Are Christians falling into the media’s trap with gun control | Rapp Report Weekly 002 | Andrew Rappaport | SFE | Striving for Eternity

Okay, today we are going to be dealing with our Christians falling into the media's trap with the issue of gun control.

We're also going to be talking about striving for eternity's giving away of the preacher's

Bible, a huge monster of a Bible designed by John MacArthur, and we're going to talk about that.

We're also going to respond to your email. We have some emails we are going to, or at least a email we're going to respond to.

So, that's what's on the agenda for today's Rapp Report. Welcome to the

Rapp Report with Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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

All right, well, we are glad you are joining us for the Rapp Report Weekly Edition.

This is our longer podcast. I do hope you're enjoying the shorter two -minute versions of our daily podcast, where we try to give you really quick applications and interpretations, and this one is the longer one.

We're going to go into more detail, and we're actually going to, later on, deal with an email that we got that addresses some of the daily podcasts, so we will be responding to that.

We want to deal with, in the monologue section before we chop it up with some brothers, one to deal with this issue that we said about Christians falling into the meatiest trap with gun control.

I'm going to have a little bit of a different view on that, maybe, and maybe what it is, I'm hoping, as with our last one that a lot of people got upset with, we dealt with immigration, and people had a knee -jerk reaction.

They didn't listen to the first eight seconds where we said, we're not talking about illegals, we're not talking about terrorists, we're talking about Muslims that were legally able to come here, but people sometimes have a knee -jerk reaction.

We hope that people won't have a knee -jerk reaction here to the fact that we want to talk about gun control, and that they may have some reaction to it that's, well, not just really what we want to talk about.

We want to focus in on something that I've noticed, but before we get to that, I want to talk about a giveaway we're doing, and for those who are watching on YouTube, you're seeing

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So we're going to be giving this Bible away. It's basically our way of bribing you, because isn't that what a giveaway is?

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What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe.

And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. Now I'm going to say right from the beginning, and sometimes,

I don't know, I say these things from the beginning and people don't listen. So I'm going to show you so that there's no question for those watching,

I am a card carrying member of the NRA. I have my card, I'm an annual member,

I think I'm paid up for like five years or six years or something like that. I am an

NRA member. I own guns. I like shooting guns. I admit it.

Look, I spent some time playing with military weapons. It was fun. I like the big guns.

I like shooting up tanks. It was a blast with the .50 cal. That's what I used to play with.

So the reality is that I'm going to say this because I think there's going to be some people who will listen to what

I'm going to say, have a knee -jerk reaction because they think that any talk of Christianity and gun control, it's a problem.

Now am I saying that I'm supporting gun control? No, I'm not going to be saying that. I do support gun control.

You should use two hands when firing. No. Control your weapon. There's a lot to these shootings that are going on that have more to do than just the issue of the gun.

Most of these people that are shooting up these places have had no father in the home or an absentee father if there is one.

There's been major issues there with the family structure in almost every one of these cases.

That's been an issue. Many of these cases, if not all, have an issue of people who've been on mood -altering drugs since childhood and either got off of it or are being affected by it.

These are things as well. You have the case, I always think of the case in Colorado with the guy who shot up people in the movie theater.

He went past three other movie theaters. Why did he go to the theater he shot at? Because it had a sign that said no guns allowed.

Now, should we as Christians, with all that I've said, as American citizens,

I support the Second Amendment. By the way, I support the Second Amendment not for hunting and not for self -protection because that's not why the

Second Amendment was written. The Second Amendment was written to protect the civilians of the

United States against a tyrannical government, not for hunting and not for self -protection.

Do I wish that I lived in a state that I could carry concealed? Yes. Why? Because I would like to be able to protect my neighbor or myself if the need was to arise.

Do I think everyone should own a gun or carry a gun concealed? If they're trained and know how to use it, then maybe.

If they are not convicted of a crime, if they're not having mental instabilities, things like that, yeah.

I mean, there would be some rules, I think, that are needed for that. But what we see, like in the case with the Colorado shooter in the movie theater, he went to a place where he knew he wouldn't be shot back, right?

So here's why I say, are Christians falling in to the media's trap with the gun control issue?

Now, I want to preface this, and many of the listeners who know of me, listen to me, you know that I was raised

Jewish. I was raised a generation after the Holocaust. And that does affect much of the way that I do things, that I view things.

Because I had 11 plus years of Hebrew school where we would talk about the

Holocaust often because they wanted us to never forget so that it wouldn't happen again.

And with that, I do have an impact where I've studied the Holocaust and what happened in World War II Nazi Germany very much.

And I've said this before, I say it again, I was glad when I was out at Shepard's Conference, John MacArthur's church, and I heard him say what

I've been saying so long, that a time is coming in America where Christianity will be criminalized.

I think that is coming faster and faster. And I think the gun issue is going to fall into that.

So one of the things that happened in Nazi Germany, the way the Nazis were able to basically outlaw

Jews, it started in several small ways at first. But one of the things was to identify

Judaism with things that the culture would be against.

And that way they could identify Jews with say, you know, gun ownership and things like this that they would end up doing.

They actually didn't do gun ownership with the Jews, but they did do issues of money with the

Jews saying that there was a mishandling and that they had positions where were unfair because they were in positions to make more money than other civilians.

And it was a way of identifying an issue with a group of people. And what they ended up doing was going after the group of people to put a stop to the issue.

And after the Florida shooting in the school, I saw the media do something that gave me great concern.

What ended up happening with the media is the media ended up making an association between Christians and guns.

Not Second Amendment and guns, not conservatives and guns, because plenty of conservatives that are not

Christian. There's plenty of gun owners that are not Christian. I would say in my gun club, which has hundreds of members, most of the ones

I talk to, the majority of them are not Christian and don't want to be Christian. They hate

God just as much as the liberals, but they do like having the freedom to have their weapons, their guns to protect themselves against the government, to hunt, to protect themselves in their home.

OK, I don't live in Idaho where I could just carry easily and therefore my guns can only be used to protect my home.

