More on Alistair Begg and Responding

When you earn your degree online at Arizona State University, you get everything the nation's most innovative university has to

offer.

The same internationally recognized faculty, the same nationally ranked programs, the same degree.

Learn more at asuonline .asu .edu.

This is Apologetics Live.

To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

We are live, Apologetics Live,.

Here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

We're here to answer them.

We can answer any question that you have about God and the Bible.

If you doubt that, well, just go to apologeticslive .com.

There is a way to just scroll down, click on the StreamYard icon, which is the little duck icon.

You can join us here.

Ask me your most difficult question.

Just remember one thing when you do so, I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

With that, we're gonna have, Drew is not here.

This week, he is sick.

So we will ask for your prayers for him.

And so tonight, what we're gonna do is cover two main topics, I hope.

I say that because either one of these topics can take the full two hours.

We wanna make sure we give time for you guys to join in.

So any questions that you have, I know people will put them in the chat as well.

By the way, if you're not watching live, you might wanna start thinking about it because this show is

a lot of fun.

There's a lot of people who, in the chat, we got a great group that's in the chat that watches mostly

on YouTube, is I guess where you can see the chat that's most active.

But the neat thing about that chat is that folks are praying for one another.

Folks are evangelizing the people that come in and a lot of different activities.

Sometimes there's completely different conversations going on there that I don't even know about.

So, but check it out if you want.

You can always go to apologeticslive .com to join us.

I should say this is a ministry of Striving for Eternity.

If you'd like to get one of our speakers to come out to your church, do some weekend seminar or something like that, we would be

happy to talk with you.

Just go to strivingforeternity .org and you could check out the speakers, the

topics.

If that's too long for you to remember, just type S -F -E dot Bible.

That's a little bit shorter.

So, tonight's two topics we're gonna try to cover is one.

We covered last week a good part of the show on Alistair Begg.

And well, there's been more that has come out.

Actually, when I talked to Drew about continuing basically based on the sermon

that Alistair Begg did this Sunday, well, since then a whole lot more has happened.

Like every day there's been more.

So, we're gonna talk about that.

And I do wanna continue in our response to Remnant Radio with their arguments against

cessationism.

They're trying to answer cessationist arguments.

So, we wanna get to their argument number two, which is that tongues,

well, basically that tongues don't have to be known human languages.

That will be their claim.

And so, we will see if they do a good job making that claim, we hope.

But that actually, I have about 10, 12 clips from them averaging about 45 seconds

to a minute.

So, yeah, that's gonna be quite a bit.

I don't know if we'll get through all of this tonight, but that's the goal.

Next week, the plan, at least, I'll just give you a heads up.

I sent Drew an article that I had seen on the

Epic Times that was showing a possible link between transgenderism

and violence.

In other words, the mass shootings that we always hear about being such a bad thing, and guns, those nasty guns do

these things.

One of the things that is common with that that I never wanna talk about is, well, mental illness and people that have been

on these drugs for many, many years.

But, just saying, it looks like some people are doing some studies and seeing that maybe some of

that is also being tied to, well, what's being taught in the schools with transgenderism.

So, we may talk about that next week and probably finish up more on responding of Remnant Radio.

We're probably gonna do a little bit of responses to Remnant Radio each week, just a little bit.

I will say, for the record, I was gonna tell Drew this.

It does seem that they've gone silent ever since I announced that we were gonna respond to them.

I don't think that's the reason why, but I downloaded 60 episodes and we haven't heard from them since.

Let me bring in someone who is, he's basking there in the darkness, well, usually the

sun of Florida, but Dr. Anthony Silvestro is here with us.

In the beginning, God is what his shirt says.

That's right.

And so, before we get into the

topics, we usually do an in the news section.

So, I got a couple things in the news and I brought Anthony in so we could see his response as well, but I

don't know if you folks heard, there was a one -day hunger strike in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.

I'm really kind of in support of that.

I just think they shouldn't stop it one day.

I mean, do like a full month or go like Moses, do 40 days.

Let's see you do a 40 -day fast for Hamas.

Fast from water too, just saying, you know.

Just really lay it on and do a 40 -day fast, no water, no nothing.

Let's see you do it.

I've never understood what a one -day fast is for.

I mean, Anthony, you and I do that like every week.

What's the big deal?

Yeah, there's really no big deal to it.

What I think should happen is that whether they fast for 40 days, like you suggest, or maybe kind of the way that

Texas and Florida shipped up a bunch of the illegal immigrants to New York, how about

we just let them have what they want and let's just ship them to Iran?

Yeah.

Let them have their fun.

And while we're at it, everybody who is a communist in our country, let's just ship them to China or North Korea and let them bask

in what they think is the best foreign government possible.

Why be here in America?

That's a really good point.

Everyone that's supportive of Hamas and Gaza, we should ship them over and let them

enjoy the beauty of Gaza.

I mean, they got wonderful beaches, or at least they were when Israel kind of was in control, but those resorts are

all gone.

So, yeah.

We can start a GoFundMe for that and I'd be happy to put some money in for that.

Yeah.

So, you know, one of the things I wanted to play, and this will trigger you, I saw this

on Matt Walsh, but this is like two minutes from Matt

Walsh.

I wanna play this for everyone to see.

This is, now, you know, folks, we tend to think that, you know, those of us

who try very hard to work hard, and, you know,

we don't realize how easy we have it.

You know, Anthony, you had your own practice as a dentist.

You were working like 13 hour days every day.

And I don't know that you realize, you know, this new

generation, they really have it hard.

You will realize after listening to this person that you just had it easy and you're not holding

up your end of a bargain.

I'm not sure what that bargain is, but let's just, let's let this person say it in their own words to see

how hard they have it in life.

Let's listen.

You need to stop expecting the same damn people who bought a four bedroom home and a brand new Cadillac convertible off of a $30 ,000 a

year salary working at Perkins to understand what it's like to be working 40 plus hours a week with a master's degree

and still not being able to afford a 400 square foot studio apartment in bum Iowa, okay?

I don't care if you're a boomer, if you're Gen X, if you're dead in the ground, I don't give a nobody likes to work 40 plus hours a week.

No one likes it, okay?

If that were true, we wouldn't have so many of you trying to become billionaires so that you can one day pay people to do that work for you so

you don't have to do it.

We're not crying.

We're not getting -.

Does it sound like he's not crying?

I'm just, I'm not sure, but just remember,.

He says, we're not crying.

Remember that line because I think he's going to contradict himself.

Well, he or she, I don't know because the person who originally said it was a girl, but it looks like a guy.

I don't know these days.

Angry and whiny and entitled because we can't work nine to five.

Yes, we can.

We do it every day.

Which is we're holding up our end of the deal, right?

We're staying in school, okay?

We're going to college, okay?

We've been working since we were 15, 16 years old.

We've built a huge line of credible references doing everything that y 'all told us to do so that we can what?

Still be living at our parents in early twenties?

Millennials and Gen Z are working more than any other generation ever has.

It's a fact.

We are more educated than any other generation.

Also a fact.

We are also making considerably and disproportionately much less than any other generation has.

Also a fact.

And that is kind of.

I know people in their mid thirties who have been working for 20 years.

That's like 70 % of their waking life.

They have been working and they still cannot afford to purchase their first home.

And I don't live in New York or LA.

I live in Minnesota.

Minnesota.

That is why some of us are crying.

That's why some of us are angry.

Because this is annoying.

We're holding up our end of the deal and someone on the other side is not holding up their end.

And it's annoying.

Okay.

If boomers and Gen X had experienced what it's like to work as much as they did and get nothing in return, they would be able to sit

across from us and go, oh my God, I feel you.

This is so.

And you know what?

Some of you are capable of cultivating empathy and I appreciate you.

But those of you who have nothing to say but judgments and calling us entitled.

You cause you don't get it.

Okay.

Well, I'm really glad that he wasn't judging or anything.

So, so, so we, we, Anthony, you and I, we just, we just do not understand

how hard it is to work 40 plus hours a week.

And, and I, I actually agree with that person.

I don't know what it's like to work like 40 plus hours a week.

Cause I work like about 80 to 90 on average.

So I, I would love to.

Yeah.

I would love to only work 40, nine to five.

Hey, bring it.

Like I get it.

I don't know what it's like for this person.

And he's way smart.

I mean, so the millennials are, according to him, the smartest, the most educated.

Hmm.

I would like to see the millennials of today put someone on the moon.

In fact, you know, recent studies have shown you and think about this folks, just a generation ago, who was

it in their twenties and thirties that were just coming up with the ingenious technologies?

Right?

You have Steve Jobs.

You have Bill Gates.

You have Elon Musk.

Where are those guys today?

Where are the 20 and 30 year olds that are like breaking new barriers with technology and

education?

They don't exist.

Cause they're too busy trying to figure out if they're a boy or a girl or on video games or social media.

So those people don't exist.

And they're, and he wants us to believe they're the smartest.

They work the hardest.

Now I may agree with this person.

They probably do get paid less.

Like all of us did when we were that age.

I mean, I, yes, I make more now than I did when I was 20 and 30.

Yep.

That's true.

But I don't, but I'm sure that I made less money

at his age or her age, whichever, you know, than they're

making today.

You know?

You know, most of us had parents who we watched to grow up and

they had the small, either apartment or small house.

And then they worked their way up through life.

Right?

Those of us who, that are in life, you don't get the big house right off

the bat.

You don't get the cushier job with higher pay right off the bat.

Like you actually have to earn something in life.

And a lot of this generation today, the two Gen Ys to Gen

Zs, seem to think that it should all come at once.

It's, you know, we call this the entitlement generation, don't we?

And on top of that, they've gone to colleges where, I mean, look, Andrew, you majored in something that actually would make

money one day in your career.

I majored in something that would actually do something in my career.

What we didn't do is get majors in underwater basket weaving or in gender

studies, which a three -year -old has a better idea on gender than most college

students today, because they look in a mirror.

You know, I mean, this is, it's insane what we are having to deal with.

Now I will say this, this is the big farce of colleges today.

You know, when I graduated, I'm going to date myself a little bit.

When I graduated from a small liberal arts school in 1990, the

average salary of a college graduate was $38 ,000 a year.

I remember that.

And from what I just heard, the average college graduate today, their starting

salary is somewhere between $34 ,000.

So in the last 25 years, it has actually gone down, not keeping up with inflation,

not anything, it's actually gone down.

Now, why is that?

Well, I think that we have colleges that have dumbed down society.

We have colleges that have allowed people to do whatever they want to do in terms of college.

It doesn't actually prepare them for the real world.

And I think the worst part of all this is, as you and I have both done on college campuses, I find it to

be sad and hysterical at the same time that students go to college and these college

professors all tell them that communism is the best way, capitalism is horrific.

And yet these same colleges that are teaching this are using capitalism in order to make as much money as

they can off these students without any care whatsoever about what they're gonna do in their lives.

