Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1375 | Cliffe Knechtle’s Most Controversial Take—And Why He’s Doubling Down

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

In this powerful episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey sits down with father-son evangelists Cliffe and Stuart Knechtle for a raw conversation on bold gospel proclamation in a hostile culture. Cliffe shares his remarkable journey from preaching in rough Boston bars to facilitating decades of open-air dialogues on university campuses, while Stuart recounts growing up in the midst of it and leveraging social media to reach millions with pre-evangelism and gospel conversations. Together they address the dramatic cultural shifts they’ve witnessed — from increased emotional fragility and moral relativism to the devaluing of human life and growing hostility toward Christian truth. The discussion dives deep into handling doubt, the importance of intellectual honesty in faith, why politics must never overshadow Christ, and practical ways to engage skeptics with grace and truth. Cliffe and Stuart also explore why many Gen Zers are walking away from church and how believers can demolish doubt with evidence and compassion. A must-watch for anyone passionate about evangelism, apologetics, and raising the next generation with unshakable faith. Share the Arrows 2026 is on October 10 in Dallas, Texas! Tickets are on sale now at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sharethearrows.com⁠⁠⁠ Share the Arrows is sponsored by: A'del Natural Cosmetics: AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Range Leather: RangeLeather.com/ALLIE We Heart Nutrition: WeHeartNutrition.com Buy Allie's book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.toxicempathy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ – Time Codes 0:00 Introduction 4: 20 The Knechtles’ Evangelism in the Face of Hostility 16:25 Is Today Different? 27:38 The Impact of Charlie Kirk’s Death 34:37 Is Gen Z Avoiding Christianity Over Trump? 44:15 Can Skepticism Be Christian? 59:49 This Question Changed Cliffe’s Faith 1:06:30 The Atheist Paradox – Today's Sponsors: A'del | Visit AdelNaturalCosmetics.com and enter promo code ALLIE for 25% off your first-time purchase. Legacybox | Visit Legacybox.com/ALLIE to take advantage of Legacybox’s Spring Cleaning sale and preserve your family’s story. Good Ranchers | If you go to ⁠⁠⁠GoodRanchers.com⁠⁠⁠ and subscribe to any box of 100% American meat, you’ll save up to $500 a year! Plus, if you use code ALLIE, you’ll get an additional $25 off your first order. Patriot Mobile | Go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT. Use promo code ALLIE for a free month of service. Geviti | Go to gogeviti.com/allie and use code ALLIE for 20% off. – Episodes You May Like: Ep 1336 | Trump Reads the Bible to America, Why Swalwell’s Sketchy Resignation Matters, & Finland is Officially Gone https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1336-trump-reads-the-bible-to-america-why/id1359249098?i=1000763123131 Ep 1288 | Bryce Crawford: How to Overcome Nerves to Share the Gospel Anywhere https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1288-bryce-crawford-how-to-overcome-nerves-to-share/id1359249098?i=1000745190902 --- ► Buy Allie's book, "You're Not Enough (and That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": https://alliebethstuckey.com/book ► Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes: https://apple.co/2UVssnP Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2FwkXxj ► Connect with Allie on social media: https://twitter.com/conservmillen https://www.instagram.com/alliebstuckey/ https://facebook.com/allieBlazeTV/ ► Relatable merchandise – use promo code ALLIE10 for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

A new poll out shows that half of Jin Z says they won't go to church because of Christian support for Donald Trump. But is that really true? What holds young people back from attending church? What is the state of faith of Gen Z and college students in America today? We've got apologists Cliff Kineckley and his son, Stuart Kineckley. They have been on campuses for years sharing the gospel, having a dialogue about Christianity, about faith. and they are here today to answer this question as well as to talk about Cliff's new book Demolishing Doubt. Why is doubt actually not as bad as some people think it is? We are talking

about this and so much more on today's episode of Relatable. Cliff and Stuart, thanks so much for taking the time to join us for maybe the five or so people on the internet who don't know who you are and what you do. Cliff, who are you? And what do you do? Well, I was born at an early age and I came to faith in Christ because of mom and dad's faithfulness in communicating the gospel to their six kids. And what I do is I have the privilege of being married to Sharon and to be the father of Robert Stewart and Ian. And for years, we traveled as a family from campus to campus around the United States. And I would stand up at a highly traffic spot on campus and speak for four or five minutes and then say, that's all I had to say. I thought we'd open it up for question, answer,

agreement, disagreement, wherever you all are coming from. And we'd hold a four to five hour dialogue. And now I have the privilege of having Stuart and his older brother Robert occasionally come with me. Stuart comes all the time and Robert comes occasionally. And we continue to do the same thing on university campuses around the United States. Okay. Before the campuses, you were preaching and sharing the gospel in bars. Is that correct? Well, while I was in seminary at Gordon Conwell, yes, I would go down Friday night, Saturday night in inner city Boston and go into the combat zone,

which is an area of the city that Boston tried to legalize prostitution in order to contain it, and I would speak to men on vacation in these bars, blue-collar-type bars, rough and tumble, television in the corner. Every time the Bruins or Celtics would lose a game, some half-drunk guy would stand up and curse God at the top of his lungs. So I figured equal time. If you get to curse God at the top of your lungs, I could say something positive about God at the top of my lungs.

And so did a bit of bar preaching down there in Boston. Is there any story that sticks out from that particular era of the bar preaching in Boston of when you had a meaningful conversation with someone, and it felt like, okay, they understood the gospel in that moment. Well, the conversation that sticks out most for me is a reporter from the Boston Globe one night came with me. He was writing an article on Born Again Christians and their desire to share their faith. And he would follow me around from bar to bar.

At the end of the evening, he said, Cliff, I got to go, but I got one question for you. it seems to me that nobody has given you any type of positive response. So why aren't you continue to do this? And I said, well, sir, let me tell you. A person coming to faith is like a chain with a lot of different links in it. Often I'm the first link or a middle link. Occasionally I have the privilege to be in the last link. But I'm called to be faithful,

and that means I'm going to be the first link or the middle link and a person coming to faith. Because a person doesn't come to faith just boom out of the dark. Instead, it's a process of learning about who. God is, learning about who Christ is, learning about the cross of Christ and the need to put your faith in Christ. And he walked away with a thoughtful look on his face. And then there were other times when, yes, I had the privilege of seeing people come to faith, but that was pretty few and far between. Began to work in a mission there in inner city Boston and saw some homeless people.

