Apologetics for the Next Generation

That's all that we need. Not only sufficient, but the only thing that could be done for us. Okay, so we don't need baptism then, because it's the only thing.

Is it the only thing or is it not? Do you need to be baptized or not? Because if you need to be baptized, it's not sufficient.

It is true that you are an extremely skilled debater, and you're good.

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Thriving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

We are barely live. Well, I'm almost alive, but we are live.

So then welcome to Apologetics Live. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport. Let me bring in my co -host,

Mr. Drew Vanita. Howdy, howdy. You're a dead man reader, right?

You're a dead guy reader. I read the dead guys, yes. That is something I try to push everyone to do.

Read the dead guys, because they have so much to teach us, and we need to be taught.

You don't want them reading my books. I'm so sad. You know what? I'd rather them read your reality.

You want me dead. I get it. When you die, I will be promoting your books forever.

Until I die. We're cracking up our guests backstage.

I'm going to give a little bit of a warning first off. I may take myself off camera, go backstage at different times throughout the show tonight, because, well,

I'm struggling with a cold, and I may need to just blow my nose and things like that at times, and I'm not going to have you guys have to watch or hear that.

So don't be surprised. Yeah, I am somewhat of a professional. You don't have a cough button?

I do. I have a cough button, but I have to take the video out, too. It's not just enough for the cough button.

Yeah, true. We don't want to see you blow your nose. But we do a couple things.

When I'm wrong, you guys know, the first thing I want to do is correct when I'm wrong. I was wrong about two weeks ago.

During the show, there was also a debate going on with James White and Leighton Flowers, and I made a statement there.

I said that I made a prediction that Leighton Flowers would be very calm, and it would give the appearance as if he was winning a debate because he was so calm and mellow.

I got that wrong. I'm sorry. I got around to watching the debate, and I will admit

I was surprised. Leighton was emotional, even on the verge of yelling.

Which is odd because the first time they debated, he looked like he was just lost, and he didn't know what to do.

But now I didn't watch this one, and I was going to watch it, but the reason

I didn't watch it and haven't watched it is because of watching how Leighton acts on Twitter and then all of his minions, and I go,

I don't want to watch it. Because at this point, you're just showing me that Dr.

White is the bigger person, and he most likely won the debate anyway. Yeah, I think their first debate gave

Leighton a platform. Their second debate was really about – because I heard

Leighton is now leaving the seminary and going to be doing soteriology 101 full -time.

So I think that the second debate was just to rally the troops. I'll tell you this.

He did a response video to the debate, and I've always said false teaching pays because just in the super chats,

I calculated $500, $600 in super chats just in one video.

That's not bad for a day's work, right? Yeah, for two hours of rambling. I mean, folks, we have a super chat button that you have there.

So look at this. I said I was going to be – said I was wrong about something, and Greg Moore says, so you're becoming

Presbyterian. Awesome. No, I said,

Greg, that I had to correct something that I was wrong about, not right about.

I mean, we should give a shout -out to Greg Moore. He's got that podcast tournament, and it has gotten a little bit out of hand.

People were throwing down bribes. Here, because Apologia Studios threw out bribes,

I actually said, okay, that's it. I wasn't sure who to vote for in that contest, and I said, okay, that was it.

I was going to vote against Apologia, and then I find out that the other guys bribed people with, hey, we'll give you tickets to our conference.

Because Matter of Theology was on there too, right? Greg is saying, how do I do a super chat? Get on YouTube, and you can do a super chat.

Oh, yeah, he's on Facebook. By the way, super chats, we always respond to. We always read those. But Matter of Theology was in it, right?

Yeah. So Matter of Theology, we have yet to make it out of the first bracket into the second round.

And so if I had known we could bribe people, I would have done that. I would have been like, I will buy 10

Puritan paperbacks, and I will give them away to random people who vote for us.

Well, okay. I think that, first off, if Matter of Theology produced an episode this year, you might have had a better shot.

I'm just saying, okay? All right, so Greg Moore is saying,

I don't see it. Because you're on Facebook. You have to go over to the YouTube. There should be on YouTube.

Yeah, super chat is a YouTube function. Yeah. Yeah. So the other thing is, last week we did a debate, and I want to address something that we had in that debate.

So I watched their literally a five -hour response to us.

And to be fair, it wasn't completely five hours because some of that was – some of that did involve – it was probably three hours of response video to the debate, and two hours they got someone that came in that didn't know – didn't understand anything, and they were trying to bring him over to their way of thinking.

So it was – but they did three hours response to a two -hour debate.

Let me see if I could provide a response in maybe five minutes, maybe even less.

So they accused us of – I think they accused both Matt Slick and I of kind of mocking them or, you know, not being so –

I forgot. I'm trying to remember the wording that they used, but basically accused us of mocking. I challenge you to go look at it and see if we were mocking.

There were times that I think what they didn't like was that at one point I said quite clearly that the fact that they were misrepresenting our position, the debate was over.

It was interesting because they basically in their response video said that we did not address any of the – we didn't address any of the, you know, the historical issues that they were bringing up.

And in my closing comments, I mentioned the fact that they failed to provide – the debate was on whether their view of the

Trinity being one person, one God was biblical, not historical, biblical.

So they had to show that it's in the Bible. Right, right.

Yeah, yeah. So I don't know what was the title or the – which is the thesis, right?

What is the title of it? Is it – The Trinity is

Biblical? Well, yeah, I think it was their view of monarchianism.

Is monarchianism biblical? Yeah, so once you have that, right, the title, that's – then when you come into the actual discussion, right, and you're doing your opening statements, that's where you're giving your thesis statement, which is

I'm going to show that monarchianism is in fact biblical beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Or you, your position, you're in Matt's position, we are going to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that monarchianism is not biblical, right?

And so now you have your position and it's centered on the Bible, not history.

Now you can use history, but ultimately that's an irrelevant point because the point is, is it biblical?

Correct, which is what Matt and I focused on. So if you were to bring up a historical argument from someone in history,

I'm not obligated to respond to it. I'm obligated to respond to what biblical arguments you make or don't make.

Correct, correct. So that's why I didn't bring up any, I didn't address any of their historical stuff.

It was really interesting because they made a comment at the end, which I corrected. You know, we, I couldn't do it in the, because it came up in the question when people were making questions, you know, the audience questions.

He made the comment that there was a textual variant in Matthew 28, 19 and 20 that says that it doesn't say baptizing in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He said baptizing in my name, he claimed there was a textual variant.

And I, instead of promoting the ministry, I used that time to, since I had no other time to correct it,

I figured that had to be corrected. I just didn't want to leave that standing. And in their after show, they basically were mocking

Matt and I because in the after show that Matt did from the debate, I mentioned that I looked through all my

Greek apparatus and there is no textual variant there, other than the word amen.

And so what ended up happening was they mocked that by saying, because Matt goes and gets his

Greek apparatus and he's looking and he goes, no, you're right. There is no textual variant there. And so basically their argument against that was, well, of course there's no textual variant in those, it can be shown because all the publishers don't want you to know that.

That right there told me that they're in a conspiracy land, like the flat earthers, because I hate to disappoint them, but the

Greek New Testament, that when we do Greek apparatuses are based on all the Greek manuscripts, and there's not publishers for those things.

There are copies of them that we find, they weren't published. Publishers existed because of before the printing press existed, by the way.

Yeah. So the thing with doing textual criticism, and this is the whole point of textual criticism, is to get back to the original.

What is authorial intent? What did the author write? Not what did a scribe several hundred years after the author wrote, think the author should have written.

So when you look at those apparatuses, they're full of textual variants because that's the whole point of doing textual criticism, so that you can see the variants, you can know what manuscripts they show up in, what manuscripts they don't show up in, so you know a good range of when did this enter into the text, and then how to deal with it from there.

That's the whole point of doing it. So for them to leave out a textual variant doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. And so it was something where when

I saw it, these are like basic things. They were very mocking, by the way, of Matt and I when they did do that, so I thought that was quite interesting, to say the least.

But the reality is they still did not understand it, and they don't think that they're wrong in doing this, but they were forcing upon Matt and I a view of three gods.

They got into a thing saying, because I made a comment when they asked me a question about it, and I said, I'm not

Mormon. And they were saying that, well, we're not saying there's a difference with Mormonism, you know,

Mormonism believes in three gods. That was the point I was making, that Mormonism believes in three gods,

I'm not Mormon, so what they tried to do in their post -debate was to say, oh, look at all this other stuff that Mormonism holds to.

That's not what I was bringing up. I was bringing up the fact that they say that we believe in three gods. Now, if you're doing a debate, if I was to characterize them as denying the deity of Christ, they would be upset with that.

They would call it out. They would say that that's not what their position is, and the debate would be over at that point.

But they didn't like when I did that, because they're debating their view is biblical, and instead of arguing for their view being biblical, they argued that the

Trinity was something that was made up, it wasn't in the Bible. In fact, they wanted me to give them a verse from the

Bible where I find that, and I gave them the issues. The issue is, and I said this, the

Trinity is a solution to a problem. The problem that we see is you see

God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, all called God, all doing the things only

God could do, all having attributes only God can have, all having titles only God can have, and yet they're separate and distinct.

Now, in their view, they want to say there's one king, monarchianism, the one monarch, and they want to say that that's one person, one

God. And then when I bring out the distinctions, and that's when I debate folks, you don't see me do as you see them try to just throw everything in the kitchen sink at me.

I just deal with a couple of passages. I don't want to deal with everything. Just focus in on a few passages that make the point.

That's why I focused on the baptism, because the baptism was one where you see all three members, and yet they're distinct from one another.

Now, once they said that that distinction was manifestations, that's the same thing.

They're recognizing the distinction. And so that was what we were trying to point out, is that there is one

God, yet there is three persons that are distinct. And that was the whole point that I was trying to make to them.

They recognize that distinction. It's like, okay, well, there you go. Once you recognize that, that was the goal of it, and yet there's one

God. And I had to point out, we believe there's one God. I even typed that into their after show, to their post.

I'm like, you do know Matt and I believe in one God. I mean, the whole argument, even in their after show, was to say, oh, if you look at Deuteronomy 6,

Andrew's Jewish, he should know that's one. I said it was. You know, it was funny because he asked me a question when

I mentioned, I mentioned about the holy, holy, holy, and I said it was there for emphasis.

His first question to me was, you know, I forgot, and he admitted he was being cheeky, you know, when he was like, well, you know, is

God, you know, something he repeated three times. At that point,

I'm like, did you pay attention to what I said? Because I actually said, during the debate,

I said it was, you know, there for emphasis. So I almost, and I'm going to give him a break on that, because I think that we always have to realize in a debate, you're not saying everything you'd like to say.

You know, it's in the heat of the moment, you're thinking, you're trying, you know, you're jotting down notes.

I mean, Matt and I are both writing, you know, constantly during the debate while they're talking. So we're listening and writing to come up with that.

Yeah, there's a lot to do. Yeah, if you've never done a formal debate, it's not as easy as people think as they sit back and just watch.

Yeah, if you want an exercise, listen to a debate and try to take notes from a debate, from what everyone's saying.

You won't be able to do it. Well, you will, but I mean, it's hard. I mean, you have to practice at it, because the thing is, you have to listen and take notes, because you've got to remember anything that you say, you say it's going to come back in cross -examination or in question.

