Examining Childhood Conversion and Biblical Salvation with Justin Peters

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00:03

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

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And we are live, but this is Pastor Justin tonight. Andrew's not here and Anthony Sylvester is not here, but we're here tonight.

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We're gonna have an incredibly good show. Guys, we're gonna have a great show. Our real good friend,

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Justin Peters, is gonna be with us. Our co -host friend, Justin Peters, this guy here.

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He's gonna be with us tonight and we're gonna be talking about a lot of really good conversations on, what was we talking about?

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Oh, that's right, examining childhood conversions and talking about really having a biblical assurance of salvation.

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We're gonna talk about those things and about baptism and salvation and all those deep truths that we all struggle with and we all work together with.

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And I'm gonna throw you back here in the back real quick just for a minute, Justin. So we're gonna have an incredibly good show tonight.

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And I wanna invite everyone just to come in, sit back and enjoy yourselves. It's gonna be some hard stuff we're gonna talk about because we're gonna talk about the assurance of salvation, knowing your faith, knowing have you been duped or do you have a reasonable assurance of your faith and your salvation?

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What about your children, your family, your loved ones? We're gonna be talking about a lot of different things.

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Justin Peters has written a book and it's called, Do Not Hinder Them. And it's a biblical examination of childhood conversion.

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And it's an incredible book. I've read through the book. I do my usual thing that I've marked up so much of it.

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I have questions on every single page. So he has to answer questions on every page. No, actually we're just gonna ask questions and see how things go.

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But this is incredibly good book. And I wanna encourage everyone to just sit back and stew over the questions, over the comments, the statements that are made.

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And at the end of it, I hope that you are steadfast in your assurance of salvation that if you're not, that you come to a biblical repentance, that you come to faith in Christ.

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And today is the day of salvation. If you don't know

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Christ as your savior, I just wanna assure you that you're gonna meet him one day. And Pastor Justin Peters, and that's a evangelist, pastor, attendant preacher, everything he does.

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He's such an amazing brother and he's here to help guide us through that.

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And then we're gonna talk about a biblical test in 1 John as well. Now, before we get to that point,

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I wanna ask you guys to go to mypillow .com.

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Yeah, I'm gonna put a plug in for MyPillow and ask you guys to go to mypillow .com to 1 -800 -873 -0176 or mypillow .com.

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And you can tell them that there's the promo code SFE, striving for eternity, promo code

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SFE, and you can get all kinds of wonderful products, good discounts, and you'll be able to support us as well through that.

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Tonight, if you have questions, maybe towards the end, we'll open it up and say, hey, if you've got questions, jump in here.

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We would love to talk to you. Also, do us a favor and go help out Brother Justin Peters at justinpeters .org.

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I think he's got a donate section on there. I've never found it. I just know that we send a donation from the church every once in a while, but I've never found a donate section on there.

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Maybe he's got one. He'll tell us about it, I'm sure. No, he won't. He's too humble. He just likes to sit there quietly.

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But I'll tell you, you can't do better than to support godly men, especially in the time when critical race theory and communism, socialism, all the other isms are being pushed in the

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SBC and all around our denominations within the church. When we see these things going on, we need to support godly men that are willing to stand up and proclaim the truth.

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And Brother Justin, Brother Andrew, Anthony, Mike Stockwell, even. If you don't know

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Mike Stockwell, get on Facebook and find Mike Stockwell. And I've been recommending these guys, some people are saying, hey, who do we support now that the

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SBC has went completely to the left and has sold themselves out for critical race theory and racism and all the wickedness?

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Who do we support? Well, brothers and sisters, there's a lot of godly good men and women out there ministering the gospel and they are missionaries and they're supporting people and they still need our love, our support and our prayers.

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And I wanna encourage you to find them. I wanna encourage you to reach out and be a part of that godly group of witnesses that we are called to uphold and help.

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If you have any questions for us, contact us at info at strivingforeternity .org.

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You can ask any question you want. If you wanna have an argument with anybody, go ahead and argue with Andrew.

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He loves having people argue with him. So if we've done anything wrong, said anything wrong, it's

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Andrew's fault. So go ahead and put that in there. Also wanna encourage you, if you like doing

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Bible study or if you're a Christian and you want to know God's word better and deeper, go to Logos Bible Software.

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That's B -I -T -L -O -G -O -S.

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If you'll go there, Andrew has said that there, I believe there's five books, that Striving for Eternity will give you for free.

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Go there and download their app. And I'm gonna tell you, I've been using

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Logos for more than 10 years and it is a great tool, great product. And it is a great

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Christian tool that gives you information, language, dialect. It gives you just a plethora of good solid material that you can use in your everyday discipleship time.

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Let's see, do we have anything else? Did I say give us a review? If I didn't, I'll say it again. If I did,

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I'll say it again. Please give us a review and tell us how much you love us and how bad we're doing at lovethepodcast .com

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Also would ask you to check us out on christianpodcastcommunity .org.

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I know they reached, I believe it was 2 million downloads just recently. And just by way of introduction, our friend,

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Justin Peters. Hey, brother. Our friend, Justin, you're on there. Doing great, brother.

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You're on the Christian Podcast Community. Yes, I am. Okay. I am.

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There's a show that you do and I can't remember what it's called. What's it called? Didache.

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Didache. Didache, Greek word for doctrine or teaching, but doctrine, yeah.

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So yeah, I've been on there for, I don't know, several months, I suppose. And yeah, it's not regular, but I try to put up some new material at least every couple of weeks.

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And so yeah, I'm honored to be a part of it. All right. Well, I just found out something popped up from, it looks like Matt Slick Live on the

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Facebook page that for some reason, Facebook has dropped that live feed and there's nothing

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I can do about it, but we'll try to see if we can link it in later after the show's over. So it's on Matt Slick Live.

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I don't know why it did it, but Facebook is, they love Christians. They're really faithful to love our

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Christian brothers and sisters, aren't they? Yeah, you can always count on Facebook. Yeah, they do a wonderful job.

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Yeah. They make sure that nobody has any thoughts that are out of conformity, don't they?

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Yeah. It's just unreal. We do not live in a free country anymore. Not by the standards with which we are accustomed anyway.

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I mean, maybe by the standards of North Korea, we do, but not by American standards.

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Absolutely. Well, I just want to start saying hello to everybody. We've been gone for a while. So KT and Jesus says, good evening.

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Hello. We've got 37 people that are on now.

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We had 45. And as soon as that feed dropped, we dropped 10 or almost 10 people.

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But for every one of you that are on here or that watch this, thank you. We do this to try to reach out to as many people as we can.

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And I just want to say thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, Laura Anderson. I want to thank you for coming.

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You know, Melissa Owens, she comes faithfully. And we've been, somebody just asked what happened to the

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Facebook feed. Well, it shut down. It's Facebook's fault.

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So on Matt Slick Live, it's not on all of them. So there we go.

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So anyway, just so you know, you can get on the other Facebook sites for Andrew and whatnot.

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So you're not, you can jump over there and you'll be fine. I just want to, well, let's just start out.

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I guess the best way to start out is, Justin, I want to ask you, as I said,

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I want to ask you, what was the catalyst for you writing your book, Do Not Hinder Them?

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Yeah, yeah, Justin. So the title is Do Not Hinder Them, subtitle, A Biblical Examination of Childhood Conversion.

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And I hate to say that the title is misleading, but it is a bit counterintuitive because most people, when they read the title,

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Do Not Hinder Them, oh, he's advocating for baptizing children, and I'm not.

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That's actually kind of the, the book takes the opposite view of that. But to answer your question, a couple of things,

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I suppose, would be the catalyst. One is my own testimony. I thought that I was converted at a very early age.

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I was reared in a Southern Baptist church, and I made a profession of faith when

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I was seven. And I had intellectual ascent to the basics of the gospel.

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I believed in the deity of Christ. I believed the Bible was the word of God. I believed in his death.

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I believed in his resurrection. I believed in these things intellectually, just like I believed in Santa Claus.

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He was real to me, too. He came to see me every Christmas. And there's a big difference between a childlike faith and a childish faith, but I had all the right answers.

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When the preacher asked me, do you believe that Jesus is the son of God? Yes, do you believe he died on the cross and was raised from dead?

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Yes, do you accept him as your personal Lord and Savior? Yes, and so I got baptized. And in Southern Baptist churches, if you're nine years old and you haven't yet been baptized, then you're over the hill.

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People start wondering, what's wrong with that kid? Why hadn't he been baptized yet? And so, yes,

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I had intellectual ascent, but I was not converted. In fact, I was not converted until much, much later.

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But so my own testimony, my own conversion experience, my own false baptism, that is certainly one of the things that led me to write this book.

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And another was a conversation that I had with a pastor friend of mine. He's a pastor of a Southern Baptist church.

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And this was probably 11 or 12 years ago or so, but he and I were having lunch one day.

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And I just kind of asked him, I said, his name's Keith. I said, Keith, what's the most difficult thing you face as a pastor?

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And his answer was knowing when to baptize children. And that surprised me.

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That was not the answer that I was expecting. You know, I figured it would be dealing with the deacons or, you know, obstinate people or that kind of thing, or I find enough time in a day.

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No, it was knowing when to baptize children. And so those two things together kind of,

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I guess you could say were the catalyst for me writing this book and doing some research into the alarmingly high statistics of kids in Southern Baptist churches, but just evangelical churches in general who make professions of faith and get baptized, but they grow up and then there's no evidence that conversion has ever taken place in their life.

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And so all those things together was the genesis of this book.

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Yeah, yeah. You know, that seems to be almost a common story. When I was seven, did you say you were seven years old?

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Yep, seven years old. Okay, so we're twins all over the place. We almost got the same name. I mean, when

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I was seven - This goes everything. Yeah, when I was seven, somebody even said that to not confuse us, they're gonna call,

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I guess, me Justine. So please don't do that. That'd be awful. No, I'm Justin.

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I'm not - A little gender confusion there. I don't have any gender confusion at all. Trust me. So when

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I was seven, just for a quick testimony here, when I was seven years old, I remember like it was yesterday, my cousin and I were sitting in the front row at a little

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Baptist church. Pastor was preaching after, almost at the end of the service, my cousin says, watch this.

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And he jumps up and goes up front. We were kids. We had no clue, but it was cool because everybody had done it.

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So he runs up front and I don't remember what the guy said to him, the pastor said to him.

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But the next thing I know, oh, it's praise the Lord. He's a believer.

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And that night, my mom meant well. She wasn't trying to be malicious. And I wanna make sure everybody understands this.

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When we're talking about this, nobody is accusing parents of being malicious in this. I don't think. I've read through this and at no time do you say, you evil, wicked people, how dare you?

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This is the culture we've lived in. And the reason I'm saying this is because my mom sat beside me and meaning well, she said, honey, it's time for you to,

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I think it's time for you to go up front and talk to the pastor. It's nighttime, we're over with,

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I go up front and he grabs my hand. He says, can I help you? And I said, yes, sir, I wanna get saved. Now keep in mind, you may have known, but of some degree, but I knew about Jesus.

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I could tell you that I colored his pictures and the cross and Easter and the

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Easter egg hunts and all that. But when

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I went up front, he grabs my hand and he says, so what can

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I do for you? I wanna get saved. Okay, do you know who Jesus is? Yes. You know, you're a sinner, don't you? Yes.

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Would you like to pray this prayer? Yes. And he prayed. And when he prayed,

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I said, yes, gave that assent. And next

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Wednesday, my cousin and I were baptized. Now it was after I got married before God truly saved my soul.

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And there was a radical difference. Now, like you said in this book, I wanna make sure everybody understands, nobody's saying children don't get saved.

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What we're saying is, is you gotta be very, very careful of doing the Baptist pedo -baptism.

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Yep. And I'm sorry, there's no other way to say it. We as confessional, as a confession of our faith, as a

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Southern Baptist or as Baptists, maybe the Southern Baptist is going down the wrong drain.

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So as Baptists, we'll say, we reject pedo -baptism. But as practice, almost every

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Baptist church I know of practices it. Yep, that's right. And so I was part of it in the church that I grew up in, the churches that I've grown up in.

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It was just basically that mental ascent. You're saved, ain't you? We're good to go, get baptized, shout in time in heaven.

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Let's go ahead and baptize them.

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Baptize as quick as we can. That's right. And get them in the Sunday school program. Yep. In your book here, to kind of give us a transition.

