Reasoning with unbelievers about the absolute claims of the bible.

today on way of the Master Ray Easy and Mark are talking to atheists Catholics and anyone who will listen. Do you have total and complete assurance that you would go to heaven? I wouldn’t say anybody really has that as a catholic. Like we believe in confession, there has to be something more that ultimately saves us. You give any credence to the bike. I’ve never read the bible ever. It’s the world’s biggest selling book of all time. You should be educated on what it says. You know what it says? You guys are religious. Cool. Okay, I’m done. So if we live in an evolved world, then how do we come to the conclusion that rape is actually a morally evil thing technically there’s like nothing wrong with it. Like I said, it happens in the animal kingdom. We’re just animals and it just happens and it’s not cool. Oh, tell me, what are your thoughts on the afterlife? Do you think there is an afterlife? Wow. Um I hope so. I don’t know if I believe in an afterlife. I don’t know if I believe in religion. What I believe in whatever you use to make you better is good and if you use it for wrong then it’s terrible, terrible. Well, how many deaths are caused by religion? Yeah, it’s really, no, it’s 6%. According to the encyclopedia of wars 6%. Who write that book? The encyclopedia Wars sounds like they want to make the money that the cancer. Cancer research by cigarette guys. Let me give you the reason for how many people died in World War Two, World Wars Vietnam Korea and the other one just nailed it since 92%. They weren’t religious wars. They were political wars. Wars of okay, well okay anything used can be cool bro. You ruin the movie dude, you’re cool bro, Shaka idiots. My dad’s hat was stolen. It’s a green hat, it’s a green L. A hat. I live in northern California. I will give some $1000. They bring me that hat. 2000. If you bring the head wearing it, they stole my dad’s hat. I’ve been up and down this coast looking for a green hat and a hug And there’s nothing but evil people in this world is so beautiful and there’s so much beauty in this world. All I want is this world to be beautiful. What’s wrong with the world everybody? Are you wrong with the world? No, I don’t think I’m wrong. Do you think I’m wrong? No, I think I think I’m the cure for cancer and I think there’s a lot of cancerous people out there, selfish people, rude people. I will give someone the 2000 and bring the head wearing it. You give any credence to the Bible. I’ve never read the bible ever. My dad told me to. That’s the next thing I need to do is the world’s biggest selling book of all time. You should be educated on what it says, you know what it says? It says, you’re an idiot. If you follow it, you’re a sheep. That’s what it says. It says you’re a sheep. If you don’t you’re a lost sheep. No, no, no, I don’t believe that you haven’t read it. You shouldn’t remark on what you haven’t read. Okay, well I can mark on how I feel. You should do what your father says and listen to what the bible says. You guys are religious, you guys have a religious, so he just told you what the bible says and yet he also says he’s never read the bible. Yeah, that’s uh that’s called prejudice and it’s so crazy. His father tells me to read the bible, he esteems his father and yet doesn’t listen to him, but it’s so typical when you don’t read the scriptures, you think everybody else is wrong. That’s what’s wrong with the world is that people won’t acknowledge their own sinfulness when you see your sinfulness? That’s part of fixing the problem that’s in the world because men’s problems are caused by men now. He also said that you are a cult and yeah, I would doubt he even understands what the definition of the word cult means. I think it’s just a word that they think puts us in a category of being nutcases people that separate themselves. But they did the same thing with jesus, they wouldn’t even when he was on trial, they didn’t even call him by his name, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can hurt unless it’s because of jesus. Alright, so we’re asking people, what do you think happens after we die? Do you give that any thought ever? I do a little bit, not a whole lot. Uh sadly I guess for me I don’t really believe in a religion, so if that has anything to do with it, so I think once you die it’s just kinda over with nothing, you decompose and your nutrients go back, your energy goes back to the planet I guess gets reused by other things. And where do you get your information from? Uh Just I guess from the scientific community, would you consider yourself to be a good person? Uh I think so in general. Yeah. Yeah, that’s why I approached because I didn’t think you were gonna mug me right? But now who gets to define that? Right? Is it you, is it me, is it her, is it him who defines what good is? Uh I guess it’s really from what I think it’s up to the person, but I mean there is like social standards but they don’t always meet uh everybody’s everybody’s own personal standards and that’s where you know some people is good, maybe another person’s bad in a culture that has largely rejected the bible. Many people claim there is no absolute truth and morals are relative. Mark likes to challenge this worldview. There’s people out there that believes flying planes into twin towers is a good thing and other people think that’s a bad thing, Who’s right, right? When we have conflicting views on something, does somebody need to be right? You know, you ever give that any thought? Yeah, I mean, that’s a tough question and I don’t think I’ve given that too much