Yeah, so what I mean is you're not going to be able to get everything right. So like in a debate, you're listening, you're taking notes as fast as you can, as clear as you can, as best as you can, and you're listening to what they're saying.

But sometimes there's something that sticks out that you have to address, because that one thing is the thing that characterizes everything else that they're saying.

So then you have to hit that, but you only have so much time in order to do that. So like you're saying, you can't hit everything or say everything that you would like to, so you almost have to pick and choose your timing and what you're saying, and then how to condense that.

So it's really a good exercise in getting your brain going and how to think on your feet.

Yeah, now I know we have our guest backstage. Before we bring her in, Amy is backstage, and she was not able to come in last week because she doesn't have good reception, so she calls from her car.

And so I want to bring her in first, if we can, so that before she has to drop off.

Although she's not on camera, so I hope that she's still there. So let's bring her in. She was. Amy, are you there?

She was previously, but Amy, are you there? Yes, I have not been raptured today.

Well, that's good. That means that you're getting more of your theology from me rather than that slick guy that you called in.

Yeah. I'm enjoying both the same amount. It's not a competition.

Oh, no. Matt and I do definitely have competitions, and it's usually about who can pay for dinner. Amy, next time you call into his program, just ask him how many times he's bought me dinner, how many times

I've bought him dinner. He'll love the question. Trust me. Yeah, but his is way better. I'm into April of 2022, so so far

I've got Matt Slick one and you just numerous. Yeah.

Is it still only one? Yeah, it's still only one in me. We don't know the count.

So for folks who don't know, so Amy contacted us. She emailed the ministry, and I know that she's been binging old episodes of The Rap Report because she's been commenting on them and Apologetics Live.

And I forget, you found us, I think, through Apologetics Live, and from there found

Matt Slick and started following him as well. And we've called his program a couple of times. How did you find us again?

I really don't even remember how the whole thing started. It's just one of those things.

Because I had been listening to True Crime. That's what I've been binging on for six weeks before I found you guys, and I cannot tell you how

I came across it. And it's been a whole new world. And I don't want to waste too much of your time, but my dad was like the cornerstone of faith in our family.

He was the one that everybody went to, and he passed away in 2018. And finding you and Matt has just been amazing.

I've had so many questions answered that I haven't felt I could ask anybody.

And questions I didn't even necessarily know I had, but just listening to you guys has been truly a blessing.

So do you have any questions for us tonight? Okay, well, is it topical?

No, you can ask anything. If it's really hard, we'll bring in our guest and make him answer them. Honestly, what's been on my heart and mind lately is

I'm in a family full of girls. I do have a brother, but I have three sisters, and then I've got 13 nieces and one nephew.

And one of my nieces just started her freshman year of college, and right before college, she came out as practicing homosexuality.

And, you know, I was raised in a Christian home and was taught that that was a sin.

I don't think we ever talked about it a whole lot, like, around her growing up. So I don't know.

But this is a new territory for me. I love her to death, but I'm not sure how to, like, approach the topic of sin and salvation and all of that with her right now.

Well, you could bring up the issue of sin and salvation and never bring up homosexuality. In fact, what

I would say to do is to not bring it up, because she will. So when

I go to the gay pride parades, not that I—I've been to a few of them. I don't go for them.

You know, the couple times I've been to them is because we already planned an outreach, and it happened to be at the same time.

So I have not purposely gone to them to do evangelism.

But when I'm at those, I never bring up the issue of homosexuality, because I don't have to.

I could bring up lying, stealing, coveting, all of those things.

But they will focus on homosexuality. And I'll—the reason I do that is because I will ask them, why are you bringing that up?

Because they know it's a sin against God. That's why they're bringing it up. And so that's why

I don't. I let them bring it up so that I can show that their own conscience reveals that.

And one of the other things I'll ask people— you may already know the answer to this with your knees—

I'll ask them what church they grew up in. Because 10 -plus years ago, you know, 10, 15 years ago, any hardcore atheist, a guy that was just coming out, yeah, there is no

God, I would say, what church did you grow up in? And thousands of times I ask that, only once did someone not grow up in church.

And what it was was that the thing to show you're rebellious against Christianity and really you're rebellious against your parents, your church, your upbringing, was to go atheist.

Now in the last 10 -plus years, it's to go homosexual and then transgender.

And so really what they're doing is they're trying to make this statement against the way they were raised within Christianity.

And that's why you see so many people that are in this, very, very active in that, grew up in a church.

It's because they grew up in a church where they weren't saved and they were trying to rebel against their upbringing.

And they're showing their hatred for Christ by doing this. And so it's actually very easy to bring it up if you don't bring up the homosexuality with her right away because she'll bring it up, but bring up sin, lying, stealing, coveting, you know, well, looking with lust will come up with that.

So it'll be a thing that comes out that way. Does that help?

Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to break the tension, you can always just impersonate

Ray Comfort and just go, so do you believe you're a good person? You got to get the accent right.

Yeah, I'll have to practice a little bit. Yeah. See, you just have to understand something,

Drew. Ray gets away with things. I told Ray, Ray and I were out evangelizing once and we were at Huntington Beach.

He gets done. Scotty was up, then Ray, and then it was me. And I'm sitting there, like afterwards, we're driving back to Ray's house, and I said,

Ray, you get away with things I could never do. This lady, before I got up, there was this woman that was not properly dressed.

You're at a beach, I get it, right? But he gets up on the box because Ray was sharing the gospel with someone and she claimed she was a

Christian and didn't like the way Ray was evangelizing and so she got on the box because she wanted to talk to Ray.

And Ray puts his hand out in front of her, turns his head, and is like, ma 'am, I can't look at you.

You got to dress yourself first. I'm like, if I said that, I would be smacked.

I'm like, how do you get away with it? He goes, because I'm short and I talk properly. So he knows the accent helps.

The Heidi's not that intimidating. It works for him. I can't do that.

I thought it was the button -up shirts and the khaki shorts with the pulled -up socks. That whole look.

Amy, I don't know if you'd feel comfortable, but if you want to give us her name, we could pray for her. We have an audience for folks who are in the chat that regularly,

I mean, we have some real prayer warriors that people usually raise prayer requests in the chat.

And if you don't want to give her name, we know your name and she's your niece, so we could do it that way. Well, I'm nervous because there's only like 10 people in the whole state, and if I give you even just her first name, it would be pretty easy to narrow it down.

Okay. No, her name is Gabby. Okay. So folks be praying for Gabby specifically, be praying for Amy to have opportunities to share the gospel with Gabby.

Yeah, and if I can say, Amy, a lot of times people avoid these situations because they know it's going to lead to an emotional response, and it could lead to an argument, and it could lead to, well, you just don't love me, and a crazy argument like that.

And so people avoid it because they don't want to deal with that kind of confrontation. And so what you have to do is you have to be faithful to God's word, right?

So the best way that you can show that you actually love Gabby is to give her the gospel and to talk with her about these things because what a lot of people do is they don't talk, whether they have a family member or anything like that, they won't address it, they won't talk to anyone.

Well, nothing shows that I hate that person more and I desire them to go to hell than to keep silent about their sin.

Yeah. So it's just one of those things. You have to be faithful to what God's word says and trust the

Holy Spirit to do the work. And I'll also say that because it can get emotional, know that going into the conversation.

So when you start that conversation, know that she may want to avoid it, may want to act out or really lash out emotionally.

When she does that, just remind her how much you love her. You know, the fact that she's behaving this way has nothing to do with how you love her.

And you could ask her about her upbringing because it usually is a direct tie to something she, with most of the people, they didn't like what they considered legalism in their upbringing.

They didn't like all the rules. And this is their way of rebelling and lashing out.

And so you could ask her, you know, could that be? Ask it as a question. But you don't want to get emotional with her either.

Right? Just tell her how much you love her. Right. And I think that is kind of a fear maybe

I hadn't recognized until just now is that I will also get emotional in the sense that, like, why did

I wait for her to, like, come out to make sharing the gospel with her an issue?

Like, it's something I should have done a long time ago. But that's kind of why I preface all this by saying, like, my dad was that guy.

I didn't, you know, when he lost him, it kind of fell apart in a way.

And I never took on that responsibility for myself and I should have. Well, this is the problem with our culture.

It's very hard to keep the kids. I mean, look, if the kids are on TikTok or anyone that's on TikTok.

But, you know, I mean, TikTok is purposely designed by the Chinese government to destroy

America. And they're, you know, in China, they're open about it. You know, they're openly saying that it is a tool they use, you know, to corrupt the generation so that Americans won't have people that are inventing things and stuff like that.

So that we won't have a good, you know, army and things.

So they know what they're doing. They're looking to destroy our culture.

And so it's working. But so it's hard.

And I hope you see that, you know, if you see in the chat, I know you were driving, but if you see in the chat, people are saying they're praying for you, praying for Gabby.

So I hope you see that. Do you have any other?

Go ahead. I'm saying I really appreciate it.

I'm actually at the truck stop right now. I don't want to even get on the highway until the show's done. So I'm going to hang out for a little bit.

All right. Well, I'm going to put you backstage. If you have questions that you want to come in, there is a private chat that you can just let us know and we'll bring you back in.

Does that sound good? Sounds great. Great. All right. So really quickly, before we bring the happy Calvinist himself on,

I want to, I do want to play one clip here. And Drew, you have to let me know if I think

I found a way to get rid of the echo we used to have when I play clips. But I just want to play this.

This is from the Remnant Radio. This is on them responding to the Calvinist documentary because people say that it's me dodging.

I just want to put this on the record. Let's play this. So we have this recorded. This is what they said.

You know, we want to, Michael, you said this already and I'm going to just repeat this. We want to appeal to Les, the maker of the film and other people that were in it as brothers.

I think what has grieved me about the film is how quickly the accusations of false teacher, false prophet and charlatan get thrown out by people in that video.

And I actually think that is divisive. They don't mention cardinal doctrines that any of us who are continuationists have denied.

What they mostly do is talk about prophecies that aren't fulfilled and therefore people are false prophets.

And so, again, I think my hope is that we can have a civil conversation eventually with some of these people.

I think the hardest part for me in a lot of this is we've tried to have conversations with guys like Justin Peters.

We've tried to dialogue on some level. And we've had a few that are willing to show up on the scene like Kosti Hinn and Tom Schreiner.

But the others, they won't come on the show. And part of that reason is they actually think that we're dangerous.

And I think, unfortunately, we're going to say the same. We actually think cessationism is dangerous. And we have a number of reasons for why that's the case.

But that will probably be at the conclusion of whatever this series comes to. So, just for the record,

I want to make sure this is clear here. They said that they're frustrated because they're trying to get people on to have a discussion.

So, for the people who say I'm dodging the remnant radio, I'm right here.

You want to have the discussion? Let's have it. You want to have a debate?

Let's have it. I'm not dodging. I'm not afraid of the discussion.

Not only the debate. I said, here I am. He said, sure.

We're trying to get that together for October. I'm not afraid. I'm not dodging.

I'm right here waiting. We've had several people that said, oh,

I know these guys. I'll get you in touch with them. I have not heard boo. No one has contacted me from there.