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In your book here, you discuss, there's a, you have five main chapters where you talk about laying the groundwork out, the nature of children and salvation.

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You talk about the heading our homes. That's important, guys. Looking for fruit, being biblical fruit inspectors.

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How to know when salvation has come and a guidance from the biblical record. I think that's important.

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And I think what I saw you write in here was a strong call for discipleship, rather than just there's this intellectual ascent like we just talked about.

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And then just grab ahold of them, get them in the water and then, oh, we're good.

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They're saved. I think there's a strong call for the hard work of discipleship in here.

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Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, Justin. And yeah, this is not to say that God never saves a child, but it is extraordinarily difficult to tell when real conversion has actually taken place in the life of a child.

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And just because a child has made intellectual ascent to the basics of the gospel does not mean conversion has taken place.

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And as you said in the book, I deal with, I contrast the nature of children and the nature of salvation.

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When you look through the language of salvation in the New Testament, it is rather adult sounding language.

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Deny yourself. How many little kids do you know who deny themselves? How many adults for that matter do you know who deny themselves?

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Take up the cross. And when Jesus said, take up the cross, we've really lost sight of the impact of those words.

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Today, when we think of taking up the cross, we think of just making it through some tough times, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and muscling through some tough times.

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And I've had a few people come up to me over the years and they say, Justin, you bear your cross well, referring to my handicap, my cerebral palsy.

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My cerebral palsy is not a cross. No, it's not. No, it's not a cross. Losing your job is not a cross.

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Having your house burned down is not a cross. Your mother -in -law is not a cross. Now, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.

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You haven't met my mother -in -law. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Not specifically yours, but you know, it's the old, the old example there.

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But these things are not crosses. Are they trials? Yeah, yeah, they are trials to be sure.

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My handicap is a trial. Losing your job is a trial. Cancer, arthritis, whatever.

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You know, losing a child even. Yes, that's a trial, but that's not what

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Jesus meant when he said, take up the cross. When Jesus said, take up the cross 2000 years ago, people would have known what he meant because they knew what a cross was.

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They were familiar with crosses. They'd seen them in action. The cross was a place of death.

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It was an instrument of execution. And Jesus was saying, you must be willing to die for the gospel if called upon to do so.

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And that is a high bar. That is not something, the thought of taking up the cross in the sense that Jesus meant it never crossed my mind when

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I was seven years old. I had absolutely no comprehension of that.

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In fact, I distinctly remember being in the fifth grade and my science teacher one day,

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I don't even remember what brought her to say this, but kind of off the cuff. But she said, she said, none of us is guaranteed that we're gonna be alive tomorrow.

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And I was like, what? That was the first time that it ever dawned on me that I don't have a 100 % guarantee that I'm gonna see the next sunrise.

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It was first time that my own mortality had ever really kind of registered with me.

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And I was in the fifth grade. I was, how old are you in the fifth grade? I guess you're like 11. Yeah.

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And I had been baptized four years before that. So what does that tell you?

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I mean, I never even contemplated my own mortality until age 11 and I had been baptized four years ago.

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So it's just, there's a real disconnect. And Justin, I make the point in my book that the nature of children is such that children naturally adopt the worldview in which they are raised.

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Of course, I believed in Jesus. I was raised a Southern Baptist, went to Sunday school, church

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Sunday morning, church Sunday night, Wednesday night prayer meeting, every once in a while on Friday nights, and we'd have family night.

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Would the Peters family be there? I mean, if the church doors were open, we were there. So of course, I believed in Jesus.

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That was my worldview. But if you were to take a typical child that's being baptized at age six, seven, eight, nine years of age in a

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Southern Baptist church, if you were to take that same child and raise that child in India, that child would be a

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Hindu. You take that same child, raise that child in Thailand, he'd be a

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Buddhist. Take that same child, raise that child in Syria, he'd be a

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Muslim. So children adopt the worldview in which they are raised.

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They don't know anything different. It's the nature of children.

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They just, they soak up whatever they're surrounded with, and that's their worldview.

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It doesn't mean that they have internalized it. It doesn't mean that they've evaluated it. That doesn't even mean that they understand it.

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This has been brought home to me in a number of different ways. But in some of my travels, I've been in some

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Islamic areas, not necessarily predominantly Islamic countries, but I've been in countries where I was in some predominantly

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Islamic areas. And I would see Islamic men wearing their white garb and whatever they call the white hats that they wear.

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And their little boys would be walking beside them dressed in the exact same way.

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You know, they're little mini -me's almost. You know, it's like father, like son. And, you know, I was like, that kid doesn't understand

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Islam or the tenets. I mean, he might have some intellectual knowledge, but he hasn't comprehended it.

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He's adopted Islam because that's what mom and dad are. So that's just the nature of children.

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And so we have been baptizing millions and millions of children just because they've made intellectual assent to a few basic gospel facts.

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But it does not mean they are saved in the studies that have been done on this, bear that out.

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You said that in, actually on page 47, guys. So I've been studying.

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I told you, I've been studying. Oh, wow, look at there. Yeah, if you notice, I take notes, a lot of them.

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And when I started doing seminary, this is what has really helped me a lot, is to take notes, take a lot of them and use those little tabby things, number them up and ask questions.

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And it sinks into your mind. So here's the thing that I want to push back.

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And then I want to make sure that everybody understands. The atheist is going to argue the same thing.

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The atheist is going to say, well, since you're in America, you're a Christian. Since you're in whatever, you're this, you're that and the other.

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So the question I wrote down is, is there then truth that the atheist claims that the only reason, big

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O, only reason that we are Christians is because of our parents and not Muslims?

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Or is there something else? And that's why I'm asking the question. I want you to elaborate on that.

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What is that more thing? What is that bigger thing than just the fact that we have, you know, we've taken them to church, we've taken them to Sunday school, we've taken all this thing.

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What is it more that there needs to be besides just the membership roles and the fact that you've been there just as much as the

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Pews have? It needs to be a transformed life. That's what there needs to be, a transformed life.

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And you look at, I mean, the majority of our people sitting in Pews on a

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Sunday morning, yeah, they might be at church on a Sunday morning, they might even bring their Bibles with them, but their lives haven't been transformed.

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And I'm talking about adults. You know, I think the great majority of people sitting in our

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Pews on a Sunday, now, granted, you're gonna have more, a higher percentage of unbelievers like going to, you know,

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Kenneth Copeland's church or Joel Osteen's church than going to John MacArthur's church. But nonetheless, shockingly high percentage of people sitting in our

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Pews on a Sunday morning, their lives have not been transformed. So that's what's missing. Amen. You look for a transformed life.

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Amen. You look for a person who has a godly sorrow over sin, who grieves over his sin.

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You look for a person whose desires have been changed. Their affections have been changed.

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You begin to love what God loves. You hate what God hates. And your life has been transformed in real repentance, real repentance that bears genuine fruit, real, tangible, visible fruit, a transformed life.

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Amen. And I agree with you exactly. And that's why I was asking that, because, you know, the atheist is gonna, they're gonna push in there and they would actually jump on that.

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And they would say, oh, see, you're admitting that Christians are just as gullible and that the kids are being indoctrinated, blah, blah, blah.

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And we're saying, no, wait a minute. We're saying, wait a minute, there's more to that. You know, Melissa and Laura Anderson, they said, here it is.

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It's only by God. It's only by the mercy of God, Angie says. You know, and you think about this.

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If it's not for the mercy of God, we are in the same boat as all of those other groups.

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And unfortunately, you know, from what you're saying and everything I've read in this, is we are making theological pagans.

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We're making these theological children who are coming up and they have some knowledge.

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You know, Hebrews tells us that they've tasted that good gift. And yet when they get older, and I have seen this so many times that if you take a child that does not have true conversion and they're in a church, they will walk the walk for a time.

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And you say it in your book. They'll walk the walk for a time. They'll talk the talk. They'll be Christian for a time.

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But when they get old enough to go out and experiment with sex and experiment with the world and parties and, you know, the blasphemies and the fun of the social media and the basically porn that's on there, the

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Nicki Minaj and all these other people that are running around twerking and everything else and how great and cool and fun it is to act like the world.

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And they get that temptation. They get that test to come in and they run away.

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You know, the scripture says once they've tasted that truth, it's almost, it's impossible, the scripture says, to draw them back to repentance.

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And that's why, I mean, that's what I see is when people who have almost never heard of anything of Christ, when they're broken in sin and they truly hear and see there's wickedness, you can't pry

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Christianity away from them. But when you've inoculated them in a church and they're not being fed the sound word of God, they're not being discipled, they're not being, you know, they're just, as soon as they have that question, hey,

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I like Jesus, you know, I read about him. You know, when I was in Sunday school, I used to have a teacher that would say, you love

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Jesus, don't you? Raise your hand if you love Jesus. You said it in your book. Yeah, yeah.

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How many kids are not gonna do it? Peer pressure. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you know,

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Billy, my friend, Billy over here, he's getting saved and Sally's getting saved and I wanna get saved.

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And you know, they get to, look, I can remember as a kid, a couple of my friends growing up in this, in First Baptist Vicksburg there, they got baptized before I did and I would see them taking communion, you know?

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And like, I wanna do that. I wanna take the little cracker. I wanna drink the little grape juice.

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You know, I wanna do that. It was a baptism in Southern Baptist churches especially, but evangelical churches in general, has become more of a rite of passage than it has an indication that a miracle of transformation has taken place in the life of a person.

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It's more of a rite of passage. And it's a horrifying thing,

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Justin. Honestly, I wish, almost wish that we would put a moratorium on vacation

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Bible school until we can figure out how to do it right. Yeah. Because I am just mortified about how many kids raise their hand, who wants to make

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Jesus their forever friend? You know? Yeah, oh yeah. What kid doesn't wanna make

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Jesus their friend? And I've actually heard that before. And you know, okay, even if we like beef it up a little bit, okay, anyone, any little boy or girl here who wants to ask

32:57

Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, just pray this prayer after me. Look, you put me in front of a room of 30 kids, and I guarantee, like five, six, seven years old,

33:10

I guarantee you, I guarantee you within 15 minutes, I can have just about every kid in there.

33:17

Closing his eyes and raising his hand, praying the prayer, praying the sinner's prayer.

33:24

Yeah. Guarantee you. I mean, that's the nature of children. And the Bible says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.

33:32

Amen. Children, and Paul says in Ephesians four there, Paul says, do not be easily tossed to, do not be like children, easily tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men.

33:45

Children are easily tossed to and fro. What captures a child's attention one week may be completely disinteresting to them the next week.

33:56

They're easily tossed to and fro. So it's a very dangerous thing.

34:03

It's a very unbiblical thing when we start baptizing young kids, and we're putting,

34:10

I put this in an illustration in the book as well, I think. Consider this. Most kids when they're five, six, seven, eight years of age, they believe in Santa Claus.

34:21

Yep. I believed in Santa Claus when I was that age. So consider this.

34:27

We are trusting in children whose intellectual capacity allows for belief in a fat man in a red suit who's pulled around the world all in one night, visiting every home on the planet on a sled pulled by a team of flying reindeer.

34:46

We're trusting children whose intellectual capacity allows for belief in that to wrestle with sin, repentance, godly sorrow, eternity, the wrath of God, justice.

35:02

Are you kidding me? Yeah. Are you kidding me? It makes absolutely no sense.

35:09

And yet, it is not infrequent when I come across a worship service from a

35:16

Southern Baptist church that I stumbled on on YouTube to see them baptizing children five, six, seven years old, sometimes younger than that.

35:25

I've seen kids, we probably, most of us have watching this right now. We've seen kids who are being baptized and the water in the baptistry pool is deeper than they are tall.

35:37

Yeah. They have to stand on a stool just to get their heads above the water in the baptistry.

35:43

I mean, we're, yeah. I cited this in my book too, Justin. Several years ago, the

35:50

Southern Baptist Convention did a study on itself because of the alarming decline in baptismal rates within the

35:57

SBC. And after doing this study, they came out with the findings and they said that the only age group that is showing an increase in the baptismal rates was age five and under, five and under.

36:17

And a Baptist pastor friend of mine, he said, yeah, it's kind of like what you said earlier. As Baptists, we may not believe in infant baptism, we just practice it.

36:27

And so, it's terrible. Well, you know,

36:33

I think when I was I wanna say it was about 10 years ago,

36:40

I was at another church and another pastor friend of mine, we actually attended the VBS, the last thing of, it was the

36:47

VBS incorporated with Awanas, their Awana Awards Night. And so, they had a gentleman come in who was a clown pastor, a clown pastor.

