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Hope Channel

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

Sebastien Braxton

Felecia Lee

Joe Reeves

Paul Samuel

01 Why Apologetics?

Jonathan Walter

02 Climbing Mars Hill

03 Divine Design

04 The Problem of Evil

05 Jesus and Hinduism

06 Jesus and Buddhism

07 Jesus and Islam

08 Jesus is Different

09 The Resurrection: Evidence that Demands a Verdict

Joe Kretschmar

10 The Bible

11 Hellfire

12 Doomsday Cults

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Joe Reeves, with Inverse.

Hi, my name is Joe, and welcome to Inverse.

Inverse is a Bible study where we get into the text.

This season we are looking at apologetics.

We are considering other religions and worldviews.

We're going to be looking at a number of different scriptures.

We're going to be thinking about what other people bring, what we can find common with them, and how the Christian religion challenges them or calls them to something different.

Studying all these things today with my friend Jonathan.

So we're at the table and you're the other chair at the table and we're so glad for that.

And as we journey through this, we've been learning a lot from each other about the Bible, about Christianity, about Jesus, the very basics of our belief system.

Leave a comment on YouTube, Facebook, or wherever you're at and ask the tough questions and engage with us and with each other.

But as we open the scriptures today, we will begin with prayer, as our acknowledgement that we need help from God.

Father, we are so privileged to get to know you.

We are in awe of the fact that although you're so great, you still invite us to know more about you and your son, Jesus Christ, who is equal with the Father.

We ask for understanding and for clarity and for hearts humble enough to receive who you are.

Bless our study together in your name I pray, amen.

You can read our Bible study guides online at inversebible.org.

We have lots of material there and some of it we go through on the programs and there's some things more in depth there in our publication.

And we have many past Bible studies that are very exciting, maybe answering questions that you've thought about.

All of our past episodes are there at hopetv.org forward slash inverse.

And the verse that we are looking at today is in Deuteronomy chapter 6.

And addressing 1 of the questions that our friends, our brothers and sisters from the Islamic faith have questions about Christianity right away.

So let's see what the Bible says about that.

In Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verses 4 through 9.

Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets before your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Very pivotal passage in the Old Testament for the Jewish religion, culture, tradition.

And Jonathan, what does this passage tell us about the nature of God?

It's a fascinating passage as many passages in the Old Testament kind of allude to this.

And that is the fact that we hear, if we look at the grammar in the original language, something interesting takes place here.

So when you see the word the Lord in the Old Testament, that is actually a replacement because the Hebrew word that is there is the name for God.

It's Yahweh or YHWH if you want to put it that way and and because the the in the Hebrew I guess religious tradition they considered the name of God unspeakable because it is so holy so they replaced it with Adonai which means Lord.

So often when you see a Lord staying there it's it really is the name of God that is mentioned there in the original language which is in singular Yahweh the Lord our God.

Now the word that's used here is in Hebrew is Elohim, which is a plural form for God.

So we see singular and plural, a singular and a plural form of God being used.

So that brings up a lot of questions, because if God is 1, what does that oneness communicate?

Is it does it mean he's 1 God or in terms of how many gods there are, or what does it mean?

And as Bible-believing Christians, our understanding is that there is here an allusion to the fact that God is unity and that he's considered 1 God, yet there is a plurality within the Godhead that is hard to comprehend.

I just recently had a discussion with someone who called me, a random person who called me where I work and was trying to discuss this with me.

And I was like, listen, like there is, there are certain illustrations you can use to try to understand it, but there is an element of mystery around what some call the Trinity or the plurality within the Godhead.

And so this this verse is beautiful because it brings out that reality about God.

And this this verse brings out something that we can really appreciate about our Islamic brothers and sisters in that many other religions that we have studied so far have many different gods that are being worshipped and they have many different idols Islam came into the scene in the sixth century was it and from the teachings of Muhammad and his leadership.

These idols cannot hear and cannot see and cannot help you.

And there's only 1 God and the Lord is 1.

And so that does bring a certain breath of fresh air when you've been surrounded by idolatry and a multiplicity of gods.

However, they do stumble on the Christian description of God and that becomes a challenge.

In the human sense, we are 1 in being and 1 in person.

But the way as Jonathan pointed out, the Bible describes God as 1 in being, but 3 in person.

And to the natural mind, to the human mind, that seems impossible.

But this is the mystery that scripture presents.

And it is a spiritual thing that has to be spiritually discerned as the Bible says.

I'd like us to walk through some of the scriptures and we'll get the number 3 in the New Testament for sure.

But are there any other verses from the Old Testament that help us understand that there's some complexity to the nature of God.

1 scripture that I like to go to is actually in Genesis.

And that is, there's a couple of, if I can, if I may, if we start in Genesis chapter 1 real quick, just 1 phrase here in verse 26.

It says, then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.

In the image of God, he created him male and female.

So you have the play on words, on singular and plurality in the creation, in the image of God, when God created human beings.

In a way, He's saying that, you know, man and woman are, yes, they're both human, but they're together, they are the image of God.

So there's a oneness and a plurality even within humanity.

Yes, and then that's, and there's a beautiful coming together in chapter 2 of Genesis, when God, in God brings marriage into the picture.

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Series

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

07 Jesus and Islam

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

03 Divine Design

29m

InVerse, 1st Quarter 2023: God First

01 God: The Upholding Giver

28m

Restoration 2006: Prepare Me

Trip Into the Trinity: Figuring the Unfathomable

38m

InVerse 4th Quarter 2024: The Gospel of John

03 A Secret Interview

29m

InVerse, 4th Quarter 2021: Deuteronomy

11 Life or Death

27m

Reading Revelation

Alpha and Omega (Reading Revelation- 5)

30m

The Doctrine of God

The Trinity, Part 1 (The Trinity in the Old Testament)

57m

InVerse 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

12 The End-time Moment of Truth

29m

Sound Doctrine