I've tried to contact them through their YouTube, the email they have there. But for the constant thing of saying, well, we're trying.

We're trying, but no one's willing to. They admit that they call us dangerous and then say that they're really upset that people call them dangerous.

Okay. No. But let's be really clear. I'm not afraid to have the discussion.

If you want to actually have an honest discussion, let's have it. But I'll call you out if you use logical fallacies.

Logical fallacies are invalid arguments. Maybe that's what they're afraid of. The thing that gets me is the accusation that they just throw out people in our camp.

They just throw out false teacher. How easy it is to throw that title out.

It's actually not. No one that I would say you know or I know throws out the term heretic just on a whim without thinking about it.

So it's because people like us, we actually take the time. We listen to more than one sermon of what some of these people are saying.

We listen to their interviews. We see what they're doing. We see what they're teaching.

And then once we have done our research, then we make the conclusion according to what scripture says.

But he throws out this thing. We've tried to have Justin Peters on to talk about these things. Okay, Justin Peters did the conversation with Sam Storms and Michael Brown.

I don't think he needs to have the conversation with you because he had the conversation with people who are the leader, who

I guess could be considered leaders or heavy hitters of the charismatic movement. So what does it benefit

Justin to go on Remnant Radio anyway? It really doesn't. Well, I would say that it could benefit in furthering the discussion to show the issues.

The issue they had with Sam Storms and Michael Brown was over the fact that those two are, they're kind of more of the intellectual side of the charismatic movement.

Look, when we reviewed - At least you would think until you watch the discussion and you go, how'd you come up with that?

Okay, you're talking about Martin Luther 500 years ago, but you're completely oblivious to Kenneth Copeland today.

What's wrong with you? Yeah, and I guess the one thing that I would say with that is they were appealing to the fact that Justin is the one that's done all this research.

Okay, then why are you not listening to Justin? So I just want to point out that, because I'm still getting comments from people saying

I'm dodging these guys because they're putting out challenges. I'm not dodging.

And the thing I keep saying is, why don't you ask them why they're dodging me? Because look, anyone can come in any week and ask any questions on this program.

You could come in. You want to have a debate on that topic? Come on in. You're prepared for a debate.

I'm not. You have the advantage. I'm not afraid. That's the advantage of having the truth on your side.

I'll just go to scripture and read it. So Andrew, I text you a picture.

Did you get it? Oh, yeah, I got that. Okay, so because Humble Clay made this post,

I want you to share that picture. Let me see if I can. I might have to save it. Because Humble Clay, he said,

Peters and Osmond versus Brown and Storms. Peters and Osmond destroyed their opponents.

And it was a long conversation. And sometimes it was tough to get through. I text Justin afterwards.

And after I watched it, and I said, that was really tough to get through, just listening to Sam Storms and Michael Brown.

Because they just almost refused to hear what Jim and Justin were saying.

But I made this meme after listening to it. And I sent it to Justin, because I knew it was right up Justin's alley.

And it's exactly what I thought about. And he had a good laugh. I actually posted it on Twitter.

So I don't know. I have to pull it. Yeah, yeah. What I got to do is, I have to save it as a picture.

Maybe I could pull it into a Word document really quick. See, the issue is that I don't want to show it.

I'd have to show all of the people I've been texting. So for privacy reasons, I don't want that up on screen.

So give me a moment. That's one thing we're sharing from there.

But now that I have it in a Word document, I just need to make it a little bit bigger.

This is what happens on live shows here, folks, is that you get to hear me talk through what I'm doing so that you go, that's really boring if he's just getting no, saying nothing at all.

So here we go. So this is what you did, and you'll have to explain this. Yeah. So I made this meme.

And on the top is Jim and Justin. And on the bottom is Sam Storms and Michael Brown. And over them,

I gave a name, right? So Jim is Luke, and Justin is Beau. Sam is

Coy, and Michael is Vance. Now, this comes from the Dukes of Hazzard, if you grew up watching the

Dukes of Hazzard. And this, and Justin grew up watching Dukes of Hazzard, loves

Dukes of Hazzard. He and I have had conversations about the Dukes of Hazzard. Luke and Beau are the real

Dukes. They're the real deal. Now, at some point, they decided, the producers, to do away with Luke and Beau and bring in their cousins,

Coy and Vance. And it was the worst absolute failure in TV history.

Okay? Not just Dukes of Hazzard history, but TV history. And so every time - I at least picked the

Luke and Beau. I had no idea who the, when you sent this to me, I'm like, who is

Coy and Vance? So - And so when I sent it to Justin, he had a good laugh and he said, but I really think

Jim should have been Beau and I should have been Luke. And I said, well, I said, that's originally how I had it.

But if you watch the show, you know, Beau is the one who mostly drives the

General Lee and Luke is the passenger. And Justin is the one who's done all the research and he's basically driving that General Lee of the argument.

And Jim is along for the ride. Helping out. So the question is, do

I send this to Michael Brown and ask his thoughts? He might look at it the same way

I did and go, yeah, I don't get the context, but - He might, but -

I'll have to ask him if he watches the show. All right. Let's, we have some comments that were coming in, but before we do, we should bring our guest in who, we should do it right away.

I'm shaving his beard or brushing his beard there. You know, look at that. This is

Claude Ramsey for folks who don't know, and I should take our banner off. So everyone can see what he calls himself. The happy Calvinist is what he calls himself.

The happy Calvinist. Claude, welcome to the program. Thank you. You could just put me backstage.

I'm enjoying listening to you all. You were, I was watching. Wisdom. So Claude, you and I -

Now is that theological wisdom or Dukes of Hazard wisdom? Because we have several. All of it.

All of it together. I was getting that when I saw that, when I saw that meme, I got it right off the bat.

I remember that because I'm an old dude. So I remember the Dukes of Hazard cards, like baseball cards.

And on the back of them, they had pieces of a puzzle, which was the generally jumping something.

And then you had to get all the cards and put them together. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know they had that.

And, and, you know, are you just rubbing it in again? The fact that, so, so we go to this, this conference is the

Open Air Theology Conference. And, and Drew, you have to understand, in every room,

I think I looked like the young guy. And in every room, I was the oldest one.

It was so depressing. That's crazy because I've been in rooms with you, you know, and I know

I'm the young guy. So, and I looked young. We had one guy that I'm like, he's gotta be older than me.

All white hair, white beard. He's like, I'm 36 or 37. I was like, no.

And everyone's like, yeah. I'm like, ah. I think I walked up on that conversation, didn't

I? You walked outside the auditorium doors. Yeah. The entrance way. KT wants to know if you're

Amish. No. He's not

Amish. So you and I met at the Open Air Theology Conference last year.

Yes, sir. And after last year, hearing you preach for the first time, there was one thing that I wanted to make sure in this year's conference.

And when I looked at the agenda, and I said this, if anyone heard my talk there, I said there was just one thing when

I looked, I just said, I was so glad that I was before Claude Ramsey and not right after Claude Ramsey, because if you haven't heard

Claude preach before, he's one of the more passionate preachers. And I really did not want to follow him because after he gets done preaching, it's like, yeah, okay, here's the boring talk now.

And hence, you know, we had Keith get up and he's talking about the different styles of everyone.

And he's, you know, what do you say about Andrew after listening to Claude? He's very professional, professorial, you know, like a professor.

Professorial. Yeah. Like, okay, thanks. I don't even know that word. That's a big word.

So you were talking, so we're at the Calvinist Conference. Why Calvinism was the topic this year.

And your topic was? Why Calvinism matters. So why does it matter?

Well, as I mentioned in the sermon, in the address, number one, because it is a sound, systematic theology that can be held to and looked at.

So it's very, very important. Yeah. I would agree.

I think that I think that we did a really good job.

I mean, the way Jeff really laid it out. That's what I said to Andrew earlier. Yeah.

I mean, it just, it really, he wanted to tell a story. And, you know, it was funny because, you know, you know, last year he put me last because when you do a conference, you're going to put speakers that you want either going to hold people there or get people there.

First and last usually tells you like who you want to hold the crowd or who you want to get the crowd to get early.

And so last year I was, I think I might have been the last speaker before the Q &A or one of the last.

And then, which I, you know, it's always hard because you have to, you're still, like,

I don't know about you, but I'm always prepping until I preach it. So I'm still like thinking about what

I'm going to say, still working on it. We kind of had Kevin Hay did the same thing. We got to make sure Kevin Hay goes there because we shared

Airbnb with with Kevin and a bunch of other guys. And Kevin was just working on his message. I don't know how he was doing it because every night we're sitting there and arguing over theology and he's at the dining room table in the next room just working away.

We're like, you know, every once in a while, I'm yelling, Kevin, what do you think about this? He's like, I'm studying. So I was glad to go first.

It was great. But the reason he had me first is because I did the history of Calvinism kind of lay out really, okay, this is where, how we've gotten to where we are today.

So, you know, with a topic of why Calvinism, your topic was extremely important because, hey, this is why it's important.

You know, then we got into the Calvinism Luther and lots of other things. And Jeff, you know, wrapped it up, you know, trying to make sure

Leighton heard his message to know that Leighton's wrong. But it was, it was a lot of fun.

I, it really was. And that was mentioned in the Drew earlier in the, the fellowship in, in the gospel.

And that's, and that's, what's key. I think too, that everybody was probably expecting, you know, us for us to have pictures of Calvin up on the, on the stage and, and bowing and asking people to ask

Calvin into their heart. But it was just solid, biblical, gospel messages, one right after the other.

There was nobody that could leave there having listened to those sermons and said, this was about Calvin.

No, it was about Christ, Jesus, the Lord. Yeah. Though you would say that reality is,

I think people weren't listening. You had someone, didn't you, Andrew, that, that said something about worshiping

Calvin. Yeah, I did. And, and even though it was in my message, we know that we don't worship

Calvin. We don't find the, the reality is and this was the whole point of the message is what we call

Calvinism didn't originate with Calvin. That's right.

I mean, I tried to show, look, it didn't originate with Luther. It didn't originate with Augustine. It didn't originate with Paul.

It originated with God. Right. We got it. God gave it in the

Bible. We have this from, you know, yes, Paul wrote a lot where we, where we gleaned from, but not, it's not just with Paul, but historically everyone's like, oh, you got it from Calvin.

You worship Calvin. And yet Calvin was dead before the five points of Calvinists of Calvinism existed.

Yeah. You know, it's like, you know, by the way, Arminius was dead by the time of the remonstrance and the five points of the remonstrance that the five points of Calvinism, you know, responded to.

By the way, you know, for those who heard my, my talk, I, I threw a fun thing out there. If you'd be able to say,

I'm so Calvinist, I'd be a six point Calvinist. If there was six points in just for our friend,

Greg Moore, who's a Presbyterian. I, I, I had no, when doing the study,

I realized that the original response to, for folks who don't know. So the, the, the followers of Arminius were known as the remonstrance.

They, they came up with the five articles of the remonstrance. And originally the, the, the followers of Beezer, who is a follower of Calvin, but so Arminius was also a follower of Calvin.

So, but the followers of Beezer ended up having eight points in response to the five points of the remonstrance.

And one had to do with children being saved through the covenant. So I was, I was,

I threw that out there for Greg and he wasn't in the room at the time. I was like, oh, he's here.

