Is the Bible sufficient for the culture? | Rapp Report Weekly 0035 | Striving for Eternity

immigration, blaming Trump for rhetoric and causing bombs to be sent to different Democrats, intersexuality and whether there really is victim status for folks, and then is there a divide in America and even more so the church?

That is some of the topics we'll be discussing today on The Rap Report. Welcome to The Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and a Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, well, welcome for joining us this week. We got a bunch of different topics on the agenda for today, things that we've been seeing in the news that we want to respond to.

We do talk about biblical interpretations, both in scripture in the church and also within culture.

We're going to deal with some cultural issues today, but I first want to give a shout out and a thanks to all of the listeners.

We have been podcasting on this RSS feed with The Rap Report for about eight months now.

We had to start from complete scratch, and I'm really not that good at promotion and putting the word out and all the marketing stuff, so I was thrilled when

I found out that The Rap Report has hit, in the U .S., in religion and spirituality, position 314.

Now, that may not sound like that high, but the reality is there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts, and actually, the religion and spirituality is the heaviest, all podcasts.

To reach the top 400 means you got in the charts. Well, we have hit that a number of times on different episodes.

In fact, we even hit within the category of Christianity 235.

That was the peak. We've started to hit it more often, which means, and this is based on listens, not downloads.

This is based purely on listens. We have had to start over from scratch. This is really exciting for us to realize that you guys are listening to it, sharing it.

When we look at the charts, we realize that the majority of people listen to 80 % of all the podcasts, and so we're really excited.

We had to start over. We were previously on a different RSS feed, and that other RSS feed has never, ever hit the charts, ever top 400 in the

U .S. U .S. is where all the podcasts really have the largest thing, so to hit those in the

United States means that there are a lot of people listening, and we appreciate all of those listens.

To give you some numbers, if you have just 212 downloads on a podcast within the first 30 months, 30 days, you are in the top 50 % of all podcasts.

I think the number is 135. If you have 135 downloads in the first day, first 24 hours, you are in the top 50 % of all podcasts.

We exceed both of those numbers regularly, and so that puts us up there.

In fact, to hit the charts at a top 400 is very humbling to think about. Want to just give the shout out to you guys, the listeners, to those of you who are sharing this, we thank you.

We appreciate it. It means a lot. It means a lot when you go out to iTunes and you review this, because that's really the way we know what you think about this podcast.

You can go to the Striving for Eternity group on Facebook and share your thoughts there. We read those comments, and that is very encouraging to us.

Let me just start off, instead of doing this at the end, I want to start off with the latest review we got. This is the latest review that we had.

Five Stars says, Hey, Andrew, thank you for coming to Redwood City for the conference. I've been listening to your podcast, and it's very encouraging and challenging.

Keep up the good work. Tall Andrew. Now, Tall Andrew is the other Andrew that was at that conference, and he was, well, quite a bit taller than me.

So I appreciate that. And this is the thing, folks, we could not be doing this without you.

There are people who to have them hear themselves speak. That's not us. We want to interact with you.

We want to hear from you. And so you can reach out to us. Let us know what you want us to discuss. You can contact us at info at strivingforeternity .org.

And then you could let us know, Hey, we'd like to hear this topic or that topic. We have a growing list of topics, and we slowly try to get to them.

And sometimes, like on this episode, we got to deal with more cultural things that we're seeing that are maybe of concern to us, to me, and want to address.

Now, I want to start with some issues that we end up seeing in immigration. Now, with the issue of immigration, here's the thing.

There's been a lot of talk recently because of the fact that there is, well, there's basically an issue that you end up seeing with this supposed convoy of immigrants that are making their way up from South America all the way up and trying to get to the

US. And President Trump has said, Nope, you're not going to be allowed in. And there's people that are in uproar about this.

Now, this is something that I find interesting. Why? There was a time that we saw a larger immigration issue with far more people than you see here.

We're seeing, I think the numbers were, last I heard, 1 ,200 to 1 ,500 people. Well, you know, in 1947, there were 4 ,515 immigrants that tried to get into a country.

Where were they fleeing? They were fleeing Nazi Germany. They were a ship of Jewish people. The ship was known as President Warfield.

That was the name of the ship. And it was headed out to try to make it to Great Britain.

And Great Britain not only decided to turn them away, Great Britain said, We're going to make an example of you.

And they sent that ship. They captured the people and put them back on a ship and brought them back to where they ended up in Most of the people that were aboard that ship ended up being killed.

Now, when it comes to the immigration laws that we look at in America, the issue is one where you have to ask the question, is someone's life at stake?

That's what makes it where they can seek asylum. Well, you know, on that ship known as the Exodus, the

Exodus 1947, that's what it's called, they're referred to. And what you end up seeing is on that, those people are clearly fleeing for their life.

In fact, what we end up knowing historically is that the majority of them died in prison camps when they were returned.

Some of them did survive. About, I think it was 1800 of them that survived. But the reality is, is that they ended up a very interesting thing that on the ship, they brought with them a pastor,

Reverend John Stanley Garrell. He was a Methodist minister. The interesting thing, why did they have a

Methodist minister? The reason they had him was for one purpose, they say, quote, because it was very probable the

British were going to be able to take the Exodus. It was the largest effort ever done in terms of movement of refugees.

So if the ship was taken, someone has to get the information out. And they figured,

I should say, unquote, they figured that they would get someone who is a Christian. They ended up saying this, quote, they said he was a journalist.

What his real job was, if the ship was taken, was to tell the story because they knew people wouldn't believe the story if a

Jew told it. But if it was a Christian who told the story, it would be received differently. And that's exactly what happened, unquote.

And I'm reading this from the Jewish virtual library .org if you want to read more on that. And you can just do a search for Exodus 1947.

I'll drop a link into the show notes. But here's the thing. There was a larger immigration that occurred.

And at that immigration, those people actually died. It was clear beforehand that their life was at stake.

And their life not only was at stake, their life was taken. The question I think that we have to ask in this

Exodus now that we're seeing from South America up into the United States, this is the question you have to ask is, are these people's lives at stake?

Now, I don't know all the details. And anybody who claims they do is wrong. The reality is we are not going to know all the details.

But from the details we do know, it doesn't seem that their lives are at stake as much as it was the Jews in 1947.

In fact, we don't really know that their life was at stake that much. The ones that we see migrating up, they were able to walk their way through and come all the way up to work their way to walk up into America.

It takes a long time. They are growing as they come. And that makes it more of a concern. There are people in this migration that are literally,

I think, going to take their lives at stake. It is not an easy journey what they're doing. And for many of them, it is the hope that they can come to a better land, to a better place and be able to have opportunities that they wouldn't be availed where they are.

We can understand that. We want the best for all people everywhere in the world, don't we? Especially those of us who are

Christians. I firmly believe that we should be open to immigration, to immigrants coming here so we can share the gospel with them, especially those who come from countries where they don't get to hear the gospel.

We should be reaching out to the immigrant, not putting them back into communities where they're with people who sound like them, talk like them or just like them and don't share the gospel with them.

No, we as Christians should reach out to the immigrants and share the gospel. That should be a primary concern for us as Christians because this is not all our citizenship.

We may be citizens of America or elsewhere, but our real citizenship is in heaven. That's what Peter says in 1

Peter. This is not our home, brothers and sisters. This is not where we're going to spend eternity. Do not put

American or Britain or Canada or wherever you're from, do not put those citizenship values above the values of Christ, of heaven.

That is exactly the argument that Paul makes in Philippians. Why Philippians? Very interesting town of Philippi.

Philippi was an area that was very well -to -do. In fact, the way that the

Roman Empire worked with the Roman army is that the army would end up having people that come in, they're not citizens, but if you worked your way up to being a general, not only did you get citizenship, but you got land when you retired.