of a thought. That is tough to answer if God exists. What is conjured up in your mind, If I say define God for me, like what’s he like, what’s his attributes or his character? Anything like that? It’s probably I mean, I wouldn’t say a person, but I’m gonna just say that because that’s the only way I can describe it as a person that just kind of observing Not really meddling or anything too much. Does he care about? Right and wrong? I don’t think so. So he so he just kind of put us on this planet, is he the creator? Did he create us? I don’t think he created us personally. Probably just created the universe that we’re in and then everything just popped up from there. All right. Things gonna be evolved into being in the way they are today. Right. Um so we have the idea that the science of, you mentioned science earlier, we have the signs of a biogenesis. Have you ever heard that science? No. So it means without right and science right, life from non life is the idea if we go back all the way back to the beginning, right? If our brains can kinda fathom that whole idea of that concept. What was there in the beginning to get us to be where we’re at here today? Is that was there a bang? Was there? What, what was it? I mean, I guess if you go way back to, I guess the beginning of the new, I mean, they have the big bang uh explanation of things now. Is that what you believe? Alan? So we have order from chaos. Right? So there’s an explosion and from this explosion we have flowers and trees and hummingbirds and sex and seafood and sunsets, Right? That’s just that’s like above my pay grade. I don’t get it. Right. Do you ever think about that? No, it’s just, I mean, it’s just it’s just happened. Ray has been witnessing the people at Huntington Beach pier for over 15 years and today he’s found someone who claims to believe the bible but seems to need some clarity on the gospel dan. What’s your thoughts on the afterlife? It exists? Do you believe there’s an afterlife? Where do people go when they die? Wow, That’s that’s I don’t know. Are you afraid of death? Afraid of not living? Yeah, it’s the same thing kinda kinda Okay, let’s test your general knowledge. What’s the biggest selling book of all time. Yeah. You nailed it. Here’s the second one. What food never spoils. I don’t know, honey honey. Yeah, honey. Yeah. The bible actually says eat honey for it’s good, you know the bible tells us what we should eat and what we shouldn’t eat. It’s an instruction book. Did you know that? Yeah. That’s why we don’t eat dogs and cats. Do you have a dog? Two cats. Would you ever eat them? No. Why not? Yeah, we know it’s wrong intuitively. But a lot of countries do we base our ethics and what we eat on the bible? I mean if evolution is true, it’s a survival of the hungriest, let’s go to the pound and you’re gonna put a lot of animals to sleep. I’ll eat them for dinner tonight. You’ll get prosecuted by the law. It’s against the law to even not feed your dog, let alone eat it. And we get those ethics. Are those standards from the bible. You ever read the bible? Do you believe it? So what’s going to happen to you after you die? Reunite with past past people. I mean sorry, that was a doozy of a question. Okay, so Sarah, you’re a college student. I could see some brain ary going on there. I see that you know, the brainwave activity radiating off your head. Let me ask you this question. How would you define the word regret like you did something and you wish you did it. Do you think that there are eternal regrets that some people will have. I think that like once you once you die and go to heaven or hell or whatever, like it’s done like it’s over with, you can’t do anything about it. Like that was your life. Let me ask you this, if you were to die today, do you have total and complete assurance that you would go to heaven? I wouldn’t say anybody really has that just because there are things in life that you don’t know and you don’t know how you’re gonna be judged at the end. So all you could do is really do your best and just ask for forgiveness if you did something that you regret, like just really talk to God and like that’s the only thing you could really do. So if there were a cure for cancer, how eager would you be to find out what that care was very. Yeah, because my grandpa actually died of cancer. So yeah, terrible. My mom did and I know the pain and the trauma of that. But if you could find out a way to know for sure that you can go to heaven and not go to hell, how important would it be for you to discover what that is. It would be very important just because I like you don’t want to go through torture your whole life like your whole eternal life. So well, Sarah I have good news for you today. There’s a way to know there’s a real eternity and this is all gonna fade and the most important thing is where you know, to know that is where we’re gonna be forever and ever and ever, you know, a lot of times, christians don’t want to get into conversations about jesus because they think that it’s gonna go really bad, they think people are gonna throw stuff at them, they’re just afraid, people are generally cordial and uh, they’ll typically listen. I mean, odds are probably, 70, of people that you try to talk to are going to engage in a conversation with you and they’re gonna be polite and they’re gonna listen and it’s incumbent on you to to have that same attitude, you just be normal. You know, sometimes Christians get really, really weird and uh, we don’t need to be weirdos to get the gospel across, but you know, you just approach people with love, journalists, kindness, humility, trust in the