Questions & Answers with Justin Peters and Andrew Rappaport

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01:01

Today on The Wrap Report, what we have for you is the Q &A, the questions and answers, from the

01:08

Snatch Them From the Flames Home Edition. Justin Peters and myself will answer many questions for you that came in during the

01:17

Home Edition of Snatch Them From the Flames. If you want to watch the full thing, just go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:24

Go to the online events. Seven plus hours of teaching and training that you can get free of charge.

01:32

If you'd like to have us come to your church and have one of these events, feel free to reach out to us.

01:37

We'll be happy to come. But today on The Wrap Report, we will answer many of the questions that came up.

01:45

And this will be very informative and helpful for you now on The Wrap Report.

01:51

One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

01:59

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

02:20

Let's see. We have a lot of questions here, Justin. And Anthony was supposed to be here to help answer them, but I think he,

02:31

I know he was with his family, his sister -in -law.

02:38

So let's see if we can get through as many as we can, which means shorter answers. Can Justin Peters handle shorter answers?

02:48

I think so. We'll find out. I think I can. All right.

02:56

Well, let's do that. And all right, so I have the list of questions here and they're marked with which ones we might want to, we might wanna make sure we answer, which ones we think we've already answered, but I'm gonna just bounce around.

03:12

We'll start with under the category of false teachers. I should have looked how many.

03:20

I'll ask our specialist behind the scenes who doesn't wanna be named to text me the number of categories that we have, and I'll just kind of break these up.

03:30

But we'll start with false teachers. So here's the first question. This one, we can alternate back and forth on who starts to answer if there is one, but this one will be one for you and I'll just leave it to you.

03:42

Will you address the dangers of Bethel -Hillsong evolution, elevation music?

03:51

Yes, there's a lot of dangers. Bethel, Hillsong, and Elevation all come from false churches.

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Bethel, of course, pastored by Bill Johnson and Bethel Music, Hillsong, Brian Houston in Sydney, Australia, Elevation, Stephen Furtick in North Carolina.

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These are false churches. None of them are led by biblically qualified men.

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Hillsong and Elevation especially are word of faith, New Apostolic Reformation.

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Bethel is arguably the worst of them doctrinally. Here's the danger of singing their music in church.

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Even though some of their songs would pass a doctrinal smell test, and some of them would, not all of them, but some of them would.

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When you put the words up on the screen on Sunday morning and people sing those songs,

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A, it's hard to obey Romans 16, 17, mark those who cause divisions and hindrances contrary to the doctrine which you learned and stay away from them.

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I mean, that is a clear command and imperative in scripture that we are to mark false teachers and stay away from them, have nothing to do with them.

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It's hard to obey that and sing their music in your church. You can't do both.

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So that's the first thing. The other thing is when you put the lyrics up on the screen and the unsuspecting person sitting in the pew is reading the lyrics and they see in the fine print down at the bottom, music by Hillsong or music by Bethel.

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They're thinking, oh, Hillsong, Bethel, they must be okay, we're singing their music.

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I think I'll check them out. This is one of their primary tools of their own twisted version of evangelism.

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They use their music as a hook to pull you into their false theology, to pull you into indeed their cult.

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And that's exactly what it is. In fact, I have video of Bill Johnson and he actually says we use our music to broaden our brand, to promote our brand.

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And so that's another danger. And the other danger, the third danger, is that according to the

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CCLI licensing guidelines, every time you sing a song that is copyrighted or licensed or whatever, according to the

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CCLI guidelines, you're supposed to send some money to whoever produced that piece of music.

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And if a church is doing what it is supposed to be doing, every single time they sing one of these songs, they're supposed to be sending in a little bit of money to whoever wrote and produced this music.

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And so when you sing Bethel, when you sing Hillsong or Elevation, if your church is doing what it ought to be doing, required to do by law, then you're sending money to a cult.

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You're sending money to a cult. Are you comfortable with that? I'm sure not. I would not support a cult.

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So yeah, there's a lot of dangers to this. And there's just no excuse. There's no case that you can make to allow for singing

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Bethel, Hillsong, or Elevation. You can't make it biblically. You can't make it logically.

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There's just no case to be made, even though some of the music would pass a doctrinal smell test.

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It's, and I've given this illustration before. Let's just say Planned Parenthood, for whatever reason, decided to write some

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Christian music just to promote their brand, broaden their tent.

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Obviously they would never do it, but let's just say they did for whatever reason. So Planned Parenthood gets some musically inclined people that work in their organization, and they sit down and they write some

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Christian songs and Christian lyrics. And you know what? Let's say the lyrics are okay. So would you sing that in your church?

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Would you sing that, those songs, even if the lyrics are good and the music is good, and you saw in the fine print music by Planned Parenthood, would you sing that in your church?

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Of course you would. Not a single evangelical church, I would hope, would do that. So let me ask you this.

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Why would you sing music that's coming from a cult? Planned Parenthood is lost.

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They're lost people. Lost people do what lost people do. Bethel and Hillsong and Elevation claim to be

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Christians. So why would you not send money to Planned Parenthood, but you would send money to cults who blaspheme

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God, offer false prophecies, preach a different Jesus in a different gospel, and lead millions of people to an eternity in hell, all under the name of Christ.

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Why would you send money to that? And you wouldn't do it to Planned Parenthood. Yep. That's a good point.

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If you're gonna give long answers, then we're not getting through all of these. Sorry. That's a big question, and that's a huge -

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It's one that comes up often. I knew I wanted to get that addressed. Here's another one that I think several people were asking, but, so isn't the

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Day of Prophets over? Does God still use prophets? Then another person said, if there's such a thing as false prophets, isn't it possible to say then there are true prophets today?

09:34

Your turn. Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to start first. Okay. Yeah, I do think the prophets are over.

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I think that, and this may be a different question. I think I saw people, how do you define prophecy?

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And when we define prophecy, there is the forth telling and the foretelling. So some of it is telling the future, but a lot of people refer to prophecy as just what happens on Sunday when people are preaching.

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And so when people have defined it that way, then yes, there would be prophets today in that sense, people prophesying,

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I'll say, in that sense. But I think the prophets were a specific group of people.

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We don't see all people that were preaching in synagogues called prophets. They were, even if they were doing that.

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So I don't think that it's a legitimate argument to say just because someone's preaching, they're a prophet.

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I think that the prophets that we see in the scriptures are done. They were around for the purpose of bringing

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God's judgment. I'm gonna say that we had prophets in the Old Testament. I think we had apostles in the

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New. And so you see people that were prophesying, but I don't think you see people in that position of prophet.

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And so I would say that, yes, they're gone. And by calling someone a false prophet today is not to say there's true prophets today.

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I would just say that you're calling them a false prophet because they claim to be a prophet and they're prophesying things that don't come to pass, making them a false prophet by their definition.

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By mine, I would say they're a false teacher, but they're claiming they're a prophet. So if they are, then they're a false one because they should be stoned according to, what is it,

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Deuteronomy 18. You have anything you wanna add to that or? Yeah, no, that was a good answer.

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No, just to say there are false prophets does not logically necessitate that there are real prophets today.

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There were real prophets, but there are not now. So anyone that claims to be one today is making a false claim.

11:44

So here's one for you, Justin. Do you know any prominent false teachers, false prophets slash teachers who have repented and come to faith?

11:55

No, I don't know of any prominent ones. I know there's been tons, maybe millions of people that God has saved out of this deception, but they're just lay people, if you will, to use that term.

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I don't know of any big names that have ever repented. Probably the closest that would come to that would be

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Kasti Hinn, and he was not a big name. He worked for a big name,

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Benny Hinn as well, but he was a catcher for his uncle in this miracle crusades, would catch people as they were slain in the spirit and that kind of stuff.

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He has definitely repented and come out of that and teaching strongly against it now. But as far as like a

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Kenneth Copeland or Benny Hinn or Joel Osteen or one of these names that you would know, I'm not aware of any.

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But wait, wait, wait, wait. Benny Hinn came out and said he repented. You and I did a video on this and a podcast on this.

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He repented, didn't he? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, his so -called repentance, he just dug his hole deeper because he actually said in his quote -unquote repentance, he was asked about it, he said that he no longer believes some of the things that he used to teach about prosperity.

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Well, the problem is is the things that he no longer believes, he didn't just teach because he believed them, he taught them because he claims that God told him to teach them.

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So he actually outed himself as a false prophet.

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Then to add insult to injury, he said that, he said,

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I don't know why God waited so long to reveal this to me. Well, no, you just threw

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God under the bus. Don't blame God for your sin. That is, I mean, that's repentance 101.

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If you're blaming God for your sin, you haven't repented. Coming out and saying

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I was wrong about a few things, that's not repentance. If Benny Hinn was truly repentant, he would empty his ministry coffers, liquidate everything his ministry has, give every red scent of it to doctrinally sound ministries and or churches, shut his ministry down because he would realize that he is not qualified to be in the pulpit.

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He would come out and admit to people that he has been lying to them for 40 plus years, doing false signs, false wonders.

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He's a false prophet. He would own up to all of that, shut his ministry down, join a good doctrinally sound church, sit in the pew and learn.

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That's what - I would say that if he truly repented, he would call his nephew

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Benny, his nephew Cosby and apologize. Another aspect of it, yeah, sure would.

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So another question that we got here is, what is the defining line between heretic and false teacher?

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So I would say that the difference there is that a heretic is a false teacher, but where I'm gonna make the dividing line is that a heretic teaches something that would damn people to hell.

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They cannot get saved without teaching. A false teacher may just teach falsely, unknowingly.

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And in one sense, there's a lot of false teachers that unknowingly would - that you could say is a false teacher because they're unknowingly teach falsehood.

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However, I'm gonna make a distinction there and say that I think a false teacher is someone who they're knowledgeable that they're teaching falsehood.

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We just done Apologetics Live this week, we're dealing with a pastor who, if he could say he's a pastor, because if you listen to the last three

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Apologetics Lives, we dealt with dangerous doctrines of this one church.

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And I don't - if these things are true, you can't call him pastor. But the thing that was said was supposedly one of the deacons said that who had come out of this church said that he acknowledged that if he was to change his views on the teachings.

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Oh, look, there's the little rat right there. There he is. Look at it, look at it. Folks, you see that. You see that, it's a little rat that he has.

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It's a her. Don't confuse my dog. She's not confused about her orientation.

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Hey, Mia. She's walking out now.

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Yeah, I upset her. I'm sorry. Of course, all the comments online are everyone's going to be like, oh, look at the dog, how nice.

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Andrew's such a meanie. It's okay. The dog didn't want to come up to me and be nice to me.

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See, Mia's back. She's back. Sitting down, waiting to sit on your lap.

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Waiting for your repentance. I'm sorry, Mia, please forgive me.

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You look like a little rat. Now she turned her back on me.