Now, of course, I never knew exactly what a homeless person meant when they said anything they said. I mean, they were slaves of alcohol and drug addiction. So I learned to take everything they said with a grain of salt. And what gave you the gumption to try that kind of evangelism? I think a lot of people might be listening and they're like, gosh, I just couldn't overcome the awkwardness or the fear, not knowing what to say, not knowing how to deal with the negative response in the moment. But you decided to walk into a pretty hostile place and just say what's true. Well, I really didn't have the courage to do it. In fact, the night that I spoke in my first bar,

I parked my car and started walking towards the bar door, and when I got there, I walked right past it, and I walked around the block for an hour, and I eventually said to myself, well, forget this, you're so scared, get out of here. So I went back to my car and was opening my door to go back up to Gordon Conwell Seminary, and the Holy Spirit brought to my mind the words of the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11, 32 to 38, where we read, and what more shall I say? I don't not have time to tell about Gideon Barrack, Samson, Jephth, the David, Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith, conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword, whose women received back their dead, raised a life again.

Some face jeers and flogging, while the still others were stoned and put in prison, chained and put in prison. And all of a sudden I began to ask myself, you know, Cliff, you claim to have faith in Christ, but you really are a wimp. You don't have the guts to go into that bar and tell those men, on vacation about Jesus Christ. So convicted of my lack of faith, I turned around and walked back into the bar, stood up and started speaking. And I started with 1 John 410, where we read, this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

And the bar tenor came running down the bar saying, you want to know what God is? God is the cash register. And all I care about these men is the money that got in their pockets. And I started dialoguing with him. Well, yeah, but there's more to love. life and money. There isn't the opportunity to know a loving God. And he came around, grabbed my arm, and gently escorted me out. But that was the first time that I preached in a bar and I'll never forget it because I was so petrified about going in there. I was so scared. And once again,

God used his word, the scriptures, to really convict me about, come on, buddy, suck it up and trust God and go in and do it. And then you graduated, for lack of a better term, I guess it wouldn't be graduated, but you decided to transition to college campuses. That was your new ministry. After you got married, after you had kids, and what gave you the inspiration to do that? Well, it started in 1980. I was on staff with Interversity Christian Fellowship, and there was the Interversity Beach Evangelism Project in Fort Lorde, Odell, Florida. And so I decided, man, I'd like to really try this. and so I went out on the beach and stood up and began to preach and guys hopped off their towels and started telling me what a fool I was for believing in Christ.

And so I scrapped my outline and started dialoguing with them. And after finishing that, some staff and students of intervarsity said, hey, would you try this on our campus? And so I said, sure, and I'll never forget the first campus was SUNY Albany in upstate New York. Charlie Tobelman was the intervorsy staff worker. He grew up in the mission field in Central America. mom were missionaries. And as we're driving a campus, he says, okay, now Cliff, how many campuses have you done this before on? And I said, none. This is my first one, Charlie. It got real quiet

for the rest of the drive to campus. Yeah. But we started and the Holy Spirit drew a group of students who really wanted to fire questions and work through the issues. So haven't stopped since. Wow. And Stuart, what was it like for you? You and your brothers actually went with your parents to these college campuses, did you have a sense of, okay, this is really cool, this is neat, I want to do this, or was it just the normal day-to-day part of your life? I always say I still struggle with PTSD over when I was three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Oh, my gosh, UC Berkeley was probably the wildest one.

I still have visions. I don't have many visions from when I was three years old, but the visions of especially this one guy, You probably remember his name. Mom probably remembers his name. I do not. Chris. Chris. We'd come out haired below his backside, hadn't cut it probably in over a decade, and would just spit in his face. And he definitely wasn't the only one, right? Berkeley was known for this. Exactly. Literally spitting right in his face. And I never saw him swing, but just screaming. And so I would run out and grab hold of my dad's leg, I was going to save him at the edge of three. And that was definitely not the only one. That would happen at numerous universities.

That was kind of my go-to thing to run, grab your leg. Yeah. So, no, I cannot say I wanted to do what my dad did when I was three or when I was a teenager and beyond that. But he was a very kind recruiter when I got asked to be a pastor

at a few different churches down south. No, he wasn't really a recruiter, but he definitely wanted to work together. But he always respected, just like a lot of dads too, probably your dad, probably your dad, probably his dad, where it's the balance of would love to work together, but I want you to do what you want to do and what God is calling you to.

But I get to the point of saying, hey, look, the culture that I'm familiar with is this one with my dad and my brothers were there as well and beyond. And so it started off pastoring, but then naturally this became a gigantic evangelistic program within our church. And so I got really excited about it. I like the majority of millennials and Gen Ziers. During COVID, it was just anybody and everybody and everybody trying out social media and just messing around. And I never wanted a personal account because I knew that would be a huge time suck. Yeah. But I had a few guys on our board and then at our church say, just start social media.

We guarantee you it would fly. So I said no at first. But I did say to him 10 years before. I was like, I cannot believe the ministry. You know, the board has tried it on black entertainment even. And it's never really taken off from a media perspective. It would grow, it would balloon on college campuses. But sure enough, these little clips from TikTok especially, I would just find ones on free speech.

I didn't hit the gospel until like after two months because I want to do pre-evangelism stuff predominantly on him. And sure enough, these things just popped off and then focused on the gospel interactions after about two months. And it just grew and grew and grew. And I think the Holy Spirit timing and COVID timing then on top of social media acting like the Roman Road, like one pastor recently said to us. the combination of it all really provided the opportunity to reach a lot of non-believers. And some of my friends who went to Christian college were reaching out to me saying, Stuart, we know, you know, we've been atheists for years, even though we go to Christian college. We're believers now because we've seen these discussions and so many atheists come into the faith.

So that did not happen before social media. So we were tremendously blessed, even though there's a dark side of social media, that as odd as it is, guys and women would watch what we were doing, especially his old stuff probably, on loop, on day-long car rides. Yeah. And they would come to the faith, probably out of boredom eventually, in those car rides on loop. So that's the benefit, I think, truly of social media acting as that Roman road, I'm sure for you as well and many others. Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor, and that is Jevity. I'm so thankful that Jevity is there to help you take charge of your health.

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was a totally neutral talk. It wasn't even actually theological. The free speech professor asked me to give a talk about what was going on at the time, which was Kavanaugh, and try to help them understand from a left and right perspective, but also just like my personal conservative perspective, what was going on. And I knew that this was a liberal campus, and I was trying to be so neutral and so moderate in my approach while still unapologetically being a conservative. The entire time I was talking, there were people screaming at me from the crowd. I'm like, And, like, laughing, they would uproar, like, it was, they would just mock me for things. And I'm like, I literally feel like I'm in a different country.

And, like, they are hearing a different language than the one I'm speaking. I was so out of sorts. And then we had a question and answer. And yeah, there would be, some were respectful. But the respectful kid, it was funny. They waited until after to come up and talk to me. But it was the kids who hated me and hated what I was saying that would raise their hand just to scream at me. And it would be like, do you have a question?