He could, he's got his one chance, you know, but he wasn't there to try to help out a

Presby and they're never around. Yeah. Try to throw him a bone. He wasn't there, but, but yeah,

I mean, both Calvin and Arminian were dead at the time that the, that the, what we call the five points of Arminianism and the five points of Calvinism really started.

And the five points, the, of the, the five articles of the remonstrance are not what's held to today.

Like a latent flowers would not hold to the five points of the remonstrance specifically total depravity because they, they, they would hold to a biblical view of total depravity.

And that's why I ended up talking about the, the Calvinism of Jacob Arminius, which, you know, we, we have a private chat with all the speakers.

And when I gave my outline, a bunch of guys were like, what are you going to say for that? I want to hear that point. But, and you know, that's the thing people don't realize is

Arminius thought he was a Calvinist, you know? Yeah. And there's a lot of points, especially early on, he agreed with Calvin, but then he kind of went astray, but nowhere near as far as his followers went.

Amen. You know? And so that's, that's actually why after the response to the remonstrance, all of those

Arminian pastors were considered heretics and thrown out of the church because of what it naturally leads to, right?

Open theism. And so, so all of them were kicked out of the church.

And you can also, you can actually see the history of this in the Calvinist documentary. Yeah. So, so Jody says, asking

Calvin into your heart. Now that's hilarious. But we hear this. I mean, you know, you know,

I mean, I had, I had someone tell me that, you know, I was worshiping

Calvin and I'm like, you know, I read Calvin, but nowhere near as much as I read many other people.

Yeah. Most, and that's the thing, like most people who are reformed in their theology, who would call themselves

Calvinist, they don't spend their time reading Calvin. They may own the institutes and they may glance at them once in a while, but they don't own the complete works of Calvin.

They most likely won't even glance at them because we have other resources, namely scripture that we actually get these doctrines from.

We don't, we actually don't need Calvin. If, if Calvin didn't exist, it just would have been somebody else who systematized it.

And that's only, that's the only reason why it's called Calvinism because he systematized it and it just would have been somebody else.

And, but the doctrine would have still been the same that originated with God, like Andrew says. And that's the thing we have to recognize that Calvin, I mean, he systematized a lot of it, but not in the form that we look at it today.

What people call Calvinism today did not exist in Calvin's time. Right. And one of the things that's even, that's very interesting is people think

Calvinism only deals with predestination and election. They don't understand that the totality of reformed theology deals with the entire council of God, all of sola scriptura.

And, and they wouldn't even know that Calvin only wrote a little bit compared to all of his other writings.

He only wrote a little bit on predestination and election. He wrote a great deal on prayer.

He wrote a lot about the Holy spirit. He wrote a lot about just scripture in general and the church, but they, he only gets labeled as this one thing, predestination and election.

And it goes so far beyond that. Correct. Amen. So, um, yeah,

I, I, I will admit it is always so distracting with the, with the chat. Amy, Amy, who's been binging different episodes of rap report and, and this show.

And, uh, I, I didn't start, so I don't see where it is, but she was referring to my, you know, I always say I'm, I'm reporting.

My last name is rap report. And so KT said, my initials are

ARR. So she says it's R -ism. And so we'll see that rolls off the tongue better.

Oh my. Well, they have the pirate translation of the Bible. You could use that. That could be your, that could be your official translation.

The, the, our translation. Oh, so, so, you know,

I wanted to have you on to, you know, we can keep talking about the conference if you want, because your, your, your talk was, was great.

Um, I did want to have you on because I wanted to talk about something that you and I are involved in, which is passing the torch.

You just got done teaching a class on that. And I wanted to,

I wanted to, you know, talk about what, what haps is trying to do with that.

Um, I wasn't sure when, when he contacted me, I, I kind of thought it was a compliment and then

I realized maybe not. Cause he called me up and said, Hey, you know, we see a lot of young guys that just need some discipleship in apologetics and could really use some guys from, you know, the old guys, you mature guys.

And I went, okay, wait, I first, I thought this was going to be really complimentary, but then I realized, wait, you just called me old.

Like, so the value I offer is that I'm old. Okay. But it's the idea that he wants to get some, you know, and I'll be honest,

I think we in, in the age of social media, when I started out, we didn't have social media.

And apologetics, I do believe has changed. With the advent of, of social media,

Jason cave saying old, old equals wise, yet not always. Jason, if you, if you want, you want proof.

this is Andrew we're talking about here. Well, no, you, cause he just made a blanket statement.

Old equals wise. I can disprove that in one name, Joe Biden.

Okay. Moving on. So what, what he wanted to do is to, to develop something where, you know, we could have some of the older guys have, who've matured in the faith.

I, I forget the passage. I think there's a passage that Paul has maybe in Ephesians.

And then John writes, talks about kind of three stages of, of us, you know, as young men, as fathers, as older men, and kind of pointing a picture that like, when we're young, we first get saved.

It's just like, Oh, like, I just want to, I want to read everything from the Bible and you have that excitement.

And then you get to that stage is the, you know, where you just want to attack falsehood. You want to attack the devil. And then you get to that older stage where you're just loving the

Lord. You know, I think, and there's something to be said about that. And I think it is helpful to have guys who have gone before us who have, are at that stage where they've mellowed out.

They're not the cage stage, taking younger guys under the wing. And, and that's really what happens is trying to do with this.

And so you, you taught your, the course. So I guess that makes you an old guy as well.

Congratulations. You have some white in that beard of yours. I don't have any white showing in my beard.

I'll have, you know, See, now I need to grow mine out because mine does have some gray in there.

So I should have grown it out. So hats could have seen that. And I'd be like, look, see, I'm old too.

This is why I keep mine nice and short, right? There, there was a question in the

Q and a at the conference about the beards. Right. And I was really quick to say, I keep a very nice, short beard.

I have a beard. It's just shorter than yours. That's all. A lot of, a lot of ladies shave.

yeah, it's just, it's just a negative beard, right? It's in the minuses. It just grows backwards.

The man statement. Okay. So what are you?

So, so. Talk about what your experience with passing a torch, what you're looking to give into that, get out of that.

What your thoughts are about the whole school that, that happens is trying to run here. So obviously this is a fantastic idea and that is exactly, you know, how he presented it to all the folks he's asking to teach.

I know there may be some younger guys teaching too, but the point is that with the advent of the accessibility of the interwebs, there's a, everybody wants to be like R .C.

Sproul said, a theologian, right? However, there, there must be wisdom.

There must be, or there must be knowledge of course, but there must be wisdom in the application of the knowledge.

And just because we know something doesn't mean we have to say something at all times. Like what you mentioned earlier to Amy, right?

You don't even have to bring up homosexuality. The fact that you're presenting the gospel and sins brought forth, right?

it's self -identifying, sin is self -identifying really and truly it is. But in that the point was to, to gather these, these men and to, to just one, you know, as far as the interwebs go, one -on -one communicate with these men and pour into these men.

Number one, the scripture, but number two is the love because we're called in the word of God to do good to all men, but to especially them that are of the household of faith and what we don't need to see,

I'm sorry, but what we don't need to see. When I say the passionate preacher, he can't even have a conversation without getting emotional and having some of that passion come out.

Well, what we don't need to see is a bunch of men who have their head full of knowledge, but they saved and they're teaching dead orthodoxy.

And the goal is not to, not to teach dead orthodoxy, nor is it to teach experience over knowledge, but to balance the two, like riding a bicycle.

It's the plainest, simplest illustration of all, but listen, if you lean too far right on a bicycle, you're going to fall over.

If you lean too far left, you're going to fall over. If you stop pedaling, you're going to fall over. And the beautiful thing about being gospel being, and again, this is focused and aimed really, truly our class was at men who felt like they are called to be preachers.

And I stress to the men in which this was a fantastic group of men that we had, but I stress to them the importance of not just wanting to be a street preacher, right?

Because that's kind of the thing. That's a popular thing and it's good thing. It's wonderful. It's needed.

However, when we're talking about being called to preach, we're talking about the local church where the local church congregation is actually getting fed the word of God.

They're not getting fed microwave meals, but they've got, they've got elders.

They've got pastors who are actually laboring in the word. Number one, because they're saved.

Number two, because they love God, because they're saved. And number three, because they love the people that they're preaching to.

Very, very important there. So that, that was the aim and the goal is to communicate those things to those men.

Yeah. No, you, I don't know if you wanted to go through it. You know, I know you had your slides here, so I don't know if you want to go through that.

We do. I do. We do have a couple of questions that came up earlier. We could, before we get to your slides, maybe we should bring some.

So this is a lengthier question. I don't know who, who asked this because it says Facebook user, which is usually haps, but Andrew, can

I get real quick because it brought this, what cloud was just saying, brought this to my mind.

And it's, it's a command from Paul in second Timothy chapter four. And it begins in verse one where he says,

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead by his appearing in his kingdom.

And then he goes into the command is to preach the word. But why do you preach the word?

Because you are in the presence of God and you are in the presence of Christ. Therefore, how you preach the word matters.

And then the character of the man, which Paul addresses in first Timothy.

Yes. Matters. That's why he gives characters and then one skill to teach, but everything else is a characteristic trait that you must have.

And if you don't have that, get out of the pulpit. Amen. You have such strong views.

I'm still controversial. All right. So this is back,

I think from, from the conference. So, you know, someone, we're talking about the conference.

So I'm sorry to cover Claude up there with the question. It's just Facebook users said, who is Kevin Thompson? He's got latent with him nodding in approval to this.

Here's, here's what Kevin said to, to latent like three weeks ago.

Quote, if you're elect, you're saved regardless of whether Christ died.

And if you're not elect, you're not saved regardless of whether or not Christ died.

So that seems to be the only piece of information that would actually constitute good news for a person.

And that is never listed as good news in scripture. So I see a mismatch, what the

Bible calls the, and then it got cut off. So who is

Kevin Thompson? Do you know? I mean, I only know the reaction we had at the conference where he was kind of, you know, he was recording the, the debate when he wasn't supposed to be.

Oh, is that who that was? Yeah, that's who that was. And, you know, he put it up on, on social media when he wasn't supposed to.

And yeah, but I never, I've never met him. I didn't know anything about him. Do you know anything about him?

Not right off the top of my head. Okay. So sorry, Facebook user. We, we, your, your quote was too long.

So we didn't get the whole thing. So, but Matt is saying, thank you for addressing the comment by Kevin Thompson.

The guy, Kevin is wild. Okay. Don't don't know.

And if Amy's still listening, if she had, she had a question backstage, I was just going to bring her in, but she dropped out.

So if she comes back in, we'll we'll let her come in and ask it. So Melissa asked this humbly.

I could not believe how condescending Sam storms was not to mention that Justin kept getting cut off mid sentence by both of them.

That is something that was, yeah,

I don't know if he was being, Justin was definitely being cut off a bunch in that discussion where discussion we're talking about is the discussion of Justin Peters, Jim Osmond with,

I almost said latent flowers, although they do have the same view, but Michael Brown and Sam storms.

So one, one thing that is different when you have a discussion versus a, a debate, a discussion is more free flow flowing, sorry, free flowing.

