This week I was invited to be a speaker at the Virtual Connect Summit by the Global Network of Evangelists (GNE), a ministry organized by the ministry of Luis Palau. They asked me to speak on “Apologetics in Evangelism.” I share from my book “Proof God is Real.”
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Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Hello, this is evangelist Daniel King. And today I want to talk to you about the use of apologetics in evangelism. This week, I was invited to be a guest speaker at the virtual connect summit, organized by the global network of evangelists, a ministry that is under the ministry of Louise. Palauan great evangelists from Argentina. And so they asked me to put together this session on apologetics and evangelism, and I thought I would share it with you today.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:32):
Well, Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host missionary and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:08):
Hello, I’m evangelist Daniel King, and I am so excited to join you for this virtual connect summit. I’m actually recording this a few days early because in this moment, while you’re watching this, I’m actually on a plane. I’m headed to the nation of Malawi to join hands together with a global network of advanced de-list the GNE. And we’re going to be doing festivals in the nation of Malawi. I’ll be joining Desmond Henry Allen green is there. And of course, Andrew Palau will be coming for a great festival in the city of Blantyre. And I’m so excited for this opportunity to collaborate with other evangelists, all of us participating together in order to hold this historic event for the nation of Malawi. So over the next three weeks, if you could pray for these outreaches in Malawi, we would appreciate it so much. I’ve been asked today to speak about the subject of apologetics in evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:16):
And this is a subject that is very important to me. I just finished writing a book called proof. God is real in this book is an apologetics book, but really the throbbing heart of this book is my passion for evangelism. I’ve been involved in evangelism my whole life when I was five years old as called by God into the ministry. Then when I was six, I preached my first sermon. When I was 10 years old, my parents became missionaries in the country of Mexico. And throughout my teen years, we would do lots of children’s evangelism on the streets of Ciudad Juarez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. We’d run through the streets with flyers, knocking on doors, inviting all the kids to come and we’d fill churches up with these kids. And then when I was 15 years old, I was reading a book about how to be a success in life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:10):
And this book, it was talking to businessmen. It said, if you really want to be successful, you need to set a goal to make $1 million before the age of 30, become a millionaire before the age of 30. But I realized that because of my upbringing as a missionary in Mexico, that money was not what was important to me. What was important was souls. And so at the age of 15, I wrote down this goal on a piece of paper, I wrote, I Daniel King want to leave 1 million people to Jesus. Before I turned 30 years of age, instead of trying to become a millionaire, I wanted to lead a million heirs into the kingdom of God. And so God started opening up doors in different nations. While I was still in college at oral Roberts university, I began to travel to different nations. And I’m excited to tell you that before I turned 30 years of age, I had the privilege of leading a million people to Jesus in a salvation prayer.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:08):
And then in the year, since then we have now hit our second million and I was praying and asking God, what comes next? And I felt like God say Daniel go for a million souls every single year. So in the natural, that may seem impossible, but with God, all things are possible. So I’m passionate about leading people to Jesus. And a lot of our great gospel festivals have been in Africa, in Latin America and Asia. And we see people walk several days in order to get to our festival sometimes in Africa, for example, but I also have a heart and a passion for reaching people here in the United States. And I noticed that one of the spirits that has really captured so many hearts and minds here in the United States is the spirit of atheism. And I’ve really been praying and asking God gone, how can we reach people who are being attacked by this spirit of atheism?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:15):
And I think the answer to that is in the area of apologetics. That’s why I wrote this book proof. God is real. When I was still a teenager, my family went on a missions trip down to the nation of Jamaica. I remember we were doing a kind of a small festival all day long, were running through the neighborhoods, inviting people to come to the festival. And at the end of the day, we were hot. We were tired. We were exhausted. We were so sweaty because Jamaica is a very tropical nation. We just wanted to come back to the hotel, take a shower and get in bed. But when we got back to the hotel, there was a big problem. All the water in the hotel had been shut off. And so we didn’t know what to do, but someone in the group was a smart missionary.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:05):