It's the height of hypocrisy.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, Melissa says, these kids are getting useless degrees and wonder why they can't find a job.

That's the point.

She also says, if Gen Z wants to fix it,.

Stop voting for Democrats.

That's the comment.

Yeah, here's the thing.

You know, an interesting thing I thought of today.

You ever think about this?

Both Democrats and Republicans want to live under conservative

values.

It's just that the Democrats don't want you to know that.

Right?

When you look at the way their life is, where do they do?

You have Black Lives Matter.

Where did they all move to?

They move to conservative areas and they wanna live under conservative principles,

but then they promote the very opposite.

And so that promotion only helps those that are in power, right?

Those that are the elite.

They don't have to live under the things they push.

And that becomes a thing.

So I saw that on Matt Walsh.

I was like, oh, we gotta play that.

You know, because I find it just so interesting.

The other thing I wanted to bring up is there was a court case recently in New York.

And if some of you guys remember during the Black Lives Matter riots, there were two New

York City attorneys that were caught

making, well, basically bombs, pouring alcohol into bottles, putting a cloth in it,

and then tossing that at police officers, police cars, buildings.

And so these were lawyers.

Well, they got basically a slap on the wrist.

It wasn't very much of a sentence because the judge, well,

they were asked to understand what they had to go through and try to understand the

trials of COVID and the injustice that Black Lives Matter was standing for.

Really?

Well, you know, we saw two years of protests and riots.

And when a bunch of people said they wanted an audit of an election on January 6th, well, yeah, those guys

are still in prison and not having their day in court.

Those people have been sentenced to 20, 30 years,.

Even those who didn't,.

24 years for a person who wasn't even in DC.

Right?

So it's just amazing.

Oh, we gotta consider what they were suffering.

Well, we don't do that with everyone else.

So just some things that were in the news for us to have some Christian views on.

How do we think about this?

Well, the reality is we expect the world to follow their father.

And we know who their father is.

Scripture makes it clear.

Jesus said that they're liars because their father is the father of lies.

And that's why they have to lie to people.

And so, let's see, we had a comment I saw earlier.

Where are they?

Fighting against government regulations and inflation to start their own businesses?

Yeah.

They're not fighting.

It was one thing with that video that I find so interesting is he says he's not, he, she says not an entitlement

mentality.

And yet it's like, poor me, I have to work more than 40 hours and I'm not

making as much as I want.

And it's someone else's fault.

Right?

It's the boomers fault.

Now, he talked about it like almost as if there was like this contract, right?

The boomers are telling them they have to stay in school and then work nine to five.

And somehow the boomers didn't keep their end of the bargain.

What bargain?

What bargain did we make with Gen Z that we had where they're supposed to,

they're supposed to do what?

Get paid really well to do nothing?

Get a nice house and not have to work for it?

I mean, just saying, I had to work hard for folks who don't know my background.

I was homeless for a while.

And so, yeah, I worked hard to get the house I live in, the cars that I drive, the things that I own.

It wasn't handed to me.

I worked for it.

That's what this person doesn't wanna have to do.

So, all right, with that, let's get into talking about Alistair Begg.

And we got a comment that came up early that I'll put up now, but it says,

if Begg wasn't, if Begg weren't a Calvinist, would the Calvinist be so

merciful to him?

What if he were a faithful minister of the gospel for as long as Alistair Begg?

Now, I'm not sure I fully understand the question.

The first part -.

The second part, yeah.

Yeah, the second part.

The first part, and I'm gonna talk about this as I did last time.

I don't see Calvinists being merciful to him.

In fact, I see the Calvinists being harder on him.

And that might be more of one of my critiques.

But if it were a faithful minister of the gospel for 40 years as long as Alistair, I

don't understand the second part of the question.

Maybe you could rephrase it.

I wonder if what he means, yeah, I wonder if he means.

If somebody who's not a Calvinist was as faithful, was a faithful minister of the gospel as Alistair Begg was

for 40 years, how would the Calvinist treat him?

I didn't know what he was asking.

Okay, okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, so I've been thinking about this a lot.

I know you, we've texted, Julie, my wife texted you a few times, and she's been

bouncing a lot of things off of me with this as well and whatnot.

The first thing I wanna say is this.

Alistair claims to be not only a Calvinist, but a high view of the sovereignty of God, right?

And yet his whole premise of why a grandmother should go to a theoretical

homosexual wedding is to leave a door open for the gospel.

And like, well, if you believe in the sovereignty of God, don't you believe that God will find a way for

the gospel to still permeate in that situation to show up at a

wedding?

And I'm calling it very loosely right now.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, let's lay back up for some folks because there are folks who are not on social media,

because I know some that asked, what is going on?

Like, why are we talking about Alistair Begg when the show, because last week it didn't mention Alistair in the

show title, this week it did.

So some people were like, what's up with Alistair?

And a lot of people were answering those people.

But so let's start.

Back in September, Alistair Begg did an interview.

He was asked a question.

He said in that, that he knew, and there's a couple of key things I'm trying to point

out with it, and we pointed out some last week as well.

He knew that not everyone was going to agree with the advice he gave.

So I'm saying that to say, this is something he did think through, but he got a letter from a

grandmother wanting to go to either a same -sex wedding or trans wedding.

I think if I remember correctly, it was a trans wedding where they were both trans, which I kind of go, okay, so

that's just, that's really not a same -sex wedding.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, and I'm just gonna apologize, folks.

Anthony has got, the internet is a little bit, like if it's choppy, it's cause he's, he's not

in a spot with great internet, just so you know.

But he is relaxing in the nice weather there, not freezing up.

So, but he, so Alistair Begg got, was asked about attending, you know,

a same -sex wedding, transgender wedding.

This grandmother, he, you know, what he prefaced was he did acknowledge that the

grandmother talked to the grandson and, or granddaughter, I don't know what's

the, which one was the biological.

So I'm gonna go with grandson cause that's how I kind of remember it, but I didn't know if that's the, so if I get that wrong, it's not me

caving on transgenderism.

It's me being ignorant of the full details there.

We have someone who's asking who's Alistair Begg.

So Alistair Begg is a pastor in Anthony's backyard.

Just saying.

But he's a pastor up in Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio area.

Very well known.

Was previously on 1500 radio stations, at least from American Family Radio.

In 1800.

1800, okay.

It was 1800.

So that's who Alistair is.

And so the advice he gave this grandmother is, hey, look, you've already talked to the grandson.

You've explained that this is a sin, that this is not good.

You don't endorse it.

But for the sake of grace, for the sake of love, do what they won't expect.

Go to this wedding and even give a gift because they won't expect that.

That will shock them.

Now, following that, there was an interview.

I did not hear that interview with American Family Radio where he did not back away from that

advice that he gave.

And so the American Family Radio removed him from the 1800 stations.

And so he then did a sermon, and I'm gonna touch with some of the things on the sermon and why we're talking

about this again, because there were some things in the sermon.

And I did go kind of back and forth.

There's one thing with this.

So first off, let me for the record just state, as I stated last week, I don't agree with the advice Alistair gave.

I was in that exact situation with my cousin where she was wanting to marry another

woman and invited me to the wedding.

And she even said, I know you're probably not gonna come, but I want to invite you anyway.

And so she knew why I wasn't gonna come.

And I said to her, I said, yeah, I won't.

I said, you know, and so what I asked her, I said this, I said, do you believe in a separation of church and

state?

Well, yeah.

Okay, well, see, marriage is a church issue, not a state issue.

The state has taken it over, but it's really a religious ceremony.

And so I'm not gonna go to something that's not, that's

abhorrent to God and say, well, I'm gonna go and, you know, and it's not about the celebration.

It's not, you know, it's the fact of, again, as I said last week, and we'll get into this week, this watershed issue where the

LGBT are shoving it in our faces to force us to say, you must

celebrate my lifestyle.

You must celebrate my sin.

Not only can you not say it's wrong, you have to celebrate it.

And that's why this is becoming a watershed issue.

We'll get into that in a few minutes, what a watershed issue is and why this is that.

But what has, one of the things, I mean, look, Ousterbeg for

over 40 years, solid ministry.

He just got done preaching through Romans 1, was very clear against homosexuality.

I don't know of anything else that I've ever heard negative of Ousterbeg.

Now, granted, everyone's gonna have something, and, you know, so it's not that there's nothing.

But I haven't heard of any major scandal.

This happened back in September.

It just popped up now where everyone's addressing it.

Maybe it just didn't get enough airtime.

People didn't know about it.

That's, you know, that's extremely possible.

So I don't know why that happened.

But there's a couple things to think about with this.

I listened to Alistair's message on Sunday, and I actually kept going back and forth because I listened to it a couple times.

And the first time through, one of the things that did get me to think is, you know, it seemed, and I'm still

not 100 sure whether Ousterbeg knew this grandmother.

Because at one point he's talking as if this is someone like in his congregation.

They sent this letter, and he said he waited on it for a while, like a week or something before responding.

Now, but later in that message, he mentions that a person he's never met before.

So I'm not sure who's the person he never met before.

Was that the grandmother or the grandson?

That I wasn't sure.

But one thing, I'm gonna caveat this, is he did say, and I think there's some people who, I've been

watching a lot of people's responses to this, there's some people who I think twisted what he had said.

But he said, maybe in another situation, I would give different advice.

And so I'm taking a step back and trying to be fair and saying, okay, maybe he knows

this grandmother.

Maybe he knows the family.

He knows some history there.

And there's something he's saying, for this family he would give advice he would never give to anyone else.

Now, I know people were trying to twist that to say, oh, this shows that he's just having

situational ethics or trying to twist things to be

nuanced things.

I think what he was just saying is, there's not always one piece of advice you give to everybody.

I mean, there's something that you may give advice to one person different than another because you

know the situations better.

And so for example, I'll give a for instance, there was someone I knew

that struggled with pornography, but wanted to evangelize outside an area where there were

topless women.

Well, you know what, maybe for some people, sharing the gospel outside of a

stripped place is not a problem.

But for someone who currently is sitting there and saying they currently have a problem with pornography, no,

you definitely shouldn't be evangelizing outside of there, right?

Because there's a temptation you're already struggling with.

So a situation can have different advice, just for the record.

I already said that I don't think it was good advice to give, it's not advice I would give.

And so the thing though is there could be a case where there's things he

knows within his church that he's not gonna share to the public, that

he's not, there's no reason he needs to, but there may be something he knows.

That is entirely possible, right?

I will state that I don't have all the information.

Why?

Because I don't even know who the grandmother is, right?

I mean, I don't know all the players.

I would find, I will say I can't think of a reason to say that someone should do this,

go to a trans wedding or same -sex wedding and buy a gift.

I think there's other ways you can do it.

Look, I did it with my cousin.

They knew, I explained why I wasn't gonna go.