37:00

I'm sorry, he was. And he had his own personal circus and he went around on the giant unicycles, and all these different unicycles and he's jumping around.

37:12

And there was, I'm gonna guess there was 300 kids and their parents there.

37:21

This place was packed, the arena we were at. And he's going around and everybody's cheering and he's throwing balloons at them and all kinds of fun stuff, confetti and everything.

37:34

And it's just having just a blast with these kids and they're having all kinds of fun. And this pastor friend of mine, look at each other like, okay, let's just see what's gonna happen here.

37:44

At the end of it, after everybody's all giddy and jumping up around, I'll never forget it for the rest of my life.

37:51

He's on top of that, I wanna say it was 15 foot tall unicycle. Then everybody's in awe of everything he's doing.

37:59

He jumps down, he says, stop, stop. I wanna tell all of you that you need

38:06

Jesus to be your savior. And I thought, okay, please go somewhere great with this. And he says,

38:12

I wanna tell you, if you stop right now and you ask Jesus to save you, I did the same thing.

38:18

I was out fishing one day and I wanna tell you, I was out fishing and Jesus became my best good friend and fishing buddy.

38:27

And he can be your best good friend and fishing buddy too for the rest of your life if you'll just ask him to save you.

38:38

This pastor friend of mine and we just looked at each other and I almost, I mean,

38:43

I was about to start crying. I was so upset. So we went out to my car and got the million dollar bills and we started handing them out to everybody and trying to witness to people.

38:53

There was probably 20 people, 20 kids that raised their hand. They wanna get saved right then and there, right?

38:59

They wanna get saved right then. And when I gave them gospel tracts, they wanted nothing to do with the true gospel.

39:07

And that was at a Baptist, Southern Baptist church. Yeah. Yeah. I wish

39:12

I could say I was surprised. I wish I could. You know, there's Ronnie Floyd's church.

39:21

He's former president of the SBC, recent former president of SBC, but his church,

39:26

I don't know if they still do it, but I know a few years ago that they had a big, you know, in their children's department, anytime a child would say the sinner's prayer and get baptized, they had a little baptistry thing,

39:40

I guess, in the children's department, but they had confetti cannons that would go off and like,

39:45

I believe a fire truck, like the siren would flash or something like that. But yeah,

39:50

I mean, this big to -do when a kid gets quote unquote saved and sirens and lights and confetti cannons go off.

40:00

Well, heck, I mean, if I was a kid, I'd get saved just to see the show. You know, I mean, that's fun for a kid.

40:06

I mean, it's absolutely appalling. Yeah. Absolutely appalling.

40:11

What a low view of salvation. What a low view of sin. What a low view of the

40:17

Holy Spirit. What a low view of ecclesiology. You know, and this is a tangential,

40:28

I guess, but it is related. I can remember growing up as a Southern Baptist, I would,

40:35

I had these questions, you know, as I got older and I didn't, things didn't make sense to me. I didn't know why they didn't make sense.

40:42

I didn't know the answers, but I can remember looking at things that just didn't make sense. I understand now why they didn't, but when a kid gets baptized, he becomes a member of the church.

40:54

And as a member of the church, that kid has just as much say -so in the affairs of the church as does an 85 -year -old man who's been in the church for, you know, decades and decades.

41:09

When I got saved, quote -unquote saved, when I got baptized, I became a member of the church.

41:15

And as a seven -year -old, I could vote. I could vote on affairs.

41:20

I could, my vote for who the next pastor was going to be, carried just as much weight as the vote from my dad.

41:30

Oh, I remember when I was 14. What's that? I remember when I was 14, actually, we had a pastor coming in and I really liked him and I actually got to vote for that.

41:39

And I got to fight for him to be in. You know, I wasn't a bit more saved than a man in the moon. You know,

41:44

I have no clue. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's, I mean, a lot of you guys here that are in the chat on the side here, you're talking, you're right in agreement there.

41:55

And I just wanted to point out some of the comments that are being made here. You know, we're talking about, you know, the need,

42:02

Laura Anderson, she points out that our need is sanctification. You know, our need is that discipleship that comes with the gospel.

42:12

You know, Randy Curry, he actually said that false conversion is a huge problem in modern evangelism.

42:20

You know, 2 Corinthians 3 .15, examine yourself to see if you're truly in the faith.

42:26

That's right. Guys, there's nothing more important than we take this seriously. Every person that's in this group and every person that's outside of this group that's in churches today, are you 100 % sure that your children are saved or that you are saved?

42:42

You know, that's a huge thing. Examine yourself. You know, it's not to say that nobody ever gets saved at the churches that we're at.

42:53

That we're talking about. We're talking about the necessity of being certain that you're calling an election is sure.

43:01

Yep. You know, this is eternally the most important discussion that can be had.

43:08

You know, I mean, I can't tell you how many parents that I've had at our church that have gotten angry that, you know,

43:18

Johnny or Jill or Jane or whoever, you talk about Billy's problem. You know, that they come into the church and they say, you know, they make their profession of faith and you've talked to them and as best you can, you're discipling with them and they're growing and they make their profession of faith.

43:36

And you say, okay, well, by the evidence we see, you know, we can't argue that there may be true conversion here.

43:43

Oh, you mean you're not gonna jump in there and baptize them? Well, no, I wanna see that they're, you know, living out that good confession as the old

43:53

Puritans used to say, that they're living the good confession. And, you know, even with that, you get 16, 17 years old and there's this, there's that opportunity for the world to sneak in.

44:06

You know, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, it jumps in. And then unfortunately, mom and dad are sitting there going, wait a minute,

44:14

I remember when Johnny said, or they went to this thing, they went to this outreach or they went to this

44:21

Awana camp or whatever else. And they really, really, really, really mean it. Don't you dare say they're not

44:28

Christians. Yeah. Guys, we can't do that. Justin, I've talked to people and one person in my mind in particular, she's an older lady now, but her son is, oh my goodness, her son is probably about my age.

44:45

So this lady is well into her seventies and her son is about my age, completely in the world, not a hint of evidence of conversion in his life, has no desire for church, doesn't even go to a seeker since,

45:04

I mean, nothing, no, no, nothing of any kind of a religious nature in his life at all.

45:10

And she said, but she is holding on, oh, I know my son is a

45:15

Christian because he was baptized when he was six. And she is holding on to her son's baptism at age six and him praying the prayer.

45:26

And she believes he's saved, even though the guy's in his upper forties and has absolutely no desire for the things of the

45:33

Lord at all, is completely worldly. And even will tell you he's not a Christian. If you were to ask him now, are you a

45:39

Christian? And he says, no, no, I'm not a Christian. Oh yes, he is, he is, he just doesn't know he is.

45:45

So she goes to a Southern Baptist church. Well, we've had several families that the teenagers have told me, they've come to me and said with full assurance that they're not

45:58

Christians to the point where, I mean, it was, I know for a fact

46:03

I'm not. And I'm trying to share the gospel with them because, I mean, there is something to be said that some people can fall away for a time of sin, but they're not going to live in sin.

46:17

Once they fall away for some period of time, they can't stand it. But when somebody loves that sin more than they love

46:25

God, when they live their life in reprobation and they are proud to say that they never were believers and that they're not believers.

46:36

I'm going to believe them at their word, right? I'm going to take them at their word.

46:42

I'm sorry, I don't, I mean, I know that Johnny or whoever else is your son or your daughter or whatever, and you definitely don't want to hear that.

46:50

But I want the truth because I don't want them to stand Matthew 7, depart from me, you worker in iniquity, for I never knew you, you know?

46:59

I don't want that. You even pointed out in the book here that unfortunately there's a lot of false converts that are in churches today that are discipling children.

47:09

And they're talking with children and they're bringing them up and they stay in the churches and they've never, you know, like Martin says,

47:19

Matthew 3 ,8, they never bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Yeah, that's right. You know, maybe you can speak to that real quick.

47:26

What is that fruit that's in keeping a repentance? Oh yeah, my goodness, we could spend hours talking about this alone.

47:34

Yeah. And that word repentance, repentance is something that, this kind of gets to the crux of the matter here, is that most

47:42

Southern Baptists think of repentance as just changing your mind. I mean, you know, most

47:49

Southern Baptist, there's a few Greek words that most Southern Baptist know. We know agape, some of us know dunamis because it's dynamite and all, which is a very bad, very bad, but that's another program.

48:03

But anyway, you know, we know agape, we know dunamis, we know koinonia maybe, and we know metanoia, which is repentance.

48:11

Oh, metanoia means to change your mind. And that's the extent of it for most people.

48:17

They think it just means an intellectual ascent to some gospel facts and you change your mind.

48:23

You go from not believing in Jesus to believing in Jesus. And that's repentance. Well, no, okay.

48:30

So repentance does include a change in mind, but it's so much more than that.

48:40

Genuine repentance comes when God grants repentance. It is a gift of God.

48:45

Repentance is not something that you and I as unregenerate people can even do on our own,

48:51

Justin. Yeah, we can't repent on our own. It's granted. That initial repentance unto salvation is a gift of God.

49:00

It's a grace of God. It's granted to us. And when God grants repentance to us, yeah, our minds are changed, but everything about us has changed.

49:11

Our desires are changed. Our affections are changed. As I said a little bit ago, we begin to love what

49:19

God loves. We hate what God hates. We grieve over our sin. We hate our sin.

49:26

We desire to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a hunger for what is holy.

49:33

We have a hunger for the scriptures. We have a desire to know Christ. We have a desire to obey

49:41

Him, an ability to obey Him. And the only objective measure we have of our love for Christ is our obedience to Christ.

49:54

Amen. Our love for Christ is not measured by how we feel. It's not measured by going to a youth camp somewhere and singing some

50:05

Michael W. Smith song 17 times and getting little goosebumps on your arms. That's not how we measure our love for Christ.

50:11

Our love for Christ is measured by our obedience to Christ. He who has my commandments and keeps them, obeys them.

50:17

He it is who loves me, John 14. So, these are all evidences of conversion.

50:25

Fruit in keeping with repentance as the brother, the sister, I can't remember who had that up.

50:32

Matthew three, verse eight. That's what John the Bitten there, Martin Silva. Bare fruit in keeping with repentance. Paul, in Acts chapter 26, he said, "'So,

50:42

King Agrippa, I kept declaring "'that all men everywhere should repent "'and turn to God, performing deeds "'appropriate to repentance.'"

50:55

Amen. That doesn't mean we perform deeds in order to repent. That would be a work salvation.

51:01

But when God grants us repentance, there will be deeds, fruit in keeping with that.

51:08

You know, you can't go from being dead in trespasses and sins and alive in Christ and there be no change.

51:18

Amen. You can't go from being an enemy of God to being adopted into his family and there not be a change.

51:26

You can't go from not being indwelt by the Holy Spirit to being indwelt by the

51:32

Holy Spirit, the third person of the triune Godhead, and there not be a change. That's a big deal. Okay, if you're indwelt by the

51:39

Holy Spirit, that's a big deal. Amen. And there's gonna be evidence of that transformation.

51:47

So a love for the brethren, a love for the brethren. You know,

51:53

I've been, by God's grace, I've preached all over this blue marble that's revolving around the sun that some people inexplicably think is flat, but it's another conversation.

52:06

But I've been all over this world and I've been in countries,

52:13

I've preached on every continent except Antarctica, and it doesn't matter where I am,

52:20

Justin, it doesn't matter what country I'm in, what culture I'm in, what language is spoken, how much they have, how little they have, their socioeconomic status, you know, none of those things matter.

52:32

And this doesn't, skin color doesn't matter either. When I'm with a like -minded brother and sister in Christ, I love that person.

52:42

I may have met them five minutes ago, but I love that person because they're my family. I love them.

52:47

This is another evidence, this is another fruit in keeping with repentance.

52:53

This is an evidence of a transformed heart. So all of these things should be in place in the life of someone who has truly been transformed.

53:05

Amen, I agree with you. You know, it's, I'm looking at Ephesians 4, 25 to 31.

53:12

I won't read the entire thing, but just think about what it says. Therefore lay aside falsehood. Speak truth with each other, with your neighbor.

53:22

For we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger.

53:30

Don't give the devil any opportunity. If you're stealing, don't steal any longer, but rather he must work.

53:40

You know, there's one thing I'll say, and I'll say it again. The Bible gives us hard work to do, to serve one another out of love, out of love for one another.