They said, let’s go down to the swimming pool and let’s just take a bath in the swimming pool. So that’s what we did. We went down to the swimming pool. We took some soap and shampoo and we’re, we’re swimming in the Shamp in the swimming pool, just renting off. When, off on the edge of the swim pool, I noticed that there was a panel that was smoking and I thought to myself, panels are not supposed to smoke. And so I swam over to investigate this smoking panel and there were sparks coming out of it and everything. And as I’m looking at it suddenly the light that was under the water, it shocked my leg and it scared me because you can die from electricity in a pool. And so immediately this whole side of my body went numb. I managed to pull myself out of the pool and I was walking away, thanking God so much that I didn’t die in that pool.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:57):
And I was about six steps away from the pool. When suddenly I remembered that all of my friends were still in the pool and immediately I became very concerned for their safety. I, I rushed back over to the pool and I started yelling at guys, guys, get out of the pool. You’re going to die if you stay in the pool. There’s electricity. I, I got shocked. Well, I was only a teenager. My friends thought that I was just playing a practical joke. So they laughed at me, but I was serious. The guys guys get out of the pool. You got to get out of the pool right now. It shot me. It’s the electricity could kill you. And so I started even grabbing some people by the hair and pulling them out of the pool. And there were still a few more that wouldn’t get out.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:39):
And if I went over there and talked to them and I showed them the smoking ban, and I said, guys, it shocked me. If you stay in the pool, it could be a dangerous situation. So finally, I rescued everyone from the swimming pool and thank God, no one died that day. But right then God spoke to me and he says, Daniel, you need to have the same passion saving people from hell as used, showed, saving your friends from that swimming pool. You see a lot of people, they get so excited that they got saved. They walk away say, thank you God so much for saving me, but they forget that there is a world full of people out there who are dying and going to hell. And so thank God that you’re saved. Thank God that I’m saved, but let’s not forget about this world full of atheist.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:30):
People who don’t even believe in God, people who are denying the existence of God. And if they die in their sin, they will spend eternity separated from God. And so we need to have passion to go and reach it. Someone said that Christianity is simply one starving man who found bread going and telling all the other starving people where they can find bread. And so thank God we have the bread of life. We have the word of God. We have the answer for a world that is starving without God. And so I wrote proved God is real. And it really comes from one verse in the Bible. Let me read you that verse right now in Hebrews 11, verse six, it says without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:31):
And so I’ve been watching YouTube and I noticed that there are a lot of videos of atheists on YouTube that are actively trying to proselytize and, and bring people into atheism. And I was thinking, you know, we need to do something as a church to, to combat this spirit of atheism. And I started thinking like, what are the three greatest questions that our generation is asking today? And I came up with a long list of questions, many different questions that people are asking, but I decided that the three greatest questions are these three questions. Question number one is God. There is God. There is there really a God. The second great question. If there is a God who’s out there, does he care about me? Does God care? And then if you decide that there is a God in that he does care about me as an individual.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:34):
The third great question is, do I dare to follow him? So is God there does God care? And do I dare to follow him? And what’s really interesting is that all three of these questions are answered in this verse, Hebrews 11, six. First of all, this verse tells us that he exists. Yes, God is there. Second. This verse tells us that God rewards those who earnestly seek him. This tells me that God does care about me as an individual. And third, this verse tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please God. So this tells me that I must dare to trust him for my salvation. So is God there does God care? And do I dare to follow him? I said, so I started asking these questions and in studying, looking for answers to these questions. And it really came because of a mother that I met at a small church in Missouri.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:47):