I said, I'd be happy to get together, take you guys out for dinner, talk.

See, there's plenty of other ways I can share the gospel than at a wedding, and there's plenty of other ways I can

show love and support.

My cousin and I have a perfectly good relationship today.

Because I didn't go to the wedding, she didn't cut me off.

She didn't say, that's it, I'm not talking to you.

In fact, it's what she expected.

But the fact that after that, I actually worked harder to keep communication lines open, we have

a good relationship.

Even when I would do shows in the past and I would talk about homosexuality because I knew she watches the

shows, she watches what I do, and I would say, hey, next week, I'm gonna be talking about homosexuality.

If you wanna offer your opinions, I'm happy to hear it.

I would tell her ahead of time, right?

So that she's not caught off guard.

And so, there's a, and sort of what you said, Anthony, when you believe in God's sovereignty, you believe that,

and I think Justin Peters did a, he did two episodes as well.

He did an episode with Dan Phillips to discuss some of this.

Now, I will say, Drew's not here, but as Drew and I talked about it, Drew really wanted to focus in with one thing with

Alistair's sermon, and that was more of a hermeneutical issue.

His sermon was a sermon looking for a text, and the text didn't fit.

It was a horrible job of hermeneutics.

He basically took the parable of the prodigal sons to try to

say that we need to show grace.

Now, do we need to show grace?

Yes.

We need to show love to all people.

Not a problem.

Many ways of doing that.

But the text that he used, it was very clear at the end that he wanted to make,

he wanted to preach on Sunday about all of the social media activities.

James White made the point that Alistair probably doesn't even watch the social media.

He's probably not on it.

It's what people are telling him was happening, so he's responding to that.

And so there was a point in the response that it seems James White pointed out that

he's not answering the real issues, but you don't know if he's actually read the issues or just is

responding to what he's hearing from the people who are relaying it back, okay?

So I am trying to give as much grace as I can in areas where we can give grace, and that was his whole

point, right, is grace.

Now, one thing I would say is if this is, a lot

of people are saying, and I saw on my wall, and I'll talk about where I saw it,

but a lot of people are questioning his salvation.

So I'm gonna say that there's two extremes here.

Is what he did wrong?

Yeah, I don't think it was good advice.

Are there people that are, I think there's Christians that have become so critical.

I think part of it is like, okay, so Anthony, you and I have talked about this in the past.

Why is it that all of a sudden Christians are believing so many conspiracy theories like flat earth?

Okay, let me just, we're headed out to the Open Air Theology Conference.

I am shocked to find out how many Christians are believing in Bigfoot.

Bigfoot is an evolutionary thought.

You wanna believe in Bigfoot, just remember it comes out of evolution.

But why is that?

Well, I think a big reason why so many Christians are starting to buy into flat earth, and there was no moon landing and all this stuff is

because, well, during COVID, everything else that you thought was a conspiracy turned out to be true.

And so they're starting to go like, well, what else was true?

What else is the government lying about?

Well, the reality is, if you really wanna buy into that stuff, just for the record, notice how much

the government actually got away with COVID.

Yeah, nothing.

Because the things that they were trying to cancel us for, for saying masks don't work, vaccines

don't work, all this stuff.

Yeah, that ends up being a case where they couldn't keep it under wraps because

the evidence came out.

So flat earth, yeah, the government's not keeping it from you.

Moon landing, the government's not, someone would spill the beans.

I had someone, Anthony, who is very much, someone I know, very much in favor of the

vaccines, thought that, said to me, I'm not gonna judge you, but I can't believe you're not gonna get the vaccine.

Someone who said, didn't wanna be around me because I wasn't vaccinated and was nervous.

And just a few weeks ago, turned to me and said, you know what?

You were right the whole time.

He's like, I should have been listening to you, right?

But there's this, I think that within Christianity, we have swung so critically

that there's an extremism on both sides.

You have Alistair Begg, so concerned about grace that he's giving bad advice.

And then the flip side where people are so quick to throw him under the bus, to claim he's not

saved.

I had more than a half dozen people that just quoted Matthew 7, 21 to 23.

And what are they saying there?

The claim is that he's claiming to be a Christian and doing all these works for God, but not a believer.

And so just based on this advice, now, is he an Andy Stanley?

Is Alistair Begg an Andy Stanley?

Well, not yet, at least.

I mean, I don't think he ever will be, but for the people who are just there, they're comparing him to Andy Stanley.

You know, when Andy Stanley first made some bad statements, people went, huh, okay,

mark this person, watch this person.

So when you have Squirrel Chatter, which is one of the podcasts on the Christian Podcast Community, who

says, and we had other podcasters that said the same thing, that Alistair Begg was just in their mind marked

from a favorable recommended resource to

listen with consideration, listen with a little bit of warning.

Okay?

In other words, it's not mark and avoid, they're just saying mark them, but watch to

see where the trajectory is going.

Now, if we see a lot more of this, if this continues this behavior, yeah, maybe it gets to a point you

mark and avoid, right?

And so I think that calling him unsaved is a bit too

far.

Now, Anthony, I know you had some things you wanted to, I was going there for a bit, but I

will give you a chance to speak up while I read the comments.

Nope, well, we're gonna wait until you get somewhere where you get better internet, because it just completely froze.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

There you are.

Oh, you're walking down the hallway, no wonder.

I'm walking back to my room.

My power's about done, and the internet is not good out here, so I'm hoping it's a little bit better

in here.

All right, so we'll wait, we're gonna let you get to your room.

So here, Melissa says, Michelle Leslie no longer recommends Alistair Begg because of his

stance on women teaching.

She had a sermon on her website.

Now that, okay, so this is another thing that I did hear with this hoopla.

There was talk about him having a woman preaching, and I think this actually came up,

Melissa, I don't know if it was you or someone else that brought it up last week, and supposedly it

turned out to be a woman giving her testimony.

And so, and maybe it was Dee that brought it up, because Dee says

the story seemed to have changed in his Sunday sermon.

He said he didn't know the grandmother, and he also said it was a granddaughter instead of a

grandson, odd.

Yeah, that's the whole thing.

I wasn't sure, there were some things that, and that's why I was saying if it's transgender, that may be why it's grandson,

granddaughter.

And I didn't know who he, he didn't, it wasn't clear who he didn't know, whether it was the grandmother or the

grandson.

That was the thing with that.

We have a comment saying, attending an unholy ceremony is an abomination

when it is, when is it ever good unless you are to contest the

marriage?

I don't know where you are, Anthony, but we're getting a lot of feedback.

Sounds like there's a party going on.

Well, I can't find a good spot, and you know, let me try inside.

I'll figure this out.

Yeah.

Sorry, I guess I should have done this before.

You know, but this should,.

You should be used to this, Andrew.

I always have technical difficulties.

Yeah, well, yeah.

Right?

This is par for the course.

Yeah, but the internet's better now, so at least now we can hear what your thoughts are,

because, I mean, you have a stronger view than me, I believe, on this, so go for

it.

You know, okay, so, you know, let me start here.

Andrew, you and I, in Striving for Return, I think the first ministry that I

know of that actually put together a systematic theology of social justice

back in 2018, 2019, we kind of had our pulse on that situation for

a little while on the homosexual piece and whatnot, and why I bring this up is we've talked about

this numerous times on different shows in the past.

People have asked you, I know people have asked me a lot as I've taught this seminar, what do you think in the social

justice movement is gonna really harm the church?

And I would say it's not critical race theory, it's not intersectionality, it's going to be the

LGBTQ piece.

That's the one we seem to capitulate on, and it's also the one the government wants to enact

hate speech laws for, and it can really harm Christianity.

You're gonna see when push comes to shove what people actually

believe, or if they want to just protect their own interests in regards to this issue.

So I feel like this is a hill to die on when we talk about the homosexuality and transgenderism

piece.

And that's why I have such a strong feeling about what Alistair Begg did.

The bottom line is this, when we talk about social justice, and I talk about the idea of racism,

a Christian should never use the term racism.

Why is that?

Because according to the Bible, there's one blood, one race, the human race.

And so by using a term like racism, we're using a term that is outside of the

Christian scope.

It's outside of the Bible.

It's a secular term we're trying to import in.

Same thing goes for the idea of marriage.

If we are looking at anything like a gay marriage, homosexual marriage, transgender marriage,

kind of like what you said earlier, we are taking what is a God -instituted

marriage and we're trying to change it for whatever they want to believe

this union is or partnership is or whatever.

And so I have a huge problem with it because the idea of giving somebody advice to go to

a transgender wedding or a homosexual wedding is acknowledging in some way

that there is some type of union here when there's not.

So I think that's my main issue with all this.

Now, there's a lot of other things for us to talk about with all the things that you've covered already to go

into more depth, but I just think from a fundamental issue,.

This is...

And I guess I understand Alistair Begg.

He gave sermons on this in the last year in Romans 1.

He has spoken against homosexuality in the past, but I'm not sure that it absolves him

of this advice about a wedding.

Yeah.

So, and let me just get to some comments because I want to respond to that.

First off, just this one.

Someone said 9 -11 was an inside job, so was the Kennedy assassination.

No and yes.

Not gonna say why, I'm just gonna say no.

9 -11 was not an inside job, but yes, I do believe there's good evidence the

Kennedy assassination was an inside job.

By the way, there's a podcast that if you guys are interested, I'm gonna look this one up because

this was really good.

I think it's called The Killing of JFK.

I'm gonna just check that.

But yeah, who killed JFK?

Go check that podcast out.

They go through things and provide...

I'm not basing my conclusion off of that podcast.

I already had that long ago.

But, oh, look at this.

Someone is, look.

Someone has said, Dee says, Wow, look at those beautiful teeth.

It's only because I have a really good dentist in Ohio.

Oh, wait, I'm sorry.

Melissa clarified.

Dee, I noticed that too.

Anthony's teeth are glowing in the dark.

I mean, if you're gonna be a dentist, you better have teeth that glow in the dark.

This is the trick.

I tell everybody, you can either whiten your teeth or go out in the sun and get a tan.

Either way, your teeth will look whiter.

Yeah.

All right, so just some clarifying points is that Melissa had said, I brought it up

last week, Andrew, about the woman preaching.

I heard conflicted information, but Michelle confirmed that it did happen.

And the woman that Alistair allowed to pulpit was teaching.

So just so we can clarify that.

Now, you know, Dee said, I wouldn't question Begg's

salvation, but perhaps his cognitive abilities are diminishing.

And that is something that I would bring out because that is an issue

of, and we've seen this throughout history, guys who, when they get older, start, I mean, this is why I

knew one guy, he would never read commentaries from anyone who wasn't dead and his theory was, that

way I know that I don't quote someone that's gonna go astray later.

You know, so, you know, the thing though is, is

that when we look at this situation, and I'm gonna say something, don't jump

right away because I want you to hear everything I'm gonna say.