53:54

And as you were saying, that bearing fruit in keeping of repentance is laid out that we put off sin.

54:01

We put off lying and falsehood. And then we go to work. We serve one another. We love one another.

54:07

We speak the truth. And it says, you must labor performing with your own hands what is good.

54:13

And the purpose, he says, he will have something to share with the ones that are need. Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but such as good for edifying.

54:24

You know, I hate you because of the color of your skin. You're this, you're that. I hate you because of this. All that goes away.

54:30

I'm a believer in Christ. So all of that should go away. And by this, do not grieve the

54:37

Holy Spirit because he sealed you for the day of redemption. 31 says, let all bitterness and wrath, anger, clamor, slander be put away from you with all malice.

54:49

That word clamor is that anger of screaming. It's the shouting.

54:54

It's the yelling. It's the anger that we see all over the world. And we see it.

55:00

I hate to say it, but we see it a lot of times in professing Christians that just have this heart of rebellion and pride that says,

55:08

I'm gonna get my way. You know, we see it in children all the time. We see it in children all the time.

55:14

And you go, wait a minute. If your children are saved, are we bringing our children up being discipled in the word so that they know that the backtalk, the slander, the maliciousness, the lying, dishonoring their parents, all of that's sin.

55:32

Are we saying, well, little Johnny, you know, he's really a Christian. I just know it.

55:38

So what if he lives in sin? That's no indicator he's not a Christian. You know,

55:43

I mean, we see it all the time. I just wanted to, I wanna point out something in your book and in chapter one, actually, you talk about Billy's problem.

55:56

Could you lay that out? I mean, because I think that, to me, that's the most profound thing. And I think everybody needs to hear that.

56:04

This problem that Billy has. If you don't mind, would you mind laying that out? It's your book.

56:11

It's been a while since I read it though. Yeah, I began by kind of setting the scene with this hypothetical example of Billy.

56:21

So little Billy, he's a young boy and he's raised in evangelical church.

56:29

And he is surrounded by the gospel or rudimentary elements of it anyway.

56:35

And he makes intellectual assent to the basics of the gospel. He prays this sinner's prayer that's not in the

56:42

Bible, but he prays it and he's baptized. And then in the baptistry, the preacher asked him, do you believe that Jesus is the son of God?

56:51

Yes. Do you believe that he died on the cross? Yes. Do you accept him as your personal Lord and savior? Yes. And so he gets baptized at age six, seven, eight.

57:00

And then Billy grows up. And for the most part, Billy is a nice kid.

57:06

He's in church every Sunday and things are rocking along. But then

57:12

Billy becomes a teenager. And Billy is beginning to be tempted by things that Billy was never tempted by before.

57:21

All of a sudden, the temptation that Billy is facing is a lot more than just not wanting to clean up his room.

57:27

Now he's being tempted with alcohol. Now he's being tempted with premarital sex.

57:35

Now he's being tempted by pornography. Yep. And this happens in high school.

57:44

Well, after high school, guess what happens? He goes off to college.

57:49

And the tug of the world, the tug, the allure of sin, the temptation becomes even stronger.

57:57

Because now mom and dad aren't around anymore to make Billy go to church. Billy's on his own.

58:04

And he's living in the dorm or he's living in an apartment or a trailer or wherever. And Billy is seduced by the world.

58:14

And he acts like the world acts because Billy is not regenerate.

58:21

Yeah. He prayed the prayer. He got baptized when he was a kid, but conversion is not taking place. And so Billy is living like the world, looking like the world because he's still part of the world.

58:34

But hey, he's a Christian because he got baptized when he was six. And then

58:40

Billy graduates from college. He finds a girl and he marries her, starts his career, he starts a family.

58:49

And then his oat sowing days are over. And so he settles down and he's got a wife and kids now and he's got responsibilities.

58:58

And so he's not out partying anymore and things like that. And so, and maybe he starts going to church because he realizes,

59:06

I need my kids should be in church. And so they start going to a church. And things look good, but he's not a

59:15

Christian because he's never truly been regenerate. He's never truly repented of his sin.

59:22

And, but he still thinks he's a Christian. Oh, I just, I backslid when

59:28

I was a teenager. I backslid when I was in high school and college, but I remember I got baptized.

59:34

So I've gotta be a Christian. So he's thinking he's a believer and he may even be going to church, but he is holding on to this fictitious baptism that he had when he was a kid.

59:47

He's still holding on to that as evidence of his conversion. And even though he may not be sowing his wild oats anymore and walking around with a lampshade on his head at the

59:57

Capposia house or whatever it is, his heart hasn't been changed.

01:00:05

He still has those worldly desires. He's still probably looking at stuff on the computer that he shouldn't be looking at.

01:00:12

Oh, but I'm a Christian because I was baptized when I was six. And I tell you, our churches are absolutely full of Billy's and Sally's who have that exact same story.

01:00:27

Our churches are absolutely full of them. He's never truly repented.

01:00:33

For one thing, he's never really been taught what repentance is. So yeah, that's

01:00:39

Billy's problem. And our churches are full of Billy's and Sally's that fit that example of what

01:00:47

I just gave. You know, the one thing you talk about in the book, and I actually did a sermon series on church history about Charles Finney.

01:00:59

This man actually had to publicly repent and tell people that he doubts that he has had one single solitary true conversion in his entire ministry.

01:01:10

But what he said was, but what I did, I did at a true desire to see people saved.

01:01:19

And I think it still had a good effect. But he actually repented and said that he did not believe at the end of his ministry and other pastors that knew him said it as well, that he did not believe he had one true conversion.

01:01:32

Yeah. He brought in this idea of backsliding in the manner that it's used today, you know?

01:01:41

Oh, don't worry, they're just backsliding. They're just, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. That's what he did, you know?

01:01:47

And you talk about it in the book. Everything you just spoke about about Billy is Finneyism. Yeah, well, yeah, totally.

01:01:54

This thing that we're seeing today is rooted in Charles Finney, you know?

01:01:59

And he's lauded as somebody to be looked up to, but, you know, brothers and sisters, this decisional regeneration, this easy believism thing that we're doing that comes about, you know, you say this prayer, unfortunately,

01:02:14

I have to go back to it. You know, you talk about baptism. You say this prayer, you ask

01:02:19

Jesus in your heart at one, two, three, four years old, and there's somebody will baptize you.

01:02:26

There's somebody will declare you to be a Christian and your family and you and somebody will remember.

01:02:32

Do you remember that you nailed it? I remember when I was, you know, saved, my grandmother and my grandpa were told that for me to go behind the shed and nail a stake in the ground as a sign to remember that I was saved.

01:02:49

They said, nail it and stake it down. And you nailed that down. And if you ever doubt, you go back to that stake and you say,

01:02:56

Satan, I nailed this stake down. And you know, that's silliness. Yeah, yeah, it is.

01:03:02

Yeah, I heard that same thing, maybe not so much nailing a stake down, but I would hear all the time when an evangelist would come in or we'd have a guest preacher or someone to do a revival or whatnot, you know, come in with his emotionally charged sermons and get everybody all emotionally worked up and have them pray the prayer.

01:03:24

And he would say, now, you write this date down on the inside cover of your

01:03:30

Bible, you know, October the 13th, 1989 or whatever.

01:03:36

You write the date down. If you ever doubt your salvation, you go back and you look on the inside cover of your

01:03:42

Bible. Nope, nope, there it is right there. I was saved on October 13th, 1989. It's 2021 now and I don't have any evidence of conversion in my life, but that's okay because I prayed the prayer 20 whatever years ago that is, 31 years ago or whatever.

01:03:59

So, you know, that's not hyperbole.

01:04:06

I mean, that - No, no, it happens all the time. All the time. But think about it.

01:04:12

You put it down in the book because I'm trying to refer back to your book as often as I can here. But you think about this.

01:04:18

In your book, you talk about life way pagan resources.

01:04:23

I don't know. It's not Christian. Guys, I'm sorry. But people that have their stuff in life way, you should, if you're a

01:04:28

Christian, pull it out. You know, I have nothing to do with it. I'm sorry, but life way is a train wreck.

01:04:35

Get it out of there. Yeah, but ABCs of salvation or what is it called?

01:04:43

Yeah, Lola, if I remember right, Lola Mazzola's Adventures to Happy Land or something like that.

01:04:50

Let me find it, hold on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You write in here, it's called

01:04:56

Lola, you said Mazzola's Happy Land Adventures. Yeah, Happy Land Adventures.

01:05:02

The John 316 book. Yeah. And happy land represents heaven.

01:05:08

Right. That's like my best good friend and fishing buddy just in print. Exactly.

01:05:14

That's exactly right. This is a book that is being sold by life way targeted to children to get them to become

01:05:20

Christians. And it gives this, you know, it's a picture book. And so it shows

01:05:26

Lola Mazzola and her happy land adventures going to this amusement park called

01:05:32

Happy Land. And that is a euphemism for heaven. And so, hey, what kid doesn't wanna go to happy land?

01:05:38

What kid doesn't wanna go to heaven? And so to go to heaven, to go to happy land, then you just need to say the

01:05:47

ABCs of the gospel and you got your ticket to happy land. Already been chewed.

01:05:53

Absolutely appalling. Yeah. Appalling that life way would sell that kind of theological garbage and poison to our children is absolutely, it is inexcusable, but that's life way.

01:06:10

They sell T .D. Jakes and Steven Furtick too. So, I mean, you're a modalist, right?

01:06:16

Yeah. Oh yeah. Life way would sell Deepak Chopra if they thought Christians would buy it.

01:06:22

They did. They used to. Randy Curry said, and so did another gentleman.

01:06:29

Yeah, they did. Talking about Paul Washer's shocking youth message. He played it there.

01:06:35

I've listened to it. I played it. I tell you, you know, that's the one thing that he talks about in that.

01:06:41

You say that God's changed, that God has saved you, but there's no evidence of true conversion, you know?

01:06:51

And that's one thing we wanna look for in the life of a Christian. I wanna be a little careful here because part of that evidence of true conversion is tribulation, temptation, persecution, perseverance in the faith.

01:07:08

And as a child, see, that's what's so dangerous about this. As a child, they haven't had time to develop and show evidence of their fruits, right?

01:07:19

As Laura Anderson said, by their fruits. You know, you think they haven't had time to show that evidence and fruit.

01:07:25

They haven't had the chance for their friend to say, you don't really believe in that Jesus, do you? Or for somebody to talk about the, well, you're not saying you're against homosexuality, are you?

01:07:37

You don't have a problem with transgender. You don't have a problem with, you know, we have a school near us that I was reliably told by one of the people in the church is that every youth, in order to be accepted into the hive of that school, you had to engage in sexual and homosexual activity, at least try it.

01:08:06

You don't have to agree with it, but you at least have to try it. Kids, okay?

01:08:13

You have to try it in some fashion. And these are kids, but they're being indoctrinated to believe this.

01:08:19

Guys, they're being indoctrinated to believe this stuff. And you have, you know, the greater responsibility.

01:08:26

Justin, you talk about in your book here, you know, talking about the contrast, the solution,

01:08:32

Jim, that I think we have to start at the solution here of dealing with the nature of children and salvation and looking at it that we have to believe, we have to teach, we have to train them to believe what the

01:08:49

Bible tells about the nature of depravity. They're not good people, you know?

01:08:55

You quoted somebody, and I can't find it, a 1926

01:09:01

Minnesota Crime Commission stated thing. I wanna read this. If you don't have it up,

01:09:07

I'm gonna read it. No, go ahead. Every baby starts life as a little savage. Now, this is 1926.

01:09:14

This is a Minnesota Crime Commission, and you know they wouldn't say it now, but listen to this.

01:09:20

Every baby starts as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self -centered, and he wants what he wants.

01:09:27

His bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever.

01:09:33

Deny him these, and he seethes and rages, and aggressiveness would be murderous were he not so helpless.

01:09:46

He is dirty, and he has no morals, no knowledge, and no developed skills.

01:09:52

This means that all children, not just certain children, but all children are born delinquent.

01:09:59

If permitted to continue in their self -centered world, world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a killer, a thief, and a rapist.

01:10:19

Guys, there's no more serious truth of a nation that used to understand depravity from the womb to the tomb.

01:10:31

That, a nation that used to understand it, because they used to have a biblical perspective. And that's what we have to teach is the nature of man, even to the smallest child.

