2021 Review and 2022 Predictions

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2021 Review and 2022 Predictions

00:03

One, two, three. Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the

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Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and Pastor Justin Pierce.

00:21

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your theological challenges, questions, whatever you have for us tonight.

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This is the Ministry of Striving for Eternity. We are here to try to teach you how to do better apologetics, and I am solo tonight.

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That means not that I'm solo, that I'm under the desk. No, it means that I don't have any other co -hosts, which means, folks, you watching,

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I need you. I need you to come on in, ask your questions. You'll be much more entertained than listening to me for two hours,

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I'm sure. But if you have questions, you have challenges, instead of doing them in the chat like many of us do, well, many of you,

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I don't, actually, I have the microphone right there. But we'd appreciate if you guys would come on in to apologeticslive .com,

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click on the icon there to be able to join us. And so that's something you could do.

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Just go to apologeticslive .com, and the link to join is right there.

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It is the screen yard little icon, the duck icon, and you just click on that, and you can join us.

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I don't know who Reverend DJ is, but he says, I know you need me. Yes, well, come on in.

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And I think I know who what DJ stands for. And so yeah, you can come on in, because I know you.

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He says that I know you miss me. Well, we'd find out when you come in.

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But Anthony is still in Florida. And so he's down there.

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And Justin Pierce got tied up with some home responsibilities. His wife is under the weather, if you don't mind praying for her.

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And he's taking care of the responsibilities, getting dinner ready and kids ready for bed and homework, and all the things that this is what dads do.

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So I was joking with Dr. Silvestro, saying that he's been busting on me for a long time, especially when

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Frank Mullis was with us and speaking, and Frank was pursuing his doctorate. And since then, he said, okay,

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I'm too busy. And so he stepped away for a while. But Dr. Silvestro used to make fun of me.

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He used to refer to us when we'd get up, and he'd say, doctor. He would refer to himself as doctor, and Frank is almost or soon to be doctor, and then bust on me.

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And so I was busting on him, telling him that I have an announcement that will fix that. But he's not here, and Justin's not here, so it doesn't make it as much fun.

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So we'll wait till next week on that. I do got a funny story for you though, because this just cracked me up.

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I laughed. I had to go and call my friend, Matt Slick, and tell him about this so he could get a laugh.

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Someone called the ministry. They were having some trouble placing an order online, and I picked up the phone.

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And I think Mary was surprised to get me on the phone, but I happened to be the one that picked up.

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And talked with her. And so she told me this story. And so folks,

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I hope that you can, this was not one of these ones where you laugh with me. This is a story where you laugh at me, okay?

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Just saying that up front. Mary had called and told me that, you know, helped her out with the problem.

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She moved on, and she goes, she had told me, she said she wanted to know, basically what she was calling was she wanted to know the coupon code to get the book

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What Do We Believe? at 50 % off, because we are running that in the month of December. And so I told her the code, and she said, she explained the reason she didn't know was because she fell asleep to the podcast.

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To which I, of course, looking to make fun of myself at any opportunity, because there's plenty of material there,

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I said to her that I was, I said, well, it's good to know that I put you to sleep.

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And she says, oh no, oh no, it's worse than that, Andrew. I said, worse than putting you to sleep, okay?

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I've heard people that jokingly will say, you know, that my sermons will put them to sleep or podcasts put them to sleep, but this is worse.

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Okay, what's worse? And she proceeded to tell me that her dog cannot sleep unless she is playing either my podcast or Matt Slick's podcast in a loop.

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She said once if she plays it, the dog falls asleep, and if it stops, the dog wakes up and roams around the house.

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She said, in fact, the dog was hearing me on the speakerphone and was wagging his tail and got all excited.

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But she said her dog cannot sleep without the help of Matt Slick's voice or my voice.

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So there you go. In case you were wondering if I was good for nothing, no, I am good for something and so is

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Matt Slick. We are capable of putting Mary's dog to sleep, but don't worry, the dog wakes up in the morning and is excited to hear her voice.

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Oh, yes. So that was something I wanted to share with you guys. Some other things that I did have on the agenda, unless any of you guys come in with questions, and it's gonna be better to come in because I don't always get to watch.

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Justin's the one that kind of watches all the chats and posts them, but I should welcome everyone.

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Happy New Year. This is the first Apologetics Live of the new year. I did offer many people to come in and give some challenges.

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There were some folks online, and I may end up dealing with some of the challenges, some people that were basically saying miracle, there was a person who said that we should go out on the streets to evangelize and expect a miracle.

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What kind of miracle were you expecting to see? Well, the miracles he was expecting to see on a regular basis is healings and other miraculous things.

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I said, well, can someone share with me, give me examples of these miracles you have. One lady had explained that a miracle that God does today is she was thinking about her sister and her sister, just as she was thinking about her sister because she wanted to talk to her sister about something, her sister came down the stairs for breakfast.

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I mean, like that doesn't happen every day, right? Your sibling would come down the stairs.

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Like that's not a miracle, folks. A miracle is something that's supernatural. Your sister coming down the stairs happens like every day.

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So there you go. What have we got? Drew says, Drew from Matter of Theology says,

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Andrew's voice keeps me up at night, mainly because I can't hear him in my head making fun of me.

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Or I can hear him in my head making fun of me. Well, I understand that, Drew. There's probably a lot of material to make fun of with you as there is with me.

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And, but Drew does say this, and this is right. A person's salvation is the greatest miracle that could occur.

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And that when people say, do miracles occur? I end up asking, what do you mean by a miracle?

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Because if you're saying something supernatural, well, taking a sinner's wicked heart that is described in the

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Bible as being stony, being an enemy of God, and adopting that person into the family of God, giving the spirit, the

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Holy Spirit, indwelling that person to be regenerated, that is supernatural. We cannot do that on our own, okay?

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And because of that, then that is a miracle when you go out on the street evangelizing, I would expect to see. And that's why

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I asked the gentleman, what does he, how does he define a miracle? So that was one thing that I saw.

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Edison says, can I join? Sure, Edison. Just go to apologeticslive .com, and you should be able to click on the duck.

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Actually, you know what? I just realized I didn't set up the Apologetics Live page. That's probably really helpful.

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So I'm gonna do that live. That's really good. To realize that I didn't set that up.

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Wow, that's a major. I will, let me put the little link here for those of you that at least are on YouTube.

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So you have the link to join, and I'll set that up really quick. That's a major mistake, right?

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So I should actually just share screen and let you guys see what it's like to set the page up.

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This is why you should not be setting these up late at night. That's what I had done. Let me, while I'm setting that up, let me talk to you about some other things

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I wanted to share with you guys. There's some other things that I had seen that I thought very interesting for us to talk about recently.

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On social media, I had seen a church that was trying to post in one of our groups.

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I think it was our Christian Apologetics group. And so it was

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Grace Church Online. I found that very interesting. I'll tell you why I did. It was

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Grace Church Online, and what they had, what they did was they were looking to be an online church.

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Now, let me explain what they meant by that. The person had said that they had been, they were led by God some time ago to realize that church was just not being done the right way.

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God revealed to them that they should do church online. And what ended up happening with that is essentially that you have a case where they felt that they were, and this is the thing

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I want you to recognize when people say it like this. They were told by God. When someone says that they're told by God, if you were dared to question it, then what you're doing is you're questioning

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God. And that is what you have people claim. As if now you can't say anything against it because saying anything against it is to discredit

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God. All right, and just for a follow -up you guys to know, I just am updating the page right now on Apologetics Live.

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Someone asked me why Apologetics Live was not showing on YouTube. And I said it was, but it probably was because I didn't set up the page right.

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So my bad. So here's the thing. When people say they have, they go to an online church.

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Can you do church online? You know, I know that many of us during COVID with shutdowns, there were many people who said that they were doing church online.