I was preaching at this church and after I was done preaching, this mother came up to and she had tears in her eyes and she’s, she grabbed me by the hand. And she says, Daniel, could you please pray for my son? It’s desperate. Well, I thought her son was sick. He needed healing or something. So I said, tell me what’s wrong with him? And I’ll pray for him. And you see she, she went with and her boy, she says, my son has become an atheist. He was raised in the church. He heard all the Bible stories and Sunday school. He knows about Joseph and the coat of many colors. He knows about Jonah and the whale, but he moved down to Austin, Texas, and he got involved with this group of atheists. And now he says that he is an atheist and he even started a blog where he’s telling other people about atheism and recording videos about atheism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:42):
And she said, please, could you pray for my son? And of course I reached out my hand. We, we, we grabbed hands together and I began to pray for her son. And then at the end of the prayer, she said, if I give you his phone number, will you call him? And of course I said, yes. And so she gave me his phone number. I called him the next day. And we had several long conversations even emailing back and forth about the questions that atheists are asking. And honestly, I didn’t really have all the answers to the questions that he was bringing up. And so, because of that, I started to study apologetics and I’ve got a big bookshelf now, full of great books about apologetics and just looking for different ways to provide an answer for the hope that is within me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:40):
And, and so, as I began to study all these books, I took all of these answers to these questions that atheists are asking, and I put them together in this book arranged under these, these three big questions is God, there does God care. And, and do I dare to follow him? And then just a couple of years ago, there was an atheist convention right here in Oklahoma. They, they say that Oklahoma is the buckle of the Bible belt. And so one day I was driving down the highway and I saw a huge billboard and it was advertising this atheist convention right here in my state that has churches on every single corner. And I said, wow, this spirit of atheism is aggressive and strong. And we need to do something to reach people who are atheist or who are skeptical about the things of God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:39):
And so I decided to go to the atheist convention and I went, I sat, I listened to everything that they were saying, sat in on all the sessions. And after words, I wrote up a blog post about what I had seen and heard at the atheist convention and, and my, my website isn’t that big, you can check it out. King ministries.com, K I N G king ministries.com. And normally I don’t get a lot of traffic on my blog posts you know, get a few dozen or a hundred people looking at a typical blog post. But when I posted this blog post about this atheist convention in just a few days, I had over 14,000 views, all atheist looking at this and commenting on it. And I probably got several hundred comments. People were mad, they’re cussing at me. They were angry about what I said about atheism, but I, I saw that there, there really is this tremendous need for Christians to reach out to atheists.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:50):
You know, I think I was the only Christian that went to that atheist convention. Well, I think that there should be dozens of Christians there interacting and having conversations with atheists. I also started to follow a bunch of atheists on Twitter and looking at what they’re saying, listening to their concerns. And, and a lot of what they’re saying is, is mocking Christianity mocking the religious beliefs of of different groups, but there is a core to it that I think the church really needs to listen to in, in our society. I think one of the biggest problems that we’re facing is this spirit of, of skepticism, this spirit of atheism that is attacking. And so I, after doing several years of research and writing and everything, I, I put together this book proof God is real and I have it available as a steady guide.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:55):
And as a book, it’s, it’s up on Amazon, you can find it by typing proof. God is real by Daniel King on Amazon. And it’s these three big questions is God there. And so I want to just give you a little bit of the information about the book. We don’t have time right now to, to cover everything in the book. And of course, there’s lots of great apologetics books out there, but I’d really like to encourage you to, to start looking for ways to reach out to our society. How are we going to reach atheist with a gospel? How are we going to interact with skeptics? How are we going to deal with our generation today? I find that sometimes Christians are really busy answering a lot of questions that is asking you go to church and they preach different sermons, different topics. And it’s not really answering the questions that people are asking.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:00):