And I will, I will give kind of a, you know, maybe a, an excuse for Michael Brown because being

Jewish, Michael being Jewish, myself being Jewish, I understand how Jewish people argue. And so there are times where it's,

Hey, let me just jump in for clarification, jump in for clarification. And Justin is kind of a, a good old

Southern boy. So he's, you know, he's more polite. And so, yeah, they were cutting him off quite a bit.

And so it, it did make it where I think if, I think if there had been a moderator to, to just to allow people to have the time to finish a thought, that would have been better.

And you could still have the discussion. They wanted it. They didn't want it as a debate. So, okay.

I see Amy back in, don't let me bring her up. And she could ask, so Amy, are you there again?

Maybe she's not. She's muted. Okay. We'll leave her up.

And Amy, just unmute yourself and pop in when, whenever you want and to ask your question.

And if not, I'll just read your question, but put this one up. Melissa S said to Drew, I enjoy the short videos that you've been posting on Facebook.

Very edifying brother. Wait, you must've you, you started this one. So I would read it. Wow. Okay. Hey, your arm hurt.

I took a page out of Andrew's playbook is what I did. Oh, is that what I do? Okay. They are encouraging.

I've been watching. There's some sermons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So some of them are very good.

So, so most of the time, whenever I'm asked to preach, it's not recorded or if it is recorded, it's very bad quality.

So the ones that are, I try to get them cut up into little short snippets. That might encourage people.

And then there's ones from a lecture series that I gave on.

It's called the foundations of expository preaching. And what's funny is Claude, what you were talking about, what you were teaching.

The very first lecture is about, are you called to preach? And it goes through the characteristics of, are you called to preach?

And I think I did that three years ago when I, when I first gave that, that lecture series.

And then I have, and then I have people randomly that ask me questions and I'm, I'll try to make short videos to answer their questions.

So why don't you make short clips out of this show here? Would you like me to do that?

I can do that. Sure. I can do that for you. Cause on my tick talk, I do have ones where the one where just Chris helped me host.

And it was me, Chris and Justin. So I have some clips of that, but I'll, I'll get some from this, from this episode. So Kevin Schaefer has a question here.

What do you think about someone who is attending the church and started their own

Bible study without any communication with the leadership? I'll go first and I'll let you guys jump in on this.

I would have a lot of questions for you, Kevin first, who's involved in the Bible study is going to be the first thing.

If, if the Bible study is made up mostly of people from the church, then

I would have a real issue that they didn't go through leadership. Okay. If you're, if you're looking to have a

Bible study with the church, the church you attend and not have it as part of the church,

I would have concern with it. Now, let me just say a lot of people think, well,

I just started Bible study. What's the big deal is from a pastoral perspective. And a lot of people sitting in the pews don't understand what goes through pastor's mind and what pastors have to deal with, because a lot of things pastors deal with, they keep within the leadership, right?

They don't go sharing when there's problems in the church. And so there was a lot of times that you have people who start a, a

Bible study, and then the Bible study becomes a real problem for the church. It's the, a lot of times it's the first step of a church split.

Someone that gathers people for a Bible study, they start talking bad about the leadership, something they don't like.

And then that's the cause of a split. And so for that reason, if, if they're doing it without the leadership's knowledge, if they're doing it purposely, that's a real problem.

Because if they're trying to, you know, if, if I, as a pastor have someone that's doing a

Bible study in the church and they don't want it as part of the church, but they're inviting the church,

I'm instantly, I'm going to have red flags and I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, as a pastor,

I would put a stop to that. And I've, I've had other pastors do the same thing and I've counseled other pastors to do that.

If they're purposely not wanting it to be a church function or under church leadership, but they do want to have it with church people, that's concerning.

Okay. If it's just a Bible study with, you know, like I know people I've gone to church with people that had a

Bible study in their old church and they came to our church and they still do that Bible study.

And some of the people from our church attended the Bible study. And it's not, it's not a church specific thing.

I think it's okay to do that. I still would argue that you, you do that through your pastor.

Your pastor should know about it. So I attend the church. My pastor knows that I do this show every

Thursday night. He's aware of it. He's aware and, and prays for, you know, like we'd have debates or different topics that come up.

He'll be praying for that because I'm accountable to him. Now, have I been doing this show longer than I've been to that church?

Yeah. Do I have to do that? No, I don't have to do that. But it is a way of showing the respect to the pastor.

If you've been listening to my Rap Report podcast, Andrew Rapwort's Rap Report, just search

Rap Report, rap with two Ps. I've been going through a series on what is a pastor.

We got two more episodes left, at least I think, that is dealing with what

I'm going to deal with, how to encourage your pastor. Do you know how encouraging it is to, for your pastor to let him know that you're going out of town for a week or two?

So he doesn't wonder where you are. People don't think about that. But when all of a sudden there's a

Bible study that starts happening, a pastor hears about it and usually hears about it because something was said in the

Bible study that someone else comes to the pastor and brings up and it's like, hey, what do you think about this pastor?

And he's like, wait, this study is going on and who's teaching it? Right? A lot of times when that happens, it's someone that the person knows the pastor would not let him teach, but he wants to teach.

And that becomes a problem because the pastor may have a reason for that person not teaching.

And that person, because often what you have is people who are looking to pray on the church and they come in and they,

I mean, I've seen this as a pastor and as just a church member, people that come in the church and they just look for, they want to gather a following within a church.

And so if you have someone doing a Bible study without communicating it to leadership or with their blessing,

I'd be concerned. In fact, and Drew, you know this because you filled out our paperwork. To be part of the

Christian podcast community, one of the questions we want to know is who's your pastor? Right?

We want to know, does your pastor, we have a question. Does your pastor know you're doing this podcast? And we've had people go, my pastor doesn't know that.

Well, go talk to him first. You know? We want to make sure people are doing a podcast.

That's not a church Bible study. But we want to make sure that your pastor is aware of it and is saying, we bless this.

So I'll throw this out, Claude. I don't know if you're a pastor. What would be your thoughts? Well, that would be looking at the question.

So number one, are they attending the church or are they members, are just attending or are they members of the church?

Because it goes back to what you said. They're just looking to draw a following. And then as being a church member, they should have been made aware before they joined the church that the standards of the church, right?

Basically, not just the confessional statements of the church, but the constitution of the church, the makeup of the church, the government of the church, how things are set up, who is allowed to teach, who is not allowed to teach biblically, so on and so forth.

So that would be one of the questions I would ask the individual. Are they members or are they just attenders of the church?

And then if they're starting their own Bible study, is there a reason why maybe they've started that Bible study?

Maybe they've got questions or concerns, and again, not going straight to the negative, but maybe they genuinely have questions and concerns that they're trying to answer on their own without spiritual wisdom and leadership from the elders of the church.

Yeah. So, I mean, instantly, my first thought in reading that question was, if they're not communicating with the leadership, that's a problem.

So if you're going to do it with people in the church, you must go through church leadership.

If you're doing your own outside of the church, you must go through church leadership if you're a member of that church.

Now, I saw it where I was a member of a church. They asked a guy who had, he and his wife, they were doing worship at the church, but they also had four teenage children, and they asked him to do a lead a

Bible study, a home group, and they didn't want to do it, but instead what they did without anyone at the church knowing it was they started a home group, but it was for teens.

And so they started pulling some of the kids from the youth group, right? And so, but what does he want to do?

He doesn't want to have that church oversight in what he's doing. So red flag, right?

But I mean, you guys hit on all the major points. I don't really have much to add to it. Are they qualified to teach?

This person, they may not be an elder, but do they at least meet the qualifications of an elder to where we can trust them to be, to lead a

Bible study, something like a Bible study. Yeah, I think you guys hit on all the major points.

Well, you know, excuse me, you know, the thing is, is that what we, we have to have in, in things like this is, is really, you know, something like what

I had this morning, a nice cup of integrity that I got from my squirrelly coat

Joe's coffee. It was good. I had some, it was, it's a, it's a cashew honey molasses, milk chocolate flavoring.

And it was great. I had a great cup of integrity this morning. You know,

I, it's just something you have to have in. And so now you,

Claude, you enjoyed the coffee that we had there at the conference, right? Well, I'm not a coffee drinker.

I'm not tough enough to drink coffee, but I did give that bag of squirrelly

Joe's coffee away at our 1689 study, which we have on Sunday nights. I usually get bonus points for folks answering questions, but then, but actually gave a real prize.

So, yeah. Yeah. This is, this is good. You know, good coffee. And yet you're supporting a

Christian. So a family run business. So that's good. But, you know,

I do have a question, you know, maybe you guys can help me out. You know, if you guys want to get folks, if you want to get yourself a good cup of coffee, go to striving for eternity .org

slash coffee. To order your, your coffee from squirrelly

Joe's. And if you use the promo code SFE, you get 20 % off on your first purchase.

So what you do is you go in the way it is, is that when you go to, you felt that your order at the checkout, there's a little thing at the top to click on, to open up the box, to put in your promo code of SFE that lets them know that you, you heard about it here.

So he will keep supporting the show. So please go get lots of coffee. You get a good night's sleep with your, my pillow using the promo code

SFE at my pillow .com. But when you wake up in the morning, you might need to get a good wake up.

I would say good to a good cold plunge. It lasts longer than coffee, but about 90 minutes after you wake up, having a little caffeine is good.

Get yourself some good squirrelly Joe's coffee. But, you know, I see a problem and, and folks in the chat, maybe you can help me out.

I would, I'm appealing to you. If I could do a poll, I would do it. You know, it's squirrelly

Joe's coffee. And, and does there seem to be a possibly, I don't know, maybe this is a copyright issue.

You know, there look at this, this is the squirrel chatter and squirrelly Joe's coffee logo.

I'm just wondering whether I, you know, did squirrel chatter copy from squirrelly Joe's.

I mean, he keeps on, you know, on squirrel chatter. If you listen to that podcast, gene client continuously talks about, you know, squirrelly

Joe's coffee. So, you know, I have a suggestion. I have a suggestion. I think maybe that, that he, he, he copied the logo that, you know, maybe

I could be wrong. I mean, it could be that, you know, but, but maybe squirrelly

Joe's should just solve the problem. And just here you go. Stick gene clients face right on there.

There you go. That's, that's how he should have that, that squirrelly Joe's coffee is to have it with, with gene clients arm around the cup.

There you go. Hey gene, that's what you should do. Maybe if you did that gene, you could then get your, you know, squirrelly

Joe's saying, Hey, we want to, we want to support your show. By the way, I do think this is kind of interesting.

I'm showing there a bag of honesty. Can, can anyone figure out what's wrong with this picture?

The bag of honesty. What type of coffee is that? Decaffeinated. Decaffeinated.

What is wrong with this picture? The coffee. Not real coffee. Is dishonest.

It's not real coffee. Got, I got to talk to squirrelly Joe about that. You know, he's got one that is half caffeinated and half decaffeinated.

For those people that don't want the full caffeine, that one's called responsibility. I, I'm not sure that's really responsible to be half and half.

You know, I'm just saying, help me out folks. To have half and half, half caffeinated, half decaf.

I mean, that that's like trying to live in the world and be in Christ at the same time. I mean, it just doesn't work.

So, so quick poll. Who thinks that. Gene client squirrel stole squirrelly

Joe's logo. We'll do a poll out there. I think there's actually a way I could do a poll within at least on YouTube through, through the app.