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So when we look at church, when we think about what church is, church is, it's gonna have pastors and deacons.

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It's going to have people that gather to do the one another's, love one another, bear one another's burdens, things like that.

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It's gonna be a place where you use your spiritual gifts. This is what you end up seeing for what church is.

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Can you do that online? The answer is no. Drew is quoting

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MacArthur here and saying, there is no such thing as Zoom church, John MacArthur.

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And that's basically the point. This person says he was brought, God gave him this revelation that he should do this.

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Well, the reality is God may have, you think God may have given you that revelation, but God would never give revelation that is opposite or contrary to what his written word has already said.

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And so the written word defines church. And the things that we are to do in church, you cannot do on your own.

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And so I got some other things I wanna bring up, but I see Edison came in. And since he is on the other side of the world,

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I'm going to add him in because it's late there for him. And so you just gotta unmute yourself there cause you're still muted.

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All right. Hi. How you doing Edison? Doing great.

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We've actually just suffered a typhoon here during Christmas season.

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Now, were you affected by the typhoon? Our house actually is good. We were affected in a way that our electricity and waters were cut off because of the posts that were affected.

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All right. Hey, before I get to you real quick, let me answer someone's question with what I was just saying cause a Facebook user is saying, what do you do if you can't go to church due to medical issues?

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Okay. So I wanna give you the caveat and I thank you. I don't know if for folks, if you go to apologeticslive .com, there is a link.

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They're showing you how to get Facebook to allow us to see your name. So I don't call you Facebook user, but there are areas where we are not forsaking the assembly.

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And this is the real issue that I think when people do church online, really what they're doing is they're forsaking the assembling together and they want it to just sound spiritual.

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But the reality is that, and he says his name is Roger. So Roger, I think if you have medical issues and you cannot make it to church, that's a difference.

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And that's the reason many churches do live streams. But when you're part of a church,

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I mean, I know as a pastor, if I have people and I've had this in the past, people who are sick or people who cannot make it to church because of medical conditions,

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I go visit them or other members of the leadership will go visit them because we still want them part of the church.

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So I've done this in the past where we've gone to people's house with a number of people so that that person can have fellowship.

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We've tried to do where one person had a medical condition, we would do a Bible study at that person's house. Why? So that they had the regular fellowship with the saints.

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So I think that that's on the church to try to find ways to help in those cases.

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So hope that helps you, Roger. So Edison, what do you got for us tonight? Yeah, actually

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I have, yeah, by the way, thank you. If you guys heard about the storm here, we were affected.

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That's why I was not able to, there was a good topic about Calvinism being a cult and Matt Slick was there.

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I wasn't able to join because of the problem with the internet here and electricity because of the typhoon.

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But I may have a question if it's okay. Sure. I have a, let me just get my.

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Okay, he walked off screen. This is the thing is bad for audio podcasts when you have no one talking.

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So while he's going to get his Bible, he's got his Bible now. I'll give commentary.

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I could be a play by play commentary. He's sitting in his seat. He just got up from his seat. No, no,

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I'm sorry. So I'm having a hard time explaining a verse to one of my anti -reform friends.

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There's a verse in Jeremiah chapter 19, verse five,

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Jeremiah 19, verse five. And I believe there's a parallel of the same book,

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Jeremiah 32, verse 35. Now, I'm just interested in what are your thoughts on this because there's a phrase there that says, the sin that they're doing, which is making an abomination unto the

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Lord, casting their sons into the fire. And it says here that it never entered in my mind.

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How does this relates to the sovereignty of God and his eternal decree?

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Okay, well, let's first read the passage. I'm gonna read verse five.

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So we see what you're referring to. Then I'm gonna back up to verse one. So we have, oh, that nasty

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C word, context. That's something, as you know, R .A. Fuentes had a problem with.

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He didn't like context. That's the killer of his belief system there, right? So verse five just says this, and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal a thing which

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I never commanded nor spoke of, nor did it ever enter my mind.

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Okay, so that's the phrase there that I guess they're focused on. So let's back up to verse one because context does help.

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It's amazing. Most of the things I can resolve, I just resolve by reading context. Maybe this is, we'll see.

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Thus says the Lord, go and buy a potter's earthenware jar and take some of the elders of the people and some of the senior priests, then go out to the

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Valley of Behinnom, which is by the entrance of the

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Pottharge gate and proclaim there the words that I tell you and say, hear the word of the

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Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the

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Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am about to bring a calamity upon this place at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle because they have forsaken me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known.

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And because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and have built the high places of Beal to burn their sons in the fire of the burnt offerings to Beal, a thing which

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I never commanded nor spoke of, nor did it ever enter my mind.

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Now, let's look at what the word mind in the New American Standard actually means.

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It has the idea, it's used almost 600 times in the

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Hebrew. It is a word to mean heart or one's inward self, an inclination, a disposition, a determination, courage, will, intention, consideration or reason.

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So if they're trying to say that the word mind means thinking, like he didn't know this, that wouldn't be the proper word,

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I think, to use here. It has, as I went through that, you see that overwhelming, actually, at least in the

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New American Standard, 434 times out of the 593.

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It's the word heart or hearts. And that's more the idea of it.

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It's the word of this inward determination or inclination.

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Someone here, Facebook user is saying, sounds like a Layton Flowers post for one of his followers.

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Yes, it does. So I would say with the first passage, the context helps us to realize that he's saying, this is something he never planned for the nation of Israel.

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They're doing these things. He's saying he never commanded it. He never spoke of it. He never even was inclined of it.

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And never even entered his reason or inclination or his inward being.

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All right, so there's another use of it, you said in Jeremiah 32, 35. Let's read that, and then we'll read some context.

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They built the high places of Beal that are in the Valley of Behinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire of Malach, which

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I had not commanded them, nor had it entered my mind that they should do this abomination to Judah to sin.

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Now, I will mention that this is, again, the same exact word that we have in the other.

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So it is, again, the idea of heart. As we look at some of the context, let's see, where's a good place to back up to, because we don't wanna read the whole chapter.

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Let me just back up, and it looks like verse 33, it says, they had turned their backs to me and not their face, though I taught them teaching again and again, they would not listen and receive instruction.

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But they put their detestable things in the house, which is called by my name, to defile it, they built their high places to Beal, and that are in the

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Valley of Behinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire of Malach, which

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I had not commanded them, nor had it entered my mind that they should do this abomination to cause

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Judah to sin. So I think in both cases, I think we have a similar thing. I think that what we have here is a case where it's his inward reason, his inward thinking.

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So I don't think that this is the same as if, and I'm taking for granted, because I don't know what your friend is saying.

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If he's saying that God doesn't know something, that's not what this is saying.

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Yeah, yeah. He used that verse to attack the eternal decree.

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And I told him, I've seen the dictionary, it does says heart, inclination.

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So I told him that if you use that verse literally in our, you know, there's a problem with no hermeneutics, because there's no gap bridging.

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If you try to interpret mine like we think mine today, that's dangerous because that's not only attacking the sovereignty, it's also attacking the omniscience of God, which is generally the teaching that is accepted by all

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Christianity. Yeah, and the thing is, is that what you wanna do, right?

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So first thing I did is look at the context. Now the context wasn't what actually helped us in this, but it was the meaning of words. And this is actually the thing that we realize when we're translating something.

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And I know you speak two languages, so you understand this. I barely speak

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English, so it's, you know. But this is the reality when you're dealing with translation of a language.

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When we're translating, words don't come out the same. For example, if I was to speak in Cantonese and I wanna say that I'm happy, okay?

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Now we understand what happy means, right? We're feeling good, our circumstances seem to be, put us in a good mood.

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But the word in Cantonese would literally be translated, the word for happy would literally be translated as open heart.