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So I think the thing you end up seeing is that you have people like this guy who could say, if I was to change the teachings that I teach,

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I would be disqualified. So he doubles down. That's known. That's someone who is, he's teaching something that he knows is false.

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That would be a false teacher. But the things he's teaching don't condemn people to hell. In other words, he's still preaching the gospel.

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The heretic, I would say, doesn't preach the gospel. Yeah. And I might just add just quickly that all heresy is error, but not all error is heresy.

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Correct. You know, just as a brief illustration, who wrote the book of Hebrews?

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Some say Paul, some say Barnabas, some say Luke. It can't all be right.

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You know, if someone teaches that Barnabas wrote Hebrews when maybe Luke wrote it or something like that, you know, that would be error.

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Or eschatology, amillennial, postmillennial, premillennial. All three of those positions, by definition, cannot be right.

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So, but none of those positions is heresy in and of themselves. I am premillennial.

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I think I'm right. If I didn't think that, I wouldn't be premillennial. But even if I get to heaven one day and I realize, oh, wow, all millennialists were right, which

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I don't think they, but anyway, you know, that's not heresy.

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Okay, so at least two of the three eschatological positions are in error, but none of them are heresy.

18:58

Okay. All right, so here's a question for you. And several people asked, you brought up Matt Chandler and several people asked in different ways.

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Matt Chandler used to be reformed. What happened? What happened to Matt Chandler? Could someone tell me what doctrinal status is of Matt Chandler?

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What should we do with Matt Chandler? Should we listen to his sermons or what do we do with his

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Bible studies? And then Matt Chandler and Jackie Hill Perry were in American gospel, refuting the word of faith.

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Have they apostatized? Do you know an update on Matt Chandler and Jackie Hill Perry?

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So we'll throw that out as one question for you. Just a long one. Yeah, well, as far as I know,

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Matt Chandler still claims to be reformed in his soteriology and his doctrine of salvation.

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But yes, they were, but they would both be charismatic.

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Matt Chandler and Jackie Hill Perry both be charismatic. They're both very, very much committed to the social justice movement.

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So yeah, but of course that documentary was filmed. People need to remember that documentary was filmed.

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Those interviews were filmed several years ago. In fact, watch me in the documentary. You can see

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I look a lot younger back then than I do now. So those interviews were done before any of the social justice stuff even came up.

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So yeah, there's a lot of water under the bridge since then. Yeah, and that's for folks to remember.

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And really what it is is Matt Chandler's become woke. And for folks who know what that is, that's where he's at.

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All right, so next question. Let's move into charismatic healing prophecy questions.

20:56

Justin, Andrew, do you consider yourself to be sensationist? So we both have to answer this one. And then, well, we'll answer that one quickly.

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I'll let you go first and then I'll. Yes, I am a cessationist.

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I believe that the sign gifts, the apostolic gifts have ceased. They are no longer in operation today.

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I do not believe that there are modern day apostles. I do not believe there are modern day prophets. I do not believe that anyone has the gift of healing today, though I do believe

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God still heals people, but only when it is his sovereign will to do so.

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But that is not the same thing as saying that someone today possesses the gift of healing.

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That I reject. I very much affirm the other more normative gifts, gift of teaching, gift of mercy, gift of ministration, gift of exhortation, gift of giving, gift of hospitality, those gifts very much in operation in the church today.

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Gift of healing, no, it's just not. And you know what, I've been all over the world. I've preached in 27 different countries.

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I've been in churches all over the planet, hundreds of them. I've never seen anybody with a gift of healing, not one.

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Well, I would always question anyone that says they have the gift of healing and there's a hospital near them.

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Go to St. Jude, yeah. Yeah, and you and I share the same position there. The next question

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I'll start with and see if you are gonna disagree with me because I think you might. Can you explain how you've come to the conclusion that tongues have ceased?

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So my position, and I think this is one of the rare areas that Justin and I disagree. I'm gonna look at 1

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Corinthians 13. As we look at that passage, and let me bring that up just so that we have it.

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And we look at verse eight. It's going to say, love never ends for where there are prophecies, they will pass away.

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As for tongues, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

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When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child, but when I became a man,

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I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face,

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I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I'm fully known. Now, my position is gonna be this.

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The tongues, it's very interesting there in the Greek, prophecies will pass, knowledge will pass away.

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That's a different, the pass away there is different in the Greek than when it says tongues will cease.

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So in other words, the prophecies will pass away because something brings that about where the tongues cease on their own.

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So I believe that people were given a gift of speaking in tongues. They were given prophecies at a time.

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So the question becomes, what is the perfect? I take that to be the canon of scripture when the canon was completed, which is fitting exactly with the context there, something that comes to completion.

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When the canon was completed, there was no more need for the prophecies. When the canon was completed, the prophecies stopped because the canon was completed, but the tongues could continue because people still had that gift until they died.

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So that would cease on its own. What I see then in verse 11 and 12 are three illustrations illustrating that word perfect, which we think of it perfect, but the word teleos means mature, complete, or perfect.

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So it's something that becomes completed or becomes perfect. So it's something that was partial to complete, which is what you see with the illustration of a child to manhood, seeing in a mirror dimly, which is not a mirror like we have.

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It's looking in polished metal versus seeing someone face -to -face. And face -to -face does not mean you have to see

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Christ. The same structure is used in Hebrew in Proverbs to refer to looking in water and seeing a reflection compared to seeing dimly in a mirror.

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You see clearer in a body in clear water. So, and then knowing partially versus knowing in whole.

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Those are three illustrations. They're not literal. They're illustrations of something that's partial to completion.

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And so I would say that once the canon of scripture was completed, there was no more need for the gifts. And therefore

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God put a stop to, when people got saved, he gives them gifts. Well, he stopped giving that gift.

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The prophecies stopped because he stopped giving prophecy because the scripture was complete. The gifts ended as those people that already had it died out.

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Yep. Yep, and yeah, and I don't disagree with that.

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I just, I kind of bounce back and forth on what exactly the perfect is. There's three different views of it.

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It could be the canon of scripture. It could also be the individual, the eternal state of the individual believer.

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And what gives me pause with that is verse 12. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face seems to point to the individual state, or the eternal state of the individual believer.

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But whichever way you go with it, this is another one of those things. This is not a point of heresy or anything.

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You and I both agree that the apostolic gifts, the signed gifts have ceased.

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We're both cessationists. Correct. And the point that I ended up making with this, and I've debated

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Matt Slick on this. He believes the gifts continue. We've debated it several times and we come down to this.

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And the issue is my position would be that I don't see where face to face suddenly becomes literal in the middle of several illustrations.

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I think it's more consistent to see them as all illustrations. You know, the comparison is looking in polished metal versus looking at someone face to face.

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So I don't think it needs to be, just because it says face to face, we have to actually see somebody. And that's why

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I go to the Proverbs passage where it does have the same phrase in the subterragean, which is the

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Greek translation of the Hebrew, of face to face. But it refers very, it's clearly referring to water, looking versus polished metal versus looking in water.

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So it's water, it's face reflects face is how that gets translated. And that's what

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I think. I think if they translated face reflects face, we wouldn't have the issue with that. Everyone would agree with me.

27:44

Okay, we got several here that are from you because they're from your first session.

27:49

So let me read, there's three of them here. I'll read them. Rachel said, at least she said it may have been wordsmith to shorten, but Rachel said, so I know that you do not audibly hear the voice of God unless we speak our

28:08

Bibles out loud, exclamation point. Good call, Rachel. But can we be led by the spirit?

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And then Pam asks, if we hear the voice of God for the reason of salvation, how do we hear that voice?

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How do you hear that voice? And then Jen said, may

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I ask what you think about people saying, quote, prompting of the

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Holy Spirit? So all those have to deal with a similar thing. Okay, okay, so the voice of salvation that John 10, 27, my sheep hear my voice.

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That is not a literal audible voice because,

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I mean, my sheep, we're sheep, right? Jesus is in heaven. He's at the right hand of the

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Father. So we're not hearing his audible voice. He's in heaven. So that's clearly a symbolic.

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This is the effectual call. This is when the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment, convicts us that we are a sinner, convicts us of our lost state, convicts us of the truth of the gospel, the need for the gospel, grants us repentance and faith in Christ.

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And we go to the shepherd, just like, I mean, we go to the shepherd symbolically.

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We don't literally see Jesus standing out in a field and we walk up to him. That's not conversion.

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We go to the shepherd. We rest in Christ for our salvation. So that's what that is talking about.

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It's not talking about a literal audible voice that you could record on a, you know, whatever, tape recorder.

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I don't get people to use tape recorders anymore, but so that's that. Let's see, the other one was being led by the

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Spirit. Yes, Christians are led by the Spirit, but it is not a mystical kind of leading.

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One of the primary roles of the Holy Spirit in the lives of us as believers, as I was teaching, is that he indwells us, third person of the triune

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God indwells us, and he does work of illumination. He helps us to understand the scriptures and we understand them.

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He enables us to obey them. Granted, not perfectly, none of us does perfectly, but we grow in that progressive sanctification from the moment of conversion until we are glorified.

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We die and we experience our glorification in heaven. So it is a leading, the

30:50

Holy Spirit creates in a person a desire for God's word. If you're a new creature in Christ, you're going to desire the pure milk of the word.

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It's gonna be a desire that the Holy Spirit will give you. And you go to the scriptures, he helps you to understand the scriptures, obey the scriptures.

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And it is that sense in which the Holy Spirit leads us, as Paul says to the

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Colossians, let the word in Colossians three, let the word of Christ dwell richly within you.

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As the word of Christ dwells richly within us, our minds are informed by the word of God, and then we just naturally obey it.

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So, and this is all the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of us as believers.

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And that is the leading of the Holy Spirit. It's not a hunch, it's not a sense, it's not a, you know, it's not, it's nothing mystical.

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It's just growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Christ by studying and obeying

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God's word. And that is the filling of the Holy Spirit too. If I could, while I'm thinking about it, a lot of people think, oh, you've got to be filled with the

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Holy Spirit. Well, it's not, you're baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ at your conversion.

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That's the baptism by the Holy Spirit when he baptizes us into the body of Christ at our conversion.

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And when Paul says, do not be drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the

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Holy Spirit, grammatically in the Greek, it could either be with the Holy Spirit or by the Holy Spirit. I would submit to you that the context argues for the latter that it's not like you go to bed at night and you're filled with the

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Holy Spirit, but you wake up in the morning and you're a court low, you know, that he seeps out somehow and you have to get more of him.

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When you're converted, you get all of the Holy Spirit you're ever gonna get. The Bible says that he gives the

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Spirit without measure. So when you're converted, you receive the third person of the triune Godhead.

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And it is the word of Christ, the content then of the filling is the word of Christ, is the scriptures, as the word of Christ dwells richly within us, so.

