Abdu Murray was a devout Muslim who rarely encountered Christians who could defend their faith. His journey from Islam to faith in Christ began after meeting the few “annoying” Christians who could.
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Photo by Travis Milner Rhyne Putman, New Orleans Seminary professor and director of the Defend 2017 apologetics conference, discusses Christ-like responses to the LGBT community while maintaining a commitment to biblical truth. |
Murray, North American director for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, told of his nine-year journey at Defend 2017, an annual apologetics conference sponsored by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s (NOBTS) Institute for Christian Apologetics. The Jan. 2-6 conference, with 250 participants, brought together noted apologists to address issues and worldviews prevalent in today’s culture.
“Truth always has a cost,” Murray said. “A lot of Muslims know there are issues with Islam and they know there is a beauty to the gospel, but they don’t want it because of the price.”
Other plenary speakers included Sean McDowell, author of 18 books on apologetics including several coauthored with his father Josh McDowell; Braxton Hunter, former president of the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists; Craig Hazen, author and apologist at Biola University; Robert Bowman Jr. of the Institute for Religious Research; and Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason Ministries.
More than 75 breakout sessions on topics of theology, philosophy, culture and ethics were led by leading apologetic speakers and Southern Baptist seminary and Baptist college professors.
Leaving one’s worldview behind to embrace Christ, Murray said, is hard to do.
Once an ardent defender of Islam, Murray said he picked up a Gideon’s New Testament to search for contradictions and to deflect the efforts of two “annoying Christians” – Dave and Pete – who returned week after week to befriend him and answer his questions.
Then, Murray found Luke 3:7-8, conveying John the Baptist’s warning to repent rather than stay entrenched in their Jewish heritage.
The passage disturbed him, Murray recounted, because he realized he had clung to tradition rather than viewing his own faith objectively, something he had often accused Christians of doing. Murray said he was drawn to Christ.
“It was the person of Christ Himself,” Murray said. “That was the attraction and that’s the attraction for many Muslims when they come to faith.“
Murray, formerly a 16-year trial lawyer, is the author of Grand Central Question: Answering the Critical Concerns of Major Worldviews and host of an apologetics radio show in Detroit and online.
The church’s calling
Andrew Walker, the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s director of policy studies, said in a breakout session that while Christians live under the rule of state, Jesus is the ultimate authority for believers. Early Christians understood they made “a direct assault on the powers of that day” when they declared “Jesus is Lord,” Walker noted.
Because Jesus is Lord and because each human bears the image of God, the church is called to address culture, speak truth to the state and stand up for those in need, Walker said.
“A Christianity that has nothing to say to the affairs of the world and the challenges facing the world is nothing but safe, middle-class, bourgeois religion. …”
Walker pointed to a quote from Carl F. H. Henry, calling it one of the “most impactful” of his life regarding the church’s responsibility in the public square: “If the church fails to apply the central truths of Christianity to social problems correctly, someone else will do so incorrectly.“
‘Fruitful’ for evangelism
Braxton Hunter, apologetics professor at Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary in Newburgh, Ind., said in the opening plenary session he picked up his first apologetics resource after a close friend became antagonistic to the Christian faith.
“I wanted to say more than I knew how to say,” Hunter said. “I didn’t know how to engage with him and that was deeply frustrating.“
Hunter, author of the forthcoming Evangelistic Apologetics, pointed to the “fruitfulness” of integrating apologetics into both proclamation evangelism and personal evangelism, urging listeners to use apologetics to lead people to faith in Christ rather than simply win arguments.
“Apologetics is not evangelism,” Hunter said. “But … apologetics can open a door to evangelism, can serve as pre-evangelism, or in some other way, aid in evangelism.”
Rhyne Putman, Defend 2017 director and NOBTS assistant professor of theology and culture, said the purpose of the NOBTS apologetics conference was to equip believers to meet challenges.
“A significant portion of those who attend our conferences are college students who are facing critical challenges to their faith on an almost daily basis,” Putman said. “We seek to equip them so that they will not only flourish in their own faith but also effectively counter the challenges to evangelism and discipleship on their campuses.“
Robert Stewart, director of the seminary’s Institute for Christian Apologetics, said next year’s conference will include a track for urban apologetics with significant time devoted to addressing apologetic issues relevant in an urban context.
“Many people of color and others living in urban communities are increasingly facing challenges from groups like the so-called Black Hebrew Israelites and claims like ‘Christianity is a white man’s religion’ that most apologists as well as most books on apologetics, to say nothing of apologetics conferences, fail to address,” Stewart said. “It would be irresponsible not to address these new challenges.”
This year’s plenary and breakout sessions topics included the reliability of the New Testament, the Trinity, the dating of scripture, evidence for the resurrection, arguments for God’s existence, the problem of evil, Islam, science and creation, the theology of counter-Christian groups such as Scientology and Mormonism and responding to LGBT activism.
Video recordings of the plenary sessions are available online at nobtsapologetics.com/defend.
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Marilyn Stewart is assistant director of public relations at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.)