Is the issue of a same -sex wedding such a bad thing to attend?

In some senses, we might say no, but culturally, I'm gonna

say it is.

Why is it?

And I said this last week, but it bears repeating.

This is what we refer to as a watershed issue, okay?

Anthony, we've talked about this plenty of times, even here on this show.

Why is it that the homosexuality and the LGBT was gonna be the issue that's gonna hurt the church?

Well, I go back to the 1980s.

Well, actually, yeah, like late 80s, when I was in college, you were probably still in elementary school,

sorry about that, but I've told this story, but it bears repeating.

I remember my parents lived in Florida.

I was in a school in New Jersey.

I stayed on campus all year round.

The only people that stayed on campus were basically the international students and the RAs, the

resident assistants, because someone had to be there during the summers, during Christmas break and all that.

Well, one Christmas break, my resident assistant came in drunk.

He told me he wanted to show me something in the janitor's little cubby there.

He unlocked the door and shows me a gay magazine.

He wanted me to read an article that was in there.

Now, to this day, I personally believe he was drunk.

I believe we never saw him with a girl.

I believe he was a practicing homosexual and wanted to see my reaction being the only

other male that spoke English on campus in the dorm.

And I think he was trying to see whether he could get a date.

Yeah, that wasn't gonna happen.

But it was interesting, the article he asked me to read, because the article laid out a game plan, how LGBT,

or back then it was just the homosexuality, could be mainstreamed.

And they laid out a plan.

One of the first things they said is we gotta be victims.

We can never stop being victims because the moment we stop being victims, we lose our rights.

And so we have to be victims, but we don't actually wanna be victimized.

So we have to be careful on who we're gonna claim is victimizing us.

It has to be a group that won't actually do anything.

So they said, we need to say that we're being targeted by Christians because the Christians will

not actually take us to court.

They're gonna try to love us and be kind to us.

And the more that they do that, eventually they'll be the ones to push it.

So they laid out a plan that we need to be victims, use that to get into schools, to get into schools to teach a

whole generation of people that homosexuality is normal, that they're victims.

We gotta, no different than blacks being enslaved, we need to give them special rights.

And then their final thing was to push it in churches.

And they actually said in the article that in the end the church will push their agenda,

but they can never stop letting the church be the victimizers, even when they promote

homosexuality, because they have to always be the victims.

And that's what you're seeing go on.

Now, this, go ahead.

You wanna comment on that?

Yeah, I was gonna answer that.

I have a book, and you and I talked about this, Andrew, in the past, but there's a book by Greg Bonson now.

Please, nobody learn from him on his end times theology, although now he's corrected on that.

But he is, in 1978 he wrote a book called Homosexuality.

It's a yellow cover with a red stripe across the same homosexuality.

And I read this book back in 2020, and he was outlining exactly what you're talking about, what you

found out in the 80s.

He knew what was going on.

It was going on for at least a decade before that.

And this agenda has been laid down.

So there's old homosexual magazines and books that they had in prints.

They were talking about how they were gonna engage culture, how they're gonna take over culture.

And their final battle to win was gonna be able to get into the churches and get

the churches to celebrate homosexuality.

So what we're seeing today, he called out back in 1978 as part of that

agenda.

So I kind of wanted to add that piece to it, because this is well thought out and planned for a really long

time.

Yeah, and the reality is, I mean, you see guys like Michael Vines, I'm

not gonna call him Pastor Vines, no matter if he wants that or not, but who claims to be practicing

homosexual and a pastor.

And he looked at the message from Alistair Begg and was praising it.

Now that right there is a reason of concern, right?

When you have someone who is openly attacking biblical

Christianity, and they see what Alistair says as a good thing, that should

be, when a devil was saying it's good, then it probably is

not too righteous.

And they're coming out and defending.

Now, if Alistair continues down this line, then yeah, we definitely should

mark and avoid.

So the thing though is, is that as we look at this, I put out a

question that, it's kind of interesting how certain things really strike.

And I'm gonna get back to the watershed issue in a moment where I was going, but I asked the question because so many people

were basically looking to cancel Alistair Begg.

And that is what it went, look, it is cancellation when people were pushing to

get him removed from American Family Radio, removed from Shepard's Conference, which I guess, and I'm

still not sure, I'm hearing different things, whether he pulled out of Shepard's Conference or Shepard's Conference removed him.

I'm not sure which, but either way, there were a lot of people pushing for that and demanding that.

I'm not gonna get into whether Shepard's Conference should or should not have removed him.

I actually was surprised.

I was actually, to be honest, I was kind of looking forward to the Q &A to

see what, and hey, if he pulled out, that could be why.

The memories of what happened with Al Mueller still is there for folks.

And that really helped wake up a lot of people to what was going on with social justice at that Shepard's Conference.

So I do believe that there is, there's some things that,

where I just, I look at it and say, let's not be too quick to say, hey, we have to remove him from everything,

okay?

However, why I think, and so I'm trying to read, I wanna be as balanced as I can be.

I wanna show grace where I can show grace.

I think, though, there is a difference that people are seeing with this issue.

So why is it, you know, Anthony, you and I were talking about the fact that there's so many people that are just defending

Alistair Begg.

Look, it's not because, you know, like the one comment, because he's a Calvinist and they're Calvinists.

I don't think they're defending him because he's a Calvinist.

I don't think there's people that are defending him because, you know, oh, they think that the advice was good.

I hear a lot of people saying the advice was bad, but either they like his teaching, they learned a lot from him,

but that doesn't mean, just because we learn something from someone doesn't mean they're always right.

We gotta be able to say when someone's wrong, but when someone says, you know, one thing wrong or believes someone, it

doesn't mean we just throw them on 40 years of ministry under the bus either and start saying, well, they're not saved.

We can't do it, have any, like, there's people that were, you know, as I saw one photo of

all their books from Alistair Begg in the garbage can, right?

I'm not gonna go that far, at least yet.

You know, if he continues down the road, then yeah, I would, but why is it the reaction we're seeing?

Look, folks, we laid out already, as Anthony and I talked about, the agenda

behind this, and the agenda is to first try to show the world that

homosexuality, well, it's just a curse that we have to bear.

I can't control it.

I was born this way, people say.

Well, you know what?

The serial murderer says he's born that way.

The rapist says he's born that way.

That doesn't mean we accept it.

No, we put them away for their crimes.

We don't go, oh, oh, you're born that way.

Let's let you continue doing it.

And when people say, well, it doesn't hurt anyone, really?

Because these people, I mean, it's a grooming thing.

That's how they reproduce.

Their evangelism is through grooming and sexual abuse.

And, you know, usually at a young age, very, very common.

Why do you think they want to do their drag queen things to

children?

Why are they fighting for the children to see it?

Why are they not just saying, well, we just want to do it for adults?

Because they want to groom a next generation.

They need to indoctrinate them.

They need to get those next generation to vindicate what they're doing.

And so they go from saying, well, it's just a cross, a curse that we

were born with, to it's just a cross we have to bear.

We really don't want this.

We wish we could be different, but, you know, it is what it is.

And we just, it's just something we have to live with to where now they see it as a crown that you must celebrate.

And this is why when we talked last week about watershed issues, why is the reactions that we're having?

Well, and I said this last week, but there's new folks joining in.

And so I recommend you go listen to last week's, but I'm saying it to be

really clear about this.

There are times in history, we see it in scripture, early church, very early church,

one of the major issues was circumcision.

There was a major issue when the church was still of a Jewish background.

But you know what happened is after the church started to change more, a major issue,

one that caused people to question people's salvation was, will you get baptized?

Remember, you get someone that gets baptized, they're turning away from either their Jewish culture

or their Roman culture, but either way, you live in a village, most people in that day never were

further than one mile from their home.

And they knew everyone in town, everyone knew them.

So when you publicly went to either a mikvah which

would be basically a bath for ceremonial washing or to go to a water

and you get baptized, it is a public announcement and people got cut

off, families cut off, jobs cut off, people wouldn't talk to you.

If you were Jewish, they'd bury empty coffins and you were dead to them.

These things happened.

And so making a public testimony like that was a major deal.

So someone who wasn't willing to be baptized, people would question their

salvation, okay?

That is why in the Bible, baptism is almost seen as being tied with

salvation because at that time, if you weren't willing to get baptized, people questioned your

salvation.

That still goes on today, by the way, in Muslim countries.

In Muslim countries, they don't, a lot of the Muslim countries don't have secret baptisms.

They do it in the public because it is a stand of saying, I am a Christian knowing that

now having been a Muslim, I can be killed, right?

That's something if someone's not willing to do, they question the salvation.

Let's go further in history, a few hundred years.

The Romans were coming into churches or to people's homes from Christians and demanding that you give up your Bible.

You give up your Bible or you go to jail.

So what some people did was they said they'd give up part of the Bible or

they'd give up a Bible and they had another or they'd just give up their Bible and say, here, take it.

Because, and some at the time made the argument, well, what will happen

anyway if we don't give up the Bible, we're gonna go to jail and they're just gonna go through my house and take my Bible.

I might as well give up the Bible and I can still serve God.

They made it, hey, it sounds spiritual.

And others who didn't give up the Bible went to prison.

And when Constantine declares all of Rome Christian, all of a sudden people are being released from

prison for not giving up their Bible.

And what happened?

They saw these people that they called compromisers.

They compromised and they questioned their salvation.

When these people that went to prison got out, they did not want to let these

compromisers in the church because they saw that compromise as a

watershed issue.

Okay, I've said all that to say this.

The reason this issue is the issue it is, I believe today, is because the LGBT have

been forcing it on Christians in such a way that this is now a watershed issue for

Christianity today in America.

It's not an issue in Muslim countries and communist countries, I'll let you know that, because they don't allow this

stuff, okay?

But that's why it's crazy that I see people looking to Putin, maybe before Trump, they looked to Putin because

he'd be like, no, we're not doing that.

It's illegal, you go to jail.

Or you get killed for these things, right?

And people are like, a leader.

And it was in the vacuum of strong leadership that we ended up with a guy like Donald Trump,

right?

And so the thing is that this is a watershed issue for many

because even the slightest bit of a crack becomes an issue

where everyone's just like, no, throw the person completely out.

Everything he's done is tainted.

I wanna be balanced and say, look, I wouldn't give that advice to you.

I don't think it was good advice.

I think he should say, hey, after thinking it through, it was bad advice.

But I also don't say, throw him out, throw everything out, toss him, he's no good, everything he did is tainted.

Now, if he goes, like I said earlier, he continues down the path, okay, then this was just the first

of a path.

But I don't see him doing that.

I see him being strong against homosexuality, just, you know, I believe he was in Romans 1

after he did that interview.

I could be wrong about that.

I don't remember the timing.

And so I'm saying that to say, we all have to be careful with this.

Could it be he's getting older?

It could be.

There's a lot of different things.