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Now, if I was to translate that literally, you would know, like if I say I'm so open heart, you would not really understand what

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I'm saying, would it? But if you understand the meaning of what it means to be open hearted, that your heart is out in the open for everyone to see, it's that kind of feeling, then you understand the meaning of what it is in Cantonese.

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And that's one of the things you end up seeing, is that when we translate to a different language, we have to deal with the fact that words do end up changing, or needing to be changed in other languages because they just don't translate well sometimes, if you're gonna translate literally.

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Yeah, just like the word no in the Bible, it's not just theoretical knowledge, there's also intimate knowing in the

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Bible, so it can mean differently. And that's what I was trying to tell him. Well, we were able to dismiss it because I told him, if you use the word mind in a single meaning, you're attacking not only the sovereignty of God, but also his omniscient, because that means he'd never know.

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So he was a little bit paused, and he said, yeah. Well, I mean, words have multiple meanings, at least in English, we have plenty of words, who, when we look at those words, we would have, like the word hear, does it mean, hey,

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I can hear you? Or does it mean that you're right here? It depends on context.

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And looking at the context, if he's gonna try and take that word to force it in to say,

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God doesn't know something, then that becomes a problem.

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Now here's, KT is putting this up, this is the Legacy Standard Bible, translates Jeremiah 32, 35 as, nor had it come upon my heart.

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And so this is the advantage of newer translations, where we understand things better.

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I just wish the Legacy Standard version would have translated the word tongues in the way that we understand it today, which would be languages, and that would ease a lot of issues there.

26:48

Humble Clay says the word too, you have T -O, T -T, T -O -O, and T -W -O, right?

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Different meanings. Actually, I should try it one day, but there's a fun video of a person, and they put like, it's,

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I forget what it was, it was like, they keep the T -W, it's like, what is, pronounce this, and it's like K -W -O, and then

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C -W -O, all these with a W -O, and then it's like, pronounce this one, and it's

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T -W -O, and they go, too, you know, they mispronounce it, not really, because they don't see it, they just hear it.

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Fun thing to do. So does that answer your question? Do you have any others for us? Yeah, yeah.

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Okay. I will put you backstage. Now, I see someone that says he's

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Reverend DJ, but there's two issues I have. One, I can see who he is, and so I'm right, he's not a

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Reverend, which means that, you know, he's not someone that we should definitely, I mean, I don't even know if I wanna put him on camera, because it doesn't look like he's even dressed appropriately, he's like just in a

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T -shirt, nothing on his head, I mean, oh, and he thinks he's big and strong there, do you see that?

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He's flexing his muscles. This is none other than Mr. Donnie Jacks. Donald, how are you tonight?

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I love it when he's muted, folks. That is, actually, if you don't know, that's the best time to talk to Donnie, is when he's muted, because then you don't actually have to hear him.

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Now, the fun part is, is some of us are watching him try to figure out how to unmute. He is trying to show off a certain book there, and if he unmutes, we could find out what it is, but he's not doing that.

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I guess he just wants to show off the What Do We Believe book, that I don't know if he got that recently, or maybe he read it recently, but he's not here to ask a question,

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I guess, so you just got to unmute, Donnie. He said, oops.

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See, it's the advantage of reading lips. I figured you knew. No, no, I was actually saying that you needed to unmute.

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I'm just trying to be like you and have your coat. Oh, you're just trying to put up, like I have the books here?

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Yeah, like you always do. There you go, yeah. Now, you got to hold up two to do it.

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You got to get my other book so I can hold it up the whole time. So you have any questions for us tonight? No, not really.

29:23

Just came in? You already answered all of them. Yeah, I just came in and bugged you. This is, folks, this is the kind of friends

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I have. They just want to bug me. Search and rescue from Eddie Roman, there you go. Eddie Roman of Romans Road Podcast, one of the other podcasts at the

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Christian Podcast Community. If you want to check all of our podcasts out, just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org.

29:48

Captain Black Eagle says nice jammies there. Thank you, thank you.

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In fact, why don't we just let Captain Eagle, there you go, Captain Black Eagle, welcome.

30:02

Thank you. Oh, you got to mute yourself. Why don't we just let Captain Eagle, there you go,

30:08

Captain Black Eagle, welcome. Thank you. Oh, you got to mute yourself. Why don't we just, sorry. I got black background music going on, so.

30:16

Yeah, you got to mute the show while you're talking. He's Air Force, he's Air Force. Okay, I'm going to mute you until you turn your show.

30:28

You got to mute the YouTube so we don't get the echo, and you can let me know in the private chat when you've done that, and then

30:36

I'll unmute you. Actually, I don't know if I can unmute you. I think

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I can once it's because I muted you, so. If you can, just take where you're watching on YouTube and just turn that off or pause it or mute it, whatever, and then that way we don't get an echo.

30:58

Let's see if he's, you have that muted there? Captain Black Eagle, if I'm trying to remember your first name, and I can't right now.

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Are you there with us? Okay, all right,

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I will just, I got him, I'm muting his, he said, okay, you said muted.

31:26

All right, I unmute you. You still got some background music going? He said he's having a party.

31:35

Yeah, no, you still got the show playing. Yeah, it's Jungle Loves, Steve Miller, wife's listening to it.

31:42

Oh, okay, yeah, but I still hear an echo, like a delay.

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So you probably still have the YouTube channel playing. So what questions do you have for us? I could be in my head.

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Do you have any questions for him? I don't have any. You don't have any? You just wanted to mention to Donnie what a nice, what nice jammies he has?

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Nice. Okay. Those jammies look nice, I have a pair just like them.

32:21

Okay, you're waiting until we respond on YouTube, all right? So I'm gonna,

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I'll mute you while I say this. So you gotta pause the YouTube channel, just be in the

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StreamYard. So you can either mute the YouTube channel and then come back to StreamYard.

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But you're, I know you're waiting until I actually ask the questions on YouTube. And so you don't wanna do that because then there's gonna be this echo where we get to hear, and we definitely don't wanna hear my voice twice.

32:53

So I'm gonna unmute you again and we'll see if we gotta figure it out. Then there's gonna be this echo where we get to hear. Nope, we don't have it figured out, okay.

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I'll just put you backstage until you figure it out. So, Donald, how are you tonight? You don't have any questions?

33:08

You usually have tons of questions for me. Just dumb ones, usually. I didn't rate them.

33:19

All right, so while you're here, so here's what we got.

33:27

Some other things that I had, wanted to share with you guys. This week,

33:34

I was able to participate in the Think podcast. They had a 12 days of Christmas, 12 -day challenge.

33:43

And on that 12 -day challenge, each day they were offering a different argument that people had.

33:49

I got to deal with two of the 12. Has the

33:54

Bible been corrupted? So we dealt with textual

34:01

Christmas. I think that was day five. If you go to Think podcast, it was day five. Has the

34:06

Bible been corrupted? And then I got to do day number 11.

34:14

And day number 11 was, does the Bible contain contradictions?

34:20

So I got to do those two, but I listened to all 12, and there were some good ones.

34:27

And Joel Sedekes, who is the host of that podcast, had a really interesting one that got me thinking that I thought, hey, it'd be fun for us here to discuss is the idea of, is

34:38

Christianity a crutch? And this is not an argument we hear as much anymore, but a lot of people will use that argument that Christianity is a crutch.

34:50

And I thought what would be helpful for us on Apologetics Live is to go through, how do we determine how to answer an argument?

34:59

Because what we want to do on the show is help people like Donald over here to make better arguments. So when he gets challenged, he has an answer, right,

35:08

Donnie? Oh, yes, yes. Well, good answer, a good answer. All right, so here's the thing

35:16

I started to think about, and this is what Joel had broken down. And he had some good examples.

35:21

I had some different examples that I thought of as he was explaining it. But when you ask the question of, is

35:27

Christianity just a crutch, or someone makes the accusation that Christianity is a crutch, you first ask the question, what is a crutch?