No, you don't have a question. So anyway, UC Berkeley, I guess hasn't changed very much. It's crazy. But my question for you is, is there one particular thing that you say that tends to get, or that you say, that tends to get the most vitriol? Like, you know when you talk about this particular subject or when you say this, there's going to be someone who just loses it. We have friends who are racists. That's what they accuse you of. That was especially yours.

You're probably most viral. You told Tucker Carlson that, right? You know, a big clip with Tucker on that one where it's mainly a Texas state, but you said it on multiple sites. I have friends who are racist. Yeah, two lesbians stepped out of the crowd and they were obviously making a point. They were kissing and hugging and feeling each other right in front of me. And so we began to dialogue with them. And at one point I said, well, yeah, I have friends who have racists.

And they said, oh, no, you can't. You cannot have a friend who's a racist. And I said, that's where you and I disagree. I'm convinced that every single human being is created in the image of God, and we all have equal value. And secondly, I'm convinced we all are sinners. I'm a dirty, rotten sinner, and guess what? You two are sinners as well.

But God loves sinners, and that's why Christ died on the cross, to pay the penalty for our sin to forgive us and to give us eternal life. And I'm going to have friends with anybody. I work in prisons, and I got acquaintances and tried while I was in seminary and went every Monday night to Lawrence County House of Correction. and I tried to build a friendship with a guy who'd kidnapped little boys, sexually molested him, and murdered him. And then when I would go into the gym to play basketball with other inmates,

they'd say, hey, man, how can you talk to this guy? He's a piece of dirt. And I said, look, guys, I know what he's done, and it's horrendous what he's done. But he's still a human being created the image of God. And so that's such news for a lot of people today who love the cancel culture and canceling people right and left. No, we don't cancel people. We offer people the grace of God.

We don't compromise. We don't compromise. justice and integrity and sexual purity and all. But we're going to try and befriend everybody the same way Jesus did. Yeah. It's interesting that there's a lot of people who would deny the reality of objective morality and objective truth, but they are very quick to draw hard lines around what they consider to be immoral or moral. It's not really the, it's not the existence of truth that they have a problem with, it's just how we actually define it. And who we define is the authority. That's what I find anyway. Not just with people who profess to be atheist, but also those who call

themselves progressive Christians. It seems to be who is the authority, which goes all the way back to the garden. Did God really say? How about that? What has changed, you think, on college campuses since you started in the early 80s to today? Well, one of the reasons I'm so good. Glad Stewart comes with me, and one of the reasons I'm so glad I've got Sharon as my wife to talk to me about this is, people are more emotionally fragile today than they were when we began back in the 80s and 90s. To give you an example, my dad grew up in Switzerland, and when he was 18, he sat up in the Alps with a gun, watching Hitler's Panzer divisions rolled towards Switzerland. My grandpa, my dad's dad, was in the front lines with his gun.

Today, when Donald Trump wins the election, university students go to a crying room to get counseling. Give me a break. What emotional fragility. What incredible emotional weakness today compared to the young 18-year-olds who fought against Adolf Hitler. So emotional fragility is there. And I'm so grateful for Stuart and for my wife Sharon because they've helped me understand that and help me not be quite as harsh and quite as direct as I have often, unfortunately, have been. So that's one point.

The second point would be sexual immorality is embraced in a way that it's not sexual morality. It's normal. So moral relativism and sexual immorality has become so commonplace that if you stand against that, you are really, really weird. Thirdly, unfortunately, what has become too infirmly entrenched, is unless you can prove it scientifically it's not true. I mean, it's fascinating to watch one group is totally into relativism and the other group is into unless you can scientifically prove it, it's not true. And so to be able to address both of those camps as a challenge, and they both are more and more

firmly entrenched. And I think the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is based on evidence, not scientific proof, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which allows for moral relativism in certain areas, you eat food offer to idols, okay? You don't eat food offered to idols. Paul writes, okay, don't make a big issue out of it. So there is some moral relativism in life. And yet there is really a strong objective morality that comes from the character of the eternal God. And so it's a real challenge to try and communicate to students who are firmly entrenched

in moral relativism that, no, you can't live your life that way. I don't care if you're a liberal. You know very well that your critique of the conservatives is a moral, ethical critique. you're not letting enough immigrants in. You're elitist. And the conservatives are the same way. And you live a sexually twisted life, a perverted life. So both are appealing to the moral argument,

which I think is exciting because it really shows that we do have consciences, which means there really is a god. The last point that I have found that's been a big switch. When I started 11 years ago with him, I did not see for the first few years at least any type of devaluing of human life, the relativizing of human value like I do today. A couple years ago, I was a, we tag team, obviously, and he tagged me out. He tags in.

And this group follows me, very, very progressive group, to a corner where I was eating a sandwich. And they corner me and they say, hey, how dare you say that you are going to try and save the life of a suicidal 16-year-old woman. That's devaluing her freedom and autonomy. If anything, you should aid her in her decision to kill herself. Now, they wouldn't say, get a noose or, you know, push her off a cliff. They were more so saying, though, a type of euthanization of like the elderly get, you know,

whether it's a pill or something along those lines. And so they pressed me for a good hour in a very, very angry way. And it was a fairly big group. And I was shell shocked. Completely shocked. And I have a background in psychology. So you wouldn't think I'd be that shocked if I was up on the times. But sure enough, we kind of got around to the point of, do you guys really mean this? Do you truly mean this? I think they got to the point of starting to realize just what they were saying. and they were relativizing morality, objective value, where do we get that from? So we see that in countries like Switzerland and many others that are pushing that type of thinking

even more so than we are now. But that's one that I see where personal autonomy and freedom is considered really the top idea and thing to pursue even more so than the value of human life. Yeah. You know, my first book that we were talking about before, I talked about, about the cult of self affirmation and kind of like, it's almost like a religious act of believing in the God of self and like the exchange of the God of Scripture

for the God of self. And I talk about the two highest values, I think in that cult of self affirmation being authenticity and autonomy, which can both be good things. We believe that we should be in control of our bodies and that the government shouldn't tell us that we have to take a vaccine

or we have to do something with our bodies that we don't believe in. And then authenticity, you don't want to lie, you don't want to pretend to be something you're not. But when those two things are untethered to objective truth, to a higher authority, then they become excuses to sin. If autonomy is your highest value, then you can use it as an excuse for abortion or for suicide because this is my highest value. If authenticity is your highest value, then you can self-identify. Why can't you become a woman. Why can't you identify how you want to sexually? All of these things, including

empathy, people get so now when I talk about this because they believe empathy is the highest value. But what you just described is empathy run amok. Empathy for someone's choice and for someone's feeling so much that you have to affirm. But if empathy is untethered to objective truth, it leads you to make really stupid and moral decisions. And so kind of going back again to authority, all of these things that I think a lot of progressives and atheists value, empathy and compassion, in love, intolerance, and inclusion, and autonomy, authenticity, they're good win in submission to absolute truth. When they're not, they're actually very dangerous. And it sounds like you're kind of seeing that more and more of the manifestation of that.