Is it that he knows the family or details of the grandmother that he gave that advice that he says he wouldn't give

to someone else?

I don't know.

I wanna show grace, but I do also recognize why it is such a strong

issue for people, because this is a watershed issue.

This is something that is becoming to a point where it starts with women preaching

and ends up accepting of homosexuality.

That's kind of where it goes.

So as Melissa was saying, where, okay, there is a case where he allowed a woman to preach.

Maybe that was the first thing and this is now the road starting to go.

Anthony, you wanted to say something.

I think it starts when we don't take Genesis right.

I think it's an old earth and then women preachers and then homosexuality.

Gee, why am I surprised that you went to Genesis?

What might be a bias here.

Yeah.

I will say this.

I mean, Melissa's had, I mean, there's been a lot of great comments on the side.

I can't pull them up here.

I know. I'm trying to get, I'm gonna let you talk so I can grab them to pull them up.

I'll do that.

So she read one.

LGBTQ will inevitably latch onto statements like Alistair's and use them against us like hate speech.

Yes.

That's exactly the issue.

Why we have to be so careful with our words as Christians.

And, you know, I don't, a lot of times that I've preached in the last couple of years, especially on

apologetics and evangelism, I keep getting, I keep trying to teach people the basics, which is thus

sayeth the Lord.

We don't need to nuance passages.

We don't need to kill it with a thousand exclaimer or what do you call

exclaimers?

We just have to say, this is what God says.

Let's just be clear about God's word and not have to

vary from it whatsoever.

Cause when we do people will latch onto those things.

It is to me, unbelievably silly that Alistair could have given this

advice.

Now, granted, he probably never intended it to get out in the public sphere and

then taken since September for anybody to find out about this.

I find that fascinating in today's day and age, by the way, for that to occur.

But is there really any scenario?

I mean, I know you just said that, Andrew.

I can't think of any scenario where it's okay to attend one of these

ceremonies.

I don't get it at all.

I don't understand the nuance to it.

I don't understand any of it.

Homosexuality is sin, period.

We don't say whatsoever and we have to stand against it the same way I think Christ would

have if he was faced with the exact same situation.

And when Alistair in his, what do you, I call it an eisegetical sermon

rather than exegetical.

Yeah, well, here's a comment with that.

The African sheep says, Beg weaponized the prodigal son parable to justify his terrible advice.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, as far as I remember the prodigal son, it's that the prodigal son recognized his sin,

came back and seemed to be in a repentant heart, came back to

his father.

This is not his father going out and watching his son doing whatever he

was doing that was the sins as he was squandering the entire wealth he was given.

I mean, Alistair knows better.

That's the problem I have with it.

Alistair has been proven to be a good expositor for 40 years or however long his ministry has been.

How did he mess up these passages so bad on Sunday except for that he

is trying to, not repent for what he

did, for what he said, and he's making excuses for it.

And so to think about how his congregation sat there and clapped at one point,

laughed about what he had said, I find the whole thing really deplorable.

And it makes me wonder now, what kind of teaching has his congregation got over the years?

Are they just there because he is a celebrity type pastor and they don't know how

to understand God's word properly?

What about his elders?

He said some of them disagree with him.

Well, how was it that Alistair could even stand up there on Sunday and give the type of sermon he did

when some elders, according to his own words, were against his advice?

I just, I find this whole thing really troubling and puzzling.

Well, you did hit on something and there were some comments I saw early about the whole thing of celebrity pastors.

And this is why there shouldn't be.

I mean, like, you know, we lift men up.

Okay, you get some guys that preach really well, granted.

And the thing though is, is that, you know,

there's people who just want to defend, and I get that.

They see someone that they learned a lot from and they feel he's being attacked.

I mean, part of this, look, folks, we see the left.

And when they see something they don't like, what do they do?

They just, okay, everyone's, you gotta avoid this.

This person's gotta be shut down because they're saying something we don't like.

Well, we gotta be careful not to be like the left, right?

And just have a knee -jerk reaction and go, okay, we, you know, I'm not saying that,

and I guess I'm seeing the comments about Shepard's conference that it must, Phil Johnson, I guess, said it was mutual,

whether, you know, he had a conversation with MacArthur and they both decided to pull

out.

Anthony, you and I know how those things kind of go.

You know, it's mutual, but it really wasn't mutual.

The question is, which side was the one that, you know, pulled out and they say it's mutual?

You know, I don't know.

But we won't know that background.

I had posted a thing that is kind of frustrating because people weren't answering the question I actually asked,

which is that in everyone's rush to try to get Alistair Begg canceled, you know, he's gotta be removed from

every conference.

You know, like everyone wants him removed, like Shepard's conference must remove him.

And the question, and we'll never know the answer now, my question was, if Shepard's conference doesn't remove him,

then the question I have is, you know, would we cancel John MacArthur?

Would we then say that he's wrong?

Now we'll never get to know, I get it.

But the thing is, is that how far do you go?

You know, there's a lot of comments in the chat and I really agree with this.

You know what was more concerning?

It wasn't that Alistair Begg was invited to Shepard's conference.

It was that John Piper was.

John Piper.

I mean, there's more issues I have with John Piper, right?

Now, so what, I'm gonna go back to this.

What made the difference?

Why is not there an outcry to remove John Piper?

And for the one guy who keeps saying it's about Calvinism, it's not about Calvinism.

It's about the fact that this is a watershed issue.

That's what it comes down to.

Now, I think you brought up a good point in someone is saying this.

You're spot on, Anthony.

Maybe the whole church staff needs to look at this.

This is something I think that part of this does need to be resolved within his church.

If there's elders that didn't agree, I hope that they're having open and honest

dialogue about that, okay?

Because this is something that ultimately, this is something that should be resolved

within the local church, okay?

That's one thing.

I think what we got to do is get away from this, like I say, celebrity pastor mentality.

Well, we also get in this thing of thinking like, the internet is the church and we could practice church discipline.

You know, the internet's not the church.

The church is the church.

And so I think that first and foremost, this should be dealt with within Parkside Church, which

is the church he's at.

There's other pastors there.

I think that's where this ultimately should be dealt with.

And, you know, we'll see what's going to happen, whether there's either pastors that leave or pastors that talk to

them.

You know, I would like to see what happens there.

Now, let me see.

Melissa had said, how should we address those who say that

passing out gospel tracts at a gay pride festival is no different than what Alistair suggested?

Okay, so I think there's a big difference here.

The difference is, is when you go to a gay pride parade to pass out tracts, and if anyone

hasn't done that, let me be clear.

Anthony and I, we've both done that.

There is no question in the mind of the people attending the gay pride parade, which side you're on.

Some of the most hateful, angry, vile people I've ever

evangelized to were at gay pride parades.

Now, Anthony, you know, you've seen me go.

I don't bring up the homosexual issue.

In fact, I purposely avoid it when I'm there because I don't need to say it's a sin because their

own words reveal they know it's a sin.

Because I'll just sit there.

I purposely avoid it so when they keep bringing it up,.

I go, why do you keep bringing it up?

And they'll go, because you say it's a sin.

And it allows me to go, no, I didn't say it's a sin.

It's that you know it's a sin, right?

So by not bringing it up, it does allow me to do that.

But I'm not going to escape around the issue.

I could bring up all the other sins they do, but you know what?

They can't let this one thing go.

They only want to talk about one thing.

And so I know that's going to be the case.

And so I know that's going to come up.

And because of that, it is very different because first off, when I'm at a gay pride parade, it is

not to celebrate in the parade, okay?

I'm not like, Dee says here when it comes to the marriage, aren't attendees at a marriage ceremony witnesses

to confirm the marriage?

So we can't confirm that.

At a gay pride parade, I'm not confirming them, okay?

I'm up there saying the behavior is sinful.

They know it's sinful.

And trying to bring them to a knowledge of Christ.

So I am not sure what this person, and I don't know how to pronounce his name, so that's why I'm not, but he's saying,

saying it ain't about Calvinism doesn't make it not about Calvinism.

There's nothing in here that makes it about Calvinism.

Homosexuality is not a Calvinism issue.

Just saying, okay?

Okay, so I'm looking at the time.

I see we got people backstage.

So I'm just going to say, we're not going to address the remnant radio, all right?

Because there's more that with comments and all that we have to say, and I want

to bring, I see Cole backstage.

Joe was backstage and dropped out, but if he comes back in, we'll bring him in.

But going to a gay pride parade, first off, typically,

at least for me, I don't know about you, Anthony, I don't go in the parade, okay?

I usually stand outside where the parade is, and when they're coming out, I evangelize.

And I'll give you two reasons why I don't go in the parade, okay?

I don't go in the parade, one, because that is one of the most vilest places

that I've seen.

And when you're in there, just from what I see from the outside, it is a

complete and utter mockery of my Lord and Savior, and I can't

stand seeing it.

So I, and that's one of the reasons I don't like going to gay pride parades.

But the second reason is because if I go inside and someone

sees me and knows me from the YouTube channel, and they're like, hey, that's Andrew Rappaport, I don't

want them thinking that I'm there part of the parade.

Even if they know that I'm there out to evangelize because that's what I do, I don't wanna seem like I'm in

the parade.

So I've never actually been inside of a gay pride parade, unless it was by accident, and I didn't

know, but just walking through a city.

But I'm usually on the outside sharing the gospel openly and publicly,

okay?

And so Melissa's saying that I brought that question up because so many people were trying to

justify Alistair's actions.

I do agree with you, Andrew.

Yeah, the thing is, it's hard to justify.

Look, I've heard the justifications.

Well, what about a unsafe person with a safe person?

Can you attend those weddings?

Can you go to a wedding that's in a church of two people that aren't believers,

but it's held in a church?

The issue is the people who are getting married who are not saved

are not trying to shove marriage in the face of Christians, okay?

That's a big difference.

So let me bring Cole in.

He's making some comments.

So Cole, welcome back.

Can you hear me okay?

We hear you wonderful.

Hear much better than Anthony with his technology.

He's traveling.

He didn't bring his good mic.

Night, buddy.

Good night, buddy.

I was catching up on this Alistair Beck thing here because I listened to him on the radio.

A lot of times on my lunch break is when his show would be on and I've heard some pretty good stuff out of him so far.

But when I looked into what his full advice was, I don't know if you covered it, was not only to

go, but to actually give gifts and his reasoning behind was, I'm

not endorsing it, so that way they didn't have a reason to think that

this grandmother was this horrible, awful Christian person.

I disagree with the gift portion, but a lot of these marriage ceremonies have a

portion of the liturgy or the whole ceremony is to, if

there's anybody who objects, speak now or keep your peace.

I would go up to that point.

But like you're saying about the pride wedding or the pride parades and whatnot, you're gonna put yourself

on display and you're gonna get yourself in a position with that.

I'm thinking they probably won't have that in a same -sex marriage.

You'd be surprised.

People sometimes will cookie cutter things.