35:37

A crutch is something to assist you in walking. It's not something needed, it's an assistant.

35:43

It's something that, with it, it helps you to walk. It helps you to, you know, you break a foot, you may not be able to walk.

35:52

Maybe you'd have to hop around and things like that. But using a crutch helps you, okay?

35:59

Now, there's a difference between that and a need. The difference would be if somebody is on insulin, for example, or some other medicine that's without the medicine, they die.

36:15

Well, that's not an assistant, is it? You see, that's not something to assist them. That is something that, you know, basically is needed.

36:26

And so now you have a difference. Is Christianity something that assists us, or is it something that is needed?

36:36

Maybe, you know, for Edison and the discussion earlier and some of his anti -Calvinistic friends, they may say

36:43

Christianity is a crutch because we could believe on God and we needed God to do some things, but ultimately it was our choice.

36:51

Now, they would still say that they need God to be right with him.

36:57

And this is the difference. Christianity is not like other religions. Other religions, you could say, are like a crutch because they help you, they assist you in living morally.

37:10

They don't actually, they're not necessarily necessary for entrance into heaven or for a right state with God.

37:20

So that's the difference. I thought interesting that the way Joel laid that out. Now, he used some different examples, but I was thinking of things more like something that is a requirement, something you can't live without, compared to something that assists you.

37:34

But that's the argument that ends up being, that we have to look at. You know, another one of the ones he did,

37:41

I think this was day 12, that I thought was interesting, is he dealt with the argument of, are all religions the same?

37:48

And that becomes an interesting one. Well, let me actually ask Johnny, any thoughts you have on the fact that Christianity is a crutch?

37:55

Anything you want to add to that? I would just go ahead and agree with him. And this is why

38:02

Donnie's here to learn. Well, I mean, it would shut down the argument. He wouldn't have nothing to say.

38:07

Oh yeah, it's a crutch. And that'd be the end of it. I mean, where is he going to go with it? You agreed with him.

38:13

And it is, you know, a crutch too. Well, is it a crutch? But you're going deeper with it, and I understand that.

38:20

But they don't understand that. Well, Stephen, that's where we take the explanation, right?

38:25

Because once you explain it, that takes it away. Because what they're saying is, you really don't need

38:32

Christianity. It just helps you in life. And that's what they mean by it. It assists you in living the way every other religion is.

38:39

But see, this is not about a better life now. Someone tell Joel Osteen, he's got it wrong.

38:47

Okay, this is not your best life now unless you have hell to look forward to, okay? This is the life we live through to get to our eternal state.

38:58

And so you don't need assistance to get to the external state through Christianity.

39:04

It's a necessary component. And so you can't get to an eternal life without having

39:13

Christianity, okay? The gospel, right? Ted here is saying,

39:20

God bless you brothers for your faithful ministry from Sydney, Australia. You know, I've always wanted to go to Australia there,

39:27

Ted. You know, I actually had a church that was trying to work on that before this thing called, what's it called?

39:36

COVID, yeah, a fake pandemic that shut everything down. So now I don't know if I'll ever be able to go and see,

39:44

I still want to. You know, I wonder if, you know, when God creates a new heavens and new earth,

39:51

I wonder if we will get to see some of the places we didn't get to see on the old earth, I don't know. Strange things to think about, but, you know.

40:00

So one of the things that Joel also addressed is are all religions the same? Now, I wanted to dig in deeper on this one because I think there's a lot there and I think there's some good ways to answer this.

40:17

But I see, let's see, what did Joel, where is it now? Drew had a comment, here it is, I need to see. Drew says, to the atheist holding to evolution, wouldn't modern science be a crutch?

40:28

Assistance to explain the universe while suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness.

40:33

That's an excellent point there, Joel, or Drew, and that's a good reason why you should get in here. Okay. Okay.

40:40

Then we could promote the Matter of Theology podcast yet again, which, by the way, is a member of the

40:47

Christian podcast community. Just go to christianpodcastcommunity .org. All right. So as we think about this one with all religions being the same,

40:59

I have a very different way of looking at it. And if you get my book, What Do They Believe, the second edition, now,

41:07

What Do They Believe, the blue one, yeah, he's gonna get up in this. See, now he doesn't wanna get up and show everyone his jammies.

41:15

He's trying to reach for it now. Okay, so Les is saying, COVID is not fake.

41:21

Well, let me be clear on what I said, the fake pandemic. It's not a pandemic.

41:27

The death rate did not increase. The worldwide death rate stayed pretty much consistent.

41:36

So we didn't have, we got a lot of people getting contagious and miraculously, a lot of people died of COVID, but they didn't die of other things,

41:44

I guess, because the death rate didn't change much year over year. So I do believe that COVID is real.

41:52

I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying that many governments used it for their own purposes to get power.

41:59

So if you get the copy of my book, What Do They Believe, the second edition, and it has an extra epilogue in there.

42:06

And the reason I put that in there, it's called The Uniqueness of Christianity, is because what I did not expect was gonna be done with that book is that people would use

42:16

What Do They Believe as an evangelistic tool. And so because of that, what we end up having is a book that wasn't designed to be an evangelistic tool, and people are giving it to people because it can be used if you're going through it because it goes through all these different religions.

42:34

And it does show that they're all works -based salvation and Christianity is not.

42:39

So it does have that. But I wanted to, if people are gonna use that, give an extra chapter there to say what makes

42:47

Christianity unique among every religion, and then give a little gospel presentation.

42:52

So doing that, I have three points in there that explains what makes

42:58

Christianity unique. And so I thought in explaining are all religions the same,

43:03

I'd go through that. So I actually argue there's only two religions in the world. There's man -made religion and divine religion, and that's it.

43:11

So now the question is, is there an objective way to know which is divine and which is man -made?

43:17

And the answer is yes. So the simplest way to know is this. One thing we know about humans is we love to praise ourselves.

43:28

Now, some of us love to praise ourselves more than others. The character right over there, and he is

43:35

Donnie, yeah. See, he was pointing to himself there for a moment too. So what you end up seeing is people will praise their good deeds.

43:48

You have a king that goes to battle, what's he gonna do? If he loses the war, he's gonna write about the battles he won because that is what human nature is like.

43:58

We praise ourselves. And so one simple way to look at a man -made religion is any religion, any religion that adds human effort in any aspect to getting right with God is man -made.

44:13

I don't care if they say one good deed counts for 10 bad deeds, that's Islam. That you have to have faith plus works, that's

44:23

Catholicism. That is also Mormonism. You could have doing the

44:29

Torah, do obeying law, that's Rabbinic Judaism. You can say living a good life and caring for others.

44:37

And then in the next life, you'll come back in a higher state until you get to an ultimate state, that's

44:42

Hinduism and Buddhism. All of them have an element of what you do is going to affect what you get from either your next life or get a right state with God.

44:56

And so Christianity is the only religion in all of the world religions that says that God did the work.

45:06

God does all the work, 100 % of it. He did it at the cross. Now let me explain what makes

45:13

Christianity different as well. The cross is very significant because at the cross is where Christ died.

45:20

So let's first look at Christ. Now you look at other world religions, every other world religion, because it's based on a system of you doing works, it's nothing more than a moral system.

45:34

And that's why people say all religions are the same. Well, they think that because all the religions, man -made religions, and there's many of them, they all teach a similar thing, do good deeds.

45:45

It's a system of morality. And so if you have a system of morality, then you're gonna be focused on the system.

45:53

So do you need Joseph Smith for Mormonism? No, actually you don't, because anyone could have fulfilled that role.

46:02

Do you need Muhammad for Islam? No, because there was nothing really special about Muhammad. He was the prophet supposedly that God used, but he's just a human.

46:14

You look at every religion and they're based on a person and their thoughts, but there's nothing unique about the person.