You'd get a land and many of the generals decided they wanted to settle in Philippi.

So here you have guys who went all the way through the military and that wasn't like military in America, boys and girls.

No, no, no. This was a military where you most often never got to the point of retiring because you died in the military and you didn't have a choice when you were enlisted because you didn't have a date to be let go until you retired and you had to basically be old enough or work your way to being a general.

And so what you end up seeing is for generals, it means that they lived their entire life in this dangerous profession and were able to get to a point of retiring.

They retire, they get the choice of land, where do they all choose? Many of them chose Philippi. Philippi was such a unique city because Philippi ended up becoming a city where it was the only city outside of Rome where you would get

Roman citizenship if you were born a free person. That was very special. Why was that? Because they had so much

Roman generals that retired there. And you know, even in the book of Philippians, Paul makes arguments about our citizenship being in heaven, not on earth.

So people who understood citizenship very much because that was one of the key elements of being in Philippi was you can have

Roman citizenship. And so you see, Paul would argue that our citizenship should be that which is in heaven more than that which is on earth.

And my plea to all of us that are professed to be believers is that we should be looking to be arguing for our citizenship in heaven.

We should be looking for immigrants that come in. We should be seeking to share the gospel with them. That's the most important thing we could do for them.

And so what are the views we should have with this convoy? Well, I do pray for this convoy. There are many people taking their lives at risk.

Could there be, as President Trump says, dangerous people, maybe even terrorists in this? Probably.

I mean, wouldn't it make sense that terrorists would make an attempt to try to get in and do this?

Yeah. Duh. Why would you think they wouldn't? Of course they're going to try that. They try every which way they can get in.

But I think that there should be some screening done on these people. Is their life at stake? That I don't know.

I don't know if it's that far. But I do think that there is something that we as Christians should be mindful of, and that is we need to be reaching out to those who legally come to this country.

I do know people. There's a guy who works on my neighbor's lawn, and he is from Mexico.

He is very much against illegal immigration. Why? He's been here 18 years, and he can't bring his family up from Mexico legally because of all the illegal immigrants.

He finally got his 16 -year -old son here. His 18 -year -old son's been here for a couple years. His wife and younger children are still in Mexico, and he can't legally bring them because there's too much illegal immigrants coming in.

So it's kind of an interesting perspective. And this is not something that you can just listen to a soundbite on the radio or on TV and go, oh,

I got the answer to this. No, there's a lot here. As Christians, though, I would argue that for us, the immigration issue, we need to be mindful of the gospel.

And I want to get into another issue that we've been seeing, and I want to play a clip that we heard, and I hope this can be heard.

But this is President Trump, and he was asked by a reporter whether his rhetoric, his rhetoric, not just specifically with the immigration, but really with the

Democrats, asking whether his rhetoric was something that's causing people to send bombs to different people in the

Democrat Party. Listen to the question and Donald Trump's, President Trump's answer. America says you're a person who's creating violence.

You know what? We're creating violence out here, but you are creating violence. And also, a lot of the reporters are creating violence by not writing the truth.

They too are creating violence. And you know why? The people that support Trump and the people that support us, which is a lot of people on TV, those people know who

I am, and they know what the story is. I'll tell you what, if the media would write, correct and write accurately and write fairly,

I lost my smile. Okay, so he's blaming the media. Well, that's not unusual, right?

So what you have here, though, is the question it was asked of President Trump, and sorry, he was, I guess, outside of Air Force One or whatever.

And so you have the helicopter, or I guess, Marine One, technically. But what you end up having is, he's being asked, is his rhetoric causing the violence?

Now, the issue is something we should be concerned with, the fact that there were several bombs sent to several different key

Democrat people. That is not something that should ever be encouraged. However, I do find it interesting that none of them were functioning.

It's almost as if someone wants to send the bombs, but he didn't want them to go off. Now, they did capture a guy that they said was involved in sending some later ones.

He hasn't been shown to do, having done the earlier ones to like Obama and others. It is kind of interesting, some of those were hand -delivered, an interesting thing, but all of them malfunctioned.

It's almost as if someone wanted, just saying, I can't prove this, I'm saying it could be, but it sure seems like someone wanted it to be out there that bombs were being sent and we got to blame

Trump's rhetoric. Well, here's the thing. I want to point out that there are some things when we evaluate anything, you've got to look at premises of arguments.

When you look at the premise of the argument, the argument is that Donald Trump should be blamed for his rhetoric, causing people to go out and send bombs.

Now, has President Trump ever encouraged anybody to send bombs to Democrats?

Well, I don't know of a single case. And if there was, we would have seen that on CNN. I mean, if there was,

CNN would have been posting that like everywhere. So I'm going to say that I think that hasn't happened, but you want to know something

I do find interesting is when the Democrats were asked whether they should be blamed when

Republicans are being chased out of restaurants and being, having things thrown at them in the streets and being chased and being attacked on the streets, whether their rhetoric, which was exactly what they said, you can go and you can look at these

Democrats who are saying that if you see a Republican in a restaurant, you should chase them out. And that's exactly what's happening.

And they say their rhetoric has nothing to do with the behavior of people. Well, if their rhetoric is not to be blamed when it's exactly what people are doing, then how can you blame

President Trump for his rhetoric? When people are doing things he hasn't said, you see, you have to be fair on both sides.

Whatever your argument is going to be, if it's going to be sound and valid and truthful, then it's going to be right.

Even if you put it in another situation, the argument that we're seeing right now from the media and some

Democrats is they're allowed to say go after Republicans and that shouldn't be against them in that they're causing it.

But if Trump says anything that even seems, just seems to be, you know, disagreeing with Democrats, then he's got to be blamed for anything that ever happens to Democrats.

In fact, you know, there was a Democrat who had said that Republicans want to kill them.

His name is Bernie Sanders. And one of his followers said it was exactly because Bernie said that that he went and shot some

Republicans that were trying to play softball. It wasn't said that Bernie Sanders was to blame. You know, I don't blame

Bernie Sanders for using the political rhetoric that caused some lunatic to kill people.

That lunatic is responsible for his action. This guy and whoever else is maybe involved in sending bombs to Democrats, they are responsible.

I don't blame Trump and I don't blame Democrats. Now, are they responsible? Is Trump responsible for the things he says?

Yes. Are the Democrats responsible for things they say? Yes. Now, if they say things that are purposely worded to incite behavior, then they are responsible for that.

You see, I don't think people can say they can just walk away from responsibility when they say things and they purposely worded in a way to get a reaction from people and people do react that way.

You can't say, well, you're not responsible anymore. You see, if you're doing it to incite a reaction, like saying when you see a

Republican in a restaurant, you should chase them out. When that happens, you are somewhat responsible for your own words that cause that behavior if you're seeking to create that.

And so that's something that they I think there is some responsibility that they would have to be responsible for, because as Trump said, is it the media's fault for inciting violence by fake news?

Now, first off, President Trump nowadays, everything is fake news to him. So it doesn't matter if he doesn't agree with it.

It's fake news. But the reality is, is that there is some truth in what he says, but there's also a reality where you can't blame him.

He is not responsible or they're not responsible for the behavior of others. And this is going to get into some of what we see in the social justice movement nowadays and this whole thing of intersexuality we're going to get to in a moment.

But this idea where others are to be blamed for things that they had nothing to do with, they're blamed for things that their parents did or their grandparents did or generations ago did, or maybe none of their generations have done.

But just the fact that there are certain skin color. I want to deal with that in a moment. Ding dong, jobless witnesses.