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I use it every day. Their oil-based products have really helped my skin glow without actually leaving my skin looking or feeling oily at all. Just clean and refreshed and moisturized. I love their bronzing stick. Their bronzing or their moisturizing blush. I love their lips tints. It's all so good. And I love Arlene and their family. They're awesome. Go to adele natural cosmetics.com. Use code Allie for 25% off your first time purchase. Adelnaturalcosmetics.com code Allie. You know, when I talk to pregnancy center directors, one thing that they will say that has changed over the years is that the women coming in are more calloused than before. They can show them a sonogram of their baby and not every time, but more likely than it used to be, those women will say, I don't care. I don't care about the heartbeat.

I don't care. I know that I want an abortion. I'm going to get an abortion now. Whereas before, women would come in more open. It sounds like you're seeing, yes, more emotional fragility. Are you also seeing an increased callousness to the truth or to true biblical compassion on these college campuses? Yes, for sure. People love, students love to say, oh yeah, empathy.

You can get that from evolution or altruism. You can get that from evolution. That is such a crazy stretch. I always like to say, fine, you can get a level of empathy. for your tribe coming out of evolution, but ultimately it would be tremendously selfish and dangerous for you to sacrifice for somebody else in a different tribe because you would be hurting your own tribe in doing so. So the Judeo-Christian understanding of empathy, altruism, sacrifice, compassion, all of that is a joke and actually is harming your group if it's simply

from an evolutionary standpoint. So for a Christian, we try and get to the point of saying, hey, Nietzsche would say that you claim to be an atheist, but if you were living by sacrifice, care for human rights, compassion, love, then you claim to be an atheist when really you're just a Christian dressed up as supposedly an atheist you think you are. And that's Nietzsche, who's kind of the top prophet, if you will, of atheism in the last hundred years. So we see that callousness certainly, and yet at the same time, people like to say, oh, no, no, I'm a very empathetic person, and I'm a pursuer of human rights. But the idea of

Jesus Christ and sacrificing for your very enemies, that idea is completely going away. And the idea of forgiveness, one philosopher was recently talking about, is completely slipping away. The idea of forgiveness and how that used to be a virtue, a strong virtue, even in our nation, is a foreign concept now. It's no, stand for the truth. We like justice. We even potentially like judgment day. This idea of forgiveness, no, that's going to harm people, actually. I wonder if Charlie's assassination had a particular impact on y'all because he was doing something that you have been doing for decades.

in that moment that he was shot and killed, he was dialoguing with people. He was saying things that are uncomfortable but true, sharing the gospel, sharing the truth about sexuality and gender. And I know that y'all have worked, I think, with Turning Point in the past and some of these campus tours. So can you talk about what it was like to learn that he had been killed on campus and then what your ministry has been like since then? Well, obviously that was an incredible tragedy. act of violence off the charts. Pathetic.

Charlie was an incredible man of faith. One of the things I respected most about him was when he had to speak with him, we signed a form that said, I am not going to endorse any politician or any political party. And I respected that highly because I did not want to be involved with Christian nationalism, meaning by that, America is the greatest country and whatever we do is good. I am far too big a skeptic to buy that. I am convinced that America is a great country when America follows Jesus Christ. And when America turns its back on Christ, we become a very ugly country.

I don't care if it's slavery, child sex traffic trade, the exportation of pornography, greed, abuse of power. And I really appreciated the way Charlie continued to grow as a follow of Christ and continue to make the number one priority in his life, Christ. and then of course he called people to be involved politically. And I respected that highly and commended him for his clear priority of putting Christ number one. I'm a real fan of Abraham Lincoln who during the Civil War, our minister came up to him and said, Mr. Lincoln, let's pray that God is on our side in this horrible conflict. And Lincoln shot back, no. I'm not going to pray that God is on our side.

Let's pray that we are on God's side, for God's side is always. he's right. You take God out of the picture and you're up a creek without a paddle when it comes to explaining to me why justice, why love, why integrity. If it's all relative, it's all a crapshoot, and it really doesn't matter what you do. And if you think about it, if there is no day of judgment

and no heaven and no hell, then we all know where Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler are the same place, the fertilizer pit, rotting. But if there is a God and there is a day of judgment and there is eternal life either in heaven or hell, then all of a sudden it does ultimately matter what Hitler versus Teresa do. And so I think Charlie had a tremendous ability to articulate very clearly what a brilliant guy he was and what a reader he was. The difference between justice and injustice. He articulated

magnificently, a biblical view of abortion, of sexuality. He was very respectful of students, as he would challenge them to think more deeply, but he did it in a highly respectful way. And to be honest with you every encounter that I've seen Charlie have with somebody I had the utmost respect for. So the vitriol that was directed against him was pathetic, I feel. Now, was he a little bit more radical politically, especially when he started out? And did he say some things probably that I wouldn't agree with? Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure I say things he wouldn't have agreed with. So we all are unique individuals. We're not carbon copies. But I have profound respect for the way he loved Christ and insisted upon thinking carefully through the difficult issues that we all are confronted

by in our culture. And what about you? I mean, I know the children are bold and you'll know that, you know, I love the quote that says, we are immortal until God calls us home. He's totally sovereign over a day of birth and day of death. But have you all been thinking any differently since September about visiting these sometimes hostile campuses? Yeah, for the first time we've had to certainly have security.

and we, I'm not going to say too much in terms of that, but we have some ideas moving forward that we want to honor our dedication, your dedication to free speech and how important it is and how Charlie would so frequently talk about it and how violence begins when talk ends and these discourses end. So for me, it, being around Charlie and the future things we had planned together, was very exciting. And the misunderstanding, we've had people leave our church. We've had been ostracized when I led the vigil in our town, which is a very far left town.

So definitely had a lot of backlash. And whenever I get that backlash, I'm always surprised, shocked by what even close friends say about him and what he did because it's conspiratorial. It's to that extent of what he said and what he did. So that's tragic in my mind. We know what it's like to really get poked by somebody who doesn't understand what you're saying, has tremendous blinders, making tremendous presuppositions about what you're saying and your character. Eventually you're going to, let's just say, speak back and it's not always going to be gentle.

Yeah. But if it's overly gentle, that's actually not very effective in helping that person really think. Some of the people that we debate hardest against are the ones we get the biggest hugs from. after our time together. That's the best. It's the best, isn't it? And so so many people don't get that who are not part of these conversations, who are not in the Coliseum.