You know, how are we going to reach people? I think we need to, as evangelists, we need to become solid in the study of apologetics. Now, sometimes people ask like, like, what is apologetics? Is that apologizing? For, for what we believe and apologetics is, is not in a apology apologetics is a tool that we can use to help to reach people. So the, the word apologetics comes from the Greek word Apologia, which means to give a reasoned response. And this word is found seven times in the new Testament. We find it in acts 22, 1 X, 25, 16 five more times. And it doesn’t mean to make an apology. It means to give a defense. And so someone has described apologetics as the frontline of the battle for people’s souls. And so before you can answer the questions of how do we deal with sin?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:18):
We have to start with the fact that there is a God, is there a God? Well, if someone doesn’t believe that there’s a God, they’re not going to care about Jesus being the son of God or Jesus dying on the cross or paying the price for our sins. I mean, first we have to establish the fact that there is a God and Isaiah one verse 18, Isaiah says, come now let us reason together in acts 19 verse eight, it says that the apostle Paul went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. And so really apologetics is how we reason with people about the things of God. It’s how we persuade people to come to a realization that there is a God. And so sometimes there is a place for strong preaching and in calling people to repentance.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:17):
But often we need to sit down, listen to what people are saying and offer a reasoned response. And we can do that reason response through social media, through YouTube, through various different methods of reaching out to people in person sitting down at a coffee shop. But I think if you’re going to be an evangelist, if you’re called by God to be an evangelist, you should become proficient in the steady of apologetics. So in this book, proof, God is real. I narrowed down to seven proofs for the existence of God. So the first great question is God there. So I talk about the cosmological proof. So the cosmological proof is that premise a everything that exists must have a cause. Premise be this cause must be a great causer premise. See the only cause or great enough would be God in the conclusion, therefore God exists.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:24):
So the cosmological proof is the proof from cost. So let me give you an example of, of how this works in everyday life. So imagine that you, you have a group of friends and that you’ve got Sarah and Mary and Luke and a group of people. And so Sarah is a little cold and she wants a jacket. So she turns to her friend, Mary and says, Mary can you, can I borrow your jacket? And Mary says, yes, of course you can borrow my jacket, but, but I don’t have one with me. Let me ask Luke for a jacket. So she turns to Luke and Mary asks, Luke and Luke says, no, I don’t have a jacket, but let me ask my other friend Samuel so-so, Luke turns to Samuel and then Samuel turns to Paul and they, they keep asking for jackets, but nobody in the group has a jacket.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:22):
So Sarah can never receive a jacket because what you have is this group of borrowers. Everyone wants to borrow from someone else, but in order for someone to get a jacket, someone must first have a jacket to lend. You must have a first lender of the jacket. And so the same is true about the universe. Everything in the universe is caused. I can lift this book up and, and drop it. It falls on the desk. Well, the sound that comes is caused by the book falling, and I’m lifting it up and that’s what caused it to fall. That’s what caused the sound. Well, what caused me something had to have caused me. Well, my mom and dad gave birth to me and that’s what caused me. And it goes all the way back. And it’s this, this idea of what came first, the chicken or the egg.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:22):
So everything in the universe has a cause in that causer must be a great causer and that great causer is the one that we call God. Another proof that God is real is the tele illogical proof. This is evidence from design. If I was walking through the forest, I found my cell phone laying on the forest floor, and I never seen one before, but I picked it up and turned it on and started scroll through it and saw pictures and stuff. And wow, this is amazing. And then if I opened up the back of my cell phone, I’d see lots of intricate, little tiny pieces of electronics and battery parts. And it would be obvious that this cell phone was designed by a great designer. Steve jobs had the idea to make the apple cell phone and he put a lot of work into designing it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:27):
And there’s thousands of pieces inside a typical iPhone. But, you know, there are thousands of pieces of information in a strand of DNA. And it is obvious by looking at creation that everything that we can see was designed by a great designer in this great designer is the one that we call God. We also deal with the ontological proof, which would be proved from abstract reasoning. If you’re locked up in a room and it was totally dark, you couldn’t feel anything. And all you could do was think, could you prove that there’s a God? And the answer is yes. We also have the morality proof evidence from our sense of right and wrong. So premise a, if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Premise be objective, moral values do exist. Conclusion, therefore God exists. And so the sense inside of us that there is right and wrong proves that there is a great moral law giver in this universe.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:43):