I thought there was a way we could do that, but I don't know how to do it offhand. but, but yeah, so go get yourself a good, a good cup of squirrelly

Joe's coffee. I hope that you'll enjoy that. I've been enjoying mine.

Like I said, we, I went to my daughters and I brought a bag of integrity out there. So we had that. That was good.

So, all right. Let me see if we could bring Amy in.

Now I'll bring her in and see, Amy, if you want to unmute yourself and then you could ask your question.

Oh, I just see in the private chat. She says, I can hear you now. Okay, there you go. You are muted.

So Amy, go ahead. I know you, you are muted. Cause we hear a hissing, but we don't hear

Amy. All right. I'm going to mute you until.

Figure out what, what's wrong with your mic and then let us know in the private chat. I will read the question she had for us.

And it was actually a clip. I think she's referring. She said, Nolan, and I don't think it was,

I'm not thinking it was Nolan, but then again, she's binging old episodes. So she said,

I listened today to the debate with Nolan. I think I I'm trying to remember that the pastor from the

Christ church of Christ, a pastor that we had it start Norm. I think it was a

Norman. Yeah, that was pastor Norm. Norm. So that's who I think she's referring to.

Cause I don't remember a Nolan, but it with my memory. Yeah. So she says the debate with Nolan.

Okay. She just said, yes, Norm. Okay. So with, so debate with pastor Norm from the church of Christ, one question

I had, if, and when you have time, if someone like him is still saved since they believed, even if they're attached works to it, or what about people under his care that don't know any different?

So the issue for folks that don't know Norm, and that's the clip that I played actually in the very beginning,

Norm was the guy that believed you needed to be baptized to be saved. And that's where he called me a very skilled debater because all of a sudden he got trapped.

He got trapped because he said that, you know, he realized that he's saying that the gospel is essential and that it's the only thing.

And then I bring up baptism and he realizes he wants to say that baptism is essential also.

And he got stuck. And instead of trying to, I'll give him the credit instead of trying to just come up with some nonsense like lean flowers would do.

He just realized he was caught. And he just passed it off as, well, you're a very skilled debater and you're very good at what you do.

Uh -huh. But I would say this to the question, Amy, what you have there is you have someone who

I don't think you can be saved believing that your works save you.

And so if his, you can be confused, people under his care could believe in a biblical gospel and believe that they're getting baptized because it's commanded.

But if they believe that they're saved because they got baptized, not because they believed in Christ, that becomes a difference.

And, you know, let me play the longer version of that with Norm so that you could hear how, you know, this is, well,

I got a three minute version or a minute and a half version of it. So let's do the minute and a half. But you'll hear how he gets trapped because he realizes he's believing in something other than just the gospel.

And so if they're believing in something that's works -based, in Galatians Paul says that is anathema.

It's another gospel. And this is what he says in Galatians chapter one, starting in verse nine and verse 10.

He says, or is it, sorry, it's verse eight and nine.

He says, but if we or an angel from heaven could preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.

As we've said before, and I say again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.

And it works. And he's saying this to people. Now, I don't argue that Paul is saying that angels would come down and preach a different gospel unless they're demons.

Right. But he's using exaggeration there. That's Paul's style. He's saying, if anybody does this, even if an angel does this, okay.

So he's doing it for emphasis. And so he says they should be accursed. He's speaking to people in this book, in Galatians, Amy, he's speaking to people who got saved, but then these

Judaizers, Jewish people that were so used to the traditions of Jewish law, they were telling the

Gentiles when they come to Christ. Well, yes, you believe in Christ, but you have to be circumcised.

You have to live kosher. And that's what Paul is addressing in this book is people who are saying you have to be under the law doing works.

And so he's saying it's accursed. It's a different gospel. It's the strongest word he could use to say that they're accursed.

And therefore I would say that if you have someone that's teaching a message like Norm was doing, that baptism is required for salvation.

No, he can't be saved. And the people under him that are believing what he believes, that their baptism saves them,

I think would be in the same boat. But I think there could be people that read the

Bible and get saved and have a proper view of what the scriptures say, that they're saved by grace alone.

Do you have anything you want to add to that? Or should I play the clip so you know what we're talking about?

I can glean from the context of the question and what you've said there. And I think it's important for us to consider and to understand the sovereignty of God in the matter of salvation, that certainly false teaching, like what that man is doing, is damnable heresy because it's adding works to making works the requirement of salvation rather than salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, which is justification by faith alone in God alone.

I think it's important for us to keep in mind, though, false teaching is dangerous and it's deadly, but God is so sovereign that he is able to save folks despite false teaching.

So we should never, never let up on the striving for the necessity of sound doctrine.

But we should also consider and remember that even in the midst of folks sitting under false teaching like that, that God is able to save them.

And there will be some that I would say that God would save. That does save despite the false doctrine.

But it's the exception rather than the norm. And so I think that's one of the heavy burdens that's placed on pastors, that when we stand before a congregation and we open the word of God to our congregations and teach people, to the congregation, the local church, or even here again on the

Internet, when we do that, there's a great and a heavy responsibility that anybody who opens their mouth in the name of God needs to stop and think about before they do or say anything.

And I was laughing because that pun, I think, was unintended when Claude said that it's the exception, not the norm.

Speaking of pastor norm. Maybe the exception, not the norm.

It's funny because I didn't even catch it. Now it's even funnier. Amy said, he really was not going to loosen up and listen.

I felt embarrassed for him. It was a bit uncomfortable. Yeah, it got uncomfortable for him because he got caught.

Really, I mean, our discussion. Drew, were you on that one? I was listening.

I was in the comments. So that was, I remember because those conversations took place when my wife and I were living with my in -laws, and we didn't really have good

Internet reception or anything. So I couldn't be on, but I was in the comments. And yeah, it was hard because what you were saying, he just didn't want to hear.

And so he kept trying to force his view in there, even though he kept contradicting himself.

And you kept pointing it out, and you kept saying, well, wait, wait, wait, no, you can't have that. And it was just rough to listen to on his part.

Yeah, well, I mean, so maybe we'll play the longer version of this so that people get context.

Because we want to talk about Apologetics for the Next Generation, right? And Claude, this is what we're trying to do. Pass on the wisdom, learning from our mistakes, pass that on to the next generation.

And what I tried to do in this was, so as we listen, let me give what

I was trying to do so that you can, as a listener, you hear and you know what to listen for now.

What I was trying to do is, and I do this often, I want to take, if someone is arguing

A, what I want to do is go over to B. See if there's agreement on B, something that contradicts

A. Get him to argue that he believes in B, which contradicts A. And when he does that, then bring

A back into the discussion. So in this discussion, what I'm arguing is, what is the essential of, you know, is, basically is the gospel, is believing in Christ the essential?

Is that all that's needed? And when he agrees to that, then I bring baptism back into the discussion to say, okay, then how do you need to be baptized to be saved?

And that's when he realized he got stuck. So, well, let's give a listen.

I'll give this longer one in context. If Christ's death on the cross was not sufficient, it requires your baptism.

I never said that, and I wouldn't say that. And it's, you know, extremely offensive to attribute that to me.

Okay, so you're saying that Christ's death was sufficient, right?

That's all that we need. Not only sufficient, but the only thing that could be done for my salvation. Okay, so let me pause it there for a second.

Notice there was something I said. He said, no, that's not what I'm saying. What am I doing?

I'm trying to clarify. This is something teaching the next generation. This is what, you know,

Claude and I want to try to teach the next generation, right? You don't just go arguing for something, you know, stopping at clarification.

I'm trying to stop him, get clarification. Now I'm realizing, okay, let's clarify what is, what's necessary for salvation.

That's the whole thing. Is baptism necessary? Let's get clarification. That's what I was trying to do. And now let's see if I can play it again.

Baptism then, because it's the only thing. Is it, is it the only thing or is it not?

Do you need to be baptized or not? Because if you need to be baptized, it's not sufficient. It is true that you are an extremely skilled debater and you're good at eyeing, you know, things around.

So they get pretty twisted up. Now, was it pretty twisted up? It was, right?

Then this guy, he said that his, he's saying that it's the essential thing is

Christ. And then it's, well, what about baptism, right? When you bring a back in, he's, he's stuck.

And this is what ends up happening with it is he wants to go off on, on different tangents. Now he, right.

That was the clip that I played at the very beginning, but here's how it ended up going after that. You're very skilled at it.

I'm just asking you the same question. You're very skilled at it. So this is, this is what

I have been consistently saying. I've not been inconsistent in anything I've said. This is what I've been consistently saying, that the gospel is the death burial and resurrection of Christ on the cross for my sins.

That's the gospel. Paul said that we obey the gospel. We obey that form of doctrine delivered to us.

We obey the gospel when we are, are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins so that we can be raised to walk with him in newness of life.

And that's Romans chapter six. Okay. So, so that again, you didn't answer it. What you said is fine.

Just doesn't answer the question. Okay. So what did I do right there? This is the thing, you know, like this program here is to train you to do apologetics.

That's what we're doing here. This is why we break things like this down. What I'm doing at that point is you can let a person go.

Just when they get caught, this is what they do. They're just ramble for a long time and hope that they're, they ramble long enough that you forgot what your original question was.

So you don't ask it again. Okay. And so what I do is I know when people do that and I'll do exactly that.

If you've watched this program enough times, you've seen me do that here. I just go, okay.

You didn't answer the question. Let's get back to the question. That's what I did. That's good to do.

Yeah. Andrew, you're so good at debate. You're, you're good at twisting things up.

The problem is you didn't twist anything up. All you said was, is this sufficient and all we need?

And he said, yes, this is sufficient, right? That agreeing with B yes, this is sufficient.

Okay. So then we don't need a, well, you're good at twisting things up.

I've been consistent. Well, no, you haven't. You just said you agree with this, but that's not, that's not what he said when he first came on.

And the whole point of his argument is that you must have baptism in order to be safe to the point that you made to him.

Well, then the gospel is not sufficient. Then is it right? That's not twisting anything.

That's not even, you don't even have to be a skilled debater to do that. All you got to do is just listen and pay attention to what he's saying.

And then just ask the question, right? Just re -ask it again. I mean, it's folks to do apologetics.

It's not that you have to have some skills in debate in, in how to make arguments, how to, you know, a lot of it's just listening and, and knowing to ask questions.

You know, Matt said he tried to say he got tricked, but really he tricked himself via fallacy argumentation.

Yeah. So let me play, I'll play the rest of it. I'll ask it again. Okay. Please do.

Was Christ, so you're saying Christ's death on the cross was sufficient, right? Absolutely.

100%. What do you mean by sufficient? I mean that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is what was necessary to pay the price for my sins.

Was it all that's necessary or just partially? Okay. I'm going to stop it there.

Why did I ask that question? For clarification. Exactly. I'm trying to get clarification on, and what

I'm doing is breaking it down in parts, right? So let's deal with this in small pieces.

Then let's get one thing. Cause he, he, you notice the pause that he had there. He knew he was trapped.

He wants to say Christ. What Christ did on the cross was sufficient. Nothing else is needed, but he also wants to say baptism is needed and he can't reconcile those two.

And it may be the first time he's been challenged with it because a good thing to do is to break things down into smaller pieces.