Yeah, well, okay.

And let me qualify for folks who may be asking, why do I keep calling them same -sex weddings and not homosexual weddings?

Homosexuals have been getting married for centuries.

People who practice homosexuality get married to people of the opposite sex all the time.

And we just don't know they practice homosexuality.

The issue is same -sex marriage, where they wanna redefine marriage.

That becomes the issue.

Okay?

You're talking about like a man and woman get married, but one of them has a side gig.

Yeah.

That's what you're saying.

Let me just, hey, Anthony, can you give us a, let's bring you up, can you give us a big smile?

Yeah, that's just for Melissa who says, we need to hear Anthony just so we can admire his teeth.

There you go.

So that was just for you, Melissa.

So let me do this.

Let me, before we continue with it, because I do gotta give a word from our sponsor.

So -.

Hold on, let me fall asleep for a minute.

Let me get in position.

Oh, well, if you want, do I have that picture still?

Hold on.

Let's see.

I'll bet he does.

It's gotta be there somewhere.

Oh yeah.

Here we go.

You think I -.

They got me good one night.

I fell asleep on here backstage and they screenshotted me.

Yeah.

I mean, you gotta admit, you really fell asleep.

I mean, so if you're -.

If we're gonna do pillow commercials -.

I was out, I was gone.

It was Anthony time and it was Susan time for me.

I mean, this was the epitome of the, if you need a MyPillow,

use promo code SFE.

I also needed a haircut at the time.

He was really tired.

It was a long show, but if you want to get a really good sleep like Cole there, then what you want to do is go to MyPillow

.com and use the promo code SFE so that they know that we sent you.

They do have a discount right now on their towels, a really good discount.

So if you want to get a great set of towels, I think you get six towels for 30 bucks.

Super, super absorbent.

So just go to MyPillow .com, use promo code SFE.

And I love their towels.

Okay, Anthony, here's what I did.

I gave my daughter a gift of MyPillow towels for Christmas.

What do you think I get when I go to her house and stay over?

I get to have MyPillow towels that way.

So it's a great way.

It's a great way to get towels.

When you're traveling to your daughter's house.

Which means you had to buy enough for her so that she had some left over.

Well, I don't know.

I think she actually, when we come to town, she gives us those towels knowing that we bought them.

But yeah, MyPillow .com if you want to check that out.

Also, I want to let you guys know, coming up this February is the Open Air Theology Conference, a great

conference.

It's looking like just a great lineup of speakers.

It's a great conference just for the discussions that happen during the conference.

The conference wraps up at five o 'clock every night so everyone can go to dinner, have theological discussions afterwards,

people of differing views, yet we can disagree in a very loving way.

And that's really what we should do.

We show grace to one another, stand strongly on our opinions and our

convictions, and yet discuss it.

So a lot of the guys that attend that, will it be live streamed?

Will you see it later on YouTube?

Yeah, you can watch those, but that conference, the way that Jeffrey Rice arranged it is really

about the fellowship.

And so go check out, search for Open Air Theology Conference and you'll

find out.

So I don't know who Facebook user is, but Facebook user, just go to ApologeticsLive

.com and get the link to open it up.

He says, is Alistair Begg in the lineup for your conference, Andrew?

Well, it's not my conference.

And if it was my conference, I would say no, it's Jeffrey Rice's conference.

So the answer would be, I guess, hell no.

Because if you know Jeffrey, that ain't going to be happening.

So Andrew, would you have removed Alistair?

Let's say you had a conference, seriously.

You had your Striving Fraternity Fire Conferences.

Alistair was one of your two speakers, as you used to do in the past.

Would you remove him based on everything that transpired?

Yeah, well, I can't answer it automatically.

Because I mean, what I would do, and it sounds like what MacArthur might have done, is I would have to have a

very lengthy conversation with him.

Now, we have two groups that did that, right?

American Family Radio and John MacArthur.

The result of both of them was a removal.

I wasn't in those talks.

I would hope those talks were lengthy and detailed and not holding back.

But that's the type of conversation I would have to have with him.

So I could see, I could, just being honest, I could see myself possibly going either way.

But I would say this, if I had him, you know, if it was on, I could guarantee that the issue

would come up in the Q &A.

Right?

And that's what I was expecting would happen at Shepard's Conference.

I figured the question was going to come up there.

You know, I've had, look, I'm not going to name the name, but

we had an individual who I had at my early events.

He started to have views where he had a misrepresentation of what

Calvinism is, and he started getting to the point where he was claiming that

Calvinism is heresy.

Yet, just mind you, by the way, folks, this is an individual who actually is a Calvinist.

Okay?

He actually is a Calvinist.

He just doesn't know what Calvinism is.

If you guys need an example of that, go watch my debate with RA Fuentes on this channel.

He wanted to debate that Calvinism is useless and dangerous and anyone who knew what Calvinism is

saw what I was doing in the first round of cross -examination where I asked him if he believed certain things

and I asked him all five points of Calvinism without using the labels.

And he agreed with every point of Calvinism.

And then second round, I asked him to define the labels and he misrepresented every one of them.

So what you have there is most people that don't like Calvinism don't even know what it is.

And they don't like their understanding of Calvinism and it's usually not the right understanding of Calvinism because most of them

are Calvinists.

And so here he was.

He was already invited.

The issues of his views on Calvinism were starting to become an issue.

And so it was within the context of the message, I

preached a message of basically dealing with his position of

being undermining over the issue of Calvinism.

So did I have him at the conference?

Yeah, I did.

And you know what I did?

I preached directly against what he was telling people privately.

I didn't hold back from it.

I did it on purpose because I knew what he was doing and a lot of others knew what he was doing.

He was already committed to being at the event.

So look, I've said I will preach anywhere as long as no one tells me what I can preach.

I'll go to the Vatican as long as they let me preach that salvation is by grace alone.

And that believing that you have to have a church to do the interpretation of God's word

is anathema.

It puts the church above the Bible.

If they're going to let me do that, I'll go.

Right?

So in that case, and that'd be the closest that I could come to have a real world example to answer your question,

where I did allow someone who I disagree with to come and be there.

And so, you know, what did I do?

I let him come because we had the commitment, but I, you know, preached against it.

Now here, I'll just put this up.

The same individual, Mr. Morto, I'll just say it that way because I can't, I just don't want to

butcher your first name.

He says, I studied at a Calvinist Bible college.

The claim is always that people don't understand Calvinism who reject Calvinism.

That's where the blinders are so seriously on.

And you know what?

Every, every person that says that to me, I like latent flowers, I understood Calvinism because I grew up

Calvinism.

Or like you say, you went to a Calvinist Bible college.

That's no proof that you actually understand Calvinism.

When, when like a guy like latent flowers, when so many Calvinists say that you're misrepresenting

the position, that should be a warning sign that you're misrepresenting the position, right?

It should be a flag.

If I have someone tell me I'm misrepresenting their position, I take a step back and say, explain to me where I'm wrong.

I don't double down and say, I understood this.

I grew up this or I was taught.

No, no.

It's the reason why, you know, recently, I don't, I didn't say this publicly, so I I'll say it now.

So last Friday, I was invited into a fortune 500 company because I didn't know this, Anthony, I don't know if you knew

this, but last Friday was world religion day.

Did you know we had that day?

But I was invited into a fortune 500 company to speak to basically

all of their employees were invited.

And I, I was asked to speak on the differences between Judaism, Islam and

Christianity.

Great opportunity.

I got to speak to lots of people in a secular environment, explain.

So what did I do?

Well, I took a, you know, I can't, I was in there because of my book.

What do they believe?

That gave me the credibility that I've done the research.

You know, one of the things I said when I started, why are you listening to me speak

on these different religions?

I knew that the board that invited me was made up of a couple of Muslims.

And so I first said, yeah, I grew up Jewish.

I understand that.

The fact that I grew up Jewish, is that where I get my understanding of Judaism from?

No, actually I learned what Judaism was as a Christian, studying the Talmud, reading the

Talmud.

That's where I learned what Judaism taught.

And so, but does that just growing up, does that give me a right to speak on Judaism?

No.

So I go to, you know, well, I'm a Christian now.

Does that give me a right?

No.

What gives me a right to speak on, like, Islam?

Well, the thing is, I went to these different religions, and when I finished my studies, before I wrote my book, I went to

authorities in those religions and say, am I misrepresenting you?

And so, you know, that's the thing.

Let me just put this, Mr. Marto says, it's not difficult to understand TULIP when you show its

inconsistency with Scripture, you're told you don't understand Calvinism.

Here's my challenge to you, sir.

My challenge to you is to email me info at strivingforeternity

.com.

Okay?

Info at strivingforeternity .com.

Please email me so that we could set up a show here for you to show me the

inconsistencies with Scripture, and I will show you if you really

understand Calvinism.

I mean, if you're going to, don't just type it on the keyboard.

Come on in.

We'll give you a full time.

I will give you the time to lay out your case.

All right?

So, that is my challenge to you.

If Calvinism is a problem, hey, teach me.

Okay?

So, if you're a regular here, you know that I'm going to give you a chance to say your piece.

So, what we have to do is understand each side.

So, to answer your question, Anthony, I guess it was a long answer, but, yeah, I don't know what I would do.

I know in the past, and obviously a different issue, it wasn't a

watershed issue, but I continued to have the person there.

I just preached a message that was very much against what he was doing privately.

And I told him to his face that what he was doing was, I don't think, biblical, because he wouldn't

publicly state his views on Calvinism.

He would just undermine different ministries and people by talking one -on -one behind the scenes.

And I didn't think that was right, and I told him that.

So, he eventually did come out publicly, but it was only because other people kind of forced the issue.

So, Anthony, any other comments that you had?

We had a couple of people that came in backstage but dropped out.

Yeah, no, I was curious about your thoughts on that.

I mean, if I was in your position, I would have dropped the speaker.

I would have dropped Alistair Begg personally.

The moment I heard those comments, I would have asked him about it immediately, and if he didn't back down from him, I'd have dropped him.

Very similar to what AFR did.

Because I do believe this is a watershed issue.

It's one of the few watershed issues that I think we have to be really, really tough on.

So, that would be my position.

Yeah, no, and this is the thing.

Look, I think there's people wrong on both sides.

I think there's some who are just ignoring the advice that Alistair gave and just being

like, oh, he's our favorite.

We love him.

He can't, like, as if he can't do wrong.

Well, don't worship a man.

He's a man.

He can be wrong.

John MacArthur's a man.

He can be wrong.

In fact, I'm not even, let me correct that.

They're both, they are wrong.

I'm a man and I am wrong.

Do not think that, don't defend the person to the point that you can't admit when they're wrong.

I have good friends, I have a good friend of mine.

He wanted to get into the pastorate.

He asked my advice.

He felt like he should get into the pastorate.

He has adult children who are out of the home.

And he asked me, he's like, hey, what do you think?