01:10:46

Paul Washer said, if an infant had the strength of an 18 -year -old, or the body of an 18 -year -old, he saw your watch, he'd rip it off of you, beat you to death, and take it from you, and wouldn't care.

01:10:59

It's true. Yeah, that's a secular guy. As you said, a Minnesota crime investigator, a viper in a diaper, that's right.

01:11:11

Yeah, that's so funny, but it's so true. That's a good picture of total depravity from this secular guy almost a hundred years ago.

01:11:23

But boy, we have totally, totally abandoned that. Even in the church, we've abandoned that.

01:11:30

I wrote a note here that I wanna make sure I put on. If you don't start where we're talking about, guys, you will produce false converts, because we must know ourselves.

01:11:45

Yeah. Maybe you started out, just take a second here and think. Maybe you started out, and you were one of these false converts.

01:11:54

Maybe you're realizing, hey, wait a minute, that was my life. Maybe you're saying, that was me.

01:12:01

I made this simple prayer, and I asked Jesus in my heart, are you saying that I'm not a Christian?

01:12:07

Well, we're saying you better examine yourself, because the evidence of false conversion is if you look at the

01:12:15

SBC it's at right now, and I'm just talking SBC. I mean, we can go to every denomination. If you look at the

01:12:21

SBC right now, it is going straight down that apostasy road.

01:12:28

Yep. Most people I know of are saying, we need to get away from it. Yeah. So we need to be truthful about it.

01:12:35

What is it personally? Has God truly saved my soul? I don't wanna be confused about it.

01:12:41

I don't wanna be wrong. And I don't want my children or people that I disciple to be wrong either.

01:12:48

Yep. I really appreciate this. Guys, I'm gonna say it. You need to go buy this book, okay?

01:12:55

For anybody that sees this, it's Justin Peter's got, Do Not Hinder Them. I've already recommended it to several pastors, and I'm pleading with them to read this.

01:13:05

You can read this book in one day. I've read it before, but you can read this book.

01:13:10

I highlighted it today. And I went through and I said, these are the notes I wanna make sure and get. Get this book.

01:13:17

It means that much. It will help you. It will help your families. It'll help your children.

01:13:23

It'll help the children in your congregation, maybe your grandchildren, or maybe yourself. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

01:13:33

And Justin, that's one of the things I say in the book there towards the end is that there are, here's what happens.

01:13:42

You start off as a little Billy, like we were talking about a minute ago, or a little Sally. And you pray the prayer, you walk the aisle, you get baptized as a kid, but you're not truly converted.

01:13:53

And so when you become a teenager, you're pulled by the tug of the world and the allure of sin.

01:14:04

But then you mature and then you, and maybe you settle down and maybe you go to church.

01:14:11

And what happens is that at some point for a lot of people, they actually do get saved in their 20s or in their 30s.

01:14:21

I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who got genuinely converted in their 30s.

01:14:28

Happened to me. So in your 20s and your 30s, you actually do get saved, genuinely saved.

01:14:33

And you do have a hunger for the word of God. You do have a godly sorrow over sin. You do love what God loves and hate what

01:14:39

God hates. You do love the brethren. You do love the church. You do wanna grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. You want all these things.

01:14:45

So conversion has taken place, but so many of these people are still looking back to their baptism when they were a kid.

01:14:57

And if that is you, if you're watching right now and you're thinking, wow, that's what happened to me.

01:15:06

You know, yeah, I was baptized as a kid, but I know now that I wasn't really converted. I know I'm converted now.

01:15:11

I know I love the Lord now, but I wasn't back then. If that's you and you're still looking back to that baptism you had as a kid, may

01:15:21

I joyfully encourage you to get re -baptized.

01:15:27

In fact, I would almost not even say re -baptized because you weren't truly baptized back then.

01:15:33

You got wet, but you weren't biblically baptized. May I joyfully encourage you to seek biblical baptism and get baptized.

01:15:44

Give your testimony to the elders. Give your testimony to the church at your baptism. What a tremendous encouragement that will be to them.

01:15:53

Cause there's, John MacArthur has said, our churches are full of baptized unbelievers.

01:15:59

People have been baptized, but haven't been saved. Our churches are full of baptized unbelievers and unbaptized believers.

01:16:07

Because there's a lot of people that actually do get saved later in life, but they're still looking back to that baptism when they were a kid.

01:16:14

But they need to be re -baptized. They need to have biblical baptism. And it will mean so much to you.

01:16:23

It will be a tremendous encouragement to the church. By God's grace, several people have read my book and they've emailed me or called me or talked to me, come up to me at a church somewhere that I'm preaching at.

01:16:35

And they'll say, Justin, I read your book and that was me. And you know what? I realized that, yeah,

01:16:40

I was baptized when I was a kid, but I wasn't converted. I am now and I've sought baptism.

01:16:45

I've gotten baptized since then. And praise the Lord for that. Praise God. So there's a lot of people out there like that.

01:16:54

One thing I wanna point out here is, Humble Clay is a great brother. I really appreciate his stuff.

01:17:00

So he's asking a question about, should we get baptized? And he says, it sounds like it's a conscience matter.

01:17:07

I wanna point something out. It's not really a matter of conscience. Now, I wanna say this.

01:17:13

It's not a conscience matter. If you go to Acts 8, 36 through 39, if you go there, sorry.

01:17:19

If you go there, you're talking about baptism. There's only one baptism that's real baptism, okay?

01:17:25

And it's called the Believer's Baptism. You see it in Acts 8, and in 36, it says, and talking about Philip in the

01:17:34

Ethiopian eunuch. Listen to one of the early discussions about baptism.

01:17:41

And this is one Andrew Rappaport uses in his Bible study on the grace in his booklet that I've actually read through, talking about the nature of baptism.

01:17:54

He says, and they went out, went on their way. And as they went on their way, they came to a certain water and a eunuch says, look.

01:18:03

Now keep in mind, they've been talking about, going through Isaiah and be talking about Christ, the

01:18:09

Messiah, and what he would be doing. Who was he talking about? And he says this, look, water prevents me from being baptized.

01:18:20

And Philip said, if you believe with all of your heart, you may, and he answered, he says, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

01:18:28

And he ordered the chariot to stop. And they both went down into the water, immersion. They went down into the water and Philip, as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him.

01:18:41

And when they had come up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. Now here's the point. Now we can't sit there and hear somebody say, oh,

01:18:49

I believe Jesus is Christ, son of the living God, and know emphatically that this person has made a true confession of faith.

01:18:56

But what we can know from this passage is the Holy Spirit had Philip go talk to this man to talk to him about the way of salvation in Christ, who

01:19:06

Christ was, and what true salvation and true baptism was. He says, what stops me, what hinders me from being baptized?

01:19:14

Well, first of all, you have to believe. So there's only one true baptism, and that is believer's baptism.

01:19:21

You have to believe the things that are being talked about, about Jesus Christ and who he is, and what he has accomplished, and what he's done to save a sinner.

01:19:32

And if you believe those things, it's not just mere mental ascent. It's true, humble understanding of who

01:19:39

Christ is, and that's a gift from God. It's a free gift, it's a gift from God, it's free.

01:19:45

The repentance is free, faith is free, it comes from God. And when you truly humbly repent and believe the gospel, you will proclaim your faith.

01:19:54

I believe that if you believe with all your heart, he says, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

01:20:01

That's no small feat for someone to say. And it ends up that this person gets baptized after they have come to a confession of faith, after they've come to true belief in Christ.

01:20:14

So it's not just about your matter of your conscience or whatever else. What I tell people who come to church, because we've had people that come in that, they were baptized and then they truly got saved.

01:20:28

And they, like you said, they're kind of, they're lost. They don't know what to do, they're embarrassed.

01:20:35

They're just kind of uncertain. And I tell them the same thing. You make your calling election sure.

01:20:41

You know that you're in the truth, that you're in the faith. And then what you need to do is follow the

01:20:49

Lord in believer's baptism. Yep. That's right. Believer's baptism.

01:20:55

That's what we see in the New Testament. And while I'm thinking about it,

01:21:00

Justin, let's talk about a couple of objections that I've heard from people. They'll say, hey,

01:21:08

I'm with you on believer's baptism. And so what we see in the

01:21:14

New Testament, we see people professing faith in Christ and they immediately get baptized. And so therefore we should not wait on baptism if a child professes faith in Christ, we should not wait to baptize them because there's no delay in the

01:21:30

New Testament. Someone professed faith in Christ, they got baptized. They did, but a couple of points here.

01:21:37

One, when you profess faith in Christ in the first century.

01:21:43

You were gonna die. You're signing up for persecution. Yeah. You're signing up for persecution.

01:21:52

Yep. That's not what we have today. I mean, it looks like we might be headed there, but we're not there yet.

01:22:01

So there was a counting of the cost. And look, I believe in election.

01:22:07

I believe in predestination. I'm a five point cavernous. I believe in these things.

01:22:14

I believe in a high view of the sovereignty of God and everything, including salvation. But there is still a counting of the cost.

01:22:22

Jesus said that we are to count the cost because there will be a cost.

01:22:28

And so there's that tension between the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. So a six year old is not counting the cost.

01:22:36

He doesn't think there is a cost. So yes, they were immediately baptized, but professing faith in Christ in the first century was a far different matter than what it is now.

01:22:47

And two, in the first century, you literally had no one who was raised in a

01:22:55

Christian home. Amen. No one. None of these people you see being baptized in the book of Acts had just left vacation

01:23:06

Bible school. Okay. Amen, I agree. That's a great point.

01:23:12

They didn't have a Christian background like kids do today. You know, kids adopt the worldview in which they're raised.

01:23:18

So none of these people in the book of Acts came from a Christian background. So those two things together, knowing that they,

01:23:26

A, they did not come from Christian background and B, they're signing up for persecution. That lent, is that the password for lent?

01:23:34

Lent, a - I'm in the South, so you can say lended. Lended? That ain't right neither, is it?

01:23:43

That ain't right. Don't make no nevermind. Don't make no nevermind to me. So those two things lent a great deal of credibility to their profession of faith.

01:23:56

Kind of built into the game there. We don't have that today, so.

01:24:02

Yeah. You know, one thing I was gonna say here is on chapter four, guys, when you buy the book, okay,

01:24:11

I'm gonna say it again, get this book. I know Justin's gonna say, you guys, you gotta quit doing this.

01:24:17

Listen, this is serious, okay? This is talking about salvation issues. Okay, you wanna say, okay, how can

01:24:25

I start looking for evidences of my child's salvation or my own?

01:24:31

And we're gonna talk about that in just a minute with First John, but I wanted to go through chapter four and talk about this because you talk about evidences of conversion.

01:24:41

And I just wanna, the bold ones you have, I'll just mention them if you wanna say something about it.

01:24:47

You know, first thing you said is godly sorrow. You know, there's no doubt. And people say, okay, so what does that look like?

01:24:57

Well, Psalm 51, guys, when people ask me, is there a sinner's prayer? You know, no, but if you wanna get the closest thing you can to a biblical repentance of godly sorrow, a man who murdered a man, had sexual relationships with his wife, got her pregnant, betrayed an entire nation, betrayed his

01:25:18

God, and everything, tried to cover it up. Nathan comes and says, you are the man.

01:25:24

And he breaks in absolute humility and subjection, repentance.

01:25:30

And he writes Psalm 51. Be gracious to me, O God, according to your love and kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion.

01:25:38

Blot out my transgression. He's not hiding it. That's right. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.

01:25:44

He's confessing that what he's done is iniquitous. We don't even know what that word means today. You know, that's the vilest things that you can be talking about in your iniquity.

01:25:55

You're confessing the blackness of your soul. That's what they're talking about. Yeah. You know, the depth of, and I won't go through all of it, but, you know, you talk about repentance and hear that, that obviously goes back to the godly sorrow that works repentance.

01:26:12

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you wanna throw anything in there or not, but.

01:26:17

Yeah, that is huge. And this is something that I wish I heard preached more often is the difference between a worldly sorrow and a godly sorrow.

01:26:26

A worldly sorrow is nothing more than a guilty conscience. And everybody's got that. Everybody has a conscience.

01:26:33

So, and Paul says a worldly sorrow leads to death. And so a worldly conscience is,

01:26:40

I mean, excuse me, a worldly sorrow is the kind of sorrow that says what would happen to me if my sin were exposed?

01:26:49

What would be the consequences to me? And so we try to cover up our sin, not because we grieve over it, but because we don't want the consequences of it.