And that moral law giver is God. And so we can prove that God is there by our sense of right and wrong. And in everyone in our generation can see that there are things that are happening that are wrong. People are mad at, at racism. They’re mad at human trafficking. They’re mad at war. And they’re wondering why does this great evil and injustice exists in the world? And actually the fact that we know that these things are wrong, prove that there is a God who gives us an objective moral value of what is right and wrong. We also have scriptural proof evidence from the Bible. So the Bible says that God exists and we can see that the Bible is trustworthy when we begin to study it, therefore we can, that God exists. I also deal with proof from miracles. I’m an evangelist who believes that God is alive.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:54):
That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever in the same miracles that Jesus did 2000 years ago, he can do today in, in many of our great festivals, we have seen God do great miracles. I was in the nation of Ethiopia a couple of years ago, and there was a man whose name was Mohammed. And he was a cripple and not many people came the first night of our festival. And it was because when our team went and put up posters, there was a team of Muslim, young people that came behind us and they were tearing the posters down from the walls. And in this, this group of Muslim youth, they actually started a fight and they threw a brick through the front windshield of our publicity vehicle. And the police were called. And they said that our guys had started the fight, which is ridiculous because why would we throw a brick through our own windshield?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:48):
And 17 of our Ethiopian team members were thrown into jail and we had to get a lawyer to get them out. And so then the first night of the festival, there weren’t many people in that area. Ethiopia is about 30% Muslim and the area that we were ministering in had a high concentration of Muslims. And, and so none of them were there. So I pray say, God, you have to do something. And so then on the second night of the festival, there’s man Muhammad, the cripple came and Jesus touched Mohammed, the cripple, and he lifted his crutch up into the air. And he began to run back and forth. He came up on the platform and he lifted his crutch into the air. And he said, Jesus healed me. Jesus healed me. And I said, what’s your name? He said, my name is Mohammad.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:32):
And instantly everyone knew that he was a Muslim. And so word began to spread that Jesus was healing Muslims, and that the next night, the crowd size doubled. And then the next night it doubled again. And then the next night, it double again, by the last night we had over 55,000 people in that place, many of the Muslim coming to hear about Jesus for the first time. And they came because of the miracle that God did in the life of this man named Mohammed. And so miracles can help us prove that God is real. You can’t argue with someone who has an experience of a miracle inexperience, we’ll be in argument any day of the week. And so when, when people begin to see God do miracles, they trust that God is real. And then of course we have redemptive proof for God’s existence. God has done great miracles in my life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:31):
And without God, I know that I would be a horrible person. So God is there. Then this book deals with the question does God care. And I believe that the, that the proof that God cares is in the life of Jesus, the birth of Jesus proves that God cares the life of Jesus proves that God cares the death of Jesus proves that God cares. And the resurrection of Jesus proves that God cares for you as an individual. And so people are asking questions about whether Jesus really existed, whether he really lived, whether he really rose from the dead and this book answers those questions. And then the third grade question, do I dare to follow him? This, this book goes into the details of Pascal’s wager and lots of other great ways to ask people to dare to follow Jesus. And so I encourage you. If you want to learn more about apologetics, get a copy of this book proof, God is real. It’s available on amazon.com and you can also get the study guide to help you go through it. So prove God is real by Daniel King. And I pray that God would use you in a tremendous way to use apologetics, to bring atheists and skeptics to Jesus Christ. Check out my website, king ministries.com. Give me your email address and I’ll send you a free book. God bless you and have a great day.
Evangelism Podcast Host (31:09):
Daniel King is on a mission to save 1 million souls a year, but he can’t do it alone. Would you consider sowing a financial seed today to give, please visit www.kingministries.com For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com again, that’s king ministries.com.