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All right, so let's deal with this whole thing. Maybe you've heard the term intersexuality. What is it? It's basically this idea that the more victim status you have over someone else, the more you have a right to speak, the more you have a right to say things.

And we end up seeing that this has become a big thing nowadays. So if you have someone who is African -American versus white, well, they're a victim and they have more right to speak than a white does.

If you're an African -American woman, well, you have more right to speak because you have two victim statuses than an

African -American male. If you're an African -American lesbian, now you have three victim statuses.

So you have more of a right than the African -American woman. And you see, it keeps going on. Everybody is looking to say, well,

I'm more of a victim than you. I'm more of a victim than you. Everybody has victim status. And this is what we see going on with this social justice issue.

And by the way, I will mention as a plug, you can go to the statementonsocialjustice .com and read the statement on social justice and the gospel, maybe even sign it.

But I should go out there and see how many folks have actually signed that now. The thing that is an issue is we're seeing this issue of the church being affected by the idea that we should be about the business of social justice.

And you have people in the church trying to argue for victim status. The gospel is the solution to victim status.

It is not something we should be using to try to argue for victim status. And there is almost 10 ,000 signers, 9 ,901.

But you can go and you can read that statement on socialjustice .com. And so the reality is when you end up seeing is there are people that even within the church,

I want to argue that they have a right to be victims. They have the ability to say, well,

I have more victim status than you. And the thing that you end up seeing is that people are going out of their way to try to argue that they have a right to be a victim.

It is something that has gotten to the point of being completely ridiculous with some.

You can look at the very white woman, Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren is what, 124th percent

Native American or something like that. And she claims that she's Native American, she's victim status.

She went to college and got a scholarship being a minority because she was a

Native American. You know what? She had to apologize to the Native Americans because they actually have a record of every

Native American and you have to register to be a Native American. And there was, I guess, no one in her family that actually registered.

So according to the Native Americans, she's not Native American. She's arguing that she is one out of one over 1024 percent

Native American. But hey, that's enough for her to say, I'm a victim. I need to be given status. Everyone is going out of their way to try to argue that they are more of a victim than someone else.

You want to know what? There is only one person that ever walked the planet earth that truly was absolutely innocent of any kind of inherited sin, of any kind of saying that he was a systemic racist because of something his family did.

This idea of systemic racism is the that if you are white, you are responsible for what other whites have done by enslaving blacks.

That is the argument. Well, Jesus Christ never had an inherited sin. He had, he existed.

Well, he always existed. And therefore, you can't argue that he was guilty by his genealogy, by what his father or mother did or their families.

No, because he was before there was any human being. And so what you end up seeing there is that in that Jesus Christ, if anybody could argue that they never had a systemic racism and was completely innocent of any crime,

Jesus Christ never violated any law. And here you have someone who's completely innocent. And what does he do?

He dies on a cross as the only true victim of humanity, the perfect man, never breaking the law.

And he chose to die and be a victim for others. This is the thing that the church has to recognize these people within the church.

Now, I understand why the world would argue for intersexuality and we're all victims and we all, I understand because they don't have

Christ, but Jesus Christ is the solution to victimhood. What bothers me is when we see in the church, we see people who want to within the church, try to argue for victim status and try to argue that they're more of a victim or because you're not like me, you don't have a right to speak on these things.

I'm sorry, but the cross is the solution, not your victim status. I like how, how Justin Peters puts it, you know, he ends up saying this and he's not alone.

I mean, Josh Bice has said this and Tom Askew said this, but as if somehow the gospel reaches just to the point of every other sin, except racism.

And then all of a sudden you need something special. And it's not just racism because now they want to extend that to, to dealing with the issues of homosexuality and other sins.

Racism is wrong. Okay. But the thing is, is that the gospel is the solution to racism. The gospel is a solution to every sin.

And so when people sit here and say, well, I'm a victim, I'm a victim of it. No, the victim, the only victim was

Jesus Christ. That's the victim. And you know what he did? He purposely came and died as Christians. We should not be touting our rights to victimhood.

We should be touting our rights to Jesus Christ and promoting Christ. You know what? If we as Christians are victimized for the sake of Jesus Christ, let it be.

I just recently watched the, the documentary or movie about Richard Wurmbrandt.

If you don't know who he is, he's the founder of voice of the martyrs. As he stood up there when the communists were sitting there and, and speaking of basically trying to gut the church and try to say, well, we want to work with the church by undermining the church and taking the church and saying, we want you to change your message to something that the, the, that atheism could promote that, you know, communism can promote.

And we want you to change your message to a different message to one that we want you to say and undercut your, the gospel for the sake of getting along.

And Richard Wurmbrandt sat there and his wife asked him whether he's going to get up and say anything. And he says, if I get up and say anything, you won't have a husband.

And he's quoted as saying things like, if you, you know, she doesn't want a coward for a husband, you know, like if he doesn't get up, she doesn't really have a husband.

And he got up and he spoke before all of the clergy there assembled and, and said that they must speak out against this and that the gospel must be the thing that is the issue to change society, not communism.

That hasn't changed any. We see people coming into the church and trying to undermine the church with a message that the culture presents.

It is undermining the gospel. That's why this is so important. It is so important because it undermines the gospel message.

Jesus Christ was a victim. He never sought victim status. He never tried to argue he shouldn't be put on the cross because he was perfect.

And he was something none of us could argue. He never tried to claim a right as a victim.

No, he knew all along he was a victim and he went to the cross anyway. As Christians, we must put the gospel far above the issue of what we think is our victim status.

There is a divide in America. We see this going on. This is something that I think is, should be very concerning to us.

This divide in America where people have to be, you either have to be with us or against us type of mentality is very, very concerning.

We understand it's a divide and conquer mentality. We understand politically that politicians will try to divide people so that they can gain support.

Black versus white, Christian versus homosexual as if there's some, I mean, right there. I mean, just, I want to stop, let me stop on that one for a moment because the reality is as Christians, we should care for every single person, whether they're practice homosexuality or not.

The reality is, is that if you, as a Christian, don't reach out to the person who practices homosexuality, how are they going to hear the gospel?

The reality is that the world would like to tell them, no, you don't associate with Christians and Christians, you don't associate with homosexuals because they don't want the gospel being heard.

I remember being in New York City at Union Square and having one man named James. James came, James wanted to talk about homosexuality.

As I sat and talked with him, when I asked him if he had shaked my hands, all of his friends that practice homosexuality grabbed him.

They did not want him to shake my hand after we got done in an exchange where I shared the gospel with him.

Why? They literally said this to him, don't give in to that Christian. See for them, it was a, it's an us or them mentality.

It is, you have to be all in with us. You can't have associate with them. The thing that really bothers me,

I see that coming into the church. Man, we see this so often. We see this where if you associate with this person, then we're done with you.

There was a whole brouhaha with James White, where James White is going to go and he's going to go to a, uh, and do a talk with a

Muslim. And now all of a sudden everyone has to, can't associate with James White or, or you have other people. I mean, I, you know,

I, on this podcast had done an interview about a, uh, with a guy named Les who was doing a movie about, about worship.

Man, people were so outraged because don't you know who this guy is? He, he drinks beer. Okay. I mean, like, so you can't associate with him at all.

I had someone call me up and spent two hours telling me how I have to call this person out.

You know, I did ask him before we went live. I talked to him. I asked him his testimony. As far as I could tell from what he said, he seems like he's a believer.

Do I agree with everything he believes? I don't agree with everything anyone believes. I don't even believe, agree with myself what

I believed 20 years ago. I mean, give me a break. So the reality is nobody agrees perfectly with everybody.

And if they do, they're probably delusional or just don't know what they haven't thought through the issues well enough. But I have to say, is this person a brother in Christ?