01:26:59

But if we could get away with it, you see, if nobody would know what we're doing on the side, if nobody would know what

01:27:06

I'm looking at on the computer, if my wife wouldn't know, if I could get away with it,

01:27:13

I'd go right back to it because that's what I really want. That's a worldly sorrow. And Paul says a worldly sorrow leads to death, eternal death.

01:27:22

But a godly sorrow is what you were just describing. Godly sorrow is that sorrow over sin that is vertically oriented.

01:27:29

It's when we grieve over our sin because we understand that our sin grieves

01:27:34

God, Ephesians 5, and we do not want to grieve him. He has been so good, so kind, so merciful, so generous to us that how could we grieve?

01:27:48

How could we sin against him? How could we grieve him? We don't want to do that. We do from time to time, but we don't want to.

01:27:55

We don't want to grieve him. That's a godly sorrow. Paul says a godly sorrow leads to repentance unto salvation.

01:28:02

And there is a difference as wide as all of eternity between a worldly sorrow and a godly sorrow.

01:28:08

And I've said this before, Justin, is that it's good and it's right to warn people to flee from the wrath to come.

01:28:16

It's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. We should warn people about hell.

01:28:22

That's good and that's right. But there's a lot of people out there that want a savior from hell, but they don't really want a savior from their sin.

01:28:31

They want to get out of hell free card because their conscience convicts them and they know it's what they deserve, but they don't really want a savior from sin.

01:28:41

So if you want to, just as much as we should want a savior from hell, we should want a savior from our sin.

01:28:47

If you want a savior from hell, but not a savior from sin, then you have a savior from neither.

01:28:54

Yeah. And so do you have that godly sorrow? Do you grieve over your sin?

01:29:00

That's an evidence of regeneration. That's an evidence of the work of the

01:29:06

Holy Spirit in your life. And I didn't have a godly sorrow over sin. I knew

01:29:11

I was a sinner when I was seven years old. Yeah. I knew I had told lies. You know, I knew I'd committed sins, but I didn't grieve over my sin.

01:29:19

Yeah. You know, so it's a huge difference. Huge difference, difference between heaven and hell.

01:29:27

Christopher Hudson, he writes this. He has a question for you. He says, how should

01:29:33

I approach my elders if they are baptizing young kids? And let me go ahead and say it.

01:29:40

I mean this, I'm not being funny. You need to get this book and get it to them and ask them to please review it.

01:29:48

You study it and you see the arguments in here. Guys, I want to tell you, Justin has done such a good job in this book of dealing with a lot of doctrinal and theological points.

01:30:00

A lot. I mean, more than I thought he was going to deal with. And he breaks them down into why it is that we need, as men especially, to be disciple makers at home and to raise up godly children and to raise up godly families.

01:30:20

And I'll just say, get the book and start there, but also maybe pass on this video and let them go through and listen to it and consider it.

01:30:28

Justin. My brother did. Yeah, I appreciate that, Justin. And yeah, without wanting to, without trying to sound like I'm trying to sell my own book.

01:30:38

But yeah, put a copy of that book in their hands. I think it's only 10 bucks on Amazon, 10 or 12.

01:30:45

But heck, I'll send you some for free if you need them. If you think your elders will read them, I'll send you some for free.

01:30:55

But ask them to read it and ask them to consider the arguments that are made there, the theology that is there, because that's a big deal.

01:31:03

If they're baptizing young children, that shows a real, the dearth of understanding the issue here, dearth of understanding the stakes that we're dealing with, that we're talking about.

01:31:20

Not only, Justin, do we not want to baptize young children because it leads them into a false assurance of their own salvation, like we've been talking about.

01:31:31

That's one thing. But also, if we truly care about the gospel and we care about the name of Christ, if we care about his reputation, if you will, then we should be very reticent to baptize young children.

01:31:49

Because if they're not truly converted, and chances are they're not, then they're gonna grow up and they're gonna act just like what they are, worldly.

01:32:01

They're gonna look like the world. Oh, but they're Christians. They behave like the world, but hey, they're

01:32:07

Christians. And so that brings reproach on the gospel. That brings reproach on the

01:32:13

Christ. When we have people running around calling themselves Christians, and there is no discernible difference between how they live and how

01:32:19

John Doe out in the world lives. So - Yeah, amen, amen. You know what

01:32:25

I think about when you... Oh, I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. I think about when you're talking about this, it amazes me as I think about bearing fruit and keeping with repentance.

01:32:35

We look at our kids and we say, but my kids are more moral than so -and -so. And you know what? They don't act like this guy who's the serial killer.

01:32:44

They're not as bad as the latest rock star, or rap star that's going out and being as vile as possible.

01:32:55

Well, at least they're not doing this or that. And I go, wait a minute. Do you know the scripture talks about that very thing?

01:33:03

Lord behold, we came out and we baptized in your name, and we did all these mighty deeds in your name.

01:33:09

And the idea there is, is not just look what we did, but look what we did as a verse to what the other people did.

01:33:16

A lot of people don't really think about the context there. They're presenting themselves as being the moral standard for the real moral standard and juxtaposition against all the other people that aren't worshiping

01:33:35

God the right way. You have to think about it. They're standing in judgment.

01:33:41

I don't want my kids there. I don't want your kids there. I want us to really consider this because that next thing you're talking about is fruit and godly affection.

01:33:53

You know, we say, oh, look, Johnny got saved. It was so cute. He was so cute. She was so cute.

01:33:58

You know, all these kids, oh, they're so adorable. And yes, they are. Guys, you want with all of your heart for your children to be right with God, to be saved, to have eternal life.

01:34:08

And if that's true, stop playing games with them. Spend time in devotion.

01:34:14

Spend time in Proverbs and go through it. Today's the 17th. Have you read chapter 17 of Proverbs with your kids?

01:34:21

Or are you doing a daily devotion with your kids and bringing out the truth, the word of God's?

01:34:27

And, you know, Deuteronomy 6, as they raise up, as they sit down, as they go by the way, everywhere they're at, you know, don't lecture.

01:34:35

Just give them truth. Give them God's truth and, you know, and look for signs of fruit.

01:34:42

You know, as you're constantly given the gospel, I want to say this, Ray Comfort, he said that nobody needs the gospel more than the

01:34:51

Christian believer. Because while the world needs the gospel, we need to hear it every single day.

01:34:58

Lest we forget. Lest we forget what God has saved us from. Lest we forget of who we are. You know, and if that's the case and somebody's making confessions of faith, we should see fruit, you know, that's your next point there, is that we should see that fruit that's a bearing and keeping with repentance.

01:35:20

I'm sure, I mean, I'll let you jump in there, brother. I'll let you speak on that, which you have been already.

01:35:25

There'll be tangible fruit. It'll be, the transformed life will be evident to everyone around you.

01:35:35

It'll be evident to the church body. They'll be able to see a difference. So yeah, real fruit,

01:35:42

I mean, real repentance bears real tangible fruit, a changed life.

01:35:49

I mean, you can't go from being dead and trespasses and sins and alive in Christ and there'll be no change.

01:35:56

There will be a change. You can't go from having a heart of stone to having a heart of flesh and there'll be no change.

01:36:01

There will be change, massive change. So yeah, it should be evident.

01:36:08

To the leaders of the church. So if you're dealing with a child who professes faith in Christ, look,

01:36:13

I say to parents, don't throw cold water on that. If your child professes faith in Christ, you don't wanna discourage that.

01:36:22

You don't wanna say, oh, you don't know what you're talking about. You're too young. No, you encourage that. Good, good son, good daughter.

01:36:32

Good, I'm glad to hear that. And let's continue to read the word of God together.

01:36:39

Let's continue to grow together. And you wanna nurture that and encourage that in them, but you want to wait until they're older to see if they bear some of this fruit that we've been talking about.

01:36:52

You wanna wait and see if there are godly desires and godly affections.

01:36:58

You wanna wait and see how they handle temptation. That's a big one. How do you handle temptation?

01:37:05

How do you stand up to real temptation? And, I mean, what kind of temptation does a six -year -old face?

01:37:11

I don't wanna clean my room, or my sister made me mad because she won't let me have her toys.

01:37:22

I'm not talking about that kind of temptation. I'm talking about real temptation. You're not gonna tempt a seven -year -old boy with alcohol or pornography.

01:37:31

But if you add 10 years to that age, then it's a different ball game.

01:37:37

Oh yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. You know, you talk about the personal holiness and the steadfastness in persecution.

01:37:52

We've been an hour and 37 minutes in, and I told you I wanted to pull up 1

01:37:58

John here. So I'm gonna go ahead, while you're talking about this personal holiness, this is one thing that I want everybody to consider this.

01:38:08

Are you walking in greater conformity to Christ today?

01:38:14

Are you seeing yourself gaining victory against those sins that used to beset you?

01:38:21

Are you seeing yourself willing to open up and tell someone that you have a struggle?

01:38:28

Because I'm gonna tell you, men and women, listen to me. Pornography, we've talked about it, you know, sexual sin.

01:38:36

Pornography starts with the lying, the compromise. It starts with, and I'm talking about with kids and adults, lying and compromise, willingness to look at things that were just off center, leading us to more and more wickedness, and an unwillingness to be truthful about it.

01:38:57

I ask pastors and people that I know, I've asked you, Justin, I've asked other people from time to time, are you having the victory over your thought life, your emotional life, your sexual life?

01:39:11

Have you looked at, specifically, have you looked at pornography today? When's the last time you did it?

01:39:17

Okay, because I'm gonna tell you something. It can hit anybody in about, what, three seconds?

01:39:24

You can jump on the internet and do it. You need to have a personal holiness in your life that you're willing to do anything, that right eye, if it offends you, that right hand, if it doesn't, you're willing to open up to, not to the world, but to friends, to true godly men and women about your sin, and you want to pursue holiness.

01:39:47

I'll let you jump on that one, brother. Yeah, absolutely. We're not talking about sinless perfection here.

01:39:56

No. We're not talking about that. It's not that Christians can't sin. We can and we do.

01:40:02

I mean, Romans 7, even though some would say, oh, that was Paul before he was converted. No, I believe he was converted, but what you're seeing in Romans 7 is a man who was a mature believer, and the more mature we become in Christ, the more sensitive we are to sin, and I hope that if the

01:40:21

Lord allows me to live another 10 or 20 years or whatever, 10 or 20 years from now,

01:40:27

I'll be more sensitive to sin in my life that maybe right now is not even on my radar, but that's just part of your growing in Christ.

01:40:38

So yes, Christians can and do sin. Yeah. We stumble into sin as Christians, but we don't swim in it.

01:40:46

Yeah. We don't relish it. We don't enjoy sin. We don't look for opportunities to sin.

01:40:53

We don't plan sin out. We don't think, okay, this is what

01:40:59

I wanna do, and this is how I'm gonna do it, and this is how I'm gonna get away with it. Hey, if that's your mindset, then you need to examine yourself to see if you're in faith because pretty sure you're not.

01:41:12

Christians don't do that. We stumble into sin, but we don't swim in it. We don't relish it. We don't enjoy it.

01:41:17

When we sin, it grieves us. We grieve over our sin. Amen, amen.

01:41:24

Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and add our Word document here.

01:41:31

Let's see if I can make sure this pops up. There we go. So talking about, you know, you wanna talk to yourself.

01:41:40

You wanna talk to your friends, your family, your loved ones. God is so good to us that He gives us what the

01:41:47

Scripture tells us is a test of faith in 1 John. And I've laid it out.

01:41:54

I mean, there are so many things you could add to this in John, but He gives us some good solid points.

01:42:01

I laid out about 15. You know, we'll go through what we can, and I'll put a link to this, or I will send this somehow into this show and to make sure there's show notes for this.

01:42:14

So anybody can have it that wants it. I wanna make sure everybody gets ahold of this.

01:42:21

So I wanna go down this list, and Justin, just stop me as you want, you know, discuss these or anything.

01:42:29

And we may go just a minute or two over. We'll try not to, but we may.

01:42:35

So talk about a believer's test of faith, of assurance that you know you're in Christ. First thing you need to do is proclaim the gospel, okay?

01:42:44

Before we get anywhere else. What is the gospel? What is the gospel of Jesus Christ? You know, it is that you and I are great sinners in the sight of a holy

01:42:54

God, and we deserve hell. We deserve the wrath of almighty God for all have sinned.