So let's let me, I'll play the rest of it then. What's up? If Christ's death on the cross was not sufficient, he requires your baptism.

I never said that. I started all the way over. Sorry. Well, we heard it.

We heard enough of it. I want to get to what I want to get to the, to, uh, passing the torch.

Cause I know you, you brought some of your notes up, Claude. So you want me to share those?

Yes, sir. So, so, I mean, I, just to say that, you know, the, the idea when we're doing, doing, uh, debates or, or apologetics, making an argument, we have to be listening to what people are saying.

And sometimes what we have to do is help them listen to themselves. Yeah. You know, that's part of it is, is just exposing.

And that's what questions do is to expose the problems in their thinking, you know, and that's really what you're doing, what you're doing in the clarifying is you're exposing to him the power that his presuppositions have on him.

Right. And so, so all of us who, when we first got into presupposition, presuppositional apologetic, we've all heard kind of the analogy story of the guy who thought he was dead.

Right. Where he thought he was dead. They kept asking him, why do you think you're dead? And he goes, well,

I don't, I just believe that I'm dead. And so eventually they take him to the doctor. And the doctor says,

I know how to, I know how to convince this guy. Do dead men bleed? He says, well, no dead men don't bleed.

So they prick his finger, blood comes out and he says, what do you think of that? And he goes, huh? Dead men do bleed.

Right. That's the power of the presupposition. And so the point of Andrew breaking it down like that is to say, okay, let's start here.

Do you agree with this? And then just move step by step by step. Cause then you say, if you agree with this and this is sufficient, meaning this is all we need, then by logically we don't need this.

This is not sufficient. Therefore we don't have to have this in order to be saved.

If Christ is all we need. So we want to get to, so we talked a little bit about this earlier, right?

The passing of the torch. The idea of this is for us old guys, thanks

Haps, to teach younger guys, which I think is important. I think it's good. And so you did a class on, well, you called it the art of prophesying and the, and the calling of the ministry.

William Perkins. Yes. Yes. In our textbook. Probably a third of the book was our textbook.

So yeah. And you know, you wanted to go through a little bit of what you taught and I think this would be helpful.

So they put out an appeal. If there's some younger men, I don't know if women are allowed to be part of a class.

Yes, okay. So if there's young, if there's some younger men or women that would like to be participating in this, in this school, where, you know, we're training up people, get, you know, contact, contact me and I'll get you in touch with Haps, you know, to get in touch with me, just email me at info at striving for eternity .com

info at striving for eternity .com. That'll get to me and I'll send you over to Haps.

So Claude, what, so you wanted to go over a little bit of what you had taught during this, the course that you had.

So. So just a very quick run through basically. And this is a blurb from the back of the book.

Sinclair Ferguson had posted or made this and he actually wrote the, wrote the forward to,

I believe, but he said a few things are more evident in contemporary churches than the decline in the importance attached to what is said from their pulpits, which was what some of the things that's been talked about tonight, of course, and you talk about them regularly, but the deeper tragedy he said is that in many places, the church has become a

Valley of dry bones. Something is needed to waken the dead and to breathe new life into the people of God.

Again, the title of the book, the art of prophecy catches folks off guard because of the miss defining of the term and the idea of what biblical prophecy is in our day and in our time, particularly the last hundred, hundred and 50 years or so.

But I mean, I know it goes back even further than that, but still yet, still yet, when we talk about prophecy, we are actually talking.

Let me get to that slide real quick. So prophecy again, in definitional terms, understanding what we're talking about, context contextually is very important, but the study of prophesying involves a commitment of the mind to acquire the ability to exercise prophecy rightly.

So with prophecy is we're talking about the word of God. And if the exclusive subject of preaching is the scriptures, then we're pointing to the scriptures.

So there needs to be a, an ability to rightly divide the word of God really.

So that was one of the things that we, we communicated to the guys every week was when you think of a synonymous terms, when you think of prophecy, think preaching so that you don't get it confused or mixed up.

When we preach, when we prophesy as claimers of the gospel, we it's a solemn public utterance.

It's a serious thing. Again, we mentioned that earlier and I'll move right through this, but it's always related to the worship of God.

That's key related to the worship of God and the salvation of our neighbors. So when we hear the term prophecy from a

Christian perspective, we should always understand it to be what was spoken by God through the prophets and the apostles in relation to that's the connecting term there in relation to the redemptive work of Jesus, both past present and future.

It always points us to the Messiah. And again, going to the important and significant nature of the local elders and pastors in the church, the function of preaching, it's instrumental in gathering together all of the elect because the church as in Philippians, you were talking about Philippians earlier before we started the podcast and not, but, but that's the thing that the gospel has to be our rallying point.

It has to be our center. It has to be our, uh, our gathering place. It has to be our focus, the gospel.

And what happens when we focus on a right interpretation of the scriptures? The second of the twofold value of preaching happens.

It drives away the wolves from the fold. So you get to a situation where maybe like the question that was asked, somebody's teaching their own

Bible study, right? Without, without any supervision, without any direction, why may, maybe again, maybe they just don't know, or maybe they just don't like what's being communicated and taught if it's solid, uh, sound biblical doctrine.

But what happens when we do rightly interpret the word, it drives away the wolves from the fold of God.

And again, basic things, two parts of interpretation of the scripture, two parts of interpretation of the scripture.

Number one, the preparation of the sermon that has to be done. That is a necessity. And then the preaching of the sermon, you should never try to preach the sermon before you made preparation for the sermon.

I mean, it's pretty, pretty straightforward. That's funny you say that because what comes to my mind is everyone that says,

I had a sermon prepared, but the Lord spoke to me and gave me such and such.

You can do that if you have, I mean, I have done that at times where I I've done the study.

So I have the notes and it, you know, so I, that's okay. But more, what I was laughing at was the, the fact that, you know,

I, I know people that literally tried to tell me that I'm wrong in doing all the prep that I do for a sermon.

How did the Holy Spirit move? You got to, you just got to get up there and let the spirit lead you.

Yeah, no, that's called rambling. Right. And then, and that comes down to a terminal, terminological issues to, you know, miscommunications throughout history and time and just culture.

Like, you know, I came up at country churches, right. And I heard that all the time, but to understand,

I think it's more correct not to say, because I, I mean, as a young preacher,

I had to go back, you know, long years ago, I'd said that before. And I had done that. However, as you grow and you mature in the

Lord, it's not wise to say, it's not, it's not wise to say,

I'm not gonna, I'm not going to go with my preparation. I'm not going to go with my teaching because I don't feel like it's the right thing to do.

Right. But unless, unless contextually there are things that come up and that's actually one of the things here,

I'll move to that slide. So it's this, it's application of the, of this preparation, the skill by which the doctrine, which has been properly drawn from scripture is handled in ways that are appropriate to the circumstances.

Certainly there are circumstances. And again, the focus is the local church. Now all everybody has nowadays on the internet is a conference sermon mentality.

Many folks negate and lessen the importance and the significance of the local congregation.

But this is what we're talking about in this class to these guys is that there are appropriate circumstances to bring up and to communicate different things in a local congregation.

Why? Well, because there are circumstances in a local congregation that may not be happening everywhere all around the block or all around the world.

It's particular to that congregation, like with the Corinthians in the

New Testament, right? There were particular things that Paul addressed that we have preserved for us in the text.

So going on, because I know it's about time. I don't want to take any more time than necessary, but passionate theology, passionate theology.

This is something that, this is one of the things that I feel very strongly about. And it's, and I'll just read this

Perkins. It's a quote from Perkins, but he said, ministers are few in number, then do all you can to increase their number.

The greater the number, the lighter the burden on each individual man. So let every minister, both in his teaching and his conversation work in such a way that he honors his calling so that he may attract others to share his love for it.

And what we communicated in this particular class, when we, when we quoted that was this, that the church, the weight and the burden of a local congregation is not all on the elders and the pastors, but it is truly carried by the believers in Christ.

And so what the minister has a responsibility to do is to demonstrate both by his conversation, his practice, his, his orthopraxy, his life, and also in his preaching, that this is not a burden.

Listen, if a man says he's called of God and is pastoring a church, and I understand that there are times that things get heavy and things get hard and things get out of control.

But if a man stands in the pulpit and he preaches not of, as a matter of fact,

I want to, I want to read first Corinthians. Oops. Sorry. First Corinthians chapter nine.

I believe it's verse 15. Let me get there. Paul said this. He said, uh, wait, sorry.

One chapter. I can quote it.

He said this. He said, to quote the King James, yet though I preach the gospel,

I have nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid upon me. And yes, woe unto me is if I preach not the gospel.

A man cannot, a man called of God can't get out from underneath the calling of the ministry.

He will die before he does that. Because God has determined this to be so.

And God intends to use this man in a way that it's going to edify and to encourage the body of Christ.

So the, the man of God should be, uh, should demonstrate to the congregation, to the people that we're preaching to that it's not a burden.

Again, we talked about some different, uh, applications, practical applications, instruction, correction, uh, and then, um,

I believe it was the class before the last, the seventh or eighth class, but we talk, we, we walk the, the folks, the men through first Corinthians two, uh, two essentials to preaching the word, the hiding of human wisdom and the demonstration of the spirit.

Again, clarifying that the hiding of human wisdom is not, uh, neglecting to get knowledge and wisdom, but it's understanding that we don't stand when we proclaim the gospel.

We do not stand bragging or standing on what we think we understand and what we know, but we are standing on what is, what is written, what is said, what is done and what is certain and for sure that is unfailing and that is unflinching.

That's what it means to not hide, uh, you know, or to hide human wisdom.

And then to depend on the work of the spirit because a man, woman, boy or girl is not going to be saved outside of the sovereign, regenerating work of the

Holy ghost of God in their hearts and in their minds, saving them. And then the expectations of the minister of the gospel, teaching by example, uh, godliness that stems from regeneration.

That's where it all begins. You gotta, you must be born again. Whitfield said it, preached it all the time.

A lady asked him one time, Whitfield, why do you always preach? You must be born again.

He said, my, my lady, because you must be born again. If, if you're going to see the kingdom of God, you're going to have to go, you're going to have to go

God's way. And then, so we, we just walked, we walked through, like I said, we walked through a whole lot with these, with these men.

And there was, uh, uh, I believe, uh, one of Hap's friends Hannah Stoddard took the class and, and his, uh, fiance or his wife,

I'm not sure if they're married yet or not, but, um, they, uh, uh, she took the class and she seemed to be very knowledgeable about the question she, um, had asked and communicated.

But I just want to thank you for letting me be on tonight. Let me talk with you all. I truly enjoy, uh, being, um, had have enjoyed being on here and enjoy your, your, your friendship and your fellowship in the gospel and drew again, again, keep up the good work for the

Lord, man. Appreciate it, brother. You're always welcome on. It is an open show for anyone to come, you know?

Yeah. Well, that, well, that's a lot like, I want, I want to have you Andrew because you're old.

The only qualification is you're living and breathing. You've got the legs. Come on.

Look, look, all I'm saying is sometimes I can't be here and it's good for Andrew to have someone to hold his hand, uh, through some of these things.

So yeah, you have an invitation. Kathy's saying, thank you. Happy Calvinist.

She corrected the spelling there. Jason says, thank you. Happy Calvinist. Yeah.