As far as I could tell from his testimony, I think so. I have no reason to, to, to question it. Do I agree with him?

No. He and I disagree on a whole bunch of things, but I enjoyed the fellowship that I had with him. And you know what? 10 ,000 years from now, none of us are going to be asking questions of,

Oh, do you associate with this person or that person or this person? No. You know, I had, I had someone that, that, uh, has been, was calling me out because I did a conference with Jordan Hall.

Do Jordan Hall and I agree on things? No, we, we don't agree on a bunch of things. It doesn't mean that I don't think he's a brother in Christ.

I think he would think I'm a brother in Christ. And so we can go to a conference and speak at the same conference. Is that a problem?

Well, it might be if, you know, I'm, I'm changing a message to, to reach, you know, to be more, uh, uh, trying to, to be placating to the person.

I mean, if I, I don't care if it's the Pope invited me to the Vatican, I, and I can preach anything

I want, I would go. If I was asked to go to a conference, I was asked to go to a flat earth conference.

And I said, I would be willing to go if I can speak on anything I want. If they let me speak about the absurdity of flat earth,

I would have went when they found out the topics I wanted to speak. I guess they didn't want me there. The reality, I don't know why they invited me in the first place, but the reality is that I'll go anywhere.

If I can speak the clear, unadulterated gospel message, that's the thing. I don't mind speaking with someone that I disagree with.

Look, one of my, one of my best friends, Matt Slick, and I are very well known for disagreeing. It is clear.

We do a podcast together, the apologetics live. You can listen, go to apologeticslive .com. You can watch us every

Thursday night at eight o 'clock Eastern time. And you can watch us as we, we deal with apologetics. There's nobody who watches that doesn't know that we disagree.

We disagree in a whole bunch of issues. And yet, as we disagree, you know what? We disagree and we can disagree and still think one another is a brother in Christ.

And, and, you know, we can end up seeing that there are things that we should not be doing, which is so common in Christianity today.

In Christianity today, you end up seeing so many people. Well, if you're going to be with this person, I can't associate with you.

If you're going to be, if you're going to hang out with that person, if you're going to promote this person, I can't be with you. You want to know a very depressing thing was when

Matt Slick did two debates. Okay. The guy's nuts. Debated David Smalley one day, debates, uh, um,

Matt Dillahunty the next day. So those guys just had to prepare for one debate. Matt prepared for two different debates, two different people, two different topics, two nights back to back.

The thing was that we got to meet a lot of atheists at that. And there was, I forget what was happening at the time, but I remember talking to a bunch of atheists and ask him about something that some guy was doing.

And so many of them wouldn't call out this person. They, they didn't want to say or this or that.

I had one person, one atheist Sunday night that really depressed me. Um, because he told the truth. Here's what he said. When I, when

I talked to him about this situation, he said, Andrew, I got to tell you, son, I like you, but you're the enemy. He said, the reality is what he's doing is he is doing great damage to the

Christianity. I will never speak out against him because he is damaging your message.

And that's more important. He understood what Christians should understand. Brothers and sisters, as Christians, we, you and I who know

Jesus Christ, we should be the ones that if we see people that are genuinely believers in Christ, we should be willing to work together.

We have secondary issues, but it is more about spreading the gospel message to the unbelievers.

And the reality is so many people, especially on social media that profess to be Christian prefer to attack other

Christians rather than address issues of the world. They would rather try to build platforms by attacking and vilifying and slandering other

Christian rather than put the gospel first, because I got news for you. I think Paul had it right in Philippians chapter one, when people were slandering him and he says, whether they do it in truth or falsehood, either way, the gospel is going forth and I will rejoice because the gospel is going out.

And so that is what we should be doing. It's about the gospel and we should be working with one another where we can.

But you know, if I don't, if I don't want to work with another person because I have differences and those differences prevent me from working with another person, it doesn't mean

I have to be publicly slandering them or speaking out. Even if it's, even if I say things that are true, I don't have to do that.

There's some people that feel like they have to do that with everybody. The reality is I do not have to point out everybody's faults.

Yes, there are some things that we will do. I mean, you take a Benny Hinn or any of those guys. I mean, anyone that's been listening to this podcast, you know, that I'll speak out against those guys.

And yet the reality is, is why? Because I don't believe they're believers and they're preying on people who claim to be believers.

They're trying to get immature, young believers to be fooled and to be deceived and to follow after falsehoods so that they won't have any spiritual maturity.

Yes, they may be saved some, but these guys, they're wolves. Well, there's a different when you have a wolf that's preying on sheep.

I think there's a difference there. But the reality is, is being clear that those are unbelievers. You know, when you have people that are attacking believers or it's like, oh, if you disagree with me, you're not a believer.

Oh, you believe that you're not a believer. I mean, everything's a gospel issue these days. I had somebody who actually told me years ago that drinking alcohol was a gospel issue.

He said to me when I said, are you telling me that someone must drink alcohol to be saved? He said, if you are a

Christian, you should have dominion over alcohol and you must drink. Even if you had a problem with it in the past,

I have real concerns about that belief. That almost becomes another gospel in my mind. When you tell people they must drink alcohol to prove they have dominion and that becomes a different issue.

And so as Christians, there needs to be unity in the body of Christ. We need to be unified. We need to have one gospel, one body, one

Holy Spirit. That is what we end up seeing. Paul say, I mean, you look at, I mean, spend some time reading first Corinthians, please, because first Corinthians is, you know, yes,

I know it deals with the issue of spiritual gifts and speaking in tongues and all that. Yes, it does. But you know what else it talks about?

It talks about the fact that we're all have different giftedness, but we're bodies. Well, verse 12, uh, 12, 12, first Corinthians 12, 12 for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body through though many are one body so that it is with Christ for in one spirit, we are all baptized into one body,

Jews or Greeks, slaves or free. We are all made to drink of one spirit.

I don't care. Black, white, you used to practice homosexuality. Now you're saved with whatever it is, wherever you were before Christ, when we are in Christ, we are part of one body.

We need to start acting that way, especially in social media. The world is watching. The world sees the division and it laughs because what many

Christians are doing is, is helping them. Now, one other thing, before we get into a discussion on some of these things, one of the thing that I'd like to point out is that, did you know that there's a new game out there, a new

Pokemon go game? That's right. The Vatican has come out with a Pokemon go their own version. Yeah.

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So that's right. You end up having the Vatican coming out with their own game. Now the Vatican wants to show how relevant they are.

So they're going to come up with a Pokemon Go game of their own. I'll put the show notes in the show notes.

I will drop the article from the Business Insider about the Vatican's Pokemon Go game. They are no better than many of these preachers that sit up in churches and want to be really relevant and hip.

So they talk about 1980s movies. They talk about movies that they grew up watching and they aren't relevant anymore.

Well, Pokemon Go was a phase for a few weeks back in 2016, like two years ago, and not many people are playing it anymore.

But the Vatican has their game. It's called Follow JC Go. They should have just called it Vatican Go. But the instead of chasing after Pikachu and Squirtle, the

Vatican's version is involved in collecting saints and other biblical figures. And if you go on your iPhone or Android and look at the game, it is cheesy looking.

They want to show how hip and relevant they are. So what do they do? They make it look like it's childish and no one's going to want to play it.

It's more of a joke, I think, than anything. When you end up looking, and they take it serious,

I understand. But the reality is that when you look at their Follow JC Go, and you end up seeing that this game that they have is supposed to teach people about spirituality.

In fact, this is really depressing, but let me read you one of the ratings that they got on this app. This is a five -star rating.

Let me tell you, before this app, I didn't believe very well. I didn't have the love and compassion of Jesus yearns for me to have.

But thanks to this app, I've memorized every single period in the Bible, and now people fear for my safety.