But the thing is this, when we look at this, the media is trying to make an identification that it's

Christians that are the issue with guns. And with that, what I want to do is

I want to share a video. It's just a two minute video, and I would like to share this with you so you get an idea of what

I'm talking about. This is what now is happening. So you have the media, they come out and they're making the association between Christians and guns.

And where I see this, as I'm saying, it's dangerous, is I believe what the media is going to do is they're going to look to say that really

Christianity becomes the problem with these shootings. I know some of you are saying that is crazy, but history has shown over and over that these things happen.

This is exactly how these things happen. It happened with Mao Tse Tung in China, in his way of taking away the farmlands from the wealthy, and I associated wealth with robbing the poor.

And so the only way to solve the problem of the poor was to take the land from the rich, and because the rich were the problem, and give it to the poor.

And that's exactly what happened, and the poor couldn't manage the land, so the government took it from them. It was the way the government basically took the land from the rich.

They couldn't take it directly, but they could associate the issue of an imbalance of wealth with this, and what ended up happening, they ended up having the ability to take it with the mass of people agreeing with it.

Nazi Germany, similar thing happened, okay, with the association with Jews and different topics. But here's the thing

I ended up seeing. I want to play this video because what you see is churches that are actually falling into the media's trap and helping the media.

They're going to give them the information they need and the fodder they need to make the argument.

So take a look at this video, and we're going to talk about this, and this is from a church, this is from CBS News, so take a listen.

God's kingdom would have come on earth. The women came in white gowns. Most of the men wore crowns.

As hundreds of people came together Wednesday at the sanctuary church for a couple's blessing ceremony, more than 50 of them also brought their

AR -15s. The rifles symbolized the rod of iron in the biblical book of Revelation.

Participants say the service was moving. You could feel the love and the peacefulness of the ceremony. It's not a violent thing.

Outside the church, protesters couldn't believe guns were being welcomed after recent mass shootings.

I thought it was a joke, but then here it is real.

Protesters were concerned that many of the participants were from outside the region. Megan O 'Kelly and her friends carried unusual signs about pickles to protest.

I wanted to think of something equally as absurd as bringing guns into religion and guns for God, so I thought pickles for peace sounds just as absurd.

While some church members came out to explain their beliefs to the protesters, the two sides remained far apart on ideals in most instances.

I think this is sacrilegious. I think that taking into a house of God of peace, a weapon of war, a weapon of mass destruction.

Caught in the middle, people like John Hines and others who lived directly across the street from the church.

They had a front row seat to the controversy. Who am I to say that it's wrong what they do?

They've got a lot of followers. I want a peaceful home. I don't want all this chaos, but tomorrow it will be over.

For folks who couldn't see that, what you ended up seeing in that video is the protest signs that they had were protesting

Trump as president and things like that. But they're bringing guns into churches and there were several churches after the

Florida shooting having gun ceremonies, celebrating guns. Here's why

I see a problem with this. This is why I have an issue here. Our churches, when we have church services, is that the place to be discussing guns?

Is that a place to be displaying our guns? The issue I end up seeing, if you heard some of the protesters, they're making the association of religion and guns.

That falls right into the media playbook because then they can sit here and say, see, it's

Christianity that's the problem. It's the church that's the problem. We need to stop the church.

That's the real goal of the enemy. The enemy wants to have Christianity be illegal. And they're going to use guns to be the way that they do it by associating

Christianity with the guns. And I just, look, I'm saying this and we're going to chop it up in a bit with some friends, but I just look at this and say,

I don't see in scripture anything that says that the worship of God on a

Sunday morning, when we're going to sit there and proclaim God's word, that we should really be proclaiming guns.

You know, there's certain things we should do in a worship service when we're celebrating the resurrected

Lord Jesus Christ. And there's certain things I think we shouldn't be doing. And I just think that when we are in church, it is about Jesus Christ.

It's about God, glorifying God and proclaiming his word. So what do I think a pastor should do on a

Sunday morning? Well, I think it's really simple. The pastor should open the word of God, read the word of God, proclaim the word of God.

We should sing praises to God. We should give offerings to God. But everything is about God, not our

American civil liberties, not our second amendment. That's not

Bible. And I know I said this in our last weekly episode on immigration, but I do think we have a problem with many

Christians where they're too natural, naturalistic and not Christian. We are

Christians first, Americans second. Why do I support gun laws in America?

Because I'm an American citizen, not because I'm a Christian. Because we have a thing called the

Bill of Rights. We have the Declaration of Independence. We have the second amendment.

That's really what it comes down to. The second amendment gives us a right to bear arms.

And so because of that right, as an American citizen, I will argue for the right to bear arms.

I will not argue it for as a Christian. I hope you guys see the difference there. I hope you end up seeing there's a difference between arguing for our gun rights because I am a

Christian or arguing for my gun rights because I'm an American. You see, when we do the latter, we pull that, that wool, that rug from the media that they're trying to trap us with.

They want to trap us. And many Christians are falling into as many churches are falling into this. Please, if you're in one of those churches, no one assures you, please share this, you know, podcast video with them.

Encourage them. My challenge here is to get our audience to think biblically.

And we need to be Christian before we are American. And that's what

I'm going to plead for. I'm going to plead that we argue for, um, for America after we argue that we're a

Christian. I want to think about what the Bible says. So will I stand up and support gun rights?

Well, yeah, duh. I'm a member of the NRA, right? I mean, I'm going to, I'm paying them to, to help promote healthy, safe gun laws.

But the thing is this, I'm not going to do that in church. I don't think that's the place for it.

There's certain things. And, you know, there's many Christians who've done podcasts and, and videos and all talking about certain things that they think inappropriate or appropriate to do within churches.

Well, you know, whether you, we argue for some of those other things, at least some of those other things that we've heard argued, it's like there, there may be a case for some of them, but you know, celebrating guns,

I just don't think is the right place to do it in a church. That's my take on that.

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And I'm now going to ask our buddies here to chop up, we're going to, before we play some games and talk and read some email,

I want to bring Vincent and John in and let's chop it up. Let's talk about it.

What do you guys think? What's your views? I wholly agree. So let me say as a programmer,

I have an order of operation type thing dealing with what should go on in a church.