Lord, and you let love swallow your fears and oftentimes you’ll be delighted to walk away going, Lord thank you. When you think of the christian worldview, what pops inside your mind? Is it something that you would agree with that you disagree with if you agree with it? Why if you disagree with it, why, what do you think? So? I don’t necessarily agree with the beliefs and everything. I do see the need for, uh not just that religion, but just any religion, people need a sense of closure with death, sense of community and social aspects of it. So that’s all good stuff, that I there’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t know for me, it’s like the thing of like spending every sunday in church when you can be doing other things. And also there’s been plenty of other bad stuff that’s kind of happened because of, you know, religion, I guess. So how will you do on judgment day if God judges you according to the 10 Commandments? Well, I personally do, Yeah. Are you a good person or if you sinned against God, generally pretty good person, Okay, I’m gonna try and change your mind about that. Can you be honest with me? Sure, I heard a little uh I’m gonna give you some information that will help change your mind. Let me give you a little story. 1st. A man got on a bus, he was completely blind and on the bus a man stood up to give him his seat. Was that a good thing to do? Yes. It was actually a very bad thing to do. The man lost his job because he did that. You know why he’s the bus driver. Okay, That information changed your mind. You thought it was a good thing now? You said no, that was a bad thing. So I’m gonna give her information to I’m gonna give you information that I think will change your mind. I’m going to give you the light of the 10 commandments to shine on you. Okay. How many lies have you told in your life? Probably a lot. What do you call someone who’s told a lot of lies. So what are you You still think you’re a good person, jesus said if you look at a woman and lust for her, you commit adultery with her in your heart, have you ever looked at a woman with lust? Of course. Okay, you’ve had sex before marriage, Okay. I’m not judging you. You’ve told me you’re a lying, thieving, fornicating, blasphemous adulterer at heart whose self righteous and saying you’re a good person when you’re obviously not, you’re like the rest of us. So, here’s where we’re going with this. If God judges you by those 10 commandments on judgment day, do you think you’d be innocent or guilty guilty Heaven or hell? I’d say heaven, God says hell says all liars of their part in the Lake of Fire, No thief, no blasphemer, No adulterer fornicator will inherit the Kingdom of God. If someone were to ask you Sarah, do you consider yourself to be a good person? What would your response be to that? Yes. And if if someone were to ask you, what what do you base that on what would you say? I’m kind to others? I always like think of others before myself, So, or that’s what I like to think I do. So, do you agree that in the end the only reel uh deciding factor on whether or not we’re good as God’s? Yeah, sometimes we can be wrong about things right For sure. Yeah, and that’s the one thing we don’t want, we don’t want to die, stand in front of God having thought that we were right with him and then we weren’t, you know, there’s a passage in the bible, it’s Matthew chapter seven or jesus said that on the day of judgment, there’s gonna be many people that they could say to him, Lord Lord. In other words, you know, you are the master of my life. They’re identifying with him like he’s there, Lord, you know, And he says he’s gonna say to them, I never knew you depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. And that passage is always terrified when I share it with people all the time when I’m doing interviews because it’s eye opening. Like this is Jesus saying there are people who will have thought they knew him, but he’s gonna say to them, I never even knew you. So obviously with your religious background, you told me you grew up Catholic, you’re familiar with the 10 commandments. So let me ask you this sara, first of all, uh you shall not lie. We know that one. How many lies would you say you’ve told over the course of your lifetime. Um A decent amount. I’m seeing the smirk creep up a little bit, which is saying more than I can count. Yeah, I mean just I know this is bad, but like, because I’m older, I feel like I throughout my years I’ve told them they’ve accumulated. Yeah. What do you call someone who’s told more lies than they can count honestly. A liar. It kind of hurts to say that, doesn’t it? I know for me like to it’s easy to put that label on someone else, but to bring it back on ourselves, it’s difficult. But I appreciate your honesty. Have you ever at any point in your life, dishonored your father and your mother? That’s the one you remembered. Yeah, I did remember that. And yes, I have. I have the bible teaches if we’ve ever looked with lust were guilty of adultery. If we’ve ever had unjust anger or hatred in our heart, we’re guilty of murder. And the worst news of all is it says if we send in one point of God’s law, were guilty of the whole thing. It’s like you’re dangling, you know, from a 10 linked chain from the edge of a cliff. And nine out of 10 are super strong. But one link breaks, it doesn’t matter which one you’re still going down. And that’s how it is with God’s law. You know, we often compare ourselves to other people, so it’s easy to look good in that regard. So we can always find worse. I mean, if you put yourself up against Hitler, you’re like, come on