they can employ to teach the youngest Christians the truth of Christianity.
Because as we all know, not only is the bible the word of a God who always honors his promise to enlighten his true followers, but the bible is also "perspicuous" or clear, meaning, if we are true followers, we can determine what a bible verse means without purchasing the bells and whistles of fools who explicitly disclaim infallible teaching authority...like J. Warner Wallace.
The book is accompanied by an eight-session So the Next Generation Will Know DVD Set (and Participant’s Guide) to help individuals or small groups examine the evidence and make the case.
Because as we all know, not only is the bible the word of a God who always honors his promise to enlighten his true followers, but the bible is also "perspicuous" or clear, meaning, if we are true followers, we can determine what a bible verse means without purchasing the bells and whistles of fools who explicitly disclaim infallible teaching authority...like J. Warner Wallace.
WRITTEN BYJ. Warner Wallace J. Warner Wallace is a Dateline featured cold-case homicide detective, popular national speaker and best-selling author.
Which can only be a testament that most of today's Christians are abysmally ignorant. Just like the more popular Benny Hinn is, the more embarrassment to Christianity.
He continues to consult on cold-case investigations while serving as a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is also an Adj. Professor of Christian Apologetics at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, and a faculty member at Summit Ministries. He holds a BA in Design (from CSULB), an MA in Architecture (from UCLA), and an MA in Theological Studies (from Gateway Seminary).
And despite all of that fancy knowledge, he cannot produce a single bible verse to support the premise that God thinks it legitimate for one of his true followers to try to beef up their teaching authority with references to how they graduated from formal Christian institutions. In the first century, the best learning institution was the original apostles who walked and talked with Jesus...but Paul explicitly disclaimed he had obtained a single thing from them, and in the same verse discounted the significance of their authority. Gal. 2:6. While fundagelical commentators insist Paul likely obtain plenty of gospel info from the earlier apostles, it remains a problem for them that Paul never actually comes right out and admits that he depended on them for any gospel knowledge.