I said, no, you can't.

Because even though he could do some ministry in the church and whatnot, when

the children were in the home, their lifestyle there and things that happened, he didn't raise them well.

And so I said, you can't, you know.

Now, everyone else was saying, oh, patting him on the back,.

You should do it, you should do it.

You know whose advice he, you know, he listened to?

The guy that was going to be open and honest with him and say, no, here's why.

And he thanked me and said, you know what?

Everyone else was just encouraging me.

No one wanted to, you know, but what you said is true.

And he never brought it up again, you know.

So don't just blindly defend him.

At the same point, I don't think we just throw everything out and throw him completely under the bus.

But I'm also saying, why is it we do this?

I keep saying it, Anthony, you just mentioned it.

It's a watershed issue.

This is an issue different than other.

If this happened in another country, if this happened a hundred

years ago, maybe we wouldn't have the reaction we would have, okay?

Because it wasn't a watershed issue then, it is now, right?

For the last 10 years, this has become a watershed issue.

That is why the reaction is so strong.

I will say where I think people are wrong, the people who are saying he's not saved, that I'm

going to say is wrong at this point.

Give it a few years.

If it continues, maybe I'll change my mind.

But at this point, the fruit has been there for over 40 years.

I think calling him unsaved, I think that is as wrong as the advice he gave.

Yeah, you know, what really is saddening too in all this is that there seems to be people that are

rejoicing over being able to tear out.

And that's not a good thing either.

You know, we should be in tears over

Alistair Begg's not only dumb statement, bad advice, however you want to say

it.

I've seen it said in many ways on Facebook.

We should be really sad over it.

We should be really sad over the fact that he doubled down with AFR Radio, tripled down with his

sermon on Sunday.

It's seeming to dig his heels in far more now than what a

past, like he kind of sound like it was just a quick passive comment in

September.

No big deal, whatever.

But then he's really dug his heels in on Sunday.

And that is what is really troubling about all this.

But you're right.

People have to stop anathematizing him right now and just let some things play out.

It was mentioned in a few other, I'm sorry, Melissa and a few others, but

Michelle Leslie and Amy Spreeman, I believe it was those two did a podcast.

My wife listened to the whole thing.

And it was, the claim was that Alistair Begg didn't just have somebody give, whether it's a testimony

or teach from his pulpit, but he made a comment at a conference that was attended by, I believe, Beth

Moore and a few other people.

That we would not agree with.

And he said, it's okay for a female to teach a mixed congregation or mixed

audience about a local pastor.

I believe that that was the claim that was brought up.

That would be really troubling if that's true.

Well, and it'd be troubling because that's where it always begins, right?

It begins with women preachers and the LGBT is second.

Yeah.

And apparently Michelle Leslie and Amy Spreeman both downgraded him on their list of approved teachers

multiple years ago.

How I missed this, I have no idea seeing that he is in my backyard.

But I mean, how many people missed this interview that he did in September, right?

It's only because someone picked it up and I think it's Protesti or someone that had an audience that

picked it up and that's where it's like, okay, it got a lot of traction because all of a sudden people

are like, wait, what?

And I mean, look, if you're on X, it's the only thing being talked about for the last two weeks,

you know?

I mean, that's why we're dealing with it and we're going to deal with it one more time.

I'm going to have to deal with this one more time on the Theology Throwdown.

If you don't listen to the Theology Throwdown podcast, that's where all of the Christian podcast community podcasters get

together and discuss a topic.

We're going to discuss this topic.

We're going to have differences, I'm sure.

And that's the goal of that podcast, is to have those

differences, to have those discussions.

Now, Mr. Mordo is saying, I would like to think he's senile because I've

benefited from his teaching.

And this is the thing, you know, this very well could be what it is.

Look, folks, when people get older, there is a tendency to

just kind of go soft, to want to be liked, you know?

That could be.

It very well could be.

It's part of aging.

That doesn't mean we throw out all the good teaching he did in the past, but it means we got to be cautious, maybe in the future,

you know?

So if there's more that is, you know, and I'm going to just tell you right now, just knowing the way people are,

the discernment ministries and bloggers and all, they're digging into everything Alistair ever said

right now and ever written.

And if there's anything else, I'm telling you, it's going to be coming up.

There's people that are probably pouring through, they're looking for something.

By the way, I was just warned when you have discernment bloggers, because they're

looking for something.

And so you want, look, Anthony, you just mentioned Amy Spearman, Michelle

Leslie.

They do a podcast together.

They have two ladies ministries separately.

I encourage you to check out what they say.

Why?

They are careful discernment bloggers.

They will research their stuff thoroughly before they say something.

But there are the discernment bloggers that are going through Alistair Begg and they're looking to get clicks.

They're looking to get downloads.

They're looking to get attention.

And so they're looking for something.

Yeah, here's Melissa brings up, you know, there's many Julie Roys out there digging up dirt on everyone.

And that's a great example because she just looks for something she can twist to say what she wants said.

There are the discernment bloggers that are looking to misrepresent someone because they can spin it the

way they want to spin it.

So you're going to get that with the Alistair Begg.

You're going to get people that are going to be saying things.

So we have to, my caution is, be fair, hear both sides.

Don't just say, oh, well, here's a blogger saying this.

It must be true.

You know, look, Melissa and Dee last week, we went through this saying, was this a woman who was preaching?

Oh, maybe it was someone just giving her testimony.

There was the back and forth.

That is good discernment.

Not just jumping to a conclusion going like, I can't be wrong, but hearing, oh, maybe I'm wrong on this.

Maybe let me investigate.

Oh, you know, I think I was wrong.

Oh, wait, more information came in I wasn't wrong.

I was actually right in the original.

That's what happened.

Well, that's the way we have to do things.

All right.

So I think that there's, there's going to be more coming out, I'm sure.

And not all of it is going to, not all of it's going to be right.

Or, you know, it'll be misrepresented.

I'm sure of it.

Because that's how these things go.

I hope that we don't have to continue talking about Alistair.

I mean, look, for the record, I used to listen to him once in a while on, you know, on the radio, but

not that much.

I don't think, I think if I have any of his books, I must've got them at Shepherd's Conference.

I don't think there's ever been an Alistair Begg book that I bought.

The closest I think that I ever was to Alistair Begg is that he and I shared editors.

So that's about as close as, you know, his editor was also my editor.

I remember that.

Yeah, that's about as close as I think I ever got.

To Alistair Begg.

So, you know, I will say this, you know, Dee brought up that, she says, I've listened to Alistair for a

while and his voice seems shaky in the last year or so.

You know, because we live close by, I've listened to him off and on.

My wife listens to him.

And one thing we've noticed over the years is that he seems to have gone from being a really good,

careful expositor to being much more of a conference style speaker even on Sunday

mornings.

So there has been that change in terms of his speaking.

I will also say that when I watched his Sunday sermon afterwards, the recording, he looked more

tired than I have ever seen him before.

Well, usually as a really sharp thinker, he wasn't quite right.

Well, let's get the benefit of the doubt.

Let's work through this, right?

And granted, when I saw it, I watched it at triple speed because that's what I do.

And so some of the shaky voice I might miss.

He was tired.

I would say go to the sermon the week before, you know, or a couple of weeks

before and see if he's tired there.

I would assume after, you know, with all this breaking, all the discussion all week long, he probably had lots of meetings with

elders.

He was probably meeting with MacArthur.

He's meeting with American Family Radio.

It probably was exhausting for him.

So the fact that he was tired this week, maybe that's why the sermon was less of a sermon and more of a

defense of his behavior.

Because that's what it's, I'm just saying, that's what it seemed.

It's like he had a text.

It had nothing to do with what he wanted to say.

You know?

Yeah, it was bizarre.

Yeah.

His sermon on Sunday.

Absolutely bizarre.

He would have been blasted.

Had he been a seminary student and gave that as one of his sample sermons, he'd have been

blasted.

Yeah.

To be honest.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

One other thing about Alistair that has, that really has bugged me.

I kind of wrote him off over three years ago.

And it's because he had his church closed for six months.

He was closed from March when, you know, the country had its sham of a shutdown

with COVID.

And he didn't open until September.

And at that point, he...

That was a long two weeks.

That's a long two weeks.

Yeah.

So he was closed for six months.

He opened for three weeks outdoors and then he moved it inside only because people complained as it was getting colder in Ohio.

I mean, we were talking and it's September.

So he was closed.

He counted to his congregation.

Um, not only that, a lot of people don't remember this.

I have not been able to find the video on this, but we did talk about this on Apologetics Live in the summer

of 2020.

Right after MacArthur made his decision, well, Grace Community Church Elders made the decision to open up Grace Community Church

and take the fight to the state of California.

There was a video within a week or two that came out by Alistair Begg, who blasted pastors

for opening their churches.

Hmm.

And he did not mention John MacArthur by name or Grace Community Church.

Yeah, I remember that.

However, yeah, there is, there's no mistake that he was talking about John

MacArthur.

The way he described the situation, there's nobody else on the national level that would have fit the details of his short, you

know, 11, 12 minute video, whatever that was.

So I've had a problem with him since then.

I will also tell you, Begg's congregation lost several thousand people that we

know of.

Some may have gone back, but they lost a ton of people through that year because he

refuses to open.

People said, watch him going forward.

Even after we reopened, a lot of people didn't go back because they said, how can I trust this guy if something ever happens again in this

country?

Yeah, yeah.

So let me just say that Dee says, I'm going to go through some of the comments here.

Dee says, the shaky voice has been happening for a while.

So, okay, so you have that.

Humble Clay said this, Andy Stanley.

We did deal with that earlier, Humble Clay.

Yeah, I don't, I don't put, I'm not putting Alistair Begg in the

category of Andy Stanley yet.

Why do I say that?

You know, it's not, give it enough time.

You know, MacArthur always says, truth and time go hand in hand.

Give, give Alistair enough time.

We're going to see if he's going to go astray.

You know, Humble Clay says he's, he's, he's not Ravi Zacharias.

I agree.

So Scott's saying that Ligonier also took him off of Refinite.

So that's interesting.

So let's see.

Carol's saying that Begg's sermon on September 16th, 2019 on 1st Timothy 2,

9 -15 on women.

So I guess something he must have preached back then.

I'm going to leave that up so folks can, could go listen, find that, that sermon and see what he said.

I'm not sure, Carol, what the, the issue is from within that sermon, but I'm assuming you're, you're saying that he was

teaching something that wasn't good there.

All right.

So let me get to a couple of other things that we had here.

I mentioned, I mentioned last week about emailing me, letting me know, you were thinking about

switching days from Thursday night to right now, it's looking like possibly Sunday night, which is where

we started.

We, we, when Matt Slick and I started this, it was Sunday nights.

Sunday nights was just hard because both of us were doing a lot of preaching.

We were traveling and Sunday nights were just hard to do.