33:10

All right, so the next, there are a couple of questions here that I'm gonna combine together, but basically the question is, how do

33:16

I get my family or friends out of word of faith movement if they're trapped in false charismatic word of faith churches?

33:24

So I kind of mentioned this earlier and I, you know, I figured,

33:30

I said, just skipping that question as I mentioned it earlier, this is one that comes up often, so we should deal with it.

33:37

I mean, one thing I do, the thing that actually started the

33:43

Justin and I win battle that we've had, which is just him and I going back and forth, it started because, you know,

33:49

I had a guy working in my house, a contractor, and he was, he loved

33:55

Joel Osteen and was in word of faith. And I keep several copies of Clouds Without Water from Justin on hand.

34:03

And so I ran out of them and that's why I said to Justin, I need some and he wanted me to, he wanted to give them to me and I wanted to pay for them and we went back and forth and that's what started that fun exchange.

34:14

But, and I won by the way, just for the record in this whole thing. I've gotten all of you to help donate to Justin on my behalf, so.

34:27

So Justin, I win. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. All right.

34:33

So, so I keep those, I mean, that's actually the best thing to have on hand is to go to justinpeters .org,

34:40

get a bunch of Clouds Without Waters and keep them on hand. If they're in the word of faith,

34:46

I don't know anything better to get them out than that, that. The other thing

34:52

I would keep on hand is, is American Gods. If possible, get several copies of those. And the first, there's actually several films that they're doing.

35:02

So they've done two films. The first one is a great one to have on hand. And so I would look to things like that and say, this is some stuff you may want to have just to say, hey, can you review this?

35:15

Let me know what you think. Now, what ends up happening is it depends on the person, your relationship with that person and the person themselves.

35:24

If it's someone I have a relationship with, I am going to deal with that over more time where I'm gonna wanna sit down.

35:32

If they're a person who is going to look at scripture and they're gonna submit to scripture, then I'm gonna sit down and say, let's dig into the scriptures and I'm gonna ask a lot of questions.

35:42

But here's the thing that I would challenge you to do. Don't answer. Don't teach. Ask questions.

35:48

Get them to have to think about what they're doing because when you ask questions, it changes the process, thinking process.

35:56

And when you do that, people have to, they're gonna process things differently. Instead of just listening to you and looking how to throw darts at what you're saying, when you ask a question, they have to answer.

36:07

And when they have to answer, the processing is different because they don't want you to poke holes at what they're saying.

36:12

So they think of how to answer to plug up all the holes. That's what you want them doing because what you want them recognizing is that they have holes in their argument.

36:24

And that when they start recognizing it as they try to plug it themselves, that's when they could start reasoning their way through it.

36:32

So I would say ask a lot of questions. I would say that you want to be careful not to just come down hard on them as I have the truth and you're wrong because all they're gonna do is respond to that defensively.

36:47

And so get some good resources and the way I would do it is not say, here, read this, you're wrong, but here, could you tell me what you think about this?

36:56

Now, in the case with the guy, the contractor who was at my house, I knew he was coming back. He came back and we had a very different discussion the second time he was out because he had watched the video.

37:07

And now he was asking me a ton of questions because he now realized he had some problems with what these guys were teaching because of the way

37:16

Justin laid things out. So I don't know if you have anything you wanna add to that, Justin. No, no,

37:22

I don't think so. Just, okay, maybe

37:27

I'll do just a little bit to tag on to that. If a person is not willing to have his theology corrected from scripture, then there's really no other card to play.

37:42

If you sense a willingness and a tenderness in the person to at least be open to the possibility that his beliefs and theology have been wrong and willing to have it corrected from scripture, then that's good.

37:56

That's what you want. That's what you hope for. And that's an opportunity and an invitation to spend more time with that person, reasoning from the scriptures.

38:05

But if they're just absolutely, if their heels are dug in, if they say, I don't care what you show me from scripture, as I've had people do with me, then there's no other card to play.

38:17

There's no other rabbit to pull out of the hat if they won't bend the knee to God's word. That's where you just pray for them and do what

38:25

God does. So a question for you is, healings in other countries, limbs being restored, dead being raised, but no video to back it up.

38:33

Can you explain this? Yeah. Yeah, because it's not happening.

38:39

I mean, it's just, it was, yeah, it was Francis Chan here just not too long ago, claims that he was in, where was it,

38:48

Andrew? Indonesia? Yeah. I forget where. Anyway, he claims that he healed, he prayed for these people in his village to be healed, and God was just healing people in this village.

39:03

And yet there's no video of it. You know, there's no proof of this. He just made the claim.

39:11

And in a day and age when everybody has a smartphone, you do not get video of this.

39:18

And I heard, I made that observation one time and this lady rebutted me. She said, oh, maybe he was where he didn't have cell phone service.

39:25

Well, you don't need a cell phone signal to record something on your cell phone. Just hit the little camera thing.

39:31

You know, you don't need wifi to record that. That's great.

39:38

Well, I mean, there was this one video I remember seeing with this woman who had something with her arm and it was all bulged up and it would straighten out and come out and these guys would pray.

39:50

And there was video of that. The problem was there was actually like three or four or five different videos of her supposedly in different places, in different countries, all having the same healing.

40:01

So whatever that healing was, it seemed to go back. Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was a scam.

40:10

No, go ahead. Oh, the guy, maybe a year or so ago, people might remember in South Africa, they claimed they raised him from the dead.

40:20

He was in this coffin and this guy in a coffin and some church in South Africa and they claimed to raise him from the dead and they had it all on video and the guy's laying there in the coffin and all of a sudden he sits up out of the coffin.

40:33

And he's like, you know, and you can see in, if you look real carefully, you can see in his coat pocket, he's got a cell phone in his coat.

40:43

So I'm not sure why they're burying a lot of people with their iPhones. Total scam, total scam.

40:52

Well, what's not a scam, even though there's no video of this, I mean, we know that I am the best faith healer because I healed you.

41:00

We're in the Philippines and you had that, you all of a sudden lost all strength in your left arm and you couldn't even put any weight on your crutch and pick yourself up.

41:13

And I remember we were on a plane flying back to the States and I prayed for you.

41:19

I prayed that you'd have healing and you didn't have to have the surgery that they planned. So therefore,

41:24

I mean, what better faith healer than someone that prayed for the healing of Justin Peters and he was healed.

41:31

I mean, now people are gonna say, but why is he still wearing crutches? Very simple, because I'm not gonna pray for his legs.

41:39

The abuse I've given him, he's gonna chase me down and beat me up. No, I just prayed for his arm.

41:45

That's all, just for the disc, the bulging disc, that's all. Why was that not a biblical healing?

41:55

I did pray for you and you did, somehow they can't explain the bulging disc that we have an

42:01

MRI wasn't an issue anymore. Yeah, I did. I had two bulging discs.

42:09

I had this problem about three years ago. I had surgery for it. So then a year ago, when we were in the

42:14

Philippines, same kind of thing happened, just different discs. And yeah, they did an

42:19

MRI and two bulging discs, one right above, one right below where they did surgery on me three years ago.

42:26

And I remember you praying for me on the plane. And now that's not when my healing happened or whatever happened.

42:35

This was in May when you and I were in the Philippines, May of 2019. It was a year ago last week.

42:43

Yeah, yeah. So I came back and went to see my doctor and yeah, you got two bulging discs.

42:53

And so we're gonna schedule surgery and surgery I remember was scheduled for August 8th last year.

42:59

And I had no feeling in my fingers, could not press down with my left arm.

43:06

I could like do a curl, but I couldn't do this. I could do this, but I couldn't do this.

43:14

And then just a couple of weeks before surgery, one day I'm sitting at the table in the kitchen and Kathy and I are in there just talking.

43:21

And I just got my hand laying on the table and I'm just kind of pushing on.

43:26

I realized all of a sudden like, I can press down with my arm.

43:32

That's weird. Hadn't been able to do that since May. And I guess this was the end of July last year.

43:39

And so I didn't know what to make of it. I called the doctor and went back for an appointment. He said, come in.

43:44

And he took a look at me, he gave me a strength test. And yeah, I could do what

43:50

I could not do before. The numbness in my fingers went away. I had the feeling back in my fingers.

43:56

And he said, well, as long as you don't have any symptoms, we're not gonna do surgery.

44:02

And so surgery was canceled. This was July of last year. And so now we're just about to go into June.

44:09

So it's been about 10 months or so. And I can still use my arm, still have the feeling in my fingers.

44:16

Now, two possibilities, two possibilities. God healed me and I'll never have that problem again.

44:27

Or the bulging discs, one of them, just the one that was pressing on the nerve just moved a little bit and relieved that, what was causing me problems.

44:40

And that's a real possibility. Maybe that is what happened. And eventually if that is what happened, it'll probably eventually move again.

44:47

And I'll be back to where I started, but he didn't order an MRI. So to this day,

44:52

I don't know which of those two is the reality, whatever it is. And whatever it is, it's a kind providence of God that I didn't have to have surgery.

45:05

I'm grateful for that. It's a kind providence of God. And that's where I'll leave it. That's where I'll leave it.

45:10

I'm not going to say it's a miracle. I'm not gonna say it's a healing. I'll just say it's a kind providence of God.

45:20

And that happens to people all the time, all the time.

45:26

And it wouldn't be the same as what we see in the Bible with healings because as you mentioned, it wasn't immediate.

45:32

Yeah, it wasn't immediate. No, no, it wasn't immediate. So, and you know, discs do that.

45:39

Discs do move around. So I may wake up tomorrow morning and I'm back in where I was a year ago.

45:45

So, you know, who knows? Let's not have that. So a question, I'll take this, which we'll move into theology and Bible questions.

45:53

Can you point me to a theology chart that delineates points of primary, secondary, tertiary doctrines?

46:02

And so the one that I could think of would be at carm .org. And if you go to carm .org

46:09

and just, I guess, search for essential Christian doctrines, but it's carm .org slash essential -christian -doctrines.

46:18

And that gives just a list of the primary essentials, the secondary essentials. That might be one resource to go to.

46:30

Let's see, you know of some others there, Justin. No. Then a question for you is out of James 5, 14 to 18.

46:40

It says, how do we properly interpret James 5, 14 to 18? It's so often taken as a promise of healing.

46:48

So long as the elders of the church pray over the sick, a righteous man like Elijah. It's hard to,

46:58

I don't know, but yeah. So how do you, how would you answer that?

47:04

Yeah, it's a question I'm asked often. And it's out of James 5, verse 13 and 14 following.

47:11

Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises.

47:16

Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

47:26

Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.

47:32

So is any among you sick? There's a couple of different ways to take this. And in the Greek, that word sick could either refer to a physical illness or a spiritual weakness.

47:47

It could go either way and it's used both ways. So, and commentators honestly seem to be divided on it.