46:21

That's not so in Christianity. In Christianity, you have

46:26

God becoming a man. So what makes it unique is the fact that he is eternal

46:32

God, therefore he can pay an eternal fine, but becoming a man, he can be a sinless, perfect sacrifice for human beings.

46:41

This is what makes Christianity unique, because it is not based on a system of morality, it's based on a person,

46:49

Jesus Christ, and uniquely that person. No one else could fulfill that role because no one else is

46:55

God. Now, because he became a man, he could pay a fine for us.

47:02

Because he's an eternal being, he could pay an eternal fine. So not only is it what makes

47:08

Christianity unique is it's based on a specific, unique individual that no one else could be, but at the cross, it is the only religion where you have a

47:19

God that can be most, both merciful and just. If you think about this, in any other religion, you either have a

47:28

God that's just or merciful. Now in Islam, they'll say, Allah most merciful. And I asked them, but is he just?

47:34

And they say, yes, I say, how? How could he be just and merciful?

47:39

See, mercy and justice are opposite. They're mutually exclusive. If you think about it, and I always use this illustration, if the law says that if I slap

47:52

Donnie here in the face, he must slap me back. Donnie has two choices when

47:57

I slap him. He can choose justice and slap me back.

48:04

Or get embarrassed more. Say that again. Get embarrassed more. Get embarrassed more.

48:10

Well, that might be the case. He could either slap me and give me justice or he cannot slap me and give me mercy.

48:19

But guess what happens if he tries to do both and just slaps me lightly? Well, it's not justice and it's not mercy.

48:26

It's neither. You see, only in Christianity do you have a God that is just and merciful.

48:33

He's just because of the fact that he paid the fine. The actual punishment for our sin was fully paid.

48:41

It was paid by himself. And now that it's fully paid, now he can offer to us mercy.

48:48

So those are three things that I would do. I would look at those and say, these are all objective things that we can look at to see which is the divine religion.

48:56

And Christianity is the only one that fits into that category. All right.

49:02

Now I see a possible troublemaker here that just joined in. Donnie, I think you're the one that'll be in trouble, but Mr.

49:12

Sean here. Sean Moss, how are you, sir? Good.

49:18

Can you hear me? Yeah. I can't believe I figured out your computer. Me neither.

49:26

Do you have some questions for us or challenges for us tonight? Nah, I'm just gonna listen in.

49:32

It's not difficult, Sean. You already know that and are aware of that. You can ask some questions. You always ask me some questions.

49:41

I have to put up with Donnie on a daily basis. That's why we pray for you on a regular basis.

49:46

I'm on the prayer list. I need it. You're on the prayer list as church. Yeah.

49:53

So what questions do you have for us tonight? Not really. Just kind of sitting here listening to Donnie.

49:59

Give him the one you give me. Give him the one you give me all the time. Which one's that?

50:05

I don't know. You come up with some rather weird questions for me. I'm just kidding. Now he's on the spot.

50:13

He doesn't wanna ask questions like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin like on a live show.

50:19

I understand that. You know, he just saves those for you, Donnie. I don't know. Yeah. Well then, let me go on to some other things and I'll leave you guys here in case you have some more questions.

50:30

You could just, you could pipe up. I'd put Sean in the backstage but he probably doesn't know how to work the chat.

50:38

No. So, you know, I was reading through my devotions.

50:44

It's kind of funny. We have, our church is going through the McCheney Bible reading and so is the

50:50

Christian podcast community. So I'm actually going in on Faithlife and marking both of them being done each day as I'm just doing it once.

50:58

Is that called cheating? I don't know. But I think it was Drew who put that into the

51:05

Christian podcast community group that we have on Faithlife as a Bible reading. And so I actually chose that for our church.

51:13

But I was in Acts 5 and this was obviously yesterday because that's when

51:18

I would have been in Acts 5. I had two thoughts that I thought would be fun to talk about here and think through.

51:25

The first one is when I came upon Acts 5 starting in verse one with Ananias and Sapphira.

51:33

I thought of a very interesting argument and folks, this is what I try to do.

51:40

When I do apologetics, what I try to do is I try to come up with things that are not the normal responses that people have heard a hundred times, okay?

51:52

And there we go. Now we get to see more of you as you turn your camera. So what

52:00

I try to do is I wanna think of something that gets people thinking. And this is a good habit to get into because if you're asking the same question that or answering the same question that everyone else answers and someone's already heard the answer, they're not impressed the way they heard it the last time.

52:20

Why are they gonna come to you? So what I try to do is come up with things that are different and I think this may be different.

52:27

One of the arguments that people make on a regular basis that come from a charismatic background is they will take the passage from Hebrews and say that God, speaking of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

52:43

Now, is that true? The answer is yes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, meaning that he doesn't change.

52:49

His nature doesn't change. He didn't stop being God at some point or he didn't stop, you know, have less attributes at some point, now gets more of them.

52:59

Those things don't happen. But what you end up seeing is that the way they will often use it is that if God gave the gift of tongues or the gift of languages in the first century, he must continue to do that today.

53:16

Now, I do have one issue with that is if that's the case, then where was this gift for like 1900 years?

53:23

Because after the first century, we don't see this commonly being used until 1905. We can actually put an exact date to it.

53:30

Because that's when a woman went, ah, why don't we speak in tongues today? And people said, oh, wow, okay. We got the gift of tongues and started doing that.

53:38

And so, now before that, there were people speaking in tongues, by the way, people in the occult and the cult.

53:45

Mormonism was one that was teaching it pretty regularly. So, but the argument that they will have is that if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then

53:54

Jesus Christ would give the same gifts. Oh, by the way, it's not Jesus Christ who gives the gifts.

54:00

It's the Holy Spirit. But even so, they would say that if God's, if Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then we would have to have the same gifts as we would have in the first century.

54:14

Okay. I think about that, and then I turn to Acts 5 and look at Ananias and Sapphira.

54:20

So, let's take there, and this is a way of doing a logic now. You already see where I'm going with this, Donnie, huh?

54:25

Yeah, it's funny. What you do when you do logic is sometimes you step into their worldview.

54:31

Let me write that down. And their argument, take their argument, apply it to something else, and show that, hey, this is your argument.

54:40

It should apply equally here, and let me see if that works. So, let's see if that works.

54:45

Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property. They decided to put back some of the profit, but they told the church,

54:53

Ananias comes in and says, like, he gave all of it. This is everything. Now, Acts 4,

54:59

Barnabas sold property, gave all of it. I'm sure that people were like, wow, look at what

55:06

Barnabas did and Ananias wanted some of that praise for himself. So, he, with his wife, agreed that they would sell some property.

55:12

It was their property. They would sell it, but they would lie about how much they sold it for and just give whatever they gave to the offering.

55:22

They said that's what they sold it for. Except Peter says, realized, because God must have revealed this to him, and Peter asked

55:30

Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit to keep some of the price of the land?

55:37

While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control?

55:46

Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart and have lied not to men, but to God?

55:54

Okay, so that's revealed. What ends up happening? Well, God strikes him dead.

56:02

Okay, it says in verse five, and he heard these words, Ananias fell back and breathed his last, and great fear came upon all who heard it.

56:10

Well, his wife, who didn't know what happened, some men drag out Ananias and go bury him, and his wife comes in not knowing, maybe she was looking for Ananias.

56:19

You know, it's been three hours. She comes in and Peter, you know, she comes in and Peter says,

56:25

Peter responded to her, verse eight, tell me whether you sold the land for such and such a price.

56:31

And she said, yes, that is the price. And then Peter said to her, why is it you have agreed together to put the spirit of the

56:38

Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out as well.

56:46

And immediately she fell at his feet and breathed her last. And the young men came in, found her dead, and carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

56:58

So here's the question. If Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the same way they use it, that God can't change the things he does in the first century, he must do today.

57:08

Why is it that people are not dying when they lie in church? I mean, you're not using the gift.