But none of that matters, because Jesus still loves us all the same. I haven't had a single meal in roughly three weeks or so,

I believe, since I have lost track of time altogether. I had to make enough space in my mind for Jesus, so I forgot about everything else.

I am now 17, and live in an elderly care home because my parents are convinced

I have Alzheimer's and autism. But it's really just my love for Jesus that brings me this far.

I truly do feel enlightened, although my doctor told me I will die within a week if I do not continue to eat and drink.

But I simply tell them, leave me, because they are atheists, and they will soon rot in a fiery pit of hell for all eternity.

I shall be with the right hand of Jesus, and will be beside him on the final day, the day the whole world will end, and the last day of all people.

I gave up everything for Jesus, and I know I will pay out in the world. I hope you all feel the same way, all because of an app, not because of the

Bible. That's concerning. I mean, here what this game is, is that once you catch all of the saints, the goal is to catch them all, the saints that is, because it's all about saints in Roman Catholicism, and so it's all about distraction from the truth of God's word.

And so you catch the saints, and then they become your spiritual squad, and now you become an evangelism team that follows

Jesus together. I mean, this is what this game is about. It is supposedly an augmented reality type of game that the

Vatican has put out. It supposedly cost half a million dollars and took two years, actually 32 ,000 development hours to come up with this game.

And when you look at it, it's cheesy looking. And this is something that the Catholic church is promoting to help people, to help reach millennials, because they say that 20 % of the millennials have left the

Catholic church, and they're trying to reach out to them through a game, because the Bible just is not enough.

That's the reality. That's the real message that you end up seeing. Whether it's the Catholic church or the Christian church, we're seeing that it's just the fact that people think that the

Bible is not enough. The sufficiency of scripture is what's at the issue.

Is the scripture sufficient? I would say yes, the scripture should be sufficient.

And yet the reality is that so many do not want to look to the scripture. They do not want to turn to the scripture as the source, because it's only within the scripture we're going to get answers.

And that becomes the real issue. And we end up seeing this in one of the most popular preachers that's becoming well -known now, really off of daddy's name, but making a name for himself in bad ways.

And that would be Andy Stanley. Oh, I just mentioned the name. Yes. Andy Stanley wants to get rid of the

Old Testament. Are we going to be unhitched from the Old Testament? In fact, we shouldn't be arguing at all for the

Bible said so. We should say the resurrection said so. You see, he wants to say that Christianity is not based on the

Bible. It's based on the resurrection. Andy, how do you know the resurrection happened? That's right. You read about it in the

Bible, that thing you want to unhitch. How do you know the resurrection was a prophecy, Andy?

Oh, because you read it in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22. That's how you know that was a prophecy.

And so you sit here and want to say as many are trying to do in appealing to the world. You notice that the theme that's been going through all these different topics that we have here today, the theme is that the church seems to want to get close and be partners with the world, with the culture, and not stand up for Jesus Christ.

That's the issue. Now, I have a friend with me here today, and we're going to discuss some of these things because I think he's going to have some valuable insight.

He's someone whose voice you should recognize if you've been listening to this podcast. If you have not been listening from the beginning, what is wrong with you?

Go back and binge. Go back to those early episodes. I think he was on episode nine. I should really go and check and see what episode he was on, but he is none other than the infamous pastor.

He's laughing. The infamous pastor, Jim Osmond from Kootenai Community Church.

I've got to make sure I pronounce it right because it's not Kootenai, Kootenai, Kootenai, Kootenai something.

Kootenai in the shin. Can you come up with a good name for your town there? Well, I wasn't around when they named it.

If I had been, we would have named it Osmondville. No, that's Osmond with a D, right? No, no

D. O -S -M -A -N. No relation to the Mormon family at all.

You know, but hey, you could have been up there singing. You were on episode seven was the last time you were on.

Episode seven. Yeah. Now you and I were just together. I was out at your church. I had the privilege of speaking at your church and those messages are online at your church website.

That is correct. And that was the first of your conference series, your fall conference. You've got a spring conference coming up that is with none other than Jason Lyle.

That's right. Yeah. We were originally slotted to have Kosti Hinn come out. We were going to do something with Kosti Hinn and Justin Peters on kind of like a false teaching conference, mostly about rescuing loved ones from false teaching, kind of geared toward how do we have conversations with our loved ones who are involved in false teaching or love false teachers?

How do we generally share the truth and what are good resources? We're going to devote a whole weekend to kind of answering that question and dealing with those issues.

But Kosti is heading to India to do a series of meetings over there for some pastors who have asked him to come over.

And I don't know that Kosti would promote this himself, but he's doing it at his own expense because these are poor pastors over in India who cannot afford to bring him over.

But he called me up and he said, you know, you've got Justin Peters in your church. Your church is not dealing with false teaching.

These guys really need me more than you do. And I said, no, that's, you're absolutely right there. So we canceled that.

And we then I went to Jason Lyle. I figured who we had other people booked for a few years out, but we decided to go to Jason Lyle and see if we can slot him in.

And he happened to be available that weekend. So we're going to be pleased to bring him out. I think he's down in Texas. We're going to please to bring him out and try and convince him to move to Idaho.

Yeah, it does seem you tried to do it. Do you have any ins with Justin Peters? I mean, do you know that guy at all? We've met a couple of times, our paths have crossed.

Yeah. Yeah. Your paths have crossed in church. So, yeah, I should say that you've done quite a bit to try to convince people to move to your, to Idaho to go here.

We're trying to collect all the good people up here. Yeah. So, I mean, let's tell you, you've been on the forefront of some of social justice issues.

I know Justin has been very much involved in the statement on social justice, has concerns about these things.

And I know that you like to praise the fact that you signed the statement on social justice and the gospel before I did.

I don't know if that's actually true. We'd have to check that. I don't know if there's a timestamp on it, but I think that was signature number 19 or something like that.

I don't remember. Yeah. Yeah. It was before a week before.

Well, no, it was more than a week because when we put the statement out, I think before the statement was ever,

I mean, the statement was going to go public and then we moved the date two weeks out. And I think it was, I think I signed it two weeks, maybe a week before the original.

So, it was like a month before it went public, I think. And by the time I, and I had gotten it, but I just didn't get around to reading it for several days.

And by the time I got it, I think I was like, I want to say in the fifties or sixties by the time

I signed it. And so, yeah. So, I mean, so you, you, you were definitely before me, but I was also, you know,

I know it got sent to me and it was like, yeah, yeah, I'll put this on the list. But let's talk about this.

I mean, you, you heard some of what I shared. I mean, I, I see a concern with the church where, you know, I think about even

C .S. Lewis's book on screw tape letters where he has this demon who's being mentored by another demon.

And it's like, how do you, how do you basically make Christians useless in the, in really what the main emphasis of Christianity should be is sharing the gospel.

And it was like all these different tactics. One of them was attack other Christians, you know, show that, that you're like the world, look at, look at the baker over there, look how he sins.

And, you know, it was, it was about distraction. And unfortunately I, to me, it seems like this works fortunately very well.

And we certainly see it within the culture and within the church. There's this almost this sharp division that exists in the culture.

And since Christians for 40 years have been told by their pastors and by their churches and by their philosophy of ministry growth experts, that we need to be more like the world in order to win the world.

The church has learned the lesson and learned it well from men like Andy Stanley and Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. We've become just like the world.

So this sharp dichotomy, this, this by, this binary choice that we have where you're, you know, you've got to choose a camp.

You can't be anywhere in the middle. I mean, if you try and take some sort of a middle road where you, you say, well, you know, in terms of the last election,

I was not a Trump supporter. I didn't vote for him. I had, I voted a third party ticket. Well, for a lot of people,

I'm a heretic for not voting for Trump because he was the best choice and out of the two. And I didn't really fall into either one of those binary categories.