47:56

Some believe it's a physical sickness. Others believe it's a spiritual weakness. I think the context argues for a spiritual weakness as opposed to a physical illness for a couple of reasons.

48:10

One, there's nothing in the book of James at all about physical sickness, except arguably right here.

48:20

There's nothing else in the book of James, all of a sudden it just kind of appears and there it is and then it goes away.

48:26

But there's a lot in James about sin. James has been referred to as Christianity in blue jeans, how we're to live out the

48:33

Christian life. In fact, it's even in the immediate context here. Is any among you sick?

48:41

You must call for the elders of the church, prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up.

48:47

And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore confess your sins to one another.

48:53

So I think the context argues for a spiritual weakness as opposed to a physical illness.

49:01

So that's one point. Another point is that even if it is a physical sickness that is in view here, this word that's rendered as sick in the

49:13

Greek, even if that is the proper term, this still cannot be a blanket promise for guaranteed healing.

49:21

It cannot be that. Why can it not be that? It cannot be that because the

49:27

Bible is full of examples of faithful servants of God who were sick and were not healed.

49:33

So this is not a blanket promise for guaranteed healing. You've got

49:38

Moses, you've got David, you've got Elisha who died of an illness. You've got Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach.

49:45

You've got Trophimus, you've got the apostle Paul himself in Galatians chapter four, verse 13 said that he had a bodily illness.

49:52

So the Bible is just full of examples of faithful servants of God who were not healed. So it cannot be a blanket promise across the board for guaranteed healing from sickness and disease.

50:04

And one other little point, notice that James says, is anyone among you either weak or sick?

50:11

You must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him. Notice who does the calling here.

50:18

The one who is weak or sick calls for the elders of the church to come to him. What do we see in the charismatic movement?

50:25

We see faith healers calling the sick to come to them.

50:32

So it's the opposite of what we see here modeled in James is the exact opposite of what we see in the charismatic movement.

50:44

Okay, so a question that was directed at me by several people. Could you please elaborate on Matthew 24, 36?

50:54

And so this is the passage that talks about, but concerning the day or hour, no one knows, not the angels of heaven nor the sons, only the father.

51:02

So clearly I didn't explain it well enough. So there's a

51:08

Jewish idiom that refers to living in a life of expectant, to be living for, you know, well, if we keep reading the context, for in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day of Noah entered the ark.

51:31

They were unaware until the flood came and swept them away. So it's that suddenness.

51:37

That's the idea that's being taught there. And that's the idea of the idiom. It is to live a life of expectancy, that something's gonna come quickly, that something is going to be.

51:48

And so come when you're not prepared. And so the thing that you end up seeing with this is people will try to, they get into trouble with the hypostatic union because that says that Jesus is both

52:06

God and man. You can't separate these two. And so when people are trying to separate them, that's where I think that you get into problems.

52:16

The idiom refers to a wedding where the father is the one that chooses the day when the son is gonna marry.

52:23

The son doesn't know the day or the hour. Only the father knows.

52:29

So when the father says, go get your bride, that's the day or the hour. So the idiom refers to the fact that a child or a son doesn't know that wedding day.

52:40

The father knows. And when he says, go get the bride, you go get the bride. That ends up fitting with the context where you see several of the illustrations afterwards are teaching the same thing.

52:56

Let's see. Question for Justin. All right,

53:02

Justin, this is definitely for you because I haven't heard of this translation. Will you please discuss problems with the

53:09

Passion Bible? Different ways,

53:15

I guess there's different, also the Message Bible. So could you just reflect on that? Yeah, so okay.

53:21

So the Passage translation is a product of Bethel. You've got the same problems with the

53:28

Passion translation as what you have with singing Bethel music. It comes out of Bethel church, quote unquote church.

53:35

It's not a church. Bethel is a, it's a goat farm. It's not a church. So anything that comes out of Bethel, I'm going to say that I would be suspect of, it would be an understatement of massive proportions.

53:51

I've not yet looked at the Passion translation yet. I need to get a copy of it just so I can be familiar with it. So in full disclosure,

53:57

I've not yet really looked at it, but I've heard a little bit about it. I've heard some

54:02

Bethel people describe it. And just from what, just the description of it, I know enough, like don't bother.

54:10

Don't get the Passage translation. For one thing, it's not a literal word for word translation.

54:16

It was produced, I believe, by one man. And that's the same problem you have with Eugene Peterson and the

54:23

Message produced by one man. So don't bother. There's other good translations out there.

54:30

My go -to is the New American Standard. It's my favorite translation. It's the most literal translation.

54:37

It's my go -to. It's the one from which I preach. I am excited like a kid on Christmas morning waiting for the

54:48

Legacy Standard Bible to come out, Lord willing, next year, that Master Seminary is putting together.

54:56

It's gonna take just a couple of the weaknesses of the New American Standard, which are shared by other translations as well, and correct those.

55:05

For example, you might have heard in my presentations, whenever Lord would be in an

55:12

Old Testament passage, I would say Yahweh because that's what it is. This new version is gonna fix that.

55:19

So anyway, I'm excited about that. New American Standard, English Standard version is good. HCSB, which

55:27

I think they're no longer making, is good. But stay away from the

55:32

Message. The Message is garbage. I mean, it's garbage.

55:37

I have looked at the Message quite a bit. I've written on it. The Message is not just a paraphrase.

55:46

You can't even call it a translation. It is so loose. Honestly, if you had a copy of the

55:52

Message in front of you and you just started reading it, you'd be lost. You would be hard -pressed to even think about like, what book is this?

56:03

And I mean, there's no, I don't even think it has verse numbers in it. I mean, you would be hard -pressed to read a page out of the

56:11

Message and even think about like, I wonder what book this is from. It is so bad.

56:17

It is so utterly atrocious. It is, it was produced by one man with no accountability.

56:25

He was writing it for his children, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, kids cause,

56:31

I mean, it just, I'm sorry. The Message denigrates the deity of Christ.

56:39

It teaches that sin will not separate us from God. Not only does it not condemn homosexuality, it actually gives an implicit endorsement to a homosexual relationship as long as it's done out of love, which is an impossibility.

56:57

There's no such thing as a loving homosexual relationship because God defines love. So, but I mean, it's, and I have all this documented.

57:07

This is not hearsay. This is, if you have a copy of the Message, burn it. Don't even throw it away and risk the off chance that somebody might find it in your garbage and take it home.

57:21

It is so bad. There is more theology in green eggs and ham than there is in the

57:26

Message. And another translation I would use is the NET, the

57:32

New English Translation. I like that one just because it was, there was a lot of discussion on the word choices, things like that.

57:39

But Holman is now Christian standard. The Holman Christian standard is now just the Christian standard. I don't like it as much because some of the things they got rid of are what we're gonna see with the legacy.

57:49

The translation of slave is slave everywhere, not servant. Really one of the reasons

57:55

Holman got away from the Holman Christian standard is the translation of tongues as languages because that clarified the issue.

58:04

And all of a sudden people were starting to read that and realize, oh, wait. Like, so yeah,

58:12

I would agree. So, and we had a question about which translations we use. So I guess

58:17

I'll answer that since you, Dave, yours. I started out with New King James when

58:22

I was pastoring and preaching. I switched over to ESV only because as I'm now traveling, speaking, that's typically what most people have in their hands.

58:33

However, now that I'm at the Master's Church of Bucks County, we preach out of the

58:39

New American standard. So I'm back now to the New American standard. So I'm preaching now the same as you.

58:46

You came home. I came home. So yeah, so that's what

58:53

I'm preaching out of now. So here's a question that I can start with, but I think both of us being evangelists would love to address both of these.

59:05

I guess I'll do the first one. I'll let you do the second, but we'll see. Here's the first one.

59:11

This is in the evangelism category. How can we share the gospel in a simple words rather than a five -point sermon?

59:20

And this is from Kim. And so Kim, there really is, it depends on when you're sharing the gospel, who you're talking to, how much time you have.

59:30

There's a lot that can be said with it. In simple form, the gospel in one word would be imputation, theological word of imputation.

59:41

Our sin laid upon Christ, his righteousness laid upon us. If you want a Bible verse for that, that would be 2

59:47

Corinthians 5 .21. For he who knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God.

59:55

And now you're gonna see the ESV that I start memorizing in. And now I got to relearn all the verses in the

01:00:00

New American Standard. I'm just a mix because I keep switching translations.

01:00:06

But that would be really the thing you wanna communicate that A, we're sinners. We break God's law. We can't save ourself.

01:00:13

That becomes important because when we talk about repentance, that term metanoia is the idea of changing mind.

01:00:19

What are you changing your mind over? It is over the fact that you cannot save yourself. It is, you can't trust your good works.

01:00:26

You can't trust your good nature. And you can't trust your genealogy. I thought

01:00:31

I was born Jewish, I was dying Jewish, and I was going to heaven because I was Jewish. I thought that just being born

01:00:37

Jewish, I was the elect and I had an immediate ticket to heaven. These things can't be trusted.

01:00:44

The only thing we could trust is in Jesus Christ alone. Why? Because he's God. So the more we dig into it, the more we look.

01:00:52

It's the fact that we sin. We're not in a right state with God and we need to be in a right state with God. How do we get in a right state?

01:00:58

Well, we can't save ourselves. It's through God himself who does the work because Jesus is truly man, he can pay a fine for men.

01:01:06

But because he's truly God, he can pay an eternal fine and pay it for more than one person.

01:01:12

That's what makes Christ unique. And so because he's God, he can pay that fine.

01:01:19

Now we have our sin, we can't save ourselves. God can save us, but we have to turn from trusting him and to trusting ourselves and trust him.

01:01:32

And so yeah, you can, you know, there are five points that you can break down when you look at these things, but we don't have to sit there and make it a sermon.

01:01:43

We could do this by talking through this. And, you know, there's plenty of examples of me sharing the gospel online.

01:01:51

Since I, I mean, it's what I end up doing as I travel around the world. And so what I try to communicate is just that.

01:01:59

Justin, do you have anything you want to add to that? No, no, not really. It's, yeah, it just kind of depends largely on how much time you have.

01:02:06

If you've got, you know, just a couple of minutes in passing with someone, you're going to have to do it differently than if you're sitting down over a meal and have an hour with them, so.

01:02:17

Yeah, if I'm doing open air and I'm near a light and everyone's just waiting for the light to change,

01:02:22

I got 30 seconds, you know, it's going to be, we all sin, we all fall short of God's glory.

01:02:28

We break his law, that would make us criminals. We lie, we steal. Therefore, we need to get in a right state with God. How do we get in a right state with God?

01:02:34

We can't do it ourselves because we're already criminals. We need someone who's perfect, who can pay that fine. That's almighty

01:02:40

God, Jesus Christ came in the flesh, fully God can pay the fine, fully man, he can pay the fine for us.

