Johannesburg, August 1, 2009
This morning I was privileged to be the plenary speaker at Springs Baptist Church (http://www.springsbaptist.org.za/about.html) speaking on “Introduction to Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Historic Christian Faith”. My central points were first that we must engage in Apologetics due to simple obedience to God’s commands(1 Peter 3:15; 2 Cor 10:5; Jude 3), and second that the New Testament authors and Apostles engaged in it. The audience was from all age groups, and there was good interaction during the Question/Answer session. One interesting question was, “Is Apologetics something new ? – since we’ve not heard of it so far” – and it was quite a thrill for people to realize that Apologetics has been something that has been in the Church through the 2000 years of Church history. Church Leaders like Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, C.S. Lewis and so on have carried out the Biblical command to defend the historic Christian Faith, and so this is nothing new-fangled.
Dr. Richard Tompkins followed this talk with a seminar on the New Age, and then another one on the Problem of evil which was well received. Overall the audience was very appreciative, and 2 people came up to me to ask what the next step would be in getting involved in learning apologetics. This positive feedback was really good to hear as I initially had no idea what to expect from a South African audience. The feedback put us in good spirits and this helped us overcome the depressing cold weather and freezing rain, and did I mention, the hailstones that pelted our vehicle, as we drove back to Pretoria !