57:20

Did Peter had a gift of death? Yeah. I mean, I was told I need to use the gift of tongues, you know, activate it.

57:31

Well, see, the thing is, but they're saying that the gifts continue. The reason the gift of tongues continue today.

57:38

We're not using it. But see, but that's not the point. Their argument is that the gift continues today because of the fact that not only did it happen in the first century, but since Jesus doesn't change, it has to happen in this century.

57:52

Well, if that's the case, this happened in the first century. People that lied to God in the first century died.

57:59

Why is it that people that lie in the church nowadays don't die? This was a one -time event.

58:06

But if their argument is Jesus doesn't change, well, then we would say that it should be then a matter that, hey,

58:15

God could be killing people in the church and when they lie in church. Now, what am I doing there? And this is what

58:21

I want to break this down. So people that are watching or listening, you learn, that's what this show is about, learning how to do apologetics.

58:27

What am I doing? Stepping into their worldview, stepping into their logical argument, taking their argument.

58:35

I'm not trying to twist it. I don't want to do a straw man. I want to keep the argument consistent.

58:41

So it's an apple to apples comparison. And then when I do that, I'm just gonna switch out the illustration.

58:49

So instead of using gifts, I'm using people dying because they lied to the spirit.

58:55

And so Donny's holding up the tactics book by my friend, Greg Kokel. And that's an excellent book where he does explain some of these tactics, as he would call them, in how to deal with different arguments.

59:09

And that's an excellent book to get. It's a book I actually, when I do my evangelism trainings, we actually keep them in stock when we sell them.

59:16

The reason we do that is because that is an excellent book in teaching how to ask good questions.

59:23

Right? I gave him one like a year ago and he still hasn't finished it. That's because the reason he hasn't finished it is because Sean can't find it.

59:31

He just saw him looking. And he's got a pretty small library there. It shouldn't take him long.

59:38

I mean. It's on my nightstand in my bedroom.

59:44

Yeah, I mean, but - Very dusty. Around me and in the basement. I don't know that you got that, but.

59:51

I made a couple of young men in my church very happy when I moved into this new house and realized

59:57

I had to downsize my books and gave away 20 % of my books. So I did have at one point about 10 ,000 volumes in my library.

01:00:05

But they've - Did you read all of them? While you were sleeping. Yeah, while I was sleeping.

01:00:12

You read all of them. So I'll just cut to the chase. I mean, not all of them are meant to be read.

01:00:18

Like these are commentaries. These over here are reference works. So, but on all those shelf, that shelf, those.

01:00:25

So I got what? What do I got here? One, two, three, four, five, six. I got six bookcases of read books, two more downstairs.

01:00:34

And then I got two bookcases of reference books. So I got a couple of bookcases. Most of them homemade, by the way, just so you know.

01:00:43

Yeah, I'm way behind, Donnie. Yeah. Hey, Michelle had a question.

01:00:52

Okay, which one was it? Aside from Credo versus, was that Pedo baptism?

01:01:01

What are the key difference between covenant and dispositional theology? Trying to look for the question.

01:01:13

Who was it that asked? I think it was Michelle. I see Melissa asking a question.

01:01:19

Is that? Let me just put this one up here and I'll deal with this one.

01:01:26

Yeah, Melissa, Melissa. Okay. I can't see your name on the screen now, that went up on the. All right, so the question is, this is probably a wider subject than you can handle in one episode.

01:01:38

I'm fairly new to Reformed theology within the last five years. I've only recently come to the conclusion,

01:01:46

I am wrong, dispensational Calvinists are a minority among the Reformed believers.

01:01:52

Aside from Credo and Pedo baptism, what are the key distinction, differences between covenant and dispensational theology?

01:02:01

All right. So, and I do know Melissa. She's a missionary, met her over in the

01:02:07

Philippines where Edison is at. So, probably not exactly where Edison is at because I think

01:02:14

Edison is in Cebu and she was in Manila, but that aside. And we got,

01:02:22

I think Captain Black Eagle is Ron, but he says, great question. So let me try to answer this,

01:02:28

Melissa. And I actually, there's more stuff I have. If you go to our Striving Fraternity Academy, go to strivingfraternity .org,

01:02:35

go to the academy page, go to the class on systematic theology, scroll through that playlist.

01:02:42

We have a whole bunch of ones that deal with dispensational theology. I even have,

01:02:48

I even have, man, someone needs to oil his chair. I'm just saying there, Sean. But the thing that we have is we have some discussions, not debates, but discussions,

01:03:01

Matt Slick and myself, on covenant theology versus dispensationalism. We have a discussion on covenant theology, sorry, new covenant theology versus dispensationalism so we could hash out some of the differences there.

01:03:14

But essentially, where the, in a small way, let me first deal with the credo versus pedo.

01:03:22

And I'm glad you said credo because some Baptists make a mistake of saying that it's believer's baptism.

01:03:30

And I like to ask the question when they do that is, do Presbyterians believe in believer's baptism?

01:03:36

And Baptists will go, no. And Presbyterians go, yes. Because a Presbyterian, when someone converts as an adult to Christianity, they get baptized as a believer in Presbyterianism.

01:03:48

So it really should be said as credo, meaning, so it's that we, after we are regenerated, then we get baptized versus baptizing children and creed.

01:04:04

And that's where we make the distinction. So the reality is that that is something you'll see, you will see covenantal

01:04:14

Baptists, or what's called reformed Baptists, with the 1689

01:04:21

London Confession of Faith that will teach some of these things where they will see baptism as a sign.

01:04:27

And so they agree with some of the views of covenant theology. But really what it comes down to when we see covenant theology, and I'm gonna say something and I want to,

01:04:39

I want, before some people get a knee -jerk reaction, I want you to hear me out on this, okay?

01:04:45

And let me explain, because this is, I'm gonna use historical terminology, and we don't do a good job of that.

01:04:52

And so I need to explain what the words meant at the time, and then carry them over to what they mean today.

01:04:59

So what we look at is covenant theology was actually what the

01:05:04

Catholic Church taught. Now, some people are having the knee -jerk reaction to say that, oh, you're saying that it's wrong because the

01:05:11

Catholic Church taught. No, I'm just saying that is what it was. What the reformers believed was called

01:05:18

Reformed Theology. Now, what it was, the view of, the covenant theology was this idea that there's a covenant relationship, and that that carried over into Reformed Theology, but Reformed Theology had more specifics of how they're going to interpret scripture.

01:05:38

They didn't use the church. They didn't use tradition. The scripture interpreted the scripture.

01:05:43

And so they would not allow some of the things that the Catholic Church would use. They reformed it.

01:05:50

Now, I know that today we use the term Reformed Theology just to mean the doctrines of grace, that you believe in what's called

01:05:56

Calvinism, that you believe in the view that God is sovereign in salvation.

01:06:02

And people use that in that specific way. Many people that would say they hold to covenant theology or Reformed Theology would recognize that many people who say they're reformed are not reformed.

01:06:17

There's many Reformed folks that would say, I'm not reformed. Why? Because Reformed Theology has the idea that you are believing scripture is the authority, but you have a system that includes creeds and confessions.

01:06:33

And I would not hold to creeds and confessions. Well, that actually, no creed, but the Bible is actually a creed, okay?

01:06:39

But I wouldn't use creeds to assist in the interpretation of scripture, okay?

01:06:45

So I'm saying all this to try to be really clear with stuff. What we have is

01:06:51

Covenant Theology, which was reformed by the Reformers as Reformed Theology, okay, but nowadays

01:06:57

Covenant Theology refers to what in the 1500s was Reformed Theology.

01:07:03

And when we talk of Reformed Theology, we're really speaking of the doctrines of grace in today's day.

01:07:09

Now, so all that explanation, just so we have clarity on terminology. So essentially,

01:07:16

Melissa, we can look at three things that we can view with this.