Yeah, definitely preaching the gospel and exegeting scripture should be what's done in a church.

Anything beyond that is, it's bordering on idolatry in my view. So, and it may be harsh, but even to the degree that some of the, some of the

Americanism that goes on in church, like on 4th of July, you know, you have whole church services dedicated to, you know,

America instead of dedicating that to the worship and proclaiming of God in his message.

I really do have an issue with that. You know, and you mentioned 4th of July, I did see several articles about different pastors that every 4th of July, they do have gun celebrations in their church.

So that's, this isn't an unusual thing in that way. I would totally agree that this is a political issue, not a church issue.

And I don't know why people are bringing politics into the church when it comes to gun control.

The one thing that I think a lot of people are not really realizing is that our rights are something that's called inalienable, okay?

It's an inalienable right. In other words, it's a right according to natural law, a right that cannot be taken away, denied or transferred.

So that the people on the left or those who are against the anti or against the guns, this is something that they really can't, and just because they, you know, they want to stop guns or have more gun control, whatever they, however they do it, whether it be more laws or either that it may be an overturn of the amendment, which would be nearly impossible.

It still doesn't give me, it still doesn't take away that right from me.

I still have the right to defend myself, primarily against tyranny, against the government or the military, if they decide to want to come into my own home.

So for a lot of people just don't understand that, that, you know, the second amendment is really something where it's very specifically clear where it says at the end, shall not be infringed.

Okay. So in other words, it can't be taken away. It can't be changed. It's something that we all have a natural part of us that will defend ourselves.

And if guns is the best way to do it, then that's great. But again, back to the actual topic though, as far as churches,

I think that, I think you make a good point that I hadn't even really thought about this connection that Christians seem to have this reputation of being

Republicans and right -wing nuts. And because of that, we're all gun nuts. Well, I mean, what a logical way for the government and for the

Democrats, the left -wing nuts, to actually make that kind of distinction and say, okay, we're going to go ahead and actually target the

Christians because we know that they all have guns. So that's really interesting. I didn't even thought about that.

So I wonder if that's going to be the path that we're leading or getting ourselves into.

You shared with us the article from an atheist site, pathos .com,

let's repeal the second amendment Christianity. I'll link that in the show notes.

But what do you see? You see a gun on top of a Bible and really, as you look through the article, you see exactly what

I was saying. They want to, and these are the hardcore atheists and what do they want to do? They want to argue that it's second amendment

Christianity. They want that tie to Christianity and guns.

I mean, we are going to see, we're going to do a podcast. I was blown away. We'll do another podcast another day on something we saw on Fox News when

Dr. Silvestro and I were over at Shepard's conference and he turned on the news and there was a woman who was basically an atheist who was upset because they were praying at a council meeting.

And she was arguing it's only Christianity that she was against. And this was the thing. They were saying, what about Islam?

Why are you not against Islam or Buddhism? And she gave an argument why Christianity was the problem. And this is the thing we're seeing.

They're now coming to the point where they're not saying they're against religion anymore. They've dropped it.

Even though everything that these atheists used to argue against religion, they pointed to Islam and then blamed

Christianity. Well, now they've dropped it and they're just saying it's Christianity. And you see this with, let's appeal second amendment

Christianity, the tie of Christianity with guns. This is the thing.

And I'm going to drop some of these other articles, John, that you shared. The one from Off the Grid News, what does the

Bible say about gun rights? And then from together, the Gospel Coalition has one of should

Christians support gun control? We're going to put those links in there so you can decide on your own.

We want to give you the information. We're not telling you how to think. We want to give you some things to think about. And John, you mentioned some things in the chat about the second amendment.

Why don't you bring that up? Oh, so yeah, the second amendment, I think I just wrote, I was just kind of expanding on your thought that you were talking about where it says the second amendment granted individuals the right to bear arms, not primarily for hunting or protection against criminals through the founders, presumably would not, though the founders presumably would not oppose, would not have opposed those reasons, but to represent a check against national, political and military power.

So I remember this one interview along a while back of when it came to gun control also.

And I remember I know, Andrew, you're you're not really well up to date with with the social just anything that's out there.

Yeah. Pop culture. But this one rapper guy named Ice -T. OK, I don't know if you know that or not, but he's of him.

Yes. Yeah. Ice -T is a well -known rapper and all that.

And he's also an actor on Law and Order or whatever. And so anyways, they asked him one time because he's well known as he was a formal gangster and, you know, he was he even wrote and made an album about cop killing and all that kind of stuff.

And so he they asked him about about gun control and about the second amendment. And he really made a really good point about it.

It's like, you know, the second amendment is not about like owning guns and going hunting or or shooting other criminals.

What the second amendment was about was protection against tyranny. And that's the most important thing about that is is is basically our gun control or our guns are really about protecting ourselves from a government that comes knocking on our door saying, we want your guns or a military comes in and say, we want to take over your your property.

That's what it's about. That's what the second amendment is about. And again, as I said earlier, it's inalienable, meaning they can't take that right away.

That that piece of paper that says the Bill of Rights, just because that goes away doesn't mean that your rights go away.

OK, it's it's inalienable. It cannot be earned or taken away. But but the government can take away certain rights from people, not

I mean, obviously, that you still the right things, but but they can take away the right to bear arms. And here's the thing, you know, people say, well, you know, this can't happen here.

You know, one of the things that always amazed me in all my studies of the Holocaust was how many people in Germany, even that lived in the towns where where the concentration camps were and people were being burned alive or gassed.

And they said, this can't be happening here. We're too civilized. Everyone assumed they're too civilized to have it happen.

Well, that's what we hear now. This can't happen in America. It's too civilized. It can't it can't happen that quickly.

You know, just take a quick look at Venezuela and you can see how quickly these things happen.

George Bush was president when Chavez became the president in Venezuela and he came to America and so many people were touting his his moves to socialism and really what became a dictatorship.

And and here you have Chavez, who's now passed away. But how quickly?

I mean, Bush was president for eight years. Obama came in and said he wanted to model

America after Chavez. So it is still at that point when Barack Obama was president.