You know, I wasn't, I certainly did not vote for Hillary Clinton would never, even if it meant my life,

I would never cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, but I didn't, I didn't feel comfortable in my conscience voting for Trump with what

I knew about him and what I saw at the time. And so I just, I couldn't cast that vote. Well, man, that puts me not in either camp, you know?

So I got, I got people on both sides calling me a, a compromiser and a heretic, et cetera, for making a decision like that.

And it's, it's that way with everything. It's that way with everything, Andrew, if you're not going to, if you try and take a middle of the road approach to almost any subject and trying to say, well, two things can be true at the same time.

Trump can be, in terms of his approach to women and his rhetoric, he can be over the top. He can be unchristian.

He can be uncharitable. And the Democrats have lost their cotton picking minds. You know, both of these can be true at the same

And we can, we can, as Christians, we ought to step back and not feel comfortable in either party where we get to the point where we are, we're taking sides and we are, we're joining forces with one team and excusing things that 20 years ago we would have condemned.

I'm old enough to remember the Clinton administration. I remember what the conservative approach was to the moral peccadilloes of Bill Clinton.

And now we see some of these same people coming out and because, because the guys on our side of the aisle are doing it because the guys on our side of the aisle don't have character, they're defending things that they found reprehensible 20 years ago.

And why is it? It's just because one guy has an R behind his name. And as Christians, we ought to be able to step outside of that and above that and be able to critique both sides of it.

And to say, look, this is not our home. I don't feel comfortable in this camp and I don't feel comfortable in that camp. And so sometimes, never, never, ever does the democratic party represent me.

Sometimes the Republican party represents me, but I can't land in the Republican party as if, as if that is my home, as if that doesn't represent me all the time.

There are some Democrats who would represent, I mean, there are fewer and fewer, but the reality is we, you know, this is the whole thing.

It's, it's this, and you hit it on the head. It's this binary mentality, us versus them. Right. And that's the way the world approaches everything because of the fabricated outrage over whatever the scandal of the day is, whatever the latest news item is that came out and hit the headlines today or Friday or whatever it was, whatever that fabric, it's, it's, it's fabricated outrage.

And so the, the, the people get upset and you've got to choose. You got what side of this are you on? Are you defending this person?

Are you critiquing this person? And, uh, and we're always forced on every issue to choose our camp and, and the media profits from that.

The political parties profit from that, but the American people don't. I mean, we're always, we're always told that you, you have to be outraged over something and it has to happen now and you have to join our club.

And there's just this polarization that is taking place in, in our nation. It's really sad to see that. Um, I don't see any way out of it.

And I think that it's happening, like you say, in the church as well. And, and I think that it is in the church. Especially on social media.

Here's the thing I find very interesting. Years ago, I remember a guy on, on Facebook who is posting things about dispensationalism.

Now, whether you agree with dispensationalism or not, not the issue, but this guy knew that what he was saying about dispensationalism was not accurate.

He knew it was wrong. He, he knew that what he was saying was not true of a dispensational position.

And I asked him about it. I'm like, dude, how can you be posting this? You know, you, this is so controversial and what you're saying.

And you know, it's not what dispensationalists hold to. And he messaged me and said, that's okay. The more people that respond to it and comment on it and like it means the more that other things

I post will show up on their feed. I said, so you know, this is inaccurate. He said, oh yeah, but you have to, and here's how he justified it, but you have to create controversy to get the traffic.

And that's a, that's a pragmatic and justifies the means type of an unethical position on things. When you come out and you, you intentionally misrepresent something or even questionably misrepresented, and you're not clear about something in order to push people to a certain conclusion, that's just unethical.

I think that's not Christian behavior. And that's the issue I have. And I remember one of the guys who used to work for us, he posted something and it wasn't, you know, it was sounding like I believe salvation by works.

Now what he meant by it, I knew very well. He meant the work of Christ, but he's just trying to be controversial. And I remember contacting him and saying, brother, you know,

I'm not going to tell you what you have to do on Facebook. Um, but you do represent us. I said, just think about what you're doing.

What's the motive behind you doing that? He said, well, I guess the motive was kind of be kind of controversial. It's edgy.

It must be edgy. Yeah. Right. Just push the envelope just a little bit. Kind of stay outside the box a little bit. Think outside the box, talk outside the box and generate some, generate some attract some attention.

Correct. Generate the attention is the thing. And he ended up saying, I said, you know, is that really what we should be looking to do as Christians?

And he's like, you know what? No. And so he stopped. I never saw him do anything like that after that. He took that post down, never did it again.

And you know, I'm not saying that you can't put something, um, I mean, look, we, we do podcasts, we do blog articles.

We want people to click on it. We're, we're going to word it things that, uh, are going to catch people's attention.

But when you word it something that's wrong to get clickbait that, that I, you know, or to, or to son, you know, is not truthful.

Um, I remember, uh, a podcast that posted that someone was a heretic and you listen to the podcast.

They don't even mention the guy's name at all ever. And it's like, so it's just like clickbait. I mean, it's just to get people to go, Oh, what's what, what's wrong with this guy.

And you go and you listen to a whole thing, nothing. And I, I just don't think that's how Christians should be behaving and doing.

And I think that we've given into the world. You're right. It's pragmatic. It works. Um, for the world's argument, it works.

And yes, the way that the world works with social media, with getting traffic, getting, um, you know, getting, uh, um, you know, likes and responses and comments on social media.

Yeah. That stuff may work and it may get, uh, you know, people that they think they got some platform behind them.

But the reality is, is, are we forsaking the platform of Christ for the sake of the platform of man?

And I don't care if it's Andy Stanley. I mean, you, you brought up bill Hybels. He's really, you know, he and John Ankerberg are really some of the guys that we could, we can look to for the fact that we, we have a lot of this.

I mean, a lot of this stuff that they did by, by taking a survey and saying, what is it? Why is it people don't go to church?

Oh, you don't like this. You don't, you don't like that. Oh, you don't want to talk of this. And we'll, we'll just, we'll, we'll craft a church to your liking.

And it worked. I mean, it worked for 20 years and then bill Hybels started evaluating his own church and went, wait a minute.

Uh, this church seems to be filled with a bunch of unbelievers or spiritually mature people. Uh, why is that?

Oh, that's right. Because they only show up on Sunday where we do dramas. We don't teach anything. Uh, they don't show up for the

Wednesday night service where we do all the teaching and, uh, Oh. And so he came out against his own thing, you know, seeing the problems in it, which was good that he saw the problems with it.

But, but so many took that and they wanted to push it and push it. And it's like, Oh, let's do it. We're really relevant and hip.

We're going to do a sermon series on jaws. Yeah. When was the last jaws? But jaws three, we came out on what?

Like 90 something. Right. You know, I mean, okay. Star Wars maybe because they keep coming out with new ones, but you know, it's like these movie series that they, these pastors do that are like on movies from the eighties and stuff.

That's to be relevant. How is that? And even if it's a contemporary movie that they're using, it's still not relevant. It's still not, it's still not the power of the word of God.

And that's what it boils down to. And then a lot of some of the secret process to churches like, um, bill highballs, they say that they do the deep teaching on Wednesday night.

And so if you read through their material or you attend their leadership courses, that's what the church program is intended that their format of church is intended to do is to, is to sort of lure you in on a morning and then try to get you a lured into a

Wednesday night Bible study where they say the deep teaching goes on for the church. So Sunday morning is for unbelievers in the midweek

Bible study is for believers. But I would be willing to bet you that in 90 % and this would be a conservative estimate 90 % of the time, they're not getting any kind of deep teaching on their

Wednesday night Bible study. We had a couple that was going to a local secret sensitive church and they came and visited with us one time.