01:02:46

Being fully God, he pays it for all eternity. We must turn from trusting ourself and our good works and turn and trust

01:02:52

Jesus Christ and believe in Christ. We repent and have eternal life.

01:02:59

That's basically what I'll say in 30 seconds. If I have way more time, I get into more details. Justin, a follow up to that is, what readings would you recommend for those who would be apologists?

01:03:13

Oh, what readings to recommend for those who would be apologists? We may be here with this one for the next hour.

01:03:19

Give me resources. Yeah, oh my goodness. Yeah, there's a number of apologetic books out there.

01:03:27

Of course, Ray Comfort has the evidence, the evidence Bible, that's a good resource. Andrew, you've got resources on apologetics at strivingforeternity .org.

01:03:38

So maybe, Andrew, I win. Yeah, you still got a long way to go.

01:03:45

Well, I know, I'm trying, little by little. There's some apologists out there that are pretty good in evidentiary apologetics, but I would not recommend as theologians.

01:03:58

And I hesitate to even mention those names because I'm so concerned about their theology,

01:04:05

I just wouldn't want to steer any people, anybody in their direction, and then get into their theology inadvertently because there's some serious issues with their theology, even though their apologetics are good.

01:04:17

But Van Til has some good resources in apologetics. Living Waters does, so go to those websites.

01:04:26

Yeah, I would say when we look at it, you're right. There's a difference between people that approach apologetics as theologians versus philosophers.

01:04:33

And when you get to the philosophers, you're going to start seeing problems. William Lane Craig, he's well -known for his debates, but his theology is bad.

01:04:41

Yeah, that's one of the ones I was thinking of. Yeah, I mean, and that may be hard for someone to think about, but what he ends up teaching is, he ends up teaching a thing called

01:04:51

Molinism, which is this idea that God somehow, because he doesn't like the idea that God elects people, so they try to find a way around it.

01:05:00

And what they do is they end up teaching that God had all these possible worlds he could have created, infinite number of worlds.

01:05:08

And based on our free will, based on our choices, he decided which of these would give him the most glory, and he picked that one.

01:05:16

Now, the irony with that is this whole idea is to avoid, to explain how we can have free will, and yet God chooses things, and so they think this marries it up.

01:05:28

But here's the problem, and any Molinists that I debate, here's the question I end up asking. Once God selects that world, can we do anything other than what we, by our choices, we are going to do in that world?

01:05:44

And they say, no. I said, so then it's determinism. Because once God chooses, we can't do anything other.

01:05:49

And all of a sudden, he actually backs up in the very thing he's trying to avoid. So let me give you some resources.

01:05:56

Living Waters we've mentioned, Great Comfort. Another good one is anything from Jason Lyle.

01:06:02

He's got some great stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jason Lyle. Jason is with Biblical Science Institute.

01:06:08

Excellent stuff you're gonna get there. And a great guy, too. Great guy, yeah, yeah, wicked smart guy.

01:06:17

But you wouldn't know it. He's so humble about it. But he's got some great stuff on logic.

01:06:22

He actually has, for homeschoolers, a course on logic for homeschooling. So that's a good resource.

01:06:30

I would say that there's gonna be guys, I would say that Stan Parisian, Greg Koukl, has some excellent stuff.

01:06:39

But he's gonna approach it from a philosophical argument. So I'm gonna have real problems when it comes to, he's got differing views with age of Earth.

01:06:45

He's gonna say the Earth could be millions of years old. And that's gonna be where you're gonna see the difference between philosophy and theology.

01:06:54

And so you wanna stick with guys that are more the theologians. Justin mentioned Striving Fraternity.

01:06:59

We do seminars on apologetics. If you listen to the Rap Report Daily podcast,

01:07:06

I'm literally giving two -minute answers to apologetics questions. That's pretty much what we do on most of the shows.

01:07:14

Let's move into church questions. Actually, what I would do, typically, is just pull some books off my shelf, but they're not there.

01:07:24

So I really can't, actually, wait, you know what, there is one. I can recommend this, because my seminary professor.

01:07:33

Is Every Believer Confident by Mark Form. And Mark was my seminary professor.

01:07:39

He's got a PhD in, I should keep it up there so you could see it.

01:07:44

He's got his PhD in presuppositional apologetics. So people always think that I, actually, this is much better, because it covers my face.

01:07:52

Look at that. Every Believer Confident by Mark Forham.

01:07:58

And people think that, like, I answered in Genesis. Someone's saying I answered in Genesis.

01:08:04

That's a good resource as well. People think that I got all my priests up from Cycle and Broomcake, because that's when most people became aware of presuppositional apologetics.

01:08:14

And I'm like, no, I was taught it 20 years before by a guy who had a PhD in it, long before Cy was believing, because Cy didn't know it until later.

01:08:25

But let's move into church questions. So the first question, and this is for both of us, what denomination are you members of, or are you non -denominational?

01:08:37

I am non -denominational. I was born and reared in the Southern Baptist denomination, but I'm not

01:08:47

Southern Baptist anymore. With people, I'm feeling much better now.

01:08:53

I mean, there's just a lot of issues with the SBC, but our church is non -denominational.

01:09:01

So for the last 10 years, I've been non -denominational. And I've been,

01:09:08

I mean, since I've been, became a believer, since I've been converted to Christ, I've been in independent

01:09:13

Baptist churches. And so pretty much in line with MacArthur.

01:09:20

All right, so let me - Yeah, you and I would both be with MacArthur on pretty much everything.

01:09:29

Not that, you know. Minor thing, we have very minor things that - We have the same hermeneutical grid.

01:09:36

Yeah, you and I have very little difference. We have very little difference with MacArthur. Both of you, when you correct your theology, will agree with me, it'll be fine.

01:09:46

Yeah. So let me ask you this question, and I'll give this one over to you.

01:09:55

What should someone do when they learn that they're under a leadership of false teaching? Leave quietly? Leave but point out first?

01:10:02

Should pointing out be done privately or publicly? Well, leave quietly or publicly.

01:10:17

I mean, I guess if, you know, if it would depend on the severity of the error,

01:10:24

I suppose, that you're in. But I would, it's kind of a difficult question.

01:10:30

It's not like a one size fits all, but here's what I would say. If you are, and this happens a lot, because I hear these testimonies all the time.

01:10:38

You're in a bad church, but all of a sudden, somewhere along the way, you actually get saved.

01:10:45

And then you do exactly what Christians do. You begin to grow. You have a hunger for the milk of the word.

01:10:51

You begin to understand scripture. You read, study. And as you grow, then you start realizing, wait a minute, something here is not right.

01:10:58

This isn't lining up with scripture, and these alarm bells are going off all over the place.

01:11:05

And I get questions from people. They say, I know now that I'm in a bad church. I know that there's a lot of things being taught that are unbiblical.

01:11:13

Should I leave, or should I stay? And a lot of people want to stay because they think they can be a source of light and a source of truth, and they can influence people in their own little

01:11:25

Sunday school class or something, and hopefully they'll just change the church from the inside out themselves.

01:11:34

That ain't gonna happen. That ain't gonna happen. A congregation is not going to rise to a level of spiritual maturity above that of its leadership.

01:11:44

It's just not going to happen. So if you're not in a good church, if you're not in a church that is being led by biblically qualified men, if you're not in a church that practices expository preaching, believers baptism, the

01:12:04

Lord's Supper, church discipline, if you're in a church that never does church discipline, then you're not in a real church.

01:12:12

You need to get out of that church because it's not a real church. And you need to be in a place that is led by biblically qualified men that does meet the marks of a biblical church, and it's only in that kind of environment that you can truly serve.

01:12:27

You can't use your spiritual gifts in a false church. Useless, useless.

01:12:35

Our spiritual gifts are designed to edify the believers. So you need to get out of that church, find a good church.

01:12:45

Now, if you're in a church and they... Maybe you're in a church and they're...

01:12:51

In all respects, it's a good church, except that maybe they have a different eschatology than you do.

01:12:58

But there's another church across the street that you're more in line with. And if that's a matter of conscience for you and you want to align yourself with a church that is more in line with your eschatology, that's fine.

01:13:11

Don't make a stink in a church just for a difference in eschatology or something like that.

01:13:17

If otherwise, in all respects, they're a good church. So now, if you're in a

01:13:23

Bethel kind of church and you get saved and then you start realizing, yeah, I mean, leave, don't pass go, don't collect $200, leave, run, don't walk, get out, and shout it from the rooftops while you're getting out.

01:13:40

Let me actually... I wanted to say something, but I wanna put up something that someone says here because this is...

01:13:47

Our leadership says we must be faithful to a church and it's wrong to leave. I would leave a church like that.

01:13:56

When they set themselves up as an authority, they set themselves up and say that it's wrong to leave them, that's cultic, okay?

01:14:09

We're gonna try to keep control of people. So there's different scenarios that you have on when to leave.

01:14:15

I mean, I'll add to what, Son, you said, is if someone is, like you were saying, end times views or things like that, but I see a lot of people that leave churches because, well, they're not evangelizing the way

01:14:25

I do and they're not doing open air, they're against open air, and therefore they're not serious about the gospel and things like this that people leave over.

01:14:33

You need to know that you do submit to your leadership and part of that submission means that you don't always agree with them, but you have to make sure that what they're doing is biblical if they're saying, well, we don't want you to open air, do open air evangelism, because we don't think it fits with our culture, our community, that's different than saying, we're not interested in sharing the gospel, okay?

01:15:06

And so you have to make sure that it's actually false teaching that they're doing.

01:15:12

That's the first thing. A lot of people just call it false teaching and what it is is they disagree with me.

01:15:18

When you leave a church saying they disagree with me and they're false, that could be pride.

01:15:24

And if you don't challenge yourself and question yourself in that, you could be leaving that church only to put up a barrier that lets your pride develop within you and shut you down from any correction.

01:15:38

And therefore every church you go to, when they see that pride, they start to address it. You're gonna have problems with them and it's time for you to leave again, or you just don't go to church at all and you become a nomad.

01:15:48

And that's what you end up seeing with a lot of people is really it's not that it's false teaching, it's that the church disagrees with them.

01:15:55

And a lot of these people, it's their own pride and they're the ones that may be in the wrong, but they refuse to see it.

01:16:01

So do you leave quietly or not? Well, it depends on situations and that's gonna always be a thing.

01:16:08

I have left quietly from churches where I just realized that it was, for the unity of the church,

01:16:18

I'm gonna disagree with the leadership and I'll leave. If that's the way the leadership wants this church to go, it's not really a doctrinal issue, then

01:16:30

I may just leave quietly. But if they start doing some things like they're gonna start teaching things against what scripture says, like allowing women to preach on Sunday morning or start promoting homosexuality or start getting into where they're gonna deny the deity, no, then

01:16:52

I'm gonna leave kind of the way Justin Peters left Todd Bentley. In other words,

01:16:58

Justin Peters went up at a Todd Bentley thing and walked up behind him and decided to read scripture to Todd Bentley and knucklehead didn't even know it was scripture.