You know, Venezuela hadn't collapsed yet, but they had given over to where Chavez was able to take all the rights away and Chavez was being worshipped.

And this is what Obama said he wanted to model after. Well, we had Obama for eight years. So within eight years, it's to a point now where people are fighting for food, where they can only have electricity a certain number of hours every day.

They went from being this major producer where they had oil and gas that they were producing for others and making money.

But now the only ones who get all that are those in government. And the country collapsed within less than 15 years and completely collapsed.

They're having all kinds of problems there. Why? Because they didn't see the signs.

Why am I giving a call out on this issue? Because I see the warning signs and I think many

Christians are falling into the trap and I just want to be a beacon. Look, the scriptures talk about the fact that we have a right to bear arms.

Someone posted on my Facebook that, sound along the lines of paraphrasing,

I should have saved it, but like gun owners are not Christian. Like if you own a gun, you're not a Christian was the argument.

And when you think about that, my question to him is, you know, would a knife be considered like the same thing in Christ's day as a gun?

They would have swords, not guns back then. Swords were the weapon. And yet we know that Peter had a sword.

He cut off one of the guard's ears. We even know that Jesus told them to carry swords.

Okay. He didn't tell them not to. He didn't say, no, you got to have knife control, sword control.

No. So we can make an argument both for carrying of weapons from the

Bible. We can make an argument for self -protection, protection of others in the Bible.

My issue is, is the church the place to be promoting and celebrating the guns?

And I hope you see the difference I'm making there. I'm trying to make a distinction there. So I hope that you guys are listening, we'd see that distinction.

And why I'm raising this, I'm raising this because I see the media doing the same trap that has been done time and time again, historically.

And people fall into it because they don't study history. They don't have the mindset to think about it.

They're having that knee -jerk reaction to defend our rights. And we have rights to bear arms.

Not because we're Christian, but because we're American. And that's how we need to distinguish that.

We need to distinguish between the Christian and American. As an American, I have a right to bear arms. It's a second amendment.

As a Christian, I worship God. I praise Christ. I don't praise my gun in a service.

And I would think that's the wrong place for it. And I think it's a dangerous precedent now because of the way the media is and the professing atheists are trying to make this association.

I think Christians even more so need to separate the church from that. So, John, your son, you want to add?

I was going to make a counter -argument about what you were just saying, where biblically, Jesus would say, what

Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek. I mean, what would you say about that, if that was the argument? Well, Jesus did say to turn the other cheek, and there are times to do that.

But the issue is when someone's going to take your life, you don't turn the other cheek, possibly. He's talking about, it would be this, you know, you guys know

I do open -air evangelism, right? I do a lot of going at it. And there's times where a police officer will say, look, can you move from over here to over there?

And there'll be some guys that will argue with the officer saying, look, I got a right to be here. This is public property.

There may be a time to do that. I remember one time we were outside of where the

U .S. Open is played, and we were preaching the gospel outside of the U .S. Open, and there was a spot where we thought there'd be enough traffic going by.

And an officer came by and said, look, you know, could you just move down over this spot here? One of the guys thought about arguing, but we just said, all right, officer, you want us to move?

Where do you want us to move? Okay, we went to the spot. It was a better spot. There were more people congregating.

It wasn't just people walking, people congregating. We actually could get better discussions. So it worked out that by God's providence that happened.

That would be a case where he's asking to walk one mile, you walk two. That's where that's going to come in.

He's not asking you to violate scripture. Do you have a right? Yeah, you may have a right, but do you have to demand that right?

Sometimes God may use that in other ways. And so I'm going to look at that and say, look, I see that there's times where someone's going to say something.

I don't have to respond. A professing atheist is going to call us names and say,

I don't have to respond to it. And that's going to be a thing. So how do I do it? I have a case of son that's going on right now, someone who's wronging me.

And I have every right to do something that would cost that person money.

You know what I'm going to do instead? Because I made a promise to that person long ago. I'm going to give them money, even though I could get money from them.

And be legally in my right to do so. They're harming me. But instead of turning and say,

I'm going to harm them back. That's not Christian. No, I'm going to give to them instead because that's where that principle comes in.

When we look at that, someone's going to harm us. We're going to do right by them. It's a thing of always doing right, even if others are not going to.

And if someone's going to look to harm us as Christians, we need to do what's right.

We need to give where we don't need to give, where we could demand.

That would be what I'd say. But again, I wouldn't apply that to promoting guns in church. I don't think that's the place for it.

Somebody else sinning does not give us the right to sin ourselves. Sure. That's a great point. So this is kind of a tangent, but let's address it.

I mean, isn't it common that people will, because someone else, someone sins against them, that they justify and sometimes even do the very thing they're saying that someone else does is wrong.

They'll do the very same thing and justify it because that person did wrong. I see that a lot.

Me too, unfortunately among Christians. Even among Christians, even among Christians.

I think maybe we all know the root cause of the whole need for the gun issue is that man has fallen.

And I think maybe we should spend more time preaching the gospel in order to combat that so we'd have less need for the whole self -defense issue.

We should be preaching the gospel to a dying and lost world. I think that would probably be more beneficial.

And that's why we have a problem with the church turning to kind of celebrating the gun issue, or you should be celebrating the real solution, which is the gospel.

And you bring up a really good point that is the focus of it is, you know, look,

I think many Christians have been distracted. They're distracted by a patriotism, you know,

America rights, nationalism. And look, if it's, I don't want this to happen, but if it was

God's will for America to become communist or America to be under Sharia and be a

Muslim state, guess what? I'm still a Christian. I'm still going to do what God calls me to do even under that.

And maybe the gospel will even prosper under that. But the reality is, I'm not going to argue,

I mean, should I try to preserve the American values? Yes, because I'm an American, not because I'm a

Christian. That's the difference with it. Despite, no matter the state of America, it's not going to hinder the gospel.

It's not going to, I mean, as Christians, we want to maybe elevate the ease of presenting gospel out there without the fear of being, you know, maybe real true persecution.

Well, isn't the gospel the solution to some of this? I mean, yeah. So if people were saved, we wouldn't have some of these issues.