And so for me, it's definitely made changes in my mind as a young dad. Like he was a young dad that definitely played a role. And so moving forward, though, we definitely don't want to lose our boldness. We martyrdom is a fantastic thing, according to our. faith and the history of our faith. And yet at the same time, yeah, we don't want to be cavalier about it. Next sponsor is Legacy Box. This is such a cool idea. If you've got a bunch or maybe your mom, your grandmother has a bunch of videos, home videos, you've got some cassette tapes with recordings on them, you've got pictures that you want to digitize. You don't want to have to

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How old is Ginzi? Once you're millennial and you're like 30s paying your mortgage, you forget how young the young people are, but you all are around these Jinziers a lot. And so you all have special insight into maybe what this poll says. It was just released, although it was conducted back in 2024, the Billy Graham Center Research Institute fielded a survey of Genzy adults. One of the statements in the survey was Christians, support of Trump has made me less likely to go to church. Half of respondents, about 48% agreed with that statement in one way or another. And then, of course, when it breaks down by political leanings, it's mostly progressive jinseers who are saying that. But overall, about 48% are saying that. I have my own thoughts and skepticism a little bit about

that. But I wonder if you feel like there's any truth to that. And if not, what is the thing that keeps young people from going to church. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a grad student stepped out of the crowd and said, why you here, Cliff? And I said, I'm here to introduce people to my closest friend, Jesus Christ. He said, let me ask you again, why you're really here. I said, I am here to introduce people to Christ.

He said, let me ask you a third time, why are you really here? And I said, I am here to introduce people to Christ. He said, okay, I believe you. I said, well, why did you have to ask me three times? He said, because I'm convinced you're really probably here for a political motive. All right. So the challenge for us is to communicate Christ

in a way that challenges people to seriously consider Christ. We're trying to wipe away smoke screens. And one of the smokescreens that people use to run away from Christ is by stereotyping us politically. So I make a real attempt, as does Stewart, to not address too many political issues. Instead, we're going to address moral issues.

So we're going to address every ethical moral issue. But I learned from Billy Graham that we've got to be very careful how closely wedded to a politician we get. Dr. Graham got too close to Richard Nixon, and the Watergate scandal broke out, and he began to realize I made a big mistake. So I want to be very, very careful, but I am insistent upon addressing every ethical issue. I don't care if it's abortion, homosexuality, immigration, feeding the poor, what the issue is. We're going to address it from a biblical perspective. In other words, we're teaching a biblical worldview.

But we are very careful not to wet ourselves too closely to a politician. And to be honest with you, I have strong disagreements with my liberal friends, and I have strong disagreements with my conservative friends. I'm convinced that the solution to America's problems is not a political solution. Instead, it's Jesus Christ who comes to change the human heart. Now, obviously, when the human heart is changed and when you embrace a biblical worldview, then you probably will vote differently politically. Yes, that is true.

That is true. What about you? Yeah, the studies that I've seen is still the reason why young people don't go to church is, one, hypocrisy, two, judgmentalism that they see in the church. And the most recent poll I saw was over 70% of Gen Zers don't go to church because they don't receive answers to the hard questions that they have. So it's a blind belief that they think they're just being asked to accept. That's why I love what you do.

We try and do it where it's, no, there's reasons to the hope that we have. We're not just being gullible when we weren't just born into the faith, although I don't judge my friends who were just born into the faith and haven't really thought through it much. So, but that stat is a lot tougher for me. And it makes sense in some ways. when we spoke before the president, I don't know, two years ago, that was when he made that mistake that went quite viral, where he said, I'm a Christian, I'm not a Christian, and at least it sounded like he said, I'm not a Christian.

And so that went crazy. It went everywhere. And no, I think whether it's Melania, President Trump, I'm not going to speak for their faith position specifically. I've already done that before and got in trouble for it. So for me, it's more so whether it's just a label or whether you truly believe in the historical Christ, I think you've got to get to the point of hopefully saying, hey, if I'm going to go by the label, let me be true and honest to what a real Christian is and who specifically Jesus Christ is. And we've seen the president in worship meetings.

We've seen him on a lot of prayer with other pastors. But at the same time, I understand the human ego can come out. And at the same time, he had, gosh, I spoke, I did a commentary on it, but I can't remember exactly what he said. He said something that a lot of pastors took as pretty blasphemous. And so you see the wavering for sure. but I think the idea again, it's like the story of Zacchaeus, Luke chapter 19. When Zachias climbs that sycamore tree, he's not looking at the crowd.

He's looking directly at Jesus Christ. And so whether President Trump seems like he's living as a Christian or not, I hope this 48% doesn't ultimately decide whether to follow Christ or go to church based off of Donald Trump. I hope they look directly over the head of Donald Trump, even us, directly to Christ. because there's way too many spiritual leaders who are falling right now into whether it's an affair or something of the sort. And people are losing their faith that we know because their spiritual leaders are falling. And I always say, guys, it's just such, it's so misplaced.

It's you've got to look directly at Christ and who Christ is and decide on who he is and whether to have a relationship with him or not because he didn't have a hypocritical bone in his body to follow him or not. Yeah. You know, I think if those who, you know, they used Trump or supportive Trump as their impediment to not go to church, they really got to know the people who vote for Trump, they would realize that most people, like most voters across the board, are not idolizing a particular politician. This is one part of their life. They feel a responsibility to engage politically. But I think a lot of people I see this assume I've been called this myself, even though this is so not characteristic of who I am or what I believe.

oh, you just are a Trump apologist. You're just MAGA. You just are going to support everything he says. And I'm like, that is not historically true at all. And you don't understand that's not my worldview and not my focus. But I think that is a presupposition that a lot of people have that. And really, I just don't find that to be characteristic as someone who has lived in the Bible Belt my whole life. It's an important thing.

Politics matter because policy matters because people matter. You got two centers on the ballot. And you have to pick one of them if you're going to vote. That's how most Christians that I'm. I know, think about it. It's not like, oh, this guy is perfect and I want him to be my pastor. I wouldn't want Kamala Harris to be my pastor either. And so I just, I do wonder, you know, I heard a testimony recently of a woman and she was talking about, she was very progressive, she was secular, she was in an open marriage. She had this idea about Christians that Christians

just can't bet on their own self-sufficiency. So in their intellectual weakness, these are her words, They had to find some answer to fill the gaps, you know, of all of their misunderstandings. And she read a book and she was like, it offended me on every page. I was offended on every page because of what this person was saying about sexuality and the gospel in our need for a savior. And she, but she said at the end of that book, I saw my sin. At the end of it, I realized, okay. And she was like, I honestly didn't need all of the other logical scientific stuff.

