Cliffe Knechtle challenges students to test false assumptions against biblical Truth

Author, evangelist, and popular Christian apologist Cliffe Knechtle graced the Convocation stage on Friday to help students examine and defend the nature of God and His Truth, the reliability of Scripture, proper context of marriage and sexuality, the compatibility of the Bible and science, and the logical fallacies of atheism and agnosticism.

Knechtle is the senior pastor of Grace Community Church in New Canaan, Conn. The 71-year-old evangelist, who has appeared on popular podcasts like “IMPAULSIVE,” “The George Janko Show,” “Within Reason,” and others, first visited Liberty as a Convocation guest in the fall of 2024. He is best known for his “Give Me An Answer” program, in which he evangelizes in public spaces, such as university campuses, challenging people’s worldviews and assumptions about God and human nature.

Knechtle’s Convocation visit coincided with the Collegiate Day of Prayer on Thursday evening in the Vines Center, where he joined pastor Jonathan Pokluda, street evangelist Bryce Crawford, and others in leading thousands of people across the globe in prayer for revival on college campuses. Pokluda and Crawford spoke in Convocation on Wednesday.

Thursday marked Liberty’s third time participating in the Collegiate Day of Prayer and its first as the host campus. The event was streamed on the Collegiate Day of Prayer website, CBN, YouTube, Liberty’s Facebook page, and multiple social media platforms.

Knechtle began Convocation by challenging students to ground their worldviews on the reliability of God’s Truth.

“We aren’t cosmic accidents,” he said. “We’re human beings created in the image of God for a purpose: to love God with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

“I’m convinced the Bible is more than just a great book of literature,” he added. “It’s God-inspired. It’s God opening up and revealing to you and to me who God really is. There’s an overwhelming amount of manuscript evidence. We have an incredibly high degree of certainty that we really have what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote.”

Knechtle also challenged students to critique how the world views sexuality, saying that culture encourages young people to act on their impulses.

“That beautiful gift of sex is to be enjoyed within the context of a lifelong commitment — that’s what marriage is,” he said. “Marriage is not a stupid piece of paper from the federal government. Marriage is a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman until death parts us. And when I rip sex out of that context, I am perverting and twisting the gift of sex. And it’s ultimately going to hurt me.”

He said one of the most popular secular arguments against Christianity is that Scripture and science are incompatible, and that people of faith cannot trust in the Word of God while also conducting good science.

“Who do you think gave you a rational mind to do good science? God did. Who do you think created the universe in an orderly way so that you, with your rational mind, can unlock the secrets of the universe? God did,” he said.

“The Bible never answers the question, ‘What process did God use to create?’ So, it’s impossible for science to contradict the Bible, because there is no science in the Bible to contradict.”

Gleaning from passages like 2 Timothy 1:12 and 2 Corinthians 5:1 — where Paul asserts the overwhelming evidence of God’s existence, Jesus’ life, and His resurrection — Knechtle said faith in God does not require believers to abandon reason.

Instead, he dared students to examine the evidence and recognize how cultural assumptions can shape what people choose to believe.

“Relativism is so embedded into our culture; it’s scary. Biblical faith is not intellectual naivete. It’s not blindly believing. Biblical faith is a response to evidence. … You don’t have absolute certainty in any area of knowledge. You can have reliable knowledge, but you cannot have absolute certainty. You have motives, you have priorities, you have ambitions, and all of that tattles what you really believe is significant in life.”