01:17:07

And Justin read Matthew 7, 21 to 23 and condemning

01:17:12

Todd Bentley and Todd Bentley didn't even seem to recognize that it was scripture. He just goes, who is the man?

01:17:18

And Justin said, you're the man. They escorted him out. And as he's being escorted out, he's preaching the gospel on the way out.

01:17:27

Well, there's a difference there because this is someone that's leading people astray to damnation that you may have a church that you disagree with them, but it's not damnable.

01:17:40

In other words, it doesn't lead them to hell. So that would be the difference I'd make there.

01:17:47

This next question we can't answer, but I'm gonna read it and ask the person to get ahold of me. Cindy asks,

01:17:53

I'm a shut -in. I was going to join a church, but my doctor says no, what should I do? What you should do is email me.

01:18:01

Just email at info at strivingforeternity .org. I'll get that because we can't answer that because there's just not enough information.

01:18:13

We don't know what your situation is that the doctor would say no. Justin, here's a question that came in and it was asked to you, but I have a feeling you're gonna throw it back at me.

01:18:23

So this is in the category of world religions, cults, and movements. The question is,

01:18:29

Justin, do you plan on addressing Hebrew roots? Yes, I wouldn't say it's not on my front burner necessarily, but it is something

01:18:40

I've looked at and I'll probably end up doing some podcasts on it, but it's bad juju, but yeah, that's definitely.

01:18:49

Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're gonna talk Hebrew roots and again with the bad juju? What do you got against my people?

01:18:56

The bad juju? And you're talking about Hebrew roots no less than you're calling it bad juju.

01:19:03

Bad juju. I gotta learn to stop saying that around you.

01:19:13

Let me give you a resource for that. This is the only resource I know on Hebrew roots movement.

01:19:20

Again, it covers my face, which is good. Torahism. Torahism, I've gotten to know

01:19:26

R .L. Stahlberg. We've done two podcasts. I've had him on my rap report podcast and the title that we used at that podcast was

01:19:34

Torahism and I had him on Apologetics Live and the title was

01:19:40

Torahism. Torahism is a term he came up with to describe Hebrew roots, black

01:19:46

Hebrew Israelites, all these groups that want to put themselves back under the law and it is the only book that I've seen on the subject.

01:19:53

It is an excellent, excellent book. Handles things wonderfully and I recommend you getting it.

01:20:01

So just look for the book Torahism. Are Christians required to keep the law of Moses?

01:20:07

And so you can go to torahismbook .com. Torahismbook .com

01:20:14

and you can pick it up there and let Robert know that I sent you. That way

01:20:19

I can get bragging rights with him and not just Justin. He won't give you anything special.

01:20:26

He may charge you more if you do that. All right, so there's, under general questions, we're to the general question category.

01:20:35

We have, I think, just a couple more. I think maybe one or two more categories, but under general questions, and I don't know how we'll answer this one, but may we please have access to your

01:20:49

PowerPoints or a PDF of that information? Do you give out the

01:20:54

PowerPoints or PDF of the slides? I mean, not typically, but I'm not opposed to it either.

01:21:04

It's kind of hard with the videos though. Yeah, the videos is what makes it hard. I mean, I'm happy to, because the videos are embedded and this is above my pay grade, but they're like embedded, whatever that means technologically.

01:21:21

So I don't think like it's not as easy as just attaching it in an email and hitting send. Yeah. So it's not an unwillingness on my part.

01:21:30

It's just, I'm not sure there's a capability there. Well, there's capability, just technically, you're not the guy.

01:21:39

No, I'm not the guy. Yeah, I mean, we could probably do something like that. It's somewhere, it's gonna be a very large file with the videos, but -

01:21:51

I mean, minus the videos, it wouldn't be so large. Yeah, and we could take that and convert it to a

01:22:00

PDF and maybe get it to folks if they wanna reach out. Is this another question in general just was, can those who registered have a copy of the event?

01:22:09

There's nothing really to have a copy of. We don't plan on putting this on DVD, although I guess we could, but we plan on leaving it up.

01:22:16

What I do, this is what we're going on. We'll have eight hours of video total. Well, seven hours of video with the breaks.

01:22:26

We're planning on leaving up. I'll probably chop these up into individual sessions and I'll put it at least on Striving Fraternity.

01:22:34

If Justin wants to put it on Justin Peters Ministries as well, we could put it there and have all the individual sessions so that it's easier to watch.

01:22:45

And so there's nothing to get a copy of because we didn't charge for it.

01:22:50

We're not gonna do anything to charge for it.

01:22:56

That's not our plan. That's not how Justin and I kind of do ministry. We don't want money to be the issue.

01:23:03

So the question that someone asked also was, will they be recorded and saved on the channel? I think

01:23:08

I answered that. Going further down, still in the category, we got another category called baptism questions.

01:23:16

I think you're gonna get a couple of those. Those started popping up really quick once we talked about your book.

01:23:23

So we didn't talk much about baptism other than your book. And boy, we got a lot of questions fired in quick.

01:23:29

So that'll be a fun one. All right, so here's the next question.

01:23:35

What would you say is more important, just reading the Bible through or making your time to interpret the text?

01:23:44

In other words, what's your strategy for daily Bible reading? And so I'll answer first because I'm sure you'll have an answer as well.

01:23:52

But my strategy is a little different in the sense that I'm also, especially now weekly studying to prepare sermons.

01:24:02

So I'm in a deeper study in that sense. And so it's a little bit different.

01:24:09

But I start my day, I will start with hearing the scriptures.

01:24:14

In other words, when I'm getting ready in the morning, I go through, I will go through the Bible. I do several different reading plans.

01:24:22

Either I'll go through the entire Bible in eight months or in a year. And I will listen through the Bible as I'm getting ready in the morning.

01:24:29

That's the first thing that I ended up doing. The second thing that I ended up doing is

01:24:36

I'll have where I'm just reading through. What I do is I read a different study Bible a year.

01:24:41

So I get different study Bibles that I'll read all the notes in it as well, because now I'm getting,

01:24:47

I'm pulling some more resources from different people, reading the scriptures, but reading their study notes.

01:24:53

And that is a little bit more than just reading, but it's not studying. And then I'm typically, when

01:24:58

I'm not preaching, when I'm not preaching every week, when

01:25:04

I'm sitting in the pew and I'm just a member of a church, is whatever the passage,

01:25:10

I have been in churches where we're preaching week by week, verse by verse, and therefore

01:25:16

I know where the pastor's generally going to be the next week, and that's what I'm studying. And so I will study what he's saying.

01:25:24

So I do a little of all of it. I will hear the word of God. I will read the word of God through in a year. And then

01:25:30

I'm going to be studying the word of God. It's the depth of that study changes when I'm preaching. So now

01:25:35

I'm not just, I'm not doing that study, but I'm doing a lot more study because now I'm spending more like 20 to 30 hours in one text of scripture.

01:25:43

So I'll do a little bit more that way. Yeah, I've fairly similar to me when

01:25:53

I'm not on the road, when I'm at home, which been kind of nice because I've had, what, three solid months now at home.

01:25:59

Kathy and I read together every night. We read, I read, she follows along with me, several chapters out of the

01:26:10

New Testament, some in Psalms, some in Proverbs, we do that. And we're kind of go with, we think we're, the way we're shooting for going through the entire

01:26:19

New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs twice together in a year. And then as far as, oftentimes what

01:26:28

I'll do as we're reading together, I'll come across something and I'll make a little note or mental note or jot something down or mark it in my

01:26:33

Bible. Like, let me go back and I'm gonna look at this some more and we'll study it some more or we'll talk about it. And that's a lot of it, whatever book

01:26:41

I happen to be reading, whether it's something on eschatology or some kind of like a devotional or Christian life, like Steve Lawson's, New Life in Christ.

01:26:56

Rabbits will pop up, rabbits will pop up here and there and I'll chase them for a while and study them.

01:27:01

As I'm getting ready to do my podcast, that'll deal with issues there, just study those, do some topical studies.

01:27:10

So that's kind of it. It's kind of a mishmash of different things.

01:27:16

I can't say that I'll read different study Bibles like you do, Andrew, I don't guess

01:27:21

I do that. I have the MacArthur study Bible and use that. I don't guess that's,

01:27:27

I don't really have another study Bible that I use per se. Yeah, well, I mentioned that I do that and someone, all of a sudden

01:27:37

I got a package of about two dozen different study Bibles. Most of them were from Holman's, because I mentioned

01:27:45

I love the Holman and I mentioned this and someone went out and got all of these different study

01:27:50

Bibles. So I actually have a large stack of, I've actually haven't been able to get through that stack yet.

01:27:56

So my wife's kind of said I can't buy more Bibles. And the preaching on a week when we go to church or whatever the pastor's preaching on,

01:28:08

Kathy and I both take notes and that'll, we'll explore some of those things maybe throughout the week.

01:28:15

So our pastor, Brian Hughes, we listen to, I still listen to Jim Osmond on the internet, even though we've moved away.

01:28:23

He's going through Hebrews right now and it's fantastic. And so, yeah, just different things.

01:28:30

Yeah, and he's having a conference right now with a Brit who's talking kind of funny at his pulpit right now,

01:28:37

Paul Taylor. Ah, yeah. So I was joking with Jim and I said,

01:28:43

I would have come to the conference, except I didn't know if I could understand his language.

01:28:50

I needed translation. Well, obviously, obviously that got back to Paul because Paul texted me yesterday and said, hey, are you gonna come here to do translation for me?

01:29:00

That's funny. All right, so here's a question. What Bible college do you recommend for me as a teacher to attend in person or online?

01:29:13

You, what list do you think of with? I'm not really in the academic world a whole lot anymore.

01:29:21

I mean, as far as like institutions, but I would say hands down. If I could turn back the hands of time and go to seminary again,

01:29:31

I'd go to the master seminary. They have a college and a seminary there. So hands down, that's where I would go if I could do it all over again.

01:29:41

Yeah, I think it somewhat depends on what you're, where they are in their education, what they're looking to teach.

01:29:47

The two universities I promote is usually Cedarville University and Masters University. For undergraduate, especially,

01:29:55

I'm gonna go with those two. I'm gonna say Cedarville is gonna be more in the sciences and Masters is gonna be more in the business areas.

01:30:03

And so those are two that I end up recommending. If you get into the

01:30:10

Masters level, I think, again, Masters I'm gonna promote, especially at the seminary.

01:30:19

But I think at those two universities, you have some solid, solid things.

01:30:24

Let's get into some baptismal questions. I think these are gonna, we'll go to two of them and before we go to the next category, and I think these will both will leave for you.

01:30:35

Because if you say something wrong, I would only have to correct you when it comes to the children's salvation.