Exactly. I mean, who's the gospel for? So, well, okay, let me put it this way. Let me ask it this way.

So if we're, as Christians, if we're out there fighting and arguing for our American rights in a political arena, does that hurt or could it possibly hurt our ability to share the gospel with liberals?

Because they look at us as a political enemy, and they don't want to listen to what we have to say about spiritual matters.

Right. I mean, what's the focus that they're seeing from us? It's not the gospel.

We all know that Democrats are not predestined. Wow. You will repent of that.

I know. Would you consider donating to Striving for Eternity? This ministry is one that tries to reach out to some of those smaller churches that most people, most speakers want to avoid.

But by our monthly donors, it allows us to get into smaller churches and provide for them the seminars and conferences that usually only larger churches can do.

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What kind of game do you have in mind, Andrew? Well, how about this one? It's time now to start the

Spiritual Transition Game. All right.

This is when we play a little game where either Vincent or John give me something that I will attempt to transition from the natural to the spiritual.

Why do we play this game? This is a game we encourage you guys playing. It will help with your evangelism.

Most people that I know, most Christians say that they're afraid to share the gospel. But once the conversation gets spiritual, they feel they can guide that conversation.

They could take the conversation down a road and they feel better about it. And they're less nervous once it gets spiritual.

But the trouble most people have is how to get that conversation into the spiritual realm. And I say it just takes practice.

And so for many years, I've probably been doing this for 25 years because this is a game that my pastor kind of taught us when we were leaders in the church to just constantly be looking for ways to transition from the natural to spiritual.

And so this is just us finding ways, practicing, taking anything and transitioning it to the gospel or to a spiritual conversation.

Now, you could do this with your friends. Just give an object, give something and say, can you transition to a spiritual conversation on this or transition to the gospel?

And so either Vincent or John is going to give me something and they like to give me things that are hard and I'm going to have to transition to the gospel.

And there is no editing in this. So this is live. So if I completely fumble, you get to see that.

But let's see how quick or how well I might be able to transition to the gospel from whatever they give me.

So who has something? I got something. You got a thumbs up. Go for it, John. Topic for tonight is comic books.

Comic books. And now you chose comic books because they're being made into movies and I don't watch movies, right?

So I have to find out. I don't know.

Okay. So I do admit that I have difficulties understanding who are the Marvel comics and who are the

DC comics. I know from seeing people on those two. Yeah, I know those two.

And I know that people who are one don't like the guys from the other. I don't get it, you know. But here's the thing that's very interesting that I find with comic books is you end up seeing that in comic books, if you think about what a comic book is, it's trying to usually teach something.

I was just reading something about actually last night on the history of the comic book

Wonder Woman. And it was interesting because the guy who I guess is the creator of Wonder Woman was married, but he and his wife had a relationship, a sexual relationship with a student of his.

He was a professor, I think it was a psychology professor at a university. And he had a woman that he and his wife lived with and she had children that were from him and they all raised these children.

And he created Wonder Woman with the model of this girl. And so what did you end up seeing?

He was trying to teach something through a comic book and using it as was explained in was he was using it to try to teach a younger generation his views.

He wanted to get a younger generation to be accepting of his worldview.

And so he used comic books as the medium because it's something that children would end up reading and accepting and thinking about.

And basically, I guess it changed after he passed away. And I don't know if it's

DC Comics or Marvel Comics, which one has Wonder Woman, but they kind of changed it. But they still have her in this

Amazon garb. And there was a bunch of stuff in there about dominance and submission and things like this.

Actually, the interesting thing was these three were the inventors of the lie detector, hence the lasso that she has of making people tell the truth.

It was very interesting. And the lasso being tied around them had to do with the fact that they enjoyed tying one another up.

And so you end up seeing that you can use things like comic books to try to influence the next generation because they don't see the lessons.

Why is it that you have books written to juveniles, young to teenagers that try to teach worldviews, that try to teach acceptance of things?

It's because of the fact that that medium ends up being something that because of the medium of a comic book, their guard is down and they receive, they end up receiving the teaching a little bit more than they would have if they knew, hey, we're going to teach you this.

I mean, if it was upfront in your face, parents would say, my child's not reading this. This is the deceptive nature of sinners that want to get people to buy into their worldview.

Why do they have to use such means? Because it goes against our conscience and they want to get people learning these things at an early age.

And this is what the Bible talks about, that wrong is right. Okay. That wrong is the culture that hates

God wants to teach that things like, you know, lying while it's not so bad. Cheating, it's not so bad.

You know, they want to say adultery, not so bad. You know, people having sex with the same sex, not homosexuality, it's not so bad.

They want to say wrong is right. And yet the thing is that we have to call right, right and wrong, wrong.

Why? Because we're all going to be accountable to a holy God one day. And we stand before him. I don't want any people, even those who hate

Jesus Christ and hate the fact that we share the message of the gospel. I don't want them spending eternity in a lake of fire.

So if I'm talking to you, I'm going to share with you the fact that, you know, we live in a culture that deceives us and tries to sear our conscience so that we're not recognizing right and wrong.

And they do that because of the fact that they want to justify their own sin. But when we stand before Christ, we can't justify sin.

Our life will be laid bare before a perfectly, infinitely, holy, just God. And for that reason, we need to call all men to repent, to turn from trusting yourself as a good person and turn to Jesus Christ.

So that's how I'm going to go from a comic book to the gospel. Not bad. Not bad at all.

I mean, you definitely got on the right path there. I would have done this a little more simplistic. You didn't know that I was reading about Wonder Woman, the creation of Wonder Woman.

I mean, what are the coincidence that you were actually reading about something about that?

God's providence. So John, how would you have transitioned from comic books to the gospel?

Let me say this. And I would probably just make it as quickly as possible.

But basically, I would kind of thumb through the comic book and I would say, see all these pictures, see all these colors and the pictures and such.

There's another book out there that kind of gives you, it's written very much like a picture book.

And that would be the Old Testament. The Old Testament is really actually kind of a picture book of what was to come.