01:42:59

There's none of us that are good. We are sinners, and we have a great savior. And that's what we talk about, is that the fact that the savior sent his son into the world, 2

01:43:09

Corinthians 5, 21, says that for our sake, God sent

01:43:15

Christ to be our savior. He sent Christ, he who knew no sin, became sin on our behalf, so that in Christ, we might be declared the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

01:43:27

And that's where we start, is with the gospel, that we need to repent and believe.

01:43:33

And we teach our children that, and as Justin said, they start out and they say, you know what,

01:43:39

I believe that. And they have that ascent, they have that knowledge. And as you start seeing them grow, for yourself or for others, you start seeing them grow.

01:43:52

And what should we look for? Well, John tells us, because he loved us, and because God loved us, he wanted us to have the truth.

01:43:59

So the questions come up like this. 1 John 1, 3 says, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us.

01:44:12

And indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.

01:44:17

So the very first question is, do you have fellowship with Christ and his saints? Yeah. Yep, yep.

01:44:27

Do you desire to know Christ? Do you desire to know him?

01:44:33

Do you desire to be in fellowship with him and serve him and please him?

01:44:39

Is he your, is he the object of your affections?

01:44:46

It should be Christ. And along with that, we should have fellowship with his bride.

01:44:54

We love the church. And someone who claims to be a Christian, but does not love the church, someone who claims to love

01:45:00

Christ, but does not love his bride, does not truly love Christ. Amen. Well, number two is, and I'm just gonna say it this way.

01:45:10

Would people say that you walk in the light or that you walk in darkness? Now, before we go any further, stop justifying yourself.

01:45:19

Okay? Yes. Stop justifying your kids. Stop saying, oh, but I helped a little old lady across the street, you know?

01:45:27

Oh, but all those people in the church, they're all hypocrites. Of course they are. That's why they're there.

01:45:33

And that's why you're there too, or should be. Listen to what it says. First John one, six through seven.

01:45:40

If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

01:45:49

But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of his son cleanses us from all sin.

01:46:01

Guys, that's powerful. Brother? Yep. Yep. I mean, a lot of people don't like lordship salvation, but there it is.

01:46:13

Yeah. We say we have fellowship, you claim to be a Christian and yet you walk in darkness, your life is not submitted to his lordship, then you're lying.

01:46:24

You're not practicing the truth. Amen. And point number three, do you hide your sin or do you confess your sin and seek

01:46:32

God's forgiveness in Christ? This is the mark of a true believer. I tell my children this and I want you to hear me.

01:46:41

My children know that I love them and I will discipline them if they do something that is in need of that.

01:46:51

But because they're my children, they trust that I'm going to be fair with them and I'm going to love them and discipline them for their good.

01:46:59

And they run to me because they want to be reconciled with me. If you're a child of God, when you sin, you will want to be reconciled with Christ.

01:47:09

1 John 1, eight to 10 says, if I can get it to turn, if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

01:47:20

If we confess our sin, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

01:47:27

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

01:47:36

Yeah, that's right. It goes back to what you were saying just a minute ago.

01:47:42

We don't deny our sin and when we do sin, we don't justify ourselves.

01:47:48

Well, yeah, I did this, but here's why I did it. If you're making excuses for your sin, then something's wrong.

01:47:58

Something's wrong. Don't make excuses for sin. One of the marks of regeneration is that we have a humble posture about ourselves, an honest posture about our sin and the holiness of God.

01:48:16

So if you're making excuses for your sin, then you need to examine yourself. Yeah.

01:48:24

Number four is, are you obedient to the word of God? 1 John 2, three to five.

01:48:31

By this, we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. The one who says,

01:48:37

I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his commandments, or keeps his word, in him, the love of God has truly been perfected.

01:48:49

By this, we know that we are in him. You can have an absolute assurance.

01:48:56

It's not saying you're perfect. We just read that in point number three. Brother, go ahead.

01:49:04

Yeah, absolutely. Again, this is also lordship salvation. By this, we know that we have come to know him if we obey his commandments.

01:49:16

Put this verse in your anti -lordship salvation pipe and smoke it. Amen. I don't smoke though.

01:49:24

Neither do I. And you don't smoke, drink, or chew. Yeah. Number five.

01:49:33

Number five is, is there evidence of perseverance? And I wanna point this out because when you're talking about children, children don't have perseverance.

01:49:43

And that's one of the evidences. First John two, two to 14. I'm 12, 12 to 14.

01:49:49

Let's not read two to 14. I am writing you little children because your sins have been forgiven you for his namesake.

01:49:57

I am writing you fathers because you know who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one.

01:50:07

See what he says there? I am writing to you children because you know the father. I'm writing to you fathers because you know him who has been from the beginning.

01:50:18

I am writing to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

01:50:29

Brother. Yeah. And I don't think we should read too much into this. These phrases like little children or fathers, young men.

01:50:37

We're not talking about a chronological age here. These are little children as in new believers in Christ.

01:50:46

Young men. These are, they're getting their spiritual legs underneath them. You know, they're growing.

01:50:53

They're not babies anymore, but they're not mature either but they're growing. And fathers, those would be more mature believers.

01:51:01

So we're not talking about literal children or young men or fathers because you know, it just, that analogy breaks down pretty quick.

01:51:10

So, you know, what about the ladies here? There's, you know, what about, you know, the widows or maybe, you know, an older man who for whatever reason doesn't have children.

01:51:22

Maybe his wife couldn't have children, you know. So does that mean he's not a father? No. So this is spiritual maturity, different levels of spiritual maturity that he's talking about.

01:51:30

And perseverance, that's exactly right. That's another fruit in keeping with real repentance is that we persevere.

01:51:38

We persevere through the trials. We persevere through the temptations. We persevere through the godless system of this world.

01:51:49

We persevere in our faith. You know, if you're truly regenerate and you go off to college and you sit under atheistic professors who are shoving evolution down your throat and transgender this and that and LGBTQIXYZ, whatever, you persevere through that.

01:52:06

You're not swayed by it. You persevere. That's evidence of conversion. Amen. You know, the part that,

01:52:13

I just wanna make sure that we're clear here. That perseverance is salvation perseverance.

01:52:19

It's gospel perseverance. It's perseverance in Christ. It's, Justin said it. It's not because you're handicapped.

01:52:26

It's not because you've had a bad day. It's not because, oh, you know, woe is me. It's because you have been persecuted.

01:52:33

You have been called out and the world is trying to tempt you to run from Christ back to the vain philosophies of this world.

01:52:46

So number six is, do you love the world and the things of the world, or do you love

01:52:52

God? Do you love the world and its things, or do you love God? 1 John 2 .15, do not love the world nor the things that are in the world.

01:52:59

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And I put a little addendum here.

01:53:06

If, and you've all heard it said before, if you're on trial as being a Christian, is there enough evidence to convict you?

01:53:15

And that, you know, throw that in there if you would, Justin. But I wanna say this.

01:53:21

If you, it's not that you're in the world, but that you're not of the world.

01:53:26

You don't have such a love for the world that you would turn your back on God in anything he tells you, according to his words.

01:53:34

Yeah, that's right. If you love the things of the world more than you love the things of God, if you love your sin more than you love

01:53:40

Christ, then there's something wrong. It doesn't mean that we can't enjoy some of the niceties of life.

01:53:48

You know, in Ecclesiastes, read through the book of Ecclesiastes, there's nothing wrong with enjoying some of the common graces that God gives to the believer and the unbeliever alike.

01:53:58

I'm a Christian. Do I study the Bible all day long, every day? Well, no, you know, from time to time,

01:54:05

I like to go out and ride my four -wheeler, you know, or I'll go fishing. You know, it's fine with enjoying some of these things.

01:54:13

That's not what this verse is talking about, but the world system, the world system that is anti -Christ, that is set up against Christ.

01:54:20

If you love those, if you have an affection for those things, then you have no reason to believe that you're in Christ at all.

01:54:30

Amen. Number seven is, would your friends and enemies, and I did that on purpose, say you practice righteousness?

01:54:39

First John 2 29, if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of him.

01:54:49

And I said this on purpose. I put it this way on purpose, because it's really easy to pat the back of Justin Peters and be his friend.

01:54:58

And I can act like I'm being righteous right there with him. It's hard to do it with the blaspheming atheist, but 2

01:55:09

Timothy, part of the test of being a teacher or a pastor or a deacon is that even the world thinks well of you.

01:55:19

Now, make sure you understand what that means. They know that you're consistent in the faith, not saying that they love you because of what you believe, but they know that you're consistent in the faith and that you're faithful to it.

01:55:34

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, if your coworkers and the people that you're around on a daily basis, if they don't know that you're a

01:55:42

Christian, if they don't see a market difference in how you just carry yourself as opposed to worldly people, then something's wrong.

01:55:52

Something's wrong. Number eight, do you follow Christ as you keep, as you seek to maintain a pure life?

01:56:02

Do you follow Christ as you seek to maintain a pure life? 1 John 3, 3. And everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he,

01:56:13

Christ, is pure. Holiness of life. If we follow

01:56:20

Christ, our lives will be marked by holiness, a desire for holiness, progressive sanctification.

01:56:29

So if our hope is fixed on Christ, then our lives will mark, will resemble that.

01:56:35

Well, we will have holiness, we will. The general trajectory, Justin, of a believer, the general trajectory is an increasing pattern of holiness in a decreasing pattern of sin.

01:56:51

There's dips along the way. We stumble into sin, as I said, but the general trajectory is that over time, as Christians, our lives will show an increasing pattern of holiness in a decreasing pattern of sin.

01:57:05

Well, that's good, because number nine. That's what number nine says. Do you see a decreasing pattern of sin in your life?

01:57:13

You say, how do I know if Johnny or whoever, Jill, if they're, that profession of faith that they made, how do

01:57:23

I know that this person is, that I love, that I care about, how do

01:57:31

I know that they are truly in the faith? Well, as you start looking down through this list, and there's a lot more, we're just touching the surface, but as you start looking down this list that God gave us to know that we're in the faith, you start seeing people battle against sin, that you start seeing people battle against wickedness in the world, their own depravity, their own sinfulness, and they start, you start seeing it, and you come to a true knowledge that this person in your life, your son, your daughter, your friend, whatever, you start to understand and see it.

01:58:04

They're walking that pattern, that course of holiness. I don't think

01:58:09

I read it yet, I'm sorry. And this is, I'll say this too, this is more than just moralism.

01:58:15

This is not just refraining from cussing or alcohol or extramarital sex or whatever, just to have some kind of a moralistic life.

01:58:28

This is more than moralism, it's not legalism we're talking about. We want to have a pure life because our motivation is to please

01:58:36

Christ. That's where it's gotta stem from. If it doesn't stem from that, then it's not real. It's just moralism.

01:58:42

You're putting a Band -Aid on a gunshot wound. Amen. You know, 1 John here, I just want to make sure I read this to get this in.

01:58:49

1 John 3, five through six, talking about a decreasing pattern of sin in your life.

01:58:54

You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him, there is no sin.

01:59:01

No one who abides in him sins, and no one who sins has seen him or knows him.

01:59:08

It's not perfection, it's that direction. It's do you abide in sin or do you abide in Christ?

01:59:16

Amen. Amen. Amen. All right, let me get to the next one here. We just have a few more to go.

01:59:23

Do you love other believers and those that are in the world? And I want to make sure this is clear.

01:59:29

1 John 3, 14 to 15. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren.

01:59:35

He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.

01:59:42

What did Jesus say is your brother? Everybody around you. Okay, don't just mistake that to say, oh,

01:59:48

I can stay in my little cubicle at church and me, my four and us no more. He's talking about you love the brethren and you love all that are in the faith.

01:59:59

No. No. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in me.

02:00:10

You want to add to that brother? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it pretty much speaks for itself. A love for the brethren, a love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

02:00:18

And oftentimes our brothers and sisters in Christ are more family to us than even our own people in our own familial family, our own blood kin.

02:00:33

If I am closer, and I'm not saying me specifically, just anyone in general, as a

02:00:40

Christian, I have a closer relationship, an intimacy and a deeper love and affection and kindred spirit with a like -minded believer in Christ living in Uganda than I do with even an immediate family member if that family member is not truly saved.

02:01:01

So it's a love for the brethren. You know, the heartbreaking reality of that, the heartbreaking reality on that is, you know, we want to see our families in Christ come to salvation.

02:01:14

And the Bible makes it clear that a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times, your enemies will be in your own household.