Actually we should mention you got a podcast for people to go and check out as well. So why don't you let folks know about that?

They hear I stand theology podcast, uh, to be honest, basically the bulk of what's on there the last half a year, probably primarily are sermons.

I've just put up the Sunday sermon on there just to keep putting video on there. So, uh, the bulk and majority of what's on there right now is probably the

Sunday sermon, but there are some sporadic podcasts from here to there. So, uh,

Well, you know, like I said to drew, maybe if you did some, some more podcasting, you might've made it out around one of the contest.

I did make it out around one. I'm going to go right at round two.

Oh yeah. And I was against James White in round two. So it was like, yeah, yeah. So someone asked why this show wasn't in there.

I'm like, cause I didn't get a say in it. Like, you know, the two that won that there's one guy that's on both shows.

So it's like, so either way he won. Yeah. Yeah. Brian. So they won.

Yeah. He won the tournament. Yeah. One way or another. So, um,

I guess the, the, uh, drew, you sent me, uh, the full, uh, message, uh, from,

I guess it was Matt. You want to do, you want to engage? Should we, you want to read that? And we get, we, we'll, we'll, we'll leave it to happen.

We'll leave it to a Claude. We'll ask him to, to respond. Okay. I can, uh,

I can read it. Yeah. So we're going to start over. Right. And this is a, I see why it was cut off.

Cause it's very, very long. It was very long. Yeah. But it says, who is Kevin Thompson and how could anyone possibly be this far off about anything ever?

And of course he's got latent flowers with him, nodding in approval to every straw man, the emoji.

Face to the face, palm emoji. Uh, if you're in, he's quoting and he says, quote, if you're elect, you're saved regardless of whether Christ died.

And if you are not elect, you're not saved regardless of whether or not Christ died.

Uh, so that seems to be the only piece of information that would actually constitute good news for a person.

And that is never listed as good news in scripture. So I see a mismatch.

What the Bible calls the good news is not good news. If Calvinism is true to anyone and election is good news and Calvinism, but that's never listed as good news in scripture.

So I see a huge mismatch with the news. So when I look at it to me, the content of it is a different gospel or there really is no gospel because even people like Piper and Sproul will say, quote, you can't really know if you're elect until you're dead.

End quote, the data set, uh, is not good news.

That's the point that I'm making. End quote. Okay. So let me ask this question,

Claude, his argument is based on the statement that was read there.

And I'm trying to read what drew sent me. Um, are the elect saved?

Let me, I want to make sure I word this well, are the, like when we think of it in time, are the elect saved before they repent in time?

So I guess what I'm trying to get to is he's saying the elect are saved, whether they believe or not.

It's the election that makes all the difference. And I, so let me ask it that way then instead of for you, do

Calvinists believe that election is what saves us or that regeneration saves us?

Regeneration saved us, saves us based on the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and election, uh, is only a piece of the puzzle.

What does Romans eight tell us, right? There's the golden chain of redemption. Here we go. Right. Oh, she goes,

Oh yeah, that's the Calvinist go to. It's not the Calvinist go to, it's the biblical go to right.

Those whom he called, or I'm sorry, those who may predestine those who called.

So we have a logical order, a connection, a sequence. God does not try to do anything.

As Yoda would say, he, he either does or does not. Right, right.

He's quoting Yoda does not. The, the, the challenge is for, uh, us as human beings is that we're fine.

We're fine. That in God is infinite. If we could understand infinite ideas and infinite principles, then it wouldn't be an issue.

It wouldn't be a problem. But the least little challenges that come up there is there's it's, it's almost, and I will,

I will say this just to give the benefit of the doubt. It's almost a, uh, maybe in,

I don't know if instinct is the right word, but it's a knee jerk reaction to automatically say,

I don't like that. Therefore, it's not true. There's a lot of things that we don't like.

You want to know how many times, if we think how many times that we open God's word and we go to reading through a text, even as we're maturing in the faith, we read a text and we, we cringe and we draw back and we say,

I don't know if I like that or not. Well, it says it. So what else are you going to do?

Well, that's the same logic that people use when they deny health, right? The Bible speaks of it, but I don't like it.

It makes me uncomfortable. Therefore, I'm going to redefine it. And it's not what scripture actually says.

It is. It is the same thing with Calvinism. That's right. Yeah. No, Melissa is saying that Kevin Thompson is a hardcore open theist.

Well, that might be, and that would explain a lot that would explain, you know,

I know that latent flowers is softening on open theism. Maybe, you know, he says it's because he's met some other open theists and he's, so I think he's on his, on his way there.

That'd be the consistent way that, that he's going, but well, if I remember the order correctly, when.

Dr. White first started engaging with him. I think because it came up, because I want to say a lot of things came about through a discussion with William Lane, Craig and Layton was going in towards Mullen ism.

And then he kind of stumbled upon provisionism or created provisionism.

And, and now is kind of moving into that open theism because Mullen ism provisionism, open theism, they all kind of have the same ideas of God, right?

That he's not really omniscient and he's not really sovereign. He's just doing the best that he can do with the hand that he has in the only, in the best world that he foresaw that he could create with the best possible outcome.

They're all essentially tied together to say the same thing, just different names.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think what you see in the, in the, the statement made here, election is something that's in the mind of God, being who's outside of time, you know, things when you try to argue,

Oh, well, someone's elect whether they believe or not, they're going to be saved. Then you don't understand a, the, the nature of God be what election is.

When we talk about being saved, we're talking about something in time.

That's right. It's a human thing. It's when God works within time. So there's a point where we're not saved in a point that we are saved, but God always knew we would be saved because he knows everything.

Amen. And, you know, yeah, like, like you said, I mean, when they want to get around that, they end up trying to say, well,

Molinism, which hopefully I'll have a debate with a guy that works for, for latent flowers, Eric Hernandez. We've, we've had him on the show many years ago on Molinism.

But the, the issue there is to, to your Molinism is the idea that God looked at all the possible things that humans would freely choose.

And then he picked one. And so he picked one, but it was our choices.

And so they're trying to say, he knows all things. He knows all the things that could have been and selected something and said, okay, this is the one that gives the greatest glory.

God, it's a God that is ultimately, you know, it makes a

God who is, um, subject to human will. Yes.

The other side, open theism that you mentioned for folks who may not know what that is. It's the idea that God really doesn't know all things.

He's a good guesser. That's how he does prophecy, but he, he waits till we make decisions till we choose things.

And then based on our choices, then he responds. And so it becomes reactionary, which is nice.

What they're trying to do is save God's character and, and human free will.

But what I, I think what ends up being more important in both those cases is human free will.

And they're trying to figure out how God works with human free will, not how human free will works with God.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, I mean, just if you look at the quote, how it starts off, he already just really refutes himself or he, he brings in a non -argument.

If you're elect, you're saved regardless of whether Christ died. If Christ didn't die, no one's not elect.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. And, and that's the whole thing of, I mean, so, and this is what to do with the folks when you're, when you're challenged with these things, what are we doing?

We're just breaking down what's being said. We're defining our terms. What is election? What is regeneration?

What is salvation? That's what we're doing. It's really not that hard. We can all do this.

Um, and, and I mean, that's what we, you know, for Claude and I, for the younger apologists, we want to encourage you.

This, this is the whole thing of it. We should not have a thing where we just look to the

James whites and the, you know, the, the old white beards and guys have gone before us that have learned this.

Um, look, James white has forgotten more theology than most of us. No. Okay. But it's because he's been doing it for a long time.

You know, people will sit there and say, Oh, hi, I can't do apologetics like you. You haven't been doing it long enough. That's all.

I mean, I, you know, this July, I turned 40, you know, spiritually, right.

I'll be, I'll be safe 40 years doing apologetics for probably a good 30, 38 years of them.

you know, do it for that long and you're going to get better if you're learning from your mistakes.

That's right. If you're doing it, like this guy, Kevin Thompson, you're not learning from your mistakes.

You're just keep repeating the same errors. Right. So, but you also don't learn and you don't get better.

If you don't just go out and talk to people either. If you're not given the gospel, you're not going to learn anyway.

So you have to actually be obedient to going out and evangelizing talk.

And you don't have to go be a street preacher. You can just go to the store. Right. You can talk to the cashier wherever you're at.

It can just be on a walk, go to a park, just sit with someone at a bench. Right.

It doesn't have to be anything extravagant. It's just starting the conversation, talking about Christ.

And then the more you do it, the more, cause what's going to, here's what's going to happen. We've all had it happen to us.

They're going to ask us a question. We don't know. We're going to have to go, you know what? I don't know that, but I can,

I'm going to have to go study that. And then you go study it. Guess what? You know it. Yep.

And then you get back to them with the answer. Well, Claude, it's always great having you on, you know, you, you are the happy Calvinist.

I, you're always smiling. Um, but, uh, you're full of wisdom. We're glad that, uh, you're part of the, you know, passing the torch that you're passing on the wisdom that you've, you've gleaned to a next generation.

And so, uh, you know, now the problem is I have to hope at least there's a couple of classes between you and I, so I don't have to.

No, those, those, those folks will be blessed. By the way, I think the torch is, is the

Facebook page that you can get those on as well. I started, uh, yesterday by posting up the first class on the here.

I stand theology podcast. So it can be watched there as well. And then each week subsequent, I'm going to, uh, add the next week.

So two will be posted up next week there on the, on the, passing the torch on Facebook.

Yes. We'll eventually get a website. I'm sure. Yeah. All right, guys, thank you so much for having me on.

I'm going to jump out. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Folks next week, uh, we have four that, you know, what's we got coming up, uh, next week we're,

I still have it open because I haven't heard, uh, trying to get Keith Foskey and, uh, redeem

Zuma who did a debate on evolution, both professing believers, both reformed, uh, one believing in evolution being resume reformed

Zuma. And then Keith is not believing in evolution. So I would like them to come on, have a further discussion.

We'll see if it happens. I haven't heard from a reformed Zuma yet. You know, you know what we should get, we should try to get another debate and have

Jason Lyle moderate. That would be really hard for Jason. Say anything.

Um, but, uh, April 4th, it'd be a great lesson in humility is what it would be. Yeah. Uh, April 4th, we're going to have

Dr. Carl Widmer, a creationist. He's going to come in, uh, April 11th.

We'll be discussing full preterism. I, I put it out. If there was a guy that said he would be willing to debate it.

And when I said, okay, I will get someone to debate it with you. And he said, oh no, I got to be anonymous because of my end time views.

Okay. In other words, I'm too scared to actually defend. I like a monologue, not a dialogue.

That conversation was out there. Yeah. It was like, yeah, I want to talk, but I only want to talk here.

And we're like, this is not the platform to do that. Let's actually have the conversation. Yeah. So we'll see.

Yeah. We set it up either way. We will learn from, uh, some, some brothers about what full preterism teaches and, uh, and then why it's, it's bad.

So that's, what's coming up. I hope that this has been helpful, encouraging, educational. Hope that you will share this with others.

Uh, if you have gotten a lot out of it, the best thing you could do is text it to some friends.

If there's some things you learned, Hey, check this out at this timestamp, um, you know, let others know about it.

Maybe text this to five friends. We would appreciate that. All right. And so with that, we're just encourage you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.