She said her husband needed that. She was like, I didn't. I saw my sin. And that was like enough. And that just made me think of this, that she would have said before she saw her sin, oh, it's all these things. It's Christians are weak. Christians are dumb.

Christians are hypocrites. She might have even said they support Donald Trump. But at the end of the day, it was really that she just didn't see her sin. And when she saw her sin, none of those other things mattered. And so when I see a poll like this, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I think for all of us, not just them for all of us, it's deeper. It's, we don't want to see our sin because it's hard.

It's hard. You recently wrote a book about doubt, came out in May, called Demolishing Doubt. And I want to hear more about why you wrote that. Tim Keller, and I wonder if you agree with this, he said that a faith without doubt is like a body without antibodies that you need it, actually, to, you know, to work out your faith. So I'm curious what you think of that and then why you decided to write this book. There is an amazing lie in our culture and that lie is Christians don't think, scientists think. Christians don't think, materialists, secularists, they are the real thinkers. I totally disagree with that.

Jesus said, beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. Jesus taught us to be skeptics, but not cynics. a skeptic is someone who refuses to believe blindly. And in John 1411, Jesus says, Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father's in me, or else believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. Believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.

So a follower of Christ is not someone who blindly believes. A follower of Christ is someone who wants to struggle through the issues. Why? Because good and evil are so intertwined that if you're not a skeptic, you will have your lunch eaten for you. I am shocked by the man who said to me, quote, all I need to know about Islam is 9-11. That is narrow-minded bigotry.

If I'm going to learn about Islam, I'm not going to look at the terrorists who blew the World Trade Center apart in New York City. Rather, I'm going to study the Quran and find out, what did Muhammad say? What did he teach? How did he treat people? Did he die and what happened after his death?

and I better be willing to do the same with Jesus Christ. So to reject Christ because of some hypocritical Christian, to reject Christ because some Christians are politically different from me, I think is a tragic, very prejudiced, very close-minded approach to reality. Next sponsor is Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile is America's Christian Conservative wireless provider. They are the real deal. They give you premium priority nationwide service on any of the three major U.S. networks

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If you're going to spend your dollars on cell phone service, you might as well spend it with people that care about the same things that we do. Go to PatriotMobil.com slash Ali and use promo code. Allie for a free month of service. That's patriot mobile.com slash alley code alley. So what is the right approach? You said understanding all of these different worldviews, trying to get to what they actually believe to be able to combat them. Someone might say, okay, look, you know, I'm a stay at home mom. I don't have time to read the Quran. And I don't have time to look into all of these different perspectives that someone has,

but they want to be a good apologist. They want to be able to stand for him in their faith. What should she do? pray as hard as you can, love people as well as you can, and study. In other words, no, I don't think you have to take a course in comparative religion. But if you're living next to an atheist, they're your neighbor, and you listen to them, and listen and listen well, you want to understand what they believe and why they believe it. And if you've got a Muslim on the other side of your house, living in the next neighborhood, and you're talking with that person, you're listening to them, then you want to understand what

they believe and why they believe it so that you can show by comparing and contrasting Jesus Christ with atheism, Jesus Christ with Islam, or Jesus Christ with hedonism. Whatever the belief is of the person that you love and you're trying to communicate with, listen, ask questions, begin to understand. In other words, feel around the rim of their life, you come to the crack, and that's where you apply the gospel. So no, you don't have to have a PhD in apologetics or a PhD in comparative religion. No, but you better use the brain that God has given you because he gave it to you for a reason. And that means you better listen carefully, you better diagnose, and then you better study and find answers. The best answer that I give is, I do not know. But then I say, but for the past 2,000

years, nobody's asked a question that's knocked the underpinnings out of faith in Christ, so I will go and find an answer and can we get together next week? And so I don't like to naturally study. I'm not an intellectual. I don't like to read that much. I do it because I want to love people by helping them see the truth of Christ. You said something that I wonder if you could expound upon. And maybe you just did sufficiently, but I thought it was so interesting. You said, feel around the rim of their life, find the crack, and apply the gospel. What does that mean? That means we're all born broken. Life is about healing. and the grace of God is the glue. So, Allie, I got to find out if I want to be your friend where your break is.

Same way, if you want to find out about me, you're going to find out where my break is, where my pain is. And then we apply the gospel in a loving, relevant way to that brokenness. And we allow the grace of God then to intervene. I mean, some people say, Cliff, I can't believe you call yourself a dirty, rotten sinner in light of the fact that you're a pastor. No, I don't have a poor. problem. No, I'm not thinking about cheating on my wife, and no, I don't steal money from the IRS.

But I can promise you, Cliff is not patient, kind. Cliff does boast, is envious, is greedy. I am a dirty, rotten sinner. That is why I need a savior. But if I buy into the lie in my culture that I'm a great guy and I'm a perfect guy, I don't need a savior. Because I'm totally autonomous. I'm this great, awesome, well-put-together guy. I mean, I went to Davidson College in North Carolina, and we had a statement, or they had a placard that said, a Davidson man needs no introduction. Excuse me. We all are broken.

We all need a savior. We all need outside help. And that's exactly what Jesus Christ offers. And so to feel around a person's life means to realize, you know, we all are born and broken. Now I've got to understand where your pain is, where your brokenness is, and then apply the gospel at that point. I think of when I think of doubt, I think of the unfortunate nickname that Thomas got for all of posterity,

doubting Thomas and he wanted to see Jesus's scars. And, you know, Jesus says, blessed are those who believe without seeing. And yet we still regard Thomas as someone who ultimately did believe. And yet there is a higher level, it seems, of blessing. It is better to believe without seeing. What is the difference between healthy doubt that can lead us towards truths, can sanctify us, and unbelief that is really evidence of just like a lack of trust in who God says he is? Well, you do a good job with that.

Why don't you answer that way? Well, so there is a chicken scratch of a note hanging in my dad's office. I don't know why he put it there. I love it. But I think he put it there probably because I was the biggest doubter of my, I was the doubting Thomas of my brothers. And the quote, I think it's anonymous. I don't know who wrote it, but it's, if Jesus Christ, Christ called out on the cross,

my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Then surely we are allowed to doubt. But to choose doubt as a philosophy for life is akin to choosing immobility as a means for transportation. And so I think that quote answers your good question. and it answers the question I've had for a long time, which is if literally Jesus doubted, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Then we are allowed, even encouraged. You look at Habakkuk, David. I mean, Habakkuk said, I thought you were from everlasting to everlasting. David said, get away from you, O Lord. Death is my only friend. Thomas obviously doubted, even though he had eyewitness testimony and DNA evidence, and then Jesus said stop doubting and believe.