And so we both, when we started over again, we started this on Thursday nights.

Right now I'm thinking maybe Sunday night might work better.

The issue was that, yeah, there's a lot of people doing things on Thursday night.

There's a lot of other friends of mine who are doing live streams on Thursday night.

Now, Melissa is saying, and I didn't know this.

She said, Matt, Andrew off topic, but Matt Slick is no longer doing Bible study on Thursday.

I don't know if that affects your decision on changing the day of the show.

Well, that, that was part of it because, you know, Matt, who Matt and I

started this together, when he was looking to move, he said, Hey, I can't do this anymore.

I'm just too busy.

So he, you know, we got other people coming in.

And then when he realized he really couldn't move to Arizona, it,

he, he was doing it for his wife, but it wasn't going to be good for his wife in the end.

And so he decided to stay put.

So he wanted to do a Bible study.

And in the process of that, he left it to the people that wanted to study.

What day should we do?

Thursday.

And so, so yeah, we used to have it where we'd have a lot of people cut out.

We'd watch the audience at the second half of the hour, just cut out.

And we knew they were all going because Matt and I have a lot of the same audience, but it wasn't just that.

I mean, there's a lot of others, open air theology, they're doing their live stream on Thursday nights.

You know, there's just others who are, who are all doing it on Thursday night.

And I'm just saying, maybe we'll change.

We haven't, we're not definitive yet.

It's something we're talking about and we're, and if we do, we're going to announce it for several weeks before we do.

Okay.

Just for the record.

I just, I'm sorry, Anthony, I, I'm going to deal with this just because I can't help myself, even though this was from earlier,

but, so we got two comments here.

Mr. Marto said, this is dealing with 9 -11 conspiracy.

Go to 3000 architects and engineer websites who debunked the official narrative from

November 11th.

And then, and Frank says, if you don't have, if, if you don't have questions about 9 -11 being

an inside job, you don't know about Barry Jenkins or the Project

Northwoods.

I'm, I'm just going to say, I'll agree.

I don't know about those studies.

Okay.

I don't have to know about those studies because unlike other people,

I actually have firsthand evidence that you will never be able to see.

Okay.

So when you're dealing with stuff like this, there's, there's information the government does

not release to everyone for anyone can read stuff and see stuff.

Okay.

So there are some things I would say, yeah, there's, you know, do I believe that the CIA

killed JFK?

Yes, I do.

Do I have evidence that I could give to you?

No, I don't.

But do I believe 9 -11 was an inside job?

No, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't.

In fact, I'll go back to what I said earlier, right?

The fact is, is conspiracy, people talk.

You know why we, you know, some of the strongest evidence we have for why JFK was, was killed by the

government?

Well, part, it just, there's too many people that have kind of spilled the beans at times.

One of the secret service agents who has admitted like the big, the big conspiracy was there was a pristine

bullet that was on the gurney.

How did it get there?

Well, secret agent, secret service agent said he found it in the back seat.

When, when Jackie, you know, leaned the president forward, he saw it there, he picked it up and he put it in his pocket.

And when he got to the hospital, he figured, well, they're going to need to know this.

This is evidence.

So he put it on the gurney.

Like, but people just, that information's out there.

There's a lot of things that are out there because it's hard to keep, if it's conspiracy, someone's going to talk.

The, the fact that, you know, you know, someone goes, Hey, I'm a patsy.

That's not what people say.

Okay.

When, when people are wrongly judged, they say, I'm innocent.

They don't say I'm a patsy, which tells you he knew what, what was happening,

right?

He knew he was being played, right?

So, so sorry, 9 -11, it really happened.

So I, I don't know what you know, Andrew, but here, here's a question and let's see if you can answer this

or not.

I don't necessarily believe it's an inside job.

However, do you believe that there were explosives based inside the buildings that helped

those come down, especially with a third building that didn't get hit by an airplane and

looked like it controlled demolition, just like the other two buildings and just like other buildings in

controlled demolitions?

Well, my answer will not be very satisfying.

I cannot confirm nor deny.

Yeah.

Because I mean, that, because that's why, I mean, there's a lot of other conspiracy theories going around that, that

whatever, you know, but this, that's the issue.

That's the one that a lot of people focus on.

Yep.

Yeah.

I can't put my finger on, on, you know, you have the issue with the Pentagon where there's $1 .5

trillion missing out of the defense budget.

The one building that got hit is the building that had all the financial records.

Yeah.

Plane records was found.

I mean, there's weird circumstances, but you know, yeah.

So, so here, let, let me give you, let me give folks a piece of advice when it comes to, you know,

conspiracy theories or, you know, especially with dealing with any government.

Okay.

People usually think it's a big conspiracy theory.

And by the way, I think it was Melissa that actually has the answer to your question.

Because Jeff is watching.

Bigfoot doesn't exist.

See, Jeff, Jeff Rice would say that it's Bigfoot.

I don't know.

It was Bigfoot.

That was the answer.

Bigfoot was marching around the buildings and they collapsed.

Andre the Giant had really good feet.

I'm, we are going to have a Bigfoot discussion at Open Air Theology this year.

And it's going to be, everything, all the conversations are going to be taped, recorded, I should say, not taped.

It's going to be there.

But here's the thing.

People want to think, let's go to someone else.

Let's go to COVID, right?

Was COVID some big conspiracy?

I don't think so.

Because I just, I understand, huh?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

It was.

And in one of the things that I've dug up for one of the newest courses I'm teaching on right now, which is the Great Reset,

this might take a different episode for us to talk about.

But there are patents out.

So in the early 1990s, the CDC, with Anthony Fauci's name, has a patent on

the genetic sequencing of COVID.

Coronavirus.

Okay, so, well, yeah, I'll let you finish and then I'll.

No, that's okay.

I mean, they had that.

University of North Carolina had recombinant DNA patents in the early 2000s.

There's been, Bill Gates and the globalists have had multiple run -throughs,

theoretical run -throughs about how, or what it would look like if a

virus was unleashed on a population.

I mean, literally everything has already been thought about,

planned, known, developed.

Coronavirus was one in a long line of viruses that was manufactured that we know

it's tied to patents through the CDC, NIH, NIAID, Anthony Fauci, it goes all the way back to HIV.

So here's the thing.

So there's a lot to it.

Yeah, but now this is the thing.

You said it was planned.

Melissa said it was planned.

What I'm saying is when we deal with this, it's not, so it's not this big conspiracy

that people, there's a lot of things that are, some are coincidence, some are planned, but not

for the reason.

So, Anthony, you know my views on this, but do I believe COVID was released?

Yes.

Why?

I don't think it was released for any of the reasons that people in America think it was released because Americans have a

view only of America.

Okay.

You know, my bride is from Hong Kong.

We were very up on Hong Kong news before COVID.

What was all the news about?

The fact that China was breaking their agreement with England where they were supposed to

leave Hong Kong untouched and running itself for 50 years, 25 years in, they're breaking that

off and they needed money because they were on the verge of bankruptcy and they needed the protests to stop.

So what, what, what you find is most often it is not that there's some big conspiracy,

but you have a bunch of selfish people looking to do something for themselves.

So I believe China didn't care about the, what it affected had on anyone

else.

They just wanted to keep people in Hong Kong indoors and releasing that

just at the time of Chinese new year would spread it.

I don't know if they thought it would spread all over the world.

I figured, I think they thought it would spread at least to Hong Kong, right?

Because what happened when that happened?

They said, Oh, everyone's got to be indoors.

Shut, shut everything down.

And then every, every, all the protests stopped and China was able to take over Hong Kong and all

that ended, they got what they wanted.

Right now, are there lots of other people that took advantage of it?

Absolutely.

But they're all looking to do their own selfishness.

They're, they're all looking to say, you know, and what happens when you have people who were start to realize the people who used to

work for Fauci that suddenly realized, wait a minute.

Now that they're seeing what's happening, how people are using it and the effects of it around the world, they don't want

anyone else to know because they're going to be guilty.

So what do they do?

They start censoring people, right?

It's, it's not the big conspiracy.

Now, so that's where like, I can agree with the patents, Anthony, because Fauci wanted to make money, right?

I mean, he, he could, he makes great money when he, when he can produce a virus that he already

produced an antidote for, or a vaccine.

Hey, that's great.

I got the solution, folks.

There's a virus out there.

Yeah, I let it loose, but I got the, I got the solution.

I got the vaccine, right?

So that's selfishness.

It's, it's no different than Bill Gates saying, oh, we need to get away from meat.

Why?

Because I bought all the fat, the farms and produce plant -based meat, right?

He just wants to make money.

He doesn't really care about meat, right?

So, so that's when I say it's not the big conspiracy.

I don't mean that there aren't people using it.

Absolutely.

The Democrats used it to say, oh, we need mail -in balloting.

Everyone's got to do it by mail because they found out a way that they could cheat.

And steal elections.

Okay.

Right.

This is no different with anybody though.

It's, so that's why I say it's not some big conspiracy.

It's a bunch of selfish people making selfish decisions for themselves,

taking advantage of, of situations, seeing how they could use it to help themselves or to

protect themselves.

And, and, you know, oh, they could, they could censor anyone that disagrees with them.

So that, you know, only their opinion gets heard.

That's what that.

So I can see why you're not.

Yeah.

I can see why you're not calling it a conspiracy from that perspective.

However, there, again, Bill Gates through the Rockefeller Foundation,

Klaus Schwab, Clover Room, all these guys had been planning.

Oh, they, they discuss it.

They plan it.

They, they, you know, they, they're like, oh, what if this happened?

Yeah, they'll, they'll do all that.

Um, and there's plenty of things, you know, but that doesn't, what I'm saying is I don't think it's this,

they all get meat behind a, you know, in a dark room with cigars and, and say, we're going to take over the world.

I mean, they would like to take, they just want to make more money.

Right.

And they don't care about us.

Well, well, that's half the battle.

I think half of it is making a lot of money and there's a lot of money to be made.

It's one of the reasons why I'm against vaccines in general.

And we're going to have a, we're going to have you on for a debate.

That's the plan.

We're going to have you on to debate a good friend of yours who is also a medical doctor on, on, you know,

vaccines and medicine.

And it'll be, I just going to, if we're, we did, we have talked about it, uh, Anthony and I, and, and,

and this other guest we've talked about it.

Uh, his, his name is Eric.

We've talked about it.

We'll probably do this at some point.

It will be a fun debate, uh, yet informative for folks, you know, two, two people that really like

each other that debate are good.

Yeah.

We would probably agree on most things.

Um, but, but there'll be a couple of things for us to, uh, to, to battle through.

But I, I will say this when it comes to COVID, um, and then these, these pandemics, so to speak, is that

a large part of his money.

There is no doubt about that.

Andrew, you're absolutely right about that.

The other part of it though, is Malthusian theory that came out in the Henry Kissinger report, which is about

depopulation.