And he was, uh, we were talking about church and church ministry. And he kind of said, well, you know, in, in on Sunday mornings, we, we don't really go deep because we don't want to scare off unbelievers and unbelievers come.

But then on Wednesday nights when we do the deep teaching, and so that's where we go to get fed. And so I looked him right in the eye and I said, so on Wednesday night, are you getting fed?

And you just look back with this deer in the headlight stare. And he said, well, no, not really. And I said, why that is?

And he said, no, why is it? And I says, because the people who are feeding you on Wednesday night are getting fed on Sunday morning.

So they're not taking you any deeper on Wednesday night than there can go themselves on a Sunday morning because the leadership of the church is shallow and everything about it is intended to be shallow.

And that's a matter of intention in order to keep the goats there and the goats happy on a Sunday morning, since it's intentionally shallow, they're not going to be able to take you any deeper than they themselves can go.

And so they never, they never get to the meat and potatoes, the word of God. They're constantly giving you milk if they give it to you at all.

And, uh, and they're not able to take you any deeper on Wednesday night for that very reason. Yeah. And I mean, even Joel still sit there and hold up a

Bible at the beginning. I've never watched Joel Osteen's services, but I mean, I've heard many people say first thing he does on every, every service is hold them a

Bible and say that he believes in it. And then what does he do after that? Yeah. I like how Justin Peters puts it, right?

He opens the Bible and it says he's going to hold to the Bible. But then after that spends the rest of the time, misquoting and misconstruing the

Bible and twisting it. Um, and this is the thing. I mean, they don't, they're not looking for, uh, the truth.

They're looking to get numbers. They're looking to, to get a bigger platform and more money and these things.

And as Christians, that should not be our focus. I mean, our focus should not be on trying to, you know, do what might work for the world to get more people to focus on us.

This is the biggest thing I have an issue with. We as Christians should be getting people focused on Christ, not us. And so much of what's called

Christian ministry nowadays, you see them focusing on them and you see them doing, Hey, I'm a victim.

Look at me, poor me. I, I acted like a jerk to someone and now they're, they're treating me like a jerk and it's,

I'm a victim. No, you're not. You were a jerk. Yeah. The church is, uh, individual Christians in the church have adopted the same, uh, worldly intersectionality ideology and it's crept into the church.

You know, there are, there are people who wear it as a badge of honor. If they can get good men to speak ill of them, if they can attack and troll enough people on Facebook that they can, they can get

Phil Johnson or James White or Justin Peters to, uh, come, come after them on Facebook or defend themselves, then they feel like they have earned a badge of honor that I got,

I got so -and -so responding to me and I'm in a Twitter battle with so -and -so. Uh, he's the bad guy and I'm the good guy. And you know, so I'm the victim because he's coming after me and, and, uh, and, and attacking me on Twitter and it's, it's intersectionality, but in the

Christian church. And the sad thing is some of the, some of those people are actually signers of the statement of social justice in the gospel.

I mean, I mean, it's like they're, they are social justice warriors. They have that same entitlement mentality where they're owed everything and everyone should be focused on them and doing for them.

And they haven't really thought that through so much. And yet they'll sit there and say, Oh, others, others have the problem. They're social justice warriors.

You know what? A lot of professing believers that, um, are social justice warriors, but in a different sense, they have the same entitlement mentality.

A lot of victimology. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so, uh, you know, I want to, I want to, as you know, we'll play our spiritual transition game.

But, uh, before we get that, you know, I think, I think I'm going to ask you to transition to the gospel on something.

Cause I think that'll be interesting. It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

Okay. So this is where we transition from whatever is given to the gospel. You will give me something that I have to transition to the gospel.

I, of course, I'm going to be kind to you. I'm going to give you something that I want you to transition to the gospel. And then you'll give me something.

I will transition. And then you'll have more time because after I transition, I'm going to ask you then to transition to what

I give you first. So I'm giving you lots of time to think about it. I'm so kind to you. So you're, you're going to give me the topic.

I'm going to give you the topic. Then you're going to give me a topic. I'm going to transition. Then you transition. So you have more time to think through your transition.

See how kind I am. So here's going to be a thing I want you to transition to. Uh, you know, when I was out at your place, uh, being, being raised

Jewish, there were certain things I wasn't allowed to eat, but you know, every, every single meal seemed to have one thing in it, uh, that, that contained something that wasn't kosher that I shouldn't eat.

You know what that thing is? Yeah. Yeah. What is that carbs? No, no, not carbs. I fed you a lot of pork while you're out here.

Yeah. A lot of pork. You gave me a lot of pork, mostly bacon. I think every meal had bacon in it.

It was an accident. Honestly, it wasn't. You know what? We've eaten a lot of pork while you're here.

So since, since you wanted to feed me lots of unkosher food, I'm going to ask you after you give me something transition to,

I want you to transition from bacon to the gospel. Okay. So you think about that. Uh, so, so you give me something that I have to transition to and folks, this is not edited.

So if I stumble, if I hesitate, it's because I'm really not sure how to do it. But the reason we do the game is so that we don't need to sit there and say,

Lord, please give me an opportunity to share the gospel. No, you can take any conversation with practice and transition to the gospel.

The more you play this game with other friends, yes, it may take you time to transition, but you take something, you build a story around it.

You build it into weaving it through something, asking questions with the person looking for how can

I transition to the gospel and look for opportunities. And then what you're doing is you're actually making the opportunities.

You don't have to pray, Lord, give me an opportunity. You make the opportunity. Therefore, I would say every conversation can become a gospel conversation if you want it to.

So Pastor Jim, what am I going to be taking? Well, I'm going to do my transition first. Are you ready for it? Sure. Okay.

So bacon under the Old Covenant, under the Old Testament was prohibited for the Jews, not for all people, because this was a law specifically for the

Jewish people to keep them separate, to set them apart, regulating their ceremonial cleanliness, etc.

Various food laws were like that. In fact, another example of that is shellfish. And I was raised as the grandchild and the great grandchild of Seventh -day

Adventist. So I have some Seventh -day Adventist grandparents in my background, who though they would raise pork and pigs, they would never eat them.

And I never understood that. To me, that was always like, if it's unclean, it's unclean. That's like saying I raised the pot, but I don't smoke it.

So they would raise the pork, but they would never eat it. My great grandmother was a Seventh -day

Adventist. She had nine children. None of them would eat pork. None of them would ever touch it. My grandmother being one of her children who would never touch pork.

So I was bringing my grandma back from a doctor's appointment in a town not too far away from us here, and she wanted to take me out for lunch.

I said, well, where do you want to go? She said, let's go to Red Lobster. And I said, what are you going to eat at Red Lobster? There is nothing you can eat there. She said, oh,

I can eat crab. I can eat shrimp. I can eat lobster. I said, you can't eat any of that. It's shellfish. It's unclean by the Old Testament standard.

And she said, no, it's not. And I said, yes, it is. Look it up in the book of Leviticus, the same chapter that condemns you eating pork also condemns you eating shellfish.

You can't eat those. Those are unclean. If you've ever eaten a piece of shellfish, you might as well have eaten a ham sandwich or a pork chop or a slice of bacon, a

BLT, because it is all condemned under the Jewish Old Testament. And then I explained to her why it is that today as a

Christian, I can eat pork and shellfish. And I explained, Grandma, because I can enjoy those things, because those laws were part of the expectation to the

Jewish community. Jesus came and he fulfilled the law on my behalf so that I can be righteous before God.

So I'm not avoiding pork in order to earn my righteousness because somebody else came and died on a cross to pay the price for my sin.