man, I’m getting into heaven with flying colors. But on the day of judgment, God isn’t gonna compare us to Hitler, He’s not gonna compare us to uh you know, a nice, innocent saintly person, he’s gonna measure us by his holy standard and his character and nature. So on the basis of that, do you think you would be good enough to get into heaven? No, my premise would be God actually does care about right and wrong, that he has a better sense of moral values than you and I and I would say that the bible actually tells us everything we need and I’m not everything we want to know, I’m not, I’m filled with questions alan just like you right, but just like I don’t understand how my digestive system fully works, but I’m not gonna keep from eating, Oh it’s all kind of like made up for me, so like there’s no such thing of like I don’t really think about that, like I feel like if you did something bad then just gonna like you’re just a bad person in my, in my eyes and there’s really no repercussion afterwards or or reward for being a good person. So you believe in moral absolutes like what is rape? I think rape is wrong? You think rape is wrong, right? Alright, so I would say that it’s morally wrong across the board for all people in all places, whether it’s practice or not is irrelevant whether we can find a society that thinks it’s a good thing is irrelevant? I think it’s wrong. I think it’s evil, wrong. What do you think? That’s a pretty bad thing? So if we live in an evolved world where everything is evolved, then how did we come to the conclusion that rape is actually a morally evil thing or bashing somebody’s head in for fun who’s innocent and evil, bad thing. If there’s no morals, if there’s no good or bad, if there’s just preferences, you have your preference. I have my preference. There’s no right or wrong to anything. We’re just making choices if everything is evolved. Does that make sense? Yeah, we kind of just are just making choices. So rape then would not be wrong by any sense of the word. It may not benefit a society or benefit an individual, but nobody can truly say that it’s wrong if there’s no law giver, if there’s no God in charge. Yeah, I mean, to me, it’s wrong. And technically there’s like nothing wrong with it. Like it’s just something that, you know, us as a species is just trying to, trying to do to pass your genes down basically. I mean, like I said, it happens in the animal kingdom, we’re just animals and it, it just happens and it’s something that we’ve decided that it’s not, it’s not cool. Yeah. So Adolf Hitler when he killed 10 million people, blacks, jews gypsies, christians, uh cleaned up society what he did was not objectively wrong, But you and I just kind of frowned on and say that probably wasn’t the best choice, but it wasn’t objectively wrong. Would that be your position still? Yeah, people kill people, but I mean it’s not the right thing to do obviously. Now why is it not the right thing to do if it’s not objectively wrong? Why is it not the right thing to do? Well, I wouldn’t want that to happen to me. So it’s just a preference then like you choose vanilla chocolate ice cream. Yeah, I wouldn’t say there’s nothing right or wrong, but we have decided what’s right and wrong and if you, you know, do something that’s wrong, then you may get punished by jail time. Yeah. Right. Right. But it’s not objectively wrong, rape is not wrong, right? I mean, you could actually walk by somebody who’s being raped and go that’s his choice and keep on going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could do that. What would you say a person needs to do in order to go to heaven and avoid health, you just have to live life. And if any if you do something wrong, like ask for forgiveness. Like as a catholic, like we believe in like confession and once you get all your sins off, like you’re forgiven God will always forgive you, but you have to admit to those, you know, regret. Like we talked about at the beginning of this interview, uh it’s not the thing that ultimately cuts it because someone can feel bad for what they’ve done. They can even ask for forgiveness. Like sure confession is a part of it. But there has to be something more that ultimately saves us, right? It’s not just that we regret. It’s not just that we ask for forgiveness. It’s not even that we just believe in God because the bible says, even the demons believe and they tremble. What we need is we need righteousness, we need perfection, we need someone to step in and take the wrath that we deserve in order for us to go free. You’re wearing that cross around your neck. I grew up going to church all my life, like I said, I grew up catholic like you and I would go and I sit in church and I see jesus on the cross, but it never clicked. Of course I knew Jesus came and he died on the cross. But I never understood the significance of it. The reason why Jesus did that is because we owed an eternal debt that we could not pay. And so the wrath of God was was pending and jesus came and he stepped in as God’s wrath is coming down and he took the wrath that we deserve for our sinfulness, so that when we stand before God on the day of judgment and he says render payment for your crimes and we say God, we can’t what we can do at that moment if we’ve placed our faith in what jesus did because he died on that cross and rose again three days later. What God can do then is he can allow us to say God here is our payment. It is the righteousness of jesus. And and he clothes us with it like a robe and God looks at us and he doesn’t see us in our own righteousness. But he sees us clothed with the righteousness