02:01:21

Your enemies will be your fathers and brothers and sisters and mothers and aunts and uncles and those that you want so much to come to see salvation.

02:01:31

And that's why we have to be diligent to proclaim the truth and not just, don't let the

02:01:36

Sunday school teachers do it alone. Don't let the Bible state teachers and don't let the world do it. So number 11, is your salvation shown by love in action for others?

02:01:48

Now, 1 John 3, 18 through 19 says, little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth.

02:02:00

We will know by this that we are in the truth and we'll assure our hearts before him.

02:02:12

John MacArthur said, love is not a sentiment, but it's deeds. I love you and there's nothing

02:02:21

I can do to make you stop. Except for, I'm not gonna go out of my way to help you. I'm not going to do anything special.

02:02:30

You need somebody to mow your yard? Well, yeah, you can do that. Are you crippled and invalid? Oh, well,

02:02:35

I don't have time for you. Are you in need of anything? No, that's not the way Christians behave.

02:02:42

Brother, I'll let you elaborate if you want. Yeah, that's right. Not everybody who professes to be a

02:02:49

Christian, of course, is a Christian. If we truly are regenerate, that will flesh itself out in real tangible deeds, real works.

02:02:58

So our love for Christ will be fleshed out in deed and truth in what we do.

02:03:06

So it goes back to lordship salvation as well. I think about Paul going around saying, guys, we need to collect an offering to help these guys in Jerusalem.

02:03:17

The ones he's asking for an offering, they didn't have any money anyway. And he's saying, give what you don't have so that we can go help those that have absolutely nothing in Jerusalem.

02:03:30

You say, oh, I don't have it. Okay, too bad. Do what you can do and do everything you do for the glory of God and for the love of your brothers.

02:03:42

Number 12, do you maintain a clear conscience? First John 321, beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence by God.

02:03:53

Now, I wanna make sure this is clear. This is not just talking about, oh, I didn't say a bad thing, right?

02:04:01

No boo -boo here. This is in context with what we were just talking about. And I said,

02:04:07

I added this to make sure everybody could hear me say this. Hard work serves others out of love for Christ and those in need and leaves little time for sin which hinders our assurance of salvation.

02:04:24

We put off sin, we put off lying, we put off theft and we put on that hard work and it covers, it causes us to wanna serve others in Christ and it does not afford us time to live in sin.

02:04:41

You know, what's the old saying? Something about idle hands or the devil's play things or something along that lines.

02:04:50

I can't remember exactly how it goes. Yeah, devil's workshop, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, clear conscience.

02:04:56

And that's one of the blessings of every believer is that we should have a clear conscience before God.

02:05:04

We do the right thing, we obey Christ and we trust Him for the results. And as long as I know that I'm obeying

02:05:12

Christ, then regardless of what the outcome is, regardless of whether or not I see the outcome that I hope to see, as long as I'm obedient,

02:05:21

I have the blessing of having a clear conscience. Then you can't put a value on that.

02:05:29

Yeah, idleness is the devil's workshop. That's what Pauline says. Let's see, number 13, do you keep

02:05:39

Christ's commands to believe in Him and love one another? It's back to that commands of believing and loving, it's obedience.

02:05:47

In 1 John 3, 23 to 24, this is His commandment that we believe the name of His Son, in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.

02:06:04

Remember Jesus said, they'll know you by your love for one another, that we are commanded to love one another.

02:06:10

The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in Him, we know that by this, that He abides in us by the

02:06:21

Spirit whom He has given us. Brother, if you wanna add anything, that's, you know.

02:06:29

Yeah, the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him. It keeps coming back to the same thing we've been saying. If you love

02:06:34

Christ, you will obey Him. Jesus says something interesting in John 3, 36.

02:06:40

He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not, and you would expect

02:06:47

Him to say, he who does not believe in the Son, but that's not what He says.

02:06:53

He says, he who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

02:07:01

The opposite of belief in biblically speaking is not unbelief intellectually.

02:07:07

The opposite of belief is disobedience. Disobedience. So that's what all these verses are basically talking about.

02:07:16

By the way, you're gonna find the Trinity all in much of what's being discussed by John here.

02:07:23

And so number 14, does the triune God abide in you as evidenced by your life and testimony?

02:07:33

1 John 4, 13 through 16. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us

02:07:41

His Spirit and we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the

02:07:47

Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God abides in Him and He and God, and we have come to know and have believed the love which

02:07:59

God has for us. God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him.

02:08:08

That's a lot of abiding by the Trinity. Yep. Yep, abiding in Christ, persevering in Christ.

02:08:20

He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.

02:08:25

So it's not just a one -time pray the prayer, walk the aisle, get baptized, and you're done.

02:08:32

This is a lifelong thing, abiding in Christ. So when you're talking to your children, guys, don't be afraid to talk to them about the

02:08:42

Trinity. Don't be afraid to tell them about our triune God, equal in majesty, equal in person, that we have not the

02:08:54

SBC president version of partial gods of what they call

02:09:02

Voltron, the all three point and come together. This is talking about the triune God, equal in majesty, equal in truth.

02:09:11

You have this triune God, equal in purpose, and He wants all three of them.

02:09:19

They want us, He wants us, God wants us to know that we abide in all of them and they abide in us.

02:09:29

Salvation is a triune work of God. Sanctification is triune work of God. Glorification, a triune work of God.

02:09:39

Amen. Amen. Number 15, that's the last one. There's more, but that's the last one

02:09:46

I have. Though not perfect, I wanna clarify that. Do you see victory over the world and sin, it should say sin, in your

02:09:56

Christian walk? First John 5, four through five, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world.

02:10:05

And this is the victory that has overcome the world of our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the son of God?

02:10:18

Brother? Yeah, victory over sin.

02:10:23

And this is one of the hallmarks of a genuine Christian that there is, the life of the

02:10:32

Christian is not marked by sin. It's not marked by habitually succumbing to temptation.

02:10:39

It's not a sin to be tempted. It's a sin to succumb to that temptation. And as Christians, we are indwelt by the

02:10:47

Holy Spirit and there is no temptation that comes to us that is not common to man. And God will give us a way of escape.

02:10:54

Whereas before, left to your own fallen nature, your own fallen desires, you had absolutely no victory over sin.

02:11:01

You couldn't repent. You might try to will yourself to turn from certain sins for a little while.

02:11:09

Maybe it works for a short time, but you always inevitably go back to it. But if you're a

02:11:15

Christian, if you're regenerate, you have a new nature, indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, you do have the power to gain victory over sin.

02:11:24

Again, not perfection, but direction. Salvation is not perfection, it is direction.

02:11:30

Which direction is your life going? And there should be an increasing pattern of holiness, a decreasing pattern of sin.

02:11:38

Amen, amen. And that's the thing is we could go on.

02:11:43

There's so many more passages we could talk about. But guys, the idea here is as we start examining ourselves and examining our children, examining each other, gracious, godly examination is a good thing because it's shown out of love.

02:12:02

It's shown out of mercy, it's shown out of care. It's not to point the finger and try to hurt other people, but it's because we love.

02:12:11

It's because we love one another. It's because we love our children that we wanna see them right with God.

02:12:17

The worst you can do is see them in sin and be silent about it. Take them through this test, take them through these tests, take them through the scripture and work with them to encourage holiness and godliness.

02:12:33

Work with them to encourage greater conformity to the word of God. Get them in discipleship.

02:12:42

I mean, Titus two is a neglected action of the church that's not been done in a long time and needs to be done of gathering the gray haired older men and women and getting ahold of them and have them help teach our children, our youth the right way they should go.

02:13:02

Amen. Amen. Yeah, I would encourage.

02:13:11

I just encourage people as we wrap up here, if you're wondering what age would be appropriate, I wouldn't look for a date on the calendar necessarily.

02:13:20

Now, if I were a pastor, I would probably not baptize anyone under, certainly under 15, 15, 16.

02:13:33

I would wait, wait until they're well into their teenage years, not 13, well into their teenage years, see how they handle temptation, see how they handle persecution.

02:13:45

They should be able to articulate a very clear testimony. And by giving a testimony, it's a lot more than answering a few questions in the affirmative.

02:13:54

Yes, yes, yes. I believe in Jesus, yes. No, give a testimony. If you can't give a testimony about how

02:13:59

Christ has changed you, then you really don't have a testimony. So wait until,

02:14:09

I would say wait until their upper teen years, until they're faced with some real stuff that they're just not gonna face when they're kids.

02:14:17

Yeah. Amen. And guys, I just wanna add to that. You got a lot of people agreeing with us tonight, brother.

02:14:27

I'm glad for that. I just wanna add to that, that I wanna make sure that we don't want to, as your book says, we don't wanna hinder.

02:14:38

I don't wanna be a hindrance. I want, it's our goal, our heart to get rid of Phineasism.

02:14:45

Yes. I just wanna see it gone because there are so many false converts that have heard that they can just have this easy believism.

02:14:56

I tell you, we need solid, godly men and women who are willing to stand up and take the reins and be willing in our churches, but in our homes.

02:15:08

Guys, start a devotion. Get a devotion going on with your children. Bring them both up and bring your children up.

02:15:20

Encourage the community, kids around. Anybody that will come in that will sit and listen to a devotion and get them ice cream, you know, whatever, you know.

02:15:29

You don't have to be lecturing people. Just give them the word of God and give them truth as they sit up and as they lay down, as they go on the way, everywhere they're going, give them the truth and, you know, be those godly people that we're called to be.

02:15:46

I honestly believe that if we stand up and do those things and don't just try to run this evangelical railroad down their throats when they don't know what they're doing, you know, maybe sit down and ask them about those doctrinal questions.

02:16:04

Who is God? Most people today, you get on Facebook and you ask how many people understand why it is that the

02:16:13

SBC president, the statement he had at his church was heretical. They won't know it.

02:16:20

Most people won't know it. Okay, there's a problem with what's being taught in the church and in the homes.

02:16:26

So we need to start discipling and start teaching and bringing them in doctrinal and theological truth, bring them into practical truth and understanding how to live.

02:16:35

Amen? Amen, absolutely. Amen. So, again, say again, if you're watching this show and you maybe you've realized, wow,

02:16:45

I was one of those people. I was one of those people. I was one of those kids that got baptized when I was in the first or second grade.

02:16:53

I know I'm safe now, but I haven't been baptized truly since my conversion.

02:16:59

Please talk to the elders of your church, set up a baptism, give your testimony.

02:17:05

It will be such a blessing. It'll be a blessing to you. It'll be a blessing to the church, tremendous blessing.

02:17:13

So, and it's an act of obedience being baptized, so. On that note, you know, as you're talking about that, on that note, as you're talking about that,

02:17:23

Justin, I had a pastor I asked about this issue one time and I had a pastor say this, there's only one baptism.

02:17:35

You may have taken a bath twice or once or whatever else, but there's only one true baptism.

02:17:41

That's the believer's baptism, done in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. You know, and that's based on a confession of faith.

02:17:48

So if you've enjoyed this night, I'm gonna ask you guys to please, you know, if we've done a good job, if you've enjoyed what we've done tonight, what we presented,

02:17:58

I'm gonna try really quickly to get this information put onto the screen so that you can get ahold of those tests.

02:18:09

Give us a review at lovethepodcast .com backslash apologetics live.

02:18:17

I'd ask you to give us a review there, support us at support us at striveforeturning .org

02:18:25

backslash support. Brother Justin as well. Guys, I don't know what on your website, but justinpeters .org,

02:18:38

if you have anything specific, throw it in there, that's fine, but please support my brother.

02:18:44

I'll tell you what, as I've gotten to know Justin more and more over the past year, I just love him dearly.

02:18:50

He's turned into a great friend and I love him dearly. And he's the man you see and listen to.

02:18:56

He doesn't change. In fact, he gets more convicted as he's alone and he's thinking on things and he wants to be a godly man.

02:19:07

And I ask you to please support him. Also, absolutely, if you like pillows and all that stuff at MyPillow, you can go to 800 -873 -0176 and tell them the promo code is

02:19:27

SFE and they'll give you a good discount. MyPillow .com as well, promo code

02:19:34

SFE, get a good discount. Other than that, we'll see you guys maybe next week.

02:19:40

I hope everybody should be back in. Brother Justin, I wanna thank you so much for coming in and helping out with this and giving us your great wisdom on these issues.

02:19:55

You're welcome, brother. My privilege, my pleasure, God bless you. God bless you, good night. Good night, everybody.