01:30:42

But how should we view infant baptism as there's no biblical foundation for the practice?

01:30:53

There's your answer. I mean, there's no biblical foundation for the practice.

01:30:58

It's not there. There's absolutely no biblical precedent.

01:31:04

There's no examples of it. There's no theology to support it. No good theology to support it.

01:31:10

Baptizing infants. Read the New Testament, it's pretty clear that the only people we see being baptized are adults.

01:31:19

Believers, baptism, that's it. So yeah, there's just no, there's no support for it whatsoever.

01:31:27

Honestly, honestly, I think believers baptism, I mean, excuse me, back up the truck.

01:31:36

Infant baptism, I think infant baptism is a Roman Catholic hangover.

01:31:44

I do think it's a Roman Catholic hangover. I think it's an area - We're saying that, but I agree. That some of us have not fully reformed in, and I think it's a

01:31:54

Roman Catholic hangover, and time to cut the apron strings and be done with Rome.

01:32:03

Let's, this next question, what if your children were baptized young, and as adults, lack evidence of conversion?

01:32:10

Yeah, then they weren't saved. Real conversion results in real fruit.

01:32:18

Real repentance bears real fruit. And so there are a ton of people, I've heard

01:32:23

MacArthur say before that our churches are full of baptized unbelievers and unbaptized believers.

01:32:33

And what that means is this, there's a lot of people out there who were baptized as children, five, six, seven, eight, nine years old, whatever, simply because they made intellectual assent to some basic facts of the gospel.

01:32:48

And as kids, they believed it as much as a child can, but children naturally adopt the worldview in which they're raised.

01:32:58

It doesn't mean that that worldview to which they ascribe has changed them from the inside out.

01:33:04

It's just that they don't know anything different. And you take a typical five, six, seven -year -old kid that's being baptized in a

01:33:11

Southern Baptist church. Has he made intellectual assent to the basics of the gospel? Sure he has.

01:33:17

Does that mean he's converted? Not at all. Because if you were to take that same five, six, seven -year -old kid and raise that child in Japan, he'd be a

01:33:27

Buddhist. If you take that same child who's being baptized in a Southern Baptist church, typically raise that child in Iran, he'd be

01:33:36

Muslim. Or take that child, raise him in Italy, he'd be Roman Catholic. So children just naturally adopt the worldview in which they are in.

01:33:46

It doesn't mean that they've owned it, they've understood it, and it has changed them from the inside out.

01:33:54

So there's a lot of people in our churches that are hanging on to a baptism event that they had as kids, and thinking that they're okay, that they're converted, that they're saved, because they prayed the sinner's prayer, quote -unquote, and were baptized as kids.

01:34:11

But there's no real evidence of conversion in their life. There's no godly sorrow over sin. There's no genuine repentance.

01:34:17

There's no genuine fruit. There's no growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But they think they're saved because they were baptized when they were kids.

01:34:27

So there's a lot of baptized unbelievers. There are also a lot of unbaptized believers, because here's what happens on the flip side of that coin.

01:34:39

Same five, six, seven -year -old kid, prays the sinner's prayer, again, quote -unquote, because the sinner's prayer's not in the

01:34:44

Bible, but you know what I mean. And they get baptized as a child, but they're not saved, they're not converted.

01:34:52

But then they grow up, they go through their teen years, they become adults, somewhere in their 20s, 30s, 40s, who knows, somewhere along the way, guess what happens?

01:35:00

They actually do get saved. They actually do get converted. And they do begin to show genuine fruit in keeping with repentance.

01:35:09

And so they're in church and they're faithful members, but guess what they're doing?

01:35:15

They're still holding on to that baptism that happened when they were kids, even though their conversion, their real conversion happened, and it did happen, but it happened at some point later in life, but they haven't been biblically baptized because they're still holding on to what happened to them when they were seven.

01:35:33

So if anybody's watching this right now and you're thinking, wow, I think that's me.

01:35:39

I remember being baptized when I was a kid, but I don't think I was saved then, but I know

01:35:44

I am now. May I joyfully encourage you to seek biblical baptism.

01:35:51

Tell the elders of your church, share your testimony. What a joy that would be. What a thrill, what an encouragement that will be to the other believers.

01:35:59

So there's a lot of people who are in our churches who actually are believers, but they haven't had biblical baptism because they haven't been baptized as believers.

01:36:08

It happened way back, you know. Yeah, in my church where we had a young girl who was baptized as a child and she wasn't saved and she realized, as I was preaching, she realized and got saved.

01:36:22

And it was a year later that she finally came to me and said, I think I need to get baptized again. And you're right, it was a joy.

01:36:28

Before we get into the last category, which is experience, visions, dreams, and angels questions, let me just address a couple of things.

01:36:36

There's someone who wanted to get ahold of me to send me some stuff on evolution.

01:36:42

You can do that at info at strivingforeternity .org, info at strivingforeternity .org.

01:36:48

Also, there's someone that mentioned in a previous question about Liberty University and recommending that.

01:36:54

I cannot recommend Liberty University. I had a very lengthy exchange with Jerry Faldwell over the issue of the school hiring a known homosexual to work with the drama team.

01:37:11

And the school was praising the fact that they hired this person. And as soon as it came out that he's a very well -known homosexual at a

01:37:23

New York City, and he was working with the drama team for this drama, the school suddenly just backed away and said, oh, he's just some contractor.

01:37:31

We knew nothing about it and all. But they were praising the hiring of it. And the concern I have is that, okay, if they didn't know, they didn't know, and they should say we didn't know, and it won't happen again, and he was laid off, and that was that.

01:37:44

That wasn't how they handled it. Instead, the way they handled it was to attack the people that reported it, to go after them and to make little of it and say that people were overblowing the situation.

01:37:56

They tried comparing it. Jerry tried to compare it with me. He said, this is no different. We don't go searching everyone that changes the light bulbs in the school.

01:38:03

And my response was yes, but everyone that changes the light bulbs in your school are not working in drama, choreographing, having students here, you stand here.

01:38:15

They're not in a leadership position. They're not putting their, typically in choreography, you're gonna have your hands on a student saying, stand over here, be like this.

01:38:23

That's a lot different than changing a light bulb. So, just so that's known. So, Justin, if we're gonna end on time, we have four minutes and maybe two or three questions left.

01:38:34

So, just so you know how quick to answer. And so I've left the question for last, or almost last, that you've been expecting and everyone's been wanting to hear.

01:38:46

So, what do you do with the Muslims that are having visions? Several people asked it different ways, but I'll summarize it that way.

01:38:55

I thought that was a question that everybody was waiting for. Yeah, we had one, two, three, four, five, six people that asked it in different ways.

01:39:04

Yeah, okay, so the whole Muslims having dreams thing, that there's this notion going around that Jesus is appearing to Muslims in dreams and visions and they are getting saved.

01:39:18

There's a lot of problems with that. Hebrews 1, 1, and 2 is a big problem. God, I talked about it earlier in my session,

01:39:25

God long ago spoke to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us in his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world.

01:39:37

Hebrews 1 pretty much puts an end to God speaking to people in dreams and visions.

01:39:42

He doesn't do that anymore. He did at one time on occasion, not regularly, but on occasion he did, but he's not doing that today.

01:39:53

Hebrews 1 puts an end to that. Romans 10 also puts an end to it,

01:39:59

I think. How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

01:40:05

How will they believe in him in whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a dream and vision?

01:40:12

No, no, it's not what he says. How will they hear without a preacher? You have massive theological headwinds with this whole

01:40:24

Jesus appearing to Muslims in dreams and visions with Hebrews 1 and Romans 10, both of those are just insurmountable odds to this, insurmountable obstacles to this,

01:40:36

I should say odds, insurmountable obstacles to this. Jesus is not showing up in dreams and visions to Muslims.

01:40:43

And a couple of things else to add to that. This Jesus, quote unquote

01:40:49

Jesus, that is appearing to Muslims in dreams and visions, a lot of times he sends them to bad churches. He sends them to a

01:40:55

Roman Catholic church or a word of faith church. That ain't the real Jesus.

01:41:00

Jesus is not going to send you to a bad church. So that's one thing.

01:41:05

Another thing is, of course, Muslims have dreams about Jesus. Why wouldn't they?

01:41:13

They have dreams about him, but they are not from him. You see, it's not that Muslims don't believe in Jesus.

01:41:19

They do believe in Jesus. They think he was a prophet. It's not that they don't think he existed.

01:41:24

They do, they just have a different Jesus, but he is part of their religious culture, if you will.

01:41:31

It would be perfectly expected that Muslims would dream about Jesus. I've had a dream about Muhammad before.

01:41:39

Was that Muhammad trying to get my attention? Absolutely not. Dreams are just that, they're dreams.

01:41:46

They're stupid dreams and they're absolutely meaningless. Just like me dreaming I could put my scooter in the water slide at an amusement park.

01:41:54

I mean, they don't mean anything. They're meaningless. So it would be perfectly expected that Muslims would dream about someone that's part of their religion, even though it's a very twisted view of him.

01:42:05

Here's the other thing. And if I were Satan, if I were

01:42:10

Satan, and I wanted to come up with some way to undermine the

01:42:16

Great Commission, I could not think of a better plan than to get this idea circulated amongst

01:42:23

Christians that Jesus is showing up to Muslims in dreams and visions and Muslims are getting saved.

01:42:31

I could think of nothing better. If you had a gun to my head and said, come up with something that will keep

01:42:37

Christians from evangelizing Muslims, come up with something better than this notion that Jesus is showing up in their dreams and visions and they're getting saved,

01:42:47

I'd say, pull the trigger, I've got nothing. That's the best I could do. Because Christians hear this and then they start thinking, oh,

01:42:54

I don't need to go to Syria. I don't need to go to Iran. I don't need a witness to a

01:43:01

Muslim. Jesus has it covered. He's showing up in their dreams and visions.

01:43:07

So why put my life in danger evangelizing Muslims? I don't need to do that.

01:43:13

I've been in some of these countries, now I haven't been in Iran, but I've been in some areas that are heavily

01:43:19

Islamic and they're playing the Muslim music on their minarets and all their mosque and all that stuff.

01:43:25

And I've passed out gospel tracts in these areas. Why would

01:43:30

I do something like that? Jesus is just showing up in dreams and visions. You see, honestly, I think this is a, and I don't use hyperbole when

01:43:38

I say this, this whole notion of Muslims getting dreams and visions, it is a satanic deception.

01:43:47

That is what it is. It is a satanic deception. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with it.

01:43:54

There's nothing wrong with it. So we got one more question. This is folks who are watching on Twitter and YouTube, you can still watch.

01:44:01

Facebook ended about two and a half minutes ago because they limit us to eight hours, but I'll give the one last question so at least we have it here.

01:44:12

Several people, three people asked this one, Justin, I'll let you answer. Please explain Acts 2 .17 with dreams and visions from God or Satan.