So I think back to doubting Thomas, that's where atheists love to try and pin us. Oh, clearly, Jesus is saying never doubt. Well, actually, in the story of doubting Thomas contextually, he's saying doubt is very good. When he gets to the point of saying, stop doubting and believe, that is after the healthy doubt of his buddies telling him that Jesus rose from the dead. And then Jesus showing up saying, put your hand in the spear wound in my side, touch my hands where the nails were stuck through my wrists. now stop doubting and believe. So God understands how we speak when we are desperate.

He understands how we speak when we are in pain like Eugene Peterson talked about. And he says, you know what? You can be as irreverent, even say, screw you, God, if you like. And as long as you just keep speaking to me, that's what I desire. So just keep speaking to me. So a healthy form of doubt is saying, hey, God, I have no idea why you're allowing this. I don't even know if you exist. but I want there to be a God and I believe that potentially you do exist.

So I want to talk to you and say, hey, if you exist, please reveal yourself to me. Hey, if I believe you exist like David clearly did, then if I'm in pain when my sons are trying to kill me, because I didn't discipline them, if I'm in pain because my boss is trying to kill me and I'm eating my tears day and night, well, eventually I'm going to get to the point though of saying, okay, there's an unhealthy doubt and I'm going to shift to three times he's. says it in 42 and 43, why you downcast all my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God for you. Praise him, my Savior, my Lord. And I think all of us, if we're honest in here, have doubts that spring up from emotions, spring up from overthinking, spring up from OCD, spring up from our

behaviors. And we have to get to the point after questioning that's healthy. If it turns to cynicism or turns to serious doubt, you've got to doubt those doubts. But then for me, you've got to get to the point of saying, hey, look, I've done this a million times. This could be the devil, the world, the flesh of the devil, really causing these doubts. I want to be like David now and say, why are you downcast on my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Fix those thoughts. Fix that pain. Grab your heart, preach to your heart rather than just having your heart preach to you. And now say, I'm going to praise you as my Lord and my God. I'm going to thank you for things. And that's when that unhealthy doubt starts to dissipate. That's when you go from, like, you're kind of

arguing that Thomas had gone from healthy skeptic to cynic, where he was about to go into that, and Jesus is like, look, you got to believe. You said one thing, and I'm wondering if we can talk about it a little bit more, that I think you were quoting someone else when you said it's okay to even say something like, screw you God or something like that, as long as you're continuing to talk to God. But I do think about Job, Job, who had everything taken from him. And he starts to crack a little bit. He starts to kind of question God like, okay, what the heck? I've been faithful.

I've been trying to do these things. And God answers him out of a whirlwind. And he spends several chapters saying, were you there during creation? Were you there when I called forth? You know, all of these different animals, creatures, the sun, the stars, and all of that. God answers with his authority does not give Job even a single excuse in doubting in that moment. or questioning God's goodness and faithfulness. So I wonder what the balance is there because I do think God cares how we talk about him

and the things that we say to him, not that he can't handle it, like he's fragile, but he cares. He cares and how we relate to him. So I've heard people say things like that. Like God can handle it if you shake your fist at him. Like, sure, he can handle it. Don't know if he likes it. Don't know if he likes it. So I don't know.

Like what's the balance there between us expressing our fear, our doubt, our emotions to God, even our feelings of betrayal, as wrong as they may be, but also making sure that, okay, I'm talking to a holy God. I'm talking to the God of the universe who actually does not fail. I wonder how we balance those two things. Stalin died on his deathbed, shaking his fist literally at God. And oddly enough, Christopher Hitchens did the same thing. in a different way, and there was a crucifix above his hospital bed that I don't think he knew

about until he was dying in that bed. So the strongest atheists who are the most militant towards God, exactly, let's just say they were very irreverent in shaking their fists at God. And when Paul, for example, says something in Ephesians, let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen. Or when James talks about to your good point, you know, why do we bless God? why do we praise God, but then curse our brother and sister who are created in God's image.

And so there's automatically endless amounts of verses in scripture that are implying and directly commanding us to speak in a very reverent way towards God. I mean, he is the creator of all things. So if he's our father and our king, like Romans 8 talks about, why in the world would we not speak to him very reverently? So you're exactly right. That has to come number one. but I just think it's so interesting that God gives us so much space because he understands our humanity. But getting to the point, again, of the Psalms that ends in those final five chapters, praising and thanking God, that David, even though he speaks irreverently at times, back in Psalm 13, how long, oh Lord, come on, God, do something about this. You're right. It always ends at praise because he is the God of the universe who loves us unconditionally.

And so we are to submit to him. I think we have the perfect balance of what you're asking in Genesis 18 when Abraham is standing over Sodom and Gomorrah. And he asks God, are you going to wipe it out if they're 50 righteous people? Well, what about 45, 40, 35, 30? And I think Abraham is obviously struggling with doubt. Obviously, he didn't get the memo of certain people that say, you're not allowed to doubt. No, he doubted and he questioned. You know, he questioned, will the judge of all the earth do right?

But in his questioning, there was a reverence, there was a respect for God throughout the entire time. So I think that Abraham in Genesis 18 is a tremendous example of that balance that you were asking about. Yeah, we do see that. It seems, as you're saying, I'm remembering just a lot of instances, especially in Genesis, where you see God's chosen person definitely not be the most confident, definitely not be the boldest, but the guy who's like, I don't really see how we're going to pull this off. But okay, I guess. And that is comforting.

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You write something really interesting on page 19 of your book. You say, as I've been telling students for decades, I can't say I'm absolutely certain that God exists or that Jesus rose from the dead because, frankly, I can't say I'm 100% certain about anything in this world. It might shock some people to hear you say that. I think it's a mistake for Christians to act like, I never struggle with uncertainty. I'm always certain.

I think it's erroneous communication to say, I never doubt. I am absolutely positive that God exists. I'm absolutely positive that Jesus rose from the dead. I'm actually positive about the Bible being the Word of God. I think that miscommunicates, because I think if we're going to be honest, if we're going to look at the evidence, we're going to have to acknowledge that there are holes. I used to make the mistake of, in my enthusiasm, saying, well, the Bible have no errors in it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Then I had to debate Dr. Bart Ehrman down over at Chapel Hill. And he's correct.