I'm an unregenerate condemned sinner, and I need forgiveness and I need righteousness and I need a savior.

And one came to pay that price to die on a cross in my stead so that I can be free from the requirements of the

Old Testament law. Now, the righteous demands of the law are written upon my heart. And now I do them because I have been forgiven and because I am righteous and I want to live in accordance with the righteousness that I have as a free gift of God's grace through Jesus Christ.

How's that? Very good. Very good. I enjoy gardening and I just planted my garden. I just planted my garlic, which is different than normal food and vegetables in the garden.

You plant the garlic in the fall and then it stays in the ground through the winter and comes up in the spring. So I'm looking forward to a good garlic harvest in the spring.

Is garlic, I'm trying to remember the term. I think it starts with P .M. or where it comes up every year.

Perennial? Perennial? No. No, it's not. Okay. So the garlic, you plant it once and then it comes up and that's it, right?

That's it. Yeah. You keep the bulb that you harvest, you keep that, you break it apart and plant the individual cloves the next season.

So you plant in the fall. You plant in the fall, not in the spring. I should go plant my garlic now and I can grow some garlic.

Yeah. Homegrown garlic is amazing. It's awesome. Yeah. I mean, the thing with the garlic,

I mean, I'd almost be willing to try that. I mean, I have my garden. I have a bunch of things in there. And this year has been, and I think you and I talked about this, this year has been hard with the garden because we just had a lot of rain.

I mean, I didn't even put a sprinkler in my garden at all. And basically we had so much water that tomatoes,

I got some tomatoes, but my cantaloupe, I got one cantaloupe. That was it. The squash and zucchini and everything just, it had what's called root rot.

I mean, it was just so wet that there was water sitting there like all the time. And even though the plants need the water, they had so much of it that it just killed them.

I mean, I just got no crop this year, which was really kind of depressing because I like my vegetable garden and especially in Jersey tomatoes.

Now that's something you really would appreciate. You know, it's Jersey tomatoes or something that you don't understand, but we get the good humidity, you know, that creates good tomatoes.

But this year I had nothing. And a lot of it is as someone that does gardening, as you know, you're dependent upon not just rain, but not having too much rain, good soil.

But you know, there's times where the soil can get too much pH and you have to change it. It's one of the reasons you have to change up the vegetables.

And the thing that's amazing is that you sit and think, so many people think if they like something, oh, this is good, like I should get more of this.

Reality is plants need water, but too much water kills them. Certain plants need more pH, but too much pH kills them.

That's actually the same with us. There's things that we think is really good. I mean, you know, some people like fast food, too much of it.

Well, yeah. Okay. Then it's not too healthy for us, right? I mean, there's things that we think if we just have more of it, it would be good because we enjoy it.

And the reality is that those things will end up killing us. There's actually only one thing in this world that I could think of that where the more of it you get, it wouldn't harm you.

I mean, if you think about everything, if you do too much, everyone talks about not doing things in excess, doing things in moderation.

And yet, because every, almost everything I could think of will be harmful in excess, except for one.

And that is a love for God. I mean, the fact is, is that we're naturally, we don't love God. We hate him actually, we're his enemy.

And yet when we think about it, here you have someone who has created the entire world.

He came to earth as a man. He died in our place to pay the sin that you and I owe. We break his laws and yet he paid the fine for us.

And yet this is the one thing in the universe, I think, that we can have more and more and more of and never have a bad effect.

Never is excess a bad thing in this one thing. And yet it's the one thing so many people avoid.

It's the one thing that you can have in excess and not be harmful. It's the one thing people avoid. And it's an interesting thing where everything else in excess can be damaging.

A love for God is not damaging. It's actually healthy. And yet it's the one thing we all avoid. And so I guess just the thought would be is, do you have a love for God or are you still one that thinks of him as your enemy?

Good. Pastor Jim, I appreciate you coming on. Look forward to the conference out in Kootenai.

And I mean, just for the record, there was a date change that occurred with Justin Peters and I on a conference so he could be there at church for Justin Peters.

And I think, I got to talk to Justin, but I believe the words that I had for him was, I'll try to see if we could change the date, but you got to find a way for Pastor Jim to get me out to the church for Jason Lyles.

I didn't need Justin at this next conference, so that's not on me. No, I think it's on Justin.

Hey, maybe Justin Peters Ministries will fly you out. There you go. And I think, hey, just remember, hashtag

Justin, I win. In fact, I could give a plug, right? You don't mind me plugging this, I'm sure.

No, not at all. I should say with you here, for the public record, for folks who know that Justin, I win, if you don't, well, here's the thing.

Go to justiniwin .com and there's actually a video explaining the history of it and what it's all about.

And you can donate to Justin Peters Ministries and just make sure in the comments, you put hashtag Justin, I win.

And I've done everything and I've done whether it's the domain coming up with that domain and you and I both know who's the web developer of that site.

The brainchild behind it. Yeah. And all of my crazy ideas get donations to Justin Peters.

I've run them all by you, his pastor, and you have been in agreement with them, have you not? That's right. That's right.

So I haven't done anything without Justin's pastor's approval. So it's pastor approved to donate to justinpeters .com.

And you can help me win a battle with him over bragging rights and just make sure you put hashtag

Justin, I win in the comments. And you can even tweet it out. I was glad Justin actually called me and said that he got a rather large donation that came in.

And yes, in the comments, it said hashtag Justin, I win. I had great joy to know that someone out there, and I know who she is, but someone out there was very generous to Justin and donated to him.

And I was thrilled to hear that he got a big donation. Well, both Justin Peters Ministries and Striving for Eternity Ministries are worthy of listener support and donations.

The money is put to good use. Yeah, we try here as well as there. And we should plug this, both

Justin and I, Justin Peters Ministries and Striving for Eternity are trying to raise money to do a trip. We're looking to go to the

Philippines for two weeks, go to several different churches in several different islands, actually.

And we have a church down there that is looking to have us out. They can take care of the hotel, but Justin and I have to find our own way out there.

So if you would like to help us, you can. We have a Patreon page. It's in the show notes.

You can also go to strivingforeturning .org, hit the donate button, and there's a place where you can donate monthly or you can give a one -time donation.

But we're looking to raise the funds to be able to go out there. Why? Because the false gospel is so prevalent out there, the prosperity gospel and things like that.

And they don't have trained men to teach them the truths. And we're going to be going out there.

And one of the things we're going to be doing is we are planning to meet with pastors alone, not just doing the conferences we're doing, but Justin Peters and I plan to meet with some of the pastors.

And we actually are trying to set up meetings with some of the very men that are following these false teachers.

And so we're hoping to be able to actually see a change in the islands in the

Philippines with a proper gospel message and some training on how to interpret the

Bible and the things they need to know when they look at theology so that they would be prepared.

So if you can help us, you can help Justin and I to get out there. We are going to go regardless. We're going because we have donors that try to help us, but we have decided we're going with or without support because it's that important.

And you can help us. I encourage you to do this. You could go to justinpeters .com, go to strivingforeturning .org.

Actually, it might be justinpeters .org. Sorry. But go to both and donate monthly. The monthly support matters so much more than a one -time gift because we have monthly expenses and it helps with that.

And so I'd ask you to think about doing that. So Pastor Jim, thanks for coming on. Thanks for your insights and keep up the good work there in Kootenai, Idaho.

Kootenai, Idaho. It's been fun, Andrew. Thank you. The land where not only are people allowed to carry guns, but the state actually looks like a gun when you turn it on its side.

We are free people out here. He's holding up his... I don't know what that is.

I'm from Jersey. We're not allowed to look at those things. Until next time, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeturnity .org.