01:44:21

So there are a couple of different questions asking about Acts 2 .17. I don't wanna,

01:44:28

I feel like I'm answering all the questions, Andrew. Do you wanna take it? Nope, this is more in your wheelhouse.

01:44:33

I've answered some. Okay, well, so Acts 2 .17, Acts 2, this is

01:44:38

Peter's sermon, Day of Pentecost, and I know I've got a rapid fire here thing.

01:44:44

Okay, so in Acts 2, Peter quotes Joel, chapter two.

01:44:51

And he quotes Joel and says that basically, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel, and shall be in the last days that I will pour forth my spirit on all my kind.

01:45:01

Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.

01:45:07

And so charismatics like to quote this as support that God is speaking to people in dreams and visions today because this is, you know,

01:45:16

Peter quoted Joel's prophecy and they say that's a full fulfillment. But it's not a full fulfillment because read down a couple more verses.

01:45:27

Look at verse 19. And I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood, fire, vapor of smoke.

01:45:36

Has anybody seen that? I haven't. The sun will be turned to darkness, the moon into blood.

01:45:43

Anybody seen that? I haven't. Before the great and glorious day, the Lord shall come.

01:45:48

And so very dramatic signs in the heavens, right?

01:45:55

Have we seen these things? No, we haven't seen these things. So this cannot be a full fulfillment of Joel's prophecy.

01:46:03

It's a partial fulfillment of Joel's prophecy. We haven't seen the signs and wonders in the heavens.

01:46:10

So this is a partial fulfillment, will not be completely fulfilled until the eschatological events take place.

01:46:18

All right. And with that, we've gone a little bit over eight hours. I'm actually surprised that we kept it within the eight hours, to be honest.

01:46:27

But what I want to do is just remind folks, I'll pull this up.

01:46:35

We do want to let you guys know just again, register, even if you're watching this later, register.

01:46:42

We have 2 ,500 people were registered today for this event. We're very humbled by that.

01:46:48

Both I speak as well for Justin on that as well. I know both of us are just blown away that all of the people who have registered, but continue to register.

01:47:02

We'll let you know about if we do more events like this, we could let you know that way, it'd be easier. But just to let you know,

01:47:09

Striving for Eternity is, we are doing a sale to basically reduce the inventory that we have as we move.

01:47:21

We have thousands of copies of what do they believe and what do we believe. So if you want those, pick those up.

01:47:29

We have several, we have lots of syllabuses and we're gonna be giving 50 % off of all the books and syllabuses at strivingforeturning .org

01:47:37

slash store. You could just go there, go to strivingforeturning .org, go to the store, use the code

01:47:42

MOVE. It'll be available until June 15th. So that's something that you can look to.

01:47:49

Again, we went all the way to the back of the slide deck instead of Justin's new website. There we go. So we have

01:47:55

Justin's new website we wanna recommend. We wanna encourage you to go check out all the resources there.

01:48:01

He has a lot of new stuff up there. It's a much nicer looking site. And so you want to make sure you get his newsletter.

01:48:09

You can do when you're at Striving for Turning, sign up for our newsletter as well. If you registered for this, you probably got an email that encouraged you about letting us get to know you better.

01:48:22

I just see a note. I should mention the giveaways that we have. The people who are gonna get the

01:48:27

Zoom meetings, we're gonna do that later in the week and we'll schedule those. But those who won books,

01:48:33

I don't know, while we were speaking, some people might have sent the emails, but Cindy Brown, Ryan Leach, Deb Ryan, David Ross, Stephanie Montgomery, and what

01:48:48

I should do is put up the email, just email that link down there, info at strivingforturning .org.

01:48:56

Les Reginous, R -E -G -N -E -R -U -S, Justin and Gloria Autumn, and Rocky Mountain Princess, and then

01:49:07

I think I ended up including in there, David King, I gave away a couple extras, but David King, Cindy, Target, Dennis, Sinan, and Steven Odom.

01:49:20

So if you guys can email at info at strivingforturning .org, you can get a free book.

01:49:27

We also wanna let you know that if you enjoyed this today, please, please, please, please talk to your pastor, talk to your church, have us come out and do this in person.

01:49:36

It's much nicer when we can actually see faces and we get to know people and talk with folks.

01:49:44

So we'd love to come. There were some questions, Justin, on social justice. We just didn't have time for them.

01:49:50

But if you have this event in your church, we could do the same event, or we could do the

01:49:55

Friday night and extend two more sessions and then we do two sessions on social justice.

01:50:01

So you just email speaker at strivingforeternity .org to be able to have us come in and do that.

01:50:11

Again, just some books we have available, my book, What Do They Believe?, which is on the six major Western religions covering those six doctrines.

01:50:21

So this is very helpful. It is really condensing 14 years of study quickly so that you could use it as a quick reference.

01:50:28

I've been told it's very helpful. We have a study guide with it as well if you're interested. And this one, I actually have a course on the

01:50:35

Striving for Trinity Academy that goes through the material in this book as well as my second book,

01:50:42

What Do We Believe?, and that is a systematic theology that covers the issues of doctrine.

01:50:49

It's gonna cover the authority for the Christian faith, biblical reliability, the Trinity, deity of Christ, man's sinfulness, fallen creation, salvation, the overview of the church and historical understanding of it, and a view of end times.

01:51:06

Then we have On the Origin of Kinds written by Dr. Silvestro, one of the speakers at Striving for Trinity, which covers presuppositional apologetics, creation science, and evangelism.

01:51:15

Justin's book on Do Not Hinder Them, we've talked about this, excellent book to get just on the subject of conversion.

01:51:22

It goes into great detail explaining what conversion actually is versus what it is not. And so that is very helpful to have.

01:51:32

Go to the Christian Podcast Community. We have a lot of podcasts out there and we really wanna see that folks would be listening to good content.

01:51:43

Justin and I, both are podcasters on the Christian Podcast Community. And so go to christianpodcastcommunity .org,

01:51:50

look at all the shows that are there. You can also subscribe on any podcast app to Christian Podcast Community.

01:51:58

Some specific ones is my Andrew Rapport's rap report. You could subscribe to that. I have both a daily and a weekly.

01:52:06

The daily is shorter and the weekly is longer. Apologetics Live, where Justin and I will try to answer the rest of these questions and the ones that we got at the

01:52:14

Philippines last year that we never got to answering. We'll do that on Apologetics Live. That's a live show. So if you have questions you want answered, that's the place to go.

01:52:22

And we will try to answer your apologetics questions. Diddykay with Justin Peters.

01:52:27

He's gonna start that up. He has some old episodes out there now, but we have some, he's gonna start doing some new episodes there.

01:52:34

And so make sure you subscribe to Diddykay with Justin Peters. If you don't know how to spell Diddykay, even though it's kind of right over there, just search for Justin Peters.

01:52:44

Also wanna recommend, if you would consider donating to Justin Peters Ministries, like I said earlier, this is something where we did this thing because we had no other speaking events because they all got cleared and that made it easy for our calendar.

01:52:59

But this is the way that Justin makes most of his living. So if you would consider having him out to speak, that would be excellent.

01:53:08

But also would you consider donating to him monthly? Monthly donations help because it helps to pay his bills monthly.

01:53:15

One -time donations are great, but monthly is better. And along with that, could also consider supporting

01:53:21

Striving for Eternity. We also have not have all the speaking events that we usually would have.

01:53:27

They've been canceled, but we do still have all of our podcasting, our discipling of other podcasts in the

01:53:33

Christian Podcast Community. We still have our academy that's still there. We still have a lot of other ways that we're trying to do teaching.

01:53:41

And so there's some of the other seminars, if you wanna have at your church, that we offer at Striving for Eternity is our

01:53:48

Ambassador of Evangelism, learning how to overcome the fear in evangelism. The session I did earlier today on Bible interpretation made easy.

01:53:56

This is the up to eight hour session that we could do. We either do just a Saturday or we could do a

01:54:01

Friday and Saturday session. And then we have real life apologetics teaching, basically presuppositional apologetics and helping you work through that.

01:54:12

Just to mention, if you happen to be in the Bucks County area and you wanna hear my preaching, you can go to the masterschurch .org

01:54:22

and we are a new church, we're a grace advanced church plant in Bucks County.

01:54:28

And so if you're in the area, please reach out to us. We'd love to get to know you. June 27th,

01:54:34

Evolution Exposed. This is Ken Ham, Ray Comfort, they're two ministries joining together to really go through a lot of details.

01:54:43

This is again, an online type conference. So if you're still home, it gives you something more to do on Saturday, June 27th.

01:54:52

And lastly is the basics of biblical counseling. This is something that our church have been involved in helping to promote.

01:55:00

So if you're up in the PA area and want to be part of learning the basics of biblical counseling, this would be something for you.

01:55:10

So with that, we're really glad so many of you stayed around the whole time.

01:55:16

This was a long day, over eight hours, just a tad over eight hours.

01:55:22

And both Justin and I are, I know that I could speak for Justin on this cause I know his heart. We are humbled, 2 ,500 people registering, 500 people watching throughout the day.

01:55:36

It is humbling to know that from literally all over the world, just seeing all the places where everyone was from, which is very humbling and we thank you.

01:55:48

And so I'm just gonna check to see. Now, before we go, I'm gonna give a shout out to someone who

01:55:53

I'm not allowed to name their name, but there's been someone throughout this whole eight hours that has been in the background, doesn't want to be on camera, doesn't want name known, but has been going through all the questions.

01:56:05

And when I say all the questions, we have 16 pages now of questions that have come in.

01:56:11

And this person has been beautifully categorizing them and putting them in so we have them.

01:56:17

And so even though they don't want to be mentioned, a lot of the help was being done by this person.

01:56:22

And both Justin and I, I think, since both Justin and I know who it is, I'm thinking we could probably come up with some way of showing appreciation to that person.

01:56:33

But, so Justin, before we go, any last words that you'd like to say? Andrew, just want to thank you and thank this person who's been working the whole time and it's been a joy, it really has.

01:56:47

I've really enjoyed our time together and trust by God's grace, it was an encouragement to everyone watching and yeah, just grateful for the body of Christ.

01:56:57

So may God bless you and be glorified in you. All right, well, Justin, we now know how this person can be thanked.

01:57:06

Because the person just sent me a thing and said, Justin can come over for a visit, so we will make that happen.

01:57:12

And I guess this would be a good way to close out is Trevor's comment, eight hours of nourishing spiritual food, it was an absolute privilege and I'm very grateful, all glory to God.

01:57:24

And I think both of us would agree with that. Thank you very much. I hope this is helpful.

01:57:29

Check out the many resources we made available. And folks, if you're interested, let us know and maybe we could do more of these, even when people are back to being out and about.

01:57:41

If you really enjoyed this, we'll try to do more of them. Thanks and remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

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