There are 200 to 400,000 manuscript variants in the New Testament alone. But in the debate, he didn't go on to acknowledge. But wait a second, those 200 to 400,000 manuscript variants are found in approximately 25,000 manuscripts. So you do the math, Dr. Erman, that's between 8 and 16 variants per manuscript or piece of manuscript. But you see, when I as a Christian come on too strong, with an absolute certainty, oh no, this is the Bible, is the Word of God. And there's no variance. There's no problems in the text. That's a little bit untrue. And that is the mistake I'm convinced

that the Muslims make. I'm convinced that when they treat the Quran as this spotless, errorless book, they're making a big mistake. I think the evidence is when the third caliph asked a young man who had written the Quran for Muhammad to just to put together the correct one and then to have all the other ones destroyed my goodness what's going on here so I think we've got to be honest intellectually admit that there are hard questions admit that I have doubts because that is the truth why should we trust in the word of God if there are variants that exist in some of the manuscripts. Because skepticism is good, but hyper-skepticism is destructive. Allie, there's no proof that when Stewart and I came in here, we didn't have knives in our back pockets and we

were out to kill you. It's possible. But if you have that type of hyper-skepticism, you're going to be a very lonely, isolated person because you're never going to be able to trust anybody. And if I don't trust you for good reason, I'm going to lose a tremendous privilege of getting to know Alley. And that's true for every person. So the challenge is not to be naive and gullible. You've got to be a skeptic. But if you're a hyper-sceptic, you're going to wipe out everybody. You're going to wipe out knowledge.

How do you grow in knowledge? You grow in knowledge by looking for evidence, not demanding proof. then making a trust step, trusting that person, trusting that information that you've accepted, and testing it, and finding out, is this really true? Is this person really reliable or not? And that's a process. And that's the way we develop relationships and friendships. It's through a process.

And that's the way we develop knowledge. If any postdoc student in mathematics thinks they know everything there is to know about in mathematics, they are really arrogant. out of touch with reality. If any postdoc person in biology thinks they know everything there is to know about biology, they are really off the wall. And I can promise you,

I don't know everything there is to know about God, and there's a lot of mystery about God. And I don't know why God allows certain things to happen. And if I look into the face of a grieving person who's just lost their child and say, oh, I'll tell you why God allowed that because he's sovereign and everything's just his will, that's a type of fatalism and determinism

that I find to be. very scary. But what's fascinating is it's the logical conclusion of atheism, and it's also the logical conclusion of Islam. It's the wall of Allah. Everything's the will of Allah. Everything's determined. Oh, no, no, no, no. I understand that, no, no, no. There's a great deal of mess going on in this world, and to call the death of a young child, the will of God, I'd be very, very careful to go down that path. A lot of mystery. I don't know why God allows a lot of things to happen. I do not know. Yes. There are things I think people ask, why does this happen. We can talk about a fallen world. And for me, I understand that in a general way. Okay, we understand there's cancer, there's war, there's conflict, there's drought, there's natural disaster and things like that. When you get into the specific stories of, say, the torment of a child or the sexual abuse of this vulnerable person, the horrible stories that we see, yes, it is very hard. And I think like you're so right. We should be honest about. that. I can't look at a horrible story of the torture and the death of a child and say, yeah, well,

you know, that's just how it is. But the one thing I do know, and that brings me comfort, is that Jesus is coming back, that he also is not apathetic to the pain. He's not looking at that little child and say, well, that's just how things go. It's a fallen world. That he's going to pay back all of those evil deeds that were done and he's going to do away with evil forever and ever. And that's kind of like that's we're just personally, not even from an apologetic standpoint. Maybe it's self-apologetics to myself when I see things like that. I'm like, okay, God, I'm not good. But if I were all powerful, I would have stopped that.

What do I do with that? That's hard. That's a hard thing. I think all of us would. If we were all powerful, knowing that we're not as good as God is, if we had the power to stop the terrible infliction of pain on a vulnerable person, we would do it. Yet God is all powerful, all good, and sometimes he chooses not too. I don't know why.

Except that. I know that he cares about that too and he's going to do something about it one day. And that's kind of like sometimes where you, to me at least, where you have to go because there are mysteries in life. On page 166, you discussed that atheists actually have miraculous assumptions themselves. And I just thought this section was really memorable and really interesting, something I hadn't really thought about before. And we're about to close out the conversation. There's so much I could ask you. But can you talk about that?

Like people think that we make these miraculous assumptions about God being good and holy, everything we just discussed, as well as Jesus' miracles. But people who don't believe in Christ also have miraculous assumptions. every atheist friend of mine has to believe non-existence proves produces existence that's a miracle non-existence producing existence that's a miracle the only problem is my atheist friend doesn't have a miracle worker all of my atheist friends have to believe chaos produces order that's a miracle the only problem is my atheist friend doesn't have a miracle worker every atheist friend of mine has to believe non-reason produces reason that's a miracle the only problem problem is my atheist friend, you don't have a miracle worker. Everyone of my atheist friends has to believe

non-life produces life. That's a miracle. Sorry, my atheist friend, you don't have a miracle worker. Everyone of my atheist friends has to believe matter and energy produce love. That's a miracle. Sorry, buddy, you don't have a miracle worker. Everyone of my atheist friends has to believe meaninglessness produces meaningfulness. That's a miracle. Sorry, bud, you don't have a miracle worker. So it's because of that type of evidence that I am convinced that God exists. What about you when you have confronted some of these atheists, when they're met with the reality of what you just said, which is just like the very basic thing of like,

okay, order had to come from something. Where did all of this come from? Has that ever stumped a skeptic who realizes, oh, yeah, I also have a lot of presuppositions myself. Yeah. One I heard this morning was, I've had short conversations with Lawrence Krauss. I don't know him well. But, you know, when he says something like, you know, let's find a way to do away with God and a way with a creator,

we could say that whether it's coming from black holes or he specifically goes with gravity, having always existed and creating all. So we don't know. We don't need to and we don't know, but especially we don't. don't need to and believe in something outside of space and time, needing to create space and time, probably through a big bang. Lawrence Krauss goes this ridiculous idea that's tremendously ambiguous with zero evidence behind it, saying, oh, no, you know, this type of nothingness has always existed, but he doesn't know how

to define nothingness. And that's what so many of these atheists do now. That's such like a typical thing they like to really propose, which is, well, nothingness is somethingness. and it's always something this has always existed. Yeah. And they'll typically call it gravity. And gravity produced something. Yeah.

But there's not a shred of evidence for it. And that's why like so many atheist cosmologists who actually push back against it. They'll say that's actually not an answer at all. Right. Yeah, there's a comedian who said something about that argument that was like, so this nothing. It's always been here and it was powerful enough to create everything. I love that clip. Sounds like something else that the Christians have been talking about.

Well, thank you guys so much. I could just go on and on. You all are fascinating and brilliant apologists. So thank you for what you do. Your book is demolishing doubt. It's available. Wherever books are sold, I assume. And if people want to catch you speaking,

do they have a place where they can find where you'll be going next? Where do people find that, Stuart? I guess the easiest will be on our Instagram account, which is Stuart underscore Connectly. then give me an answer with Cliff and Stuart Connectly on YouTube. We'll try and put it up there. We've got our Luddite internet sensation over here. Exactly. Well, thank you all so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for all of you doing. Keep going. Keep going, Alan. You too. Thank you. Thank you.