In this video, Luke shares his own take on making your PAT – Personal Apologetic Testimony.
Most Christian testimonies revolve around one’s own experience – how one’s life led them to experience God personally. This is very good, and Luke doesn’t discount the importance of it. But he, like Dr. Cynthia, thinks it is not good enough to simply share how good knowing God makes you feel. That is “subjective,” other people can’t usually connect personally with what happened to you. So, you need to give evidence that others can relate to. We call that “objective” evidence.
Luke encourages all Christians to think about the reasons for why we believe what we believe. This will help you be ready to give an answer when people question you, and is what I Peter 3:15 tells us.
A Personal Apologetic Testimony includes:
- a little about your BACKGROUND to set the stage
- presents your favorite OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE,
- and summarizes that it CONVINCES YOU.
A strength of this structure is that people can argue over facts, but they can’t argue that they CONVINCE YOU!
Apologetic testimonies can be tailored toward what might touch the thinking or heart of the one that you are sharing with. So, you might have more than one PAT for different settings. For example, how you would present to a child or uneducated person is different from how you would share with a Ph.D.
Although he does share with Muslims, Luke shares mostly with skeptics. He presents to us Dr. Cynthia’s PAT for Skeptics, based on her medical experience. He, as an engineer, favors evidence from complexity. He presents reasons that are convincing to him and are included in his PAT.
Luke says fulfilled prophecies are one of the top proofs for his Christian faith; but these take a while to explain to someone who knows nothing about the Bible.
For what you might include in in a PAT to MUSLIMS, watch our other video on making a PAT.