And all these depictions actually point to someone. And that person would be Jesus Christ. Yeah. That, you know,

I actually, I did think, I was thinking of maybe going the route of, hey, you know, comic books just give you an overview of things like, you know,

Book of Revelation. I often refer to that as a, you know, kind of like a political cartoon in some ways where you get vague pictures of things, but you don't get the detail.

You don't get as much detail as some like to argue. And just like in the first coming, people got it wrong.

I think they'll get it wrong in the second coming as well in some areas. But definitely, definitely point out that people are looking at these comic books.

You know, the people are usually saving people. Yeah. We know the real savior of all who call upon him.

So that's a great transition too. Now, you know, I mean, look at this three different people and we take the same topic transition at three different ways.

And that's the fun of playing this game with other people is you end up seeing differences in the way you can do this.

The good news is Striving for Eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

That's right. The art and science of interpreting scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life verse. To learn more, go to strivingforeternity .org

to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. So let's get to an email in the time we have left.

I want to read an email that we just we got actually just before we started recording. And because this deals with our daily podcast and someone that's responding to things.

And I wanted to deal with I'm not going to give his full name. I'll just call him Doug P. That's, you know, and if you want to email us, you want to engage with us, you think we're right.

You think we're wrong. You want to ask a question. You want us to interact with son. You can email us at info at striving for eternity dot o r g info at striving for eternity dot o r g.

If you email us, well, we're we you basically are saying, hey, we're giving you the right to read it online, right?

But but here's the thing I do. There's two main things that this person that Doug is going to address, and I want to deal with both of them if I could.

So so Doug says, for some reason, I see you folks articles as sponsored content on my

Facebook feed regularly. Now, I'll just say that I'm sorry I read it just as it is. I'm not going to criticize his grammar because anyone who knows me online, you know, my grammar stinks.

I have an editor for a reason. My books are edited because I'm so I read it as it as it was.

But here's his first point. Let's do a point number one. He says the first paragraph. One thing that strikes me is that a lot of your material is negative.

Of course, if something is theologically wrong, you have to correct it. But there are plenty of so -called ministries or ministers who are just negative for its own sake or for the purpose of isolating a group of followers from the larger society into in order to establish a personal domain over them.

I've been dealing with high control churches and parachurch groups for almost 50 years.

My exposure to your work is limited. But based on what I've seen, which is whatever randomly comes across my feed, it looks to me like you fall somewhere in this classification.

So Doug, let me let me address that. And John and Vince, if you want to jump in. I agree with you on your assessment of how ministries work.

One of the things, and this is why I'm going to disagree with your assessment of us at Striving for Eternity, you say it comes off as negative.

And the thing for Doug to consider is, Doug, could it be that your 50 years of work with high control churches and paragroup churches, could it be that you're expecting a negativity?

And I'm going to tell you why. I agree with your sentiment about churches and groups that isolate people and followers specifically to establish, as you say, domain.

I call it either empire building or trying to build a platform. What I have seen in Christian ministries is people will go after a ministry that they think is a little bit bigger than them, try to tear them down so that they could pull some followers into their own, that they could grow their own platform.

I believe that is an un -Christian way to practice. That is divisive.

I think that is, I'm going to say it's sinful behavior. In fact, in church this past Wednesday, while we were teaching in church, we're going through Proverbs, we happened to be in Proverbs 6.

And let me read to you Proverbs 6 and what we had to deal with. Now, first off, it starts with a

Jewish idiom. There are six things which the Lord hates. Yes, seven, which are an abomination to him.

Now, he's going to list out seven things. When a Jewish idiom, when they would do this, six things the Lord hates, but seven are an abomination.

What he's going to do is saying, he's saying he's going to list seven things, but that seventh one is like the key, okay?

So, what are these seven things? Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies.

Notice the lies were in there twice. And now the seventh one, and one who spreads strife among brothers.

I think when you have ministries that are built on causing division and strife among brothers to build themselves up, it's sinful.

In fact, I've come up with a term for ministries who lie and deceive people to build up their own ministry.

It's called Christian Takiyah. Now, Takiyah is a Muslim term. It's in Islam, you are allowed to lie to protect the

Muslim faith. So, if you're speaking to an infidel, a non -believer, you are allowed to lie about the faith to protect the faith.

And so, this is something that you can do in Islam. And I argue that's wrong.

I argue that we shouldn't do that. I argue, and I guess John is showing the process of reconciliation chart.

I guess I could drop the link in there for the show notes. But he's displaying a chart that we have available at Striving for Eternity on how to reconcile with people, which would be really good when we talk about these things.

I agree. So, thanks for that. But here's the thing. A place to go when you're disagreeing with somebody.

The thing is, is that what I see with this, Doug, when I see ministries like this,

I think it's wrong. I think it's unbiblical. I think it's unchristian. I think that it works in the world's eyes.

It does build people's ministries, platforms, whatever you want to call it, a following.

It does work. But should Christians do that? I would say no. In fact,

Doug, what you may not know about Striving for Eternity is this is the reason we do a lot of the things we do.

We work with other ministries to try to promote others and not ourselves.

We try very hard to try to look on the positive. Now, you're right. I mean, there are things.

I mean, look, we talked tonight about a danger that I see. Could that be seen as negative? It could be.

It's not meant to be. Really, what I want to do is highlight that in church, we focus on Christ. But it could be a negative, but it's a negative toward people that are,

I think, doing things that are incorrect in a church. And it's a warning about what the media is doing. You know, he's going to refer to some of the podcasts, the daily podcasts we've done with the

King James Version. And I am addressing specifics in there. And for someone who may think that the

King James is the only Bible to use, it may seem negative in that sense. And I don't think that's

Doug's case, but that he thinks the King James is the only Bible to use. And we'll get to that. But I'm not trying to be negative for negative sake,

Doug. I'm really trying to be the opposite. In fact, we have a ministry that we do at Striving for Eternity, where we started to disciple other ministries specifically to train them to not do these very things that you showed concern, that you're voicing concern over here.

I totally agree with you. I have been counseling people in high control churches and parachurch ministries, having written a book on world religions and cults, having dealt with people in these type of churches and cults.