of Christ. And the awesome thing Sarah is that the Bible says that salvation is a free gift. You can earn it, you can’t work for it. God gives it to us for free and see what we need to do is look away from ourselves because what we try to do is we try to improve ourselves, try to do good, try to do better, try to earn God’s favor. But that’s an insult to God. So Sarah, my encouragement to you today is to do what I did almost 30 years ago. Look away from yourself, look to Christ see the severity of your sin and then fall before him broke and saying God, I can’t do this. I can’t save myself. You did it. And so I repent. I placed my faith in you. Save me. And so are you gonna think about that. And and the importance of you genuinely repenting and receiving that free gift that christ gives. Yeah, so glad we met today, Sarah. I believe this was a divine appointment. God orchestrated it. And my hope is that you and I will be an eternity together without any regrets. What I’ve tried to do because I love you and I care about you is put the fear of God in you hoping you’ll see that fear is your friend not your enemy because the bible says through the fear of the Lord men depart from evil. And the only way you let go of those beloved sins that pornography, the fornication, all those things that give us great pleasure is to realize where it’s taken you dragging you to hell and I don’t want that to happen to you. So what do you think about what we talked about today? It’s a I wouldn’t say a different way of thinking but it’s something you probably don’t think about and you you put it in a way that okay now it makes sense. Okay I hope you’ll take a little further and say okay I have to jump out of a plane parachutes being offered. That makes sense. I better put it on. That’s where I want you to get to. Okay so when you leave here just say God please forgive my sins. I’m really sorry for sinning against you and I want to put my trust in jesus and God will give you a new heart with new desires. So you love to serve them so that your thirst for righteousness. Thanks for staying and doing this interview. I know you didn’t want to do it, but you did and I really appreciate it. Thank you. Good point. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, that was wonderful. Was that that bad? It wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t sure what to expect. So right at the end there, you encouraged him to go get alone with God and pray where a lot of christians and doing evangelism, they would have ended with asking him to pray with them pray this prayer with me. They would have let him in what’s called the Sinner’s prayer. Why don’t you do that? Because I did great damage as a brand new christian. I had my little four lords booklet ran through it, say this prayer after me and I led 27 of my surfing buddies to the Lord with the Sinner’s prayer. You used to have people say a prayer time. It was so easy. I could just talk you know anyone I met into 1234, say this prayer, you can ever lasting life, it’s yours everlasting life. And I didn’t understand that salvation is the work of God. You know, I can’t interfere with what God’s doing. And so I let the Lord bring them to himself like Nathan did with David, Nathan didn’t say to David, pray this prayer after me. You’ve committed adultery and you’ve committed murder. So I’m going to lead you in a prayer of sorrow to God would be a dumb thing to do. You know, it had to spill from David’s heart and we get some 51 have mercy upon me. O God, according to your loving kindness, according to multitude of tender mercies blot out my transgressions against you and you only have I sinned and numbers, even in the site, that’s what I want him to do. I don’t want him to have a false conversion caused by me in my zeal without knowledge. Remember peter in the garden and zeal, he took a sword and cut off someone’s ear. That’s what modern evangelism done does with zeal without knowledge, takes a sort of God’s word and cuts off ears. The hardest people to talk to, to get to listen to the gospel of people who have tried it and it didn’t work, gave my life to jesus and it didn’t work. He didn’t solve the problems. There was no repentance. They put their hand on the player and they looked back and they weren’t fit for the kingdom. So I want him to be fit for the kingdom. You know, I think I’ve met a lot of people like that who, in talking to him, it comes out that they prayed a sinner’s prayer at some point in their life and it’s almost like they’re holding onto that memory or that prayer, they prayed 10 years ago and yet their life looks no different than than any other Unbeliever who really doesn’t care at all about God. And yet when you ask them about it, if they’re a Christian, not they say yeah, why? Because I prayed this thing 20 years ago. And and so so I can see why that could be a problem. That’s a big problem. Jose a 46 says my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. As we learn the truth of scripture, let’s allow God to change us into people who will live for him and only him. Let’s proclaim the Gospel of jesus christ wherever. And whenever we can, we hope this episode of way of the master has inspired you to share the gospel with others. You can watch our award winning movies and listen to the living Waters podcast freely at Living Waters dot com. Where you’ll also find articles, ebooks, videos, audio content, digital resources and gospel tracts, including our popular starter kit with four of our top gospel tracts. To help you share your faith biblically and effectively make sure to visit living Waters dot com today