01:07:25

There's three elements of dispensationalism that we can take Dispensational Theology and Covenant Theology or Reformed Theology and put those together.

01:07:35

When I'm saying Covenant slash Reformed Theology, I hope you understand, I'm referring to what the Reformers were teaching, okay?

01:07:43

The theological system that they came with that many hold to today, okay? Just so that we're clear on things.

01:07:51

All right, so what we end up with is that dispensationalism, as it came about, they saw three areas of distinction between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism.

01:08:08

The first is, and I want you to realize that these are both, when I'm speaking of Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology, I'm speaking about them in the hermeneutic.

01:08:19

That's the science of interpretation, how we interpret. Dispensationalism is a hermeneutic.

01:08:26

Covenant Theology or Reformed Theology is much broader than that, okay? It's a hermeneutic, but it's also a theological system.

01:08:34

Okay, Dispensationalism is not so much of a theological system. It's how you interpret the

01:08:40

Bible. And then from that, you're gonna come up with certain things that you'll have as a theological system, but they're not tied together the way

01:08:48

Covenant Theology would be, all right? So let me get those three things.

01:08:53

The first one is that Dispensationalism would have what is called a literal or normal hermeneutic.

01:09:00

In other words, we're gonna, as a Dispensationalist, I'm gonna take things in its normal sense.

01:09:07

What does that mean? Well, if I was to see in Scripture something that's an idiom, that's meant to be an idiom, in other words, if Donny was to tell me that he's so hungry he can eat a cow.

01:09:18

Now, Sean, do you think that Donny can actually eat a cow, a whole cow? No, he's all keto.

01:09:25

Yeah, well then, if he's keto, he's gonna eat lots of cow, right? Yes, yes.

01:09:30

So the thing is that that is in a way of illustrating, it's not meant to be taken literal, it's meant to be something that is taken figuratively, okay?

01:09:44

Well, I'm gonna interpret those things figuratively, but I'm going to default to a literal interpretation for the things that should be literal.

01:09:52

Now, you have things in Covenant Theology where they will take things that are in a simple reading would be literal and they will give it a figurative meaning, okay?

01:10:04

So Revelation 20, you have six times usage of 1 ,000 years. There's a chronological ordering of events.

01:10:12

It seems the 1 ,000 years would be literal there. They would take that as a figurative number.

01:10:17

So it just means a long period of time, okay? Now, why would I lean toward dispensationalism?

01:10:24

Because I think it would be dangerous when you start to, or it could be dangerous. If you need an example, just look at Harold Camping and what he used to teach.

01:10:32

He was a Covenant theologian. Now, I'm not saying all Covenant theologians are extreme like Harold Camping.

01:10:37

I just say that it could lead toward it. There's errors in dispensationalism as well when you get too fanatical about it.

01:10:46

But I don't want to, the issue for me is I don't want to stand before God and say that I said thus says the

01:10:53

Lord when that's not what the Lord said. So if for any reformed folks that understand when it comes to worship, there's a principle called the regulatory principle which says that we don't do anything in worship, that God hasn't explicitly commanded in Scripture.

01:11:07

They regulate the worship to only what God commands. Well, I do the same thing with the interpretation of Scripture.

01:11:14

I would say that we don't go beyond what God has said to do. And so that would be my view, okay?

01:11:22

Now, with that said, we have that, what

01:11:28

I want to point out is that's the first one, okay? A normal interpretation versus a figurative interpretation.

01:11:37

A second would be a Christological approach to Scripture or a doxological approach.

01:11:44

So what that means, Melissa, is Christological, which would be the Covenant view, is that every passage of the

01:11:50

Bible is about Christ. And so they'll come to a book of Song of Solomon and you gotta find

01:11:57

Christ in there. So this is about Christ and the marriage to the church. So does that mean that Song of Solomon had no meaning for a thousand years until there was a church?

01:12:08

I would say no. Now, as a doxological, it means for God's glory,

01:12:13

I say the purpose of Scripture, every passage of Scripture is to give God glory. Now, I can look at Song of Solomon and say it's about a godly marriage.

01:12:23

Now, that doesn't point to Christ, but it does point to God's glory. And I'm gonna interpret that consistently and not try to find a meaning.

01:12:34

That's the thing I don't wanna do. I don't wanna read into the Scripture something that is not there. And I know that many will say, but the

01:12:42

Bible's a special book and it's meant to be interpreted differently. Well, I would challenge people and say, where did

01:12:49

God tell us that we're supposed to interpret that differently? I don't have any of that. The third thing is, and this is the most significant one, is a distinction between Israel and the church.

01:13:01

Now, let me be really clear about this. Covenant theology and dispensationalism, they both see that Israel is not the church, but see similarities, okay?

01:13:11

The issue is that in covenant theology, they're gonna see a lot more similarity and say that the church is

01:13:17

Israel, so that it's one body with two administrations. As a dispensationalist,

01:13:23

I'll say that the nation of Israel is separate from the church that the promises that God gave,

01:13:28

He will do, okay? Those land promises, and He'll do them literally.

01:13:35

All right, so let me just put you guys backstage right here. So I hope that helped, Melissa. We got someone else in here.

01:13:42

Mr. Silvestro, who is probably hanging out somewhere comfortably on his vacation, decided to join us.

01:13:47

Hello, sir. And as usual, he doesn't know how, he's as bad as Sean, doesn't know how to unmute or anything.

01:13:56

He just has to touch that little button that says, you know, he should know better. It's the little button that's the little microphone.

01:14:05

Okay, we got it now. Here we go. Yeah, I had to turn my phone sideways, and then

01:14:10

I got the little button and I couldn't find it. So I saw that you, I had to get on because I saw that the

01:14:16

Reformed Hillbillies were on. Yeah, the Reformed Hillbillies, yes.

01:14:22

Did they announce their new podcast name yet? Or no, I just kind of put it out there.

01:14:28

Is there something - Oh my goodness, no. You were working on that, right?

01:14:33

You were working with Sean, and you were going to be the Reformed Hillbillies, I thought. Yeah, we're working on it.

01:14:44

How's sunny Florida? You know, it's been good down here. There's been a lot of good ministry, and I've been teaching at Beulah Baptist Church last night, later this week, doing some evangelism training for the church.

01:14:57

Wait, what's going on there? I see the flashing light of the police after you there. Yeah, almost.

01:15:03

They almost got me, but I've been eluding them. No, I took my son to a little -

01:15:09

Yeah, my son's at a little amusement park tonight, so he's running around on go -karts and that kind of stuff.

01:15:17

So yeah, that's what's going on here. Anthony also, he's riding go -karts, don't. Well, I rode a few,

01:15:24

I have to admit that, yeah. So I will tell you this, today was a really interesting day.

01:15:31

It was my first time meeting, well, I met John Barrows last week while I was down here, and so we were supposed to go to the abortion mill that he goes to.

01:15:38

He's gone to Faithfully every day for like 18 years, and we had a chance to go today to go see it, and what an amazing ministry.

01:15:46

I mean, talk about how God's hand has been all over this ministry, and I would love to have him on actually one of these nights for Apologize Live and just let him tell the stories he has.

01:15:56

He's full of them. It's incredible. He's got a ton of them, and for folks that don't know, John is a faithful brother. I've known him for years, who has been,

01:16:03

I don't know, I'm thinking it's going on half a dozen to a dozen years that he has been faithfully going to the same abortion mill and sharing the gospel faithfully out there, and I saw your picture.

01:16:15

You had a picture of someone in a Porsche, and you said they can afford to have their baby. You said, or instead of taking his girlfriend to have an abortion, but how do you know?

01:16:27

Did you see him get out of the car? I mean, maybe she had the Porsche. No, he was the driver, and he drove her there, and I'll tell you, it's really interesting.