So I'm with you, brother. I'm with you. And you've been studying it for a lot longer than I. So if I've given you the impression that we're negative, please forgive me.

And I will try to work on that and get better with it. Okay? So that's what I'll work on. Let's address the next—I'll let you guys on that paragraph, anything you want to share or say.

I fully agree. You know, all of us, with you and with us in the council, you know, if y 'all have issues, we'll address them directly.

And we won't shy away from criticism. So just wanted to put that out there. We're open to correction.

Had an interesting conversation with someone today. This is a total side note. We're probably going to go long now because I'm going to do this, and I'll give a shout out to him, even though I don't have permission to it.

There's a brother, Rick Friesen. I accidentally blocked him because of something

I thought and I was wrong. He didn't even know it. I found out I was wrong. I unblocked him today and I contacted him, sent him a message.

And I'm like, could you give me a call? I need to ask your forgiveness for something I've wronged you.

And you don't even know about it. What a message to get, right? He's like, his response was, are you sure you got me?

Like, you got the right person? And I said, yes, I got the right person. I need to ask your forgiveness.

Could you give me a call? And I called him and I just told him what I did and why I did it and how

I found out I was wrong. And I needed to ask his forgiveness. He was blown away. He's like, you know, first off, he ended up saying at the end, he's like, you know, the fact that you call me and ask forgiveness.

And he's like, I can't believe that. He's like, I'm a nobody. I stopped him. I said, no, you're a child of God.

That's not a nobody. And never think that some guy who may have a big platform or a bigger platform than you have, don't ever think that you're less than them.

As a Christian, we're all children of God. People with a bigger platform are not somehow, and this is a problem we have in our society is that people think like, oh, if you have a bigger platform, somehow you're more important.

No, I sinned against the brother. I needed to go to that brother and ask his forgiveness. Because that's the right thing to do.

You take that process of reconciliation flow chart that John was showing, and that's what it's going to walk you through how to do.

You guys have worked with me for a couple of years now. If you guys think that I'm more on the negative side,

I hope you would tell me. Without hesitation, brother. We enjoy it.

Well, look, it's a funny thing. Striving Fraternity is the power of church ministry. You guys know that.

Anyone listening now will know this. But there's an interesting way to get on a board of directors for Striving Fraternity.

There's two requirements to be on the board of directors for Striving Fraternity. You have to be fully in agreement with our ministry and the philosophy of ministry that we have and what we're trying to do.

It makes sense. If you're going to be on the board of directors, you agree with the mission and vision, right? A second is you either have to have corrected me or shown a willingness to correct me as the executive director.

I mean, that's how serious we take, Doug, how serious we take accountability at Striving Fraternity.

I don't want a bunch of yes men. I want a bunch of guys that will correct me. Do I always agree with them with their correction?

No, they don't always agree with me when I correct them. But I want an environment where we as a board feel like we can confront one another when we think someone's doing wrong.

And I want guys around me that are willing to tell me when they think I'm wrong and we can discuss it.

And I may disagree, but it doesn't mean that just because someone corrects me, they're always right. But I want them to feel like they can.

And that's what I've tried to cultivate. So, let's deal with the second part of this because we're going longer than the one hour podcast that we try to keep.

His second paragraph is this, more specifically, I'm writing you about your current KJV series.

I don't mind asserting that the KJV was not given by inspiration.

And I'm going to stop there and say, that was a lot of, I mean, he's agreeing with me that I don't believe the

King James Version of the Bible was given by inspiration. And that is the context that I'm giving some of this in. And he's going to give some details that I didn't have time in the two minute podcast to give.

Okay. Remember, a two minute podcast is two minutes. If you guys think that's an easy thing to do, try it.

Try recording some, some, you know, detailed content in two minutes and you will see this actually takes me more work than this one hour podcast.

Okay. It's funny. I listened to yours. I was actually listening to yours today. And I, you know, being that I'm so used to learning how to edit things,

I can totally hear the edits. I mean, I can go, oh, there you go. I didn't edit right there.

Oh, there's another one. Yeah. Trying to get that. I was trying to, you know, basically what I was doing to get it to that two minutes.

There's times where I have to, I basically have to cut out the silence. And so you hear words jumping right on top of each other and I'm trying not to have that happen as much.

I'm still working at it, but it is hard to get to two minutes. So, so brother Doug, you are providing, I want folks to know he's going to provide some really good content here that I didn't get a chance to get into.

And really, let me say this. The purpose of our dailies episodes is to give you some information, but it's also to get you thinking, get you digging in more.

Okay. And we had someone that emailed us and said today that they like those daily podcasts because it gets them thinking about things they haven't thought of and digging into the, to studying more in areas they haven't before.

And that's, that's kind of the goal. That's helpful. So let's get back to what he said. So obviously it was not.

So let me reread that first sentence because that give the context that was messed up. So forgive me, Doug. More specifically,

I'm writing about your current KJV series. I don't mind you asserting that the KJV was not given by inspiration.

Obviously it was not. No translation is. So that's worthwhile and you're correct.

You're correcting an error, but it seems like you're trying too hard. For instance, in your latest installment, any ordinary garden variety listener would think that you're asserting that the

KJV translators invented the idea of transliterating baptize.

And that's not true. Baptize was used in the Catholic Douay -Rheims version in 1582, 1559.

Yeah. 1582. Sorry. And on the Protestant side, it was used in Tyndale in 1526.

The KJV built on what had been done before. It's about 80 %

Tyndale. By not explaining yourself better on this point, you're libeling the

King James translators, both as the originators of their decision and therefore as to their possible motives.

So Doug, let me address that. First off, great information. It's stuff I couldn't get into. Yes, the

King James Bible, I did mention in one of the podcasts, there were other English versions out there and much of the

King James, as he says, 80 % of King James is really from Tyndale, which was much earlier.

But and they did translate, transliterate the word baptize instead of translating it to dip.

He accuses me of libel, and I'm not trying to do libel. It's that I can't fully explain in two minutes everything.

But I thought that I was clear. And if I wasn't clear, again, forgive me, but I thought that I was clear in saying that for those who claim the

King James version is inspired. And that's who I was addressing. I was addressing people who claim, who make the claim.

Why is that claim important? I think the reason that claim is important is because of the fact that if you say the

King James version is inspired by God, then what you're also saying that 1611 version specifically, right?

Then what you're saying is that God inspired the Apocrypha because that was included in that.

But also the big confusion. There is confusion over baptism and Deaconess, those two

Greek words. Why? Because they were transliterated. Why did the Catholic Church translate or transliterate that word?

Because they didn't practice dipping or plunging. They practice sprinkling and pouring.

Why did Tyndale do the same thing? For the same reason. Because at the time, that is how the

Protestants baptized was sprinkling or pouring. So all of the followers, the

Anglican Church would translate it that way, right? Everyone would translate it that way. I'm not saying that it originated with the

KJV translators, but what I am saying is if you say the KJV is inspired, that's 1611, then you're saying that God introduced confusion when there are perfectly good words for baptism and Deaconess.

Deaconess would be a waiter of tables. But because in many churches, deacons acted as leaders, they couldn't call them servants, which would have been the meaning of the word because that would seem like a step down.

And so I think that was some of the motivation between the transliterating of those words, because it was against the practices that developed within the church.

So I do think theology influenced the translation in those ways.

And is that being honest with text? I think it is. I think it's honest to say that there were many translations that translated before the

King James. But if you're going to say the KJV 1611 is inspired, then

I think you have to deal with the fact that this confusion exists. That was the point, Doug. Hope that clarifies.

So that is the show we got for you tonight. I hope it was helpful. I hope that you will, again,

I want to give the reminder out there, we are doing a giveaway, in case you didn't pay attention at the beginning, of one of these preacher

Bibles designed by John MacArthur, wide margins so that you could take notes. You can't really see in the camera there.

Let me do it like that. The wide margin, this thicker paper that's designed for you to be able to take notes and it doesn't bleed through.

The nice thing about this, it's a very soft goat skin. The thing that you really see with this is this is designed, several pages in the front for you to take notes, several pages in the back for you to take notes.

This is designed to be a Bible that you pass on to the next generation. Look behind me.

You got tons of commentaries there. My kids will inherit my library when I die and they can read those commentaries to understand the

Bible, but which is going to be more valuable to them, reading those notes or reading their dad's notes?

Let me show you my first Bible that I took my notes in. As you can see, this thing is taped together.

I mean, this is my, you know, it has all my notes in here.

I mean, you can see tons of notes here. It's not wide margins.

You're just going to have to, you're showing off right now. That's all I got to say. Yeah. I mean, this is me trying to write really small to fit it in.

You'll see if I go to certain pages, certain books obviously were important to me and they were falling out of my

Bible. But this is the thing. My kids, when I pass on, they would like this.

I mean, you have, you know, obviously I spent way too much time in the

Beatitudes because you see my thumb wore the pages away. That's not going to happen with the preacher's

Bible. Okay. I have, if I go to, I think it was Philippians that actually fell out of here and I had to tape it in.

I have pages taped in. Here's the book of John chapter one is taped back in Philippians.

I had to tape it in. I'm not going to have this problem with the preacher's

Bible and we're giving away two of them. The first one's going to be given away April 15th. The way to do it is follow

Andrew Rappaport on Twitter, follow Striving for Eternity Ministries on Facebook, and then share these podcasts, all the

Rappaports. You can share each episode each day. And so you can share them on both

Twitter and both Twitter and Facebook. Hashtag what? Thank you.

I forgot. So thank you. So you have to include when you share the Rappaport podcast, you have to do hashtag

Rappaport. So it's Rappaport with two Ps or the Rapp has two Ps, I should say, not the report.

So it's R -A -P -P report. So hashtag R -A -P -P report and you would be entered.

And so enter as many times as you can. If you don't want to share it all in one place, you can share it in different groups and in different areas, send it to other people, however you want to do it.

But it's our way of trying to do a contest to help get the word out that we are doing a new podcast and we're trying to get subscribers and we hope that you find value in these podcasts.

And if you do, then what we want to do is encourage you to share it with others, even if we're not giving away a

Bible. But hey, that helps. It helps a lot, I'm sure for many people. So with that,

I want to say thanks for listening. Go share this episode where you can, everywhere you can.

And we thank you very much. And I didn't play a whole bunch of the commercials I should play, but let me encourage you to go to strivingforeternity .org.

You could donate there and help us, support us monthly. We are redoing the website.

You're going to see that in a month or two. There's going to be major changes going on with the ministry.

We're really refocusing in a lot of ways and you're going to see those changes coming soon. We've been working behind the scenes and we could really use your support for some of the stuff we're doing.

We're revamping some of our classes. We're going to revamp some of our seminars. We're revamping the website and we're going to be putting these things out throughout the year and it costs a lot to do this.

And we try to help other ministries. And so it would help if you could help donate, it would be a great help to us.

And we would thank you very much. And so till next week. Hey, search for the council too, bro.

We're out there too. We're going to promote the council too. Yeah. So find us on Facebook and iTunes.

We're friends with Andrew here. So the council is a group of guys that get together.

They do a weekly podcast. They do a couple other. They have some other people that come in and do podcasts and it is good discussions.

I encourage you guys. You can find them on Facebook. Go search in your podcast catcher for the council.

And it is Vince and John kind of run the council. I'm hoping

I'm still an honorary member, even though I've been kind of absent from meetings. Always. But it's a place where really good discussion happens.

And so you guys should go there. You should download their stuff and see what's going on there because there's some lively discussion over there.

I'll just leave it at that, but it's good discussion. And you know what you end up seeing there is guys who are trying to share the gospel.

You'll hear the gospel every week. You're also going to hear some guys who are trying to not only share the gospel, but talk through differences in a loving charitable way, which is what

Striving for Eternity is trying to do. And that's why we get along so well with the council. Thank you.

So with that. And we also give away marriage advice from our good friend,

Josh Smith. You had to go there. Folks, you're going to have to listen to the council to get that inside joke and ask them to explain.