01:16:36

So first of all, John Barrows has been doing this. I hope you're not getting too much background noise here, but John Barrows has been doing this for 18 years, and he goes every day from eight in the morning until 5 p .m.,

01:16:48

Monday through Friday, and apparently he used to go Saturdays as well, except he's tired of dealing with all the

01:16:53

Catholics that have their statues of Mary and are praying the rosary and really interfering with him.

01:16:59

He says that there's times that they've driven their car up onto the lawn to block him preaching to the abortion mill.

01:17:06

I mean, it's incredible stuff. Because they hate the gospel. Because they hate the gospel, they hate, right. Because they need -

01:17:12

So here's what I can do. Well, that's right. And so there's one Catholic there today, which I guess John tolerates.

01:17:18

It's eyewitness to him today, because he's pretty quiet there. Here's some interesting things about this ministry.

01:17:24

First and foremost, may all of us have pastors who would go out and do evangelism, especially at abortion mills every so often, and to know that John Barrows was really, really close to the

01:17:36

R .C. Sproul. And this is the abortion mill that R .C. Sproul was at a lot. I mean, even when R .C.

01:17:41

was having a hard time walking in the later years of life and oxygen tanks, he was still sitting at the same abortion mill with John, faithfully preaching the gospel and trying to get the women to turn around.

01:17:52

I mean, it was very surreal for me to be there and just kind of know all the ministry that's gone on there.

01:17:59

All the people have gotten saved there. All the babies have gotten saved there. It really is incredible. Here's a great story

01:18:05

I need to share. I'm sure John will repeat it one day if we have him on, but it just so happens in God's providence that one of John's really good friends is a medical doctor who is literally right next door to the abortion clinic, and they share the same driveway.

01:18:20

Which means then, because they share the driveway and he has permission from his friend, the medical doctor, we can be all over that driveway, sidewalk.

01:18:29

I mean, the access we have to this abortion mill is more than - And this is the thing for folks that don't realize, what most abortion mills wanna do, the murder mills don't want you in their parking lot.

01:18:39

And since that's private property, they try to block that off. So say you can only stay on the sidewalk.

01:18:44

And then what they do is a lot of these murder mills, you will see their parking lot is purposely put in the back of the building so that people drive in and don't have to hear the preaching of the gospel.

01:18:57

It tells you that they know what's gonna happen. They know, it's amazing that a friend of mine once said, we were preaching at an abortion mill.

01:19:04

And he said, notice that all the windows are blacked out because there's a shameful thing going on inside there.

01:19:12

And yet you go to the pregnancy center across the street and it's all bright and windows are open because there's godly things being done there.

01:19:21

It's just very interesting even the way they design it. But so they actually don't want you in the parking lot. And they usually will try to block you from that.

01:19:28

But in this case, John actually has access to that. Well, I'll tell you, it's amazing. This abortion mill has the parking lot behind the building as well.

01:19:36

However, we have access all the way down the driveway and it's connected to the parking lot of the other doctors.

01:19:44

So you can stand there right on the line and preach to people who are in that parking lot. And so I spent a lot of my morning doing that today, preaching people in the parking lot.

01:19:53

And that's where I took the picture of the Porsche. The guy was in there and this abortion was interesting because the doctor doesn't show up until somewhere around 12 to two o 'clock every day.

01:20:03

So that means they have females that get there by 7 .30, eight o 'clock in the morning, line up for the opening doors at eight o 'clock.

01:20:10

They go in, they're all told they have an appointment first thing in the morning, right? They go in and they say, go back to the parking lot and wait till the doctor gets here.

01:20:18

And every day, apparently it's the same. Doctor just shows up at 12 or one o 'clock and then performs all the procedures.

01:20:25

So that means that you have hours to be able to talk to the girls. And in this case, they occasionally roll down their windows and get fresh air or open the sunroof as in the guy in the

01:20:35

Porsche's case. So you get a chance to preach for them to have to listen to you. So that was really neat today.

01:20:41

I know in North Carolina, what we used to do, there was one abortion clinic. We did an event every year and what we would do is the guys actually, the abortion mill was set up with a parking lot in the back, but there really wasn't a good, there was no entrance where there's no place to stand on the street.

01:21:00

And so what they would do is they set up on a hill that's public property and used to preach to the parking lot.

01:21:08

So the abortion clinic put a fence. So these guys built a stand and they would get up and stand on a stand so that they could be over the fence and they would preach down to that and they couldn't do anything about it because it was public land and they would amplify.

01:21:25

And so every year we'd go there, we'd preach down to them and it really is, this is the difference because you would see people and we would have the

01:21:33

Catholics there every year and the Catholics would get upset with us because we would preach the gospel to them as well. They need it too.

01:21:39

But the difference is we're preaching the gospel. It's not, it is about saving a baby's life.

01:21:45

It's about preventing a murder, but it's also about the gospel. That's the important there.

01:21:51

And that's what we're gonna, the message we're gonna deliver when we go. Yep, amen to that, that's right.

01:21:56

And it's amazing how many people that just walk past the abortion mill.

01:22:01

So, you can do ministry to all kinds of people there. You've got the people going to the mill, you've got the Catholics and then you've got all kinds of people just walking down the street.

01:22:08

Really it's a great place to minister, although it's really one of the hardest.

01:22:15

So, Julie, she, my wife, Julie, she'll go out and when we go shopping, hand out tracts all day long, she'll talk to people, but she's not one for going to events, right?

01:22:25

She's never gone to a college campus with me. She doesn't, and that's fine. I mean, I get it, it's not her wheelhouse. She decided today to go to the abortion mill.

01:22:32

So, the first thing she picks to do is go there. That is not, knowing your wife, that is not a good place for her to go.

01:22:41

Yeah, you know, she can be a very meek person usually, but every so often, you know, the tiger gets let out of the cage, so to speak.

01:22:49

And that's kind of how she was today. I think the first 20, 30 minutes was just kind of gathering her thoughts about what was going on.

01:22:55

And then she was all out after that. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was interesting, but it is a hard ministry.

01:23:02

I mean, I give people credit. I talk about how hard it is to go to the homosexual parades at times and sometimes college campuses.

01:23:12

I enjoy them, but they can be difficult at times. There is nothing like an abortion mill. When you know what's going on in there all day long, it's a, that's a hard thing mentally to grasp.

01:23:22

Yeah, yeah, I actually, as much as I don't like going to the gay pride parades,

01:23:28

I think I'd prefer that over abortion, you know? Yeah. So let me do this.

01:23:33

Let me keep you on for a little bit longer and maybe we could get to some 2021 reviews and predictions for the year, since that's what we were gonna get to.

01:23:44

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01:26:47

So I noticed, I just noticed this. Look, look who's been watching. It's Mr. Justin Peters. He said, oh, no, that's, that wasn't the first one.

01:26:53

Yeah, here he says, hello everyone. So hello, Justin. Welcome. Justin should just join in, but cause it would be fun to get

01:27:01

Justin's review of 2021 and predictions for 2022. For folks that don't know, he did do a predictions.

01:27:10

Justin recently put out a video, predictions. He gave a 100 % guaranteed prediction that the word that God had spoken to him.

01:27:20

Did you see that video yet, Anthony? I have not, I've not seen it yet. So I didn't know it was out yet. I should have known though.

01:27:26

Yeah, he started doing this, I guess like three years ago. Justin and I were joking one time that what we wanted, what

01:27:31

I wanted to do was, and this is something you shouldn't do, but I wanted to,

01:27:37

I just wanted to start, like on a Monday and go, oh, the word, God gave me a word.

01:27:43

Friday, I'll reveal it. And then, you know, like Tuesday, Wednesday, like the whole week, just keep doing that. And then on Friday, just read scripture, you know, and just, just leave it at that.

01:27:55

And so needless to say, I, you know, we talked about it and realized that's probably not a smart thing to do because chances are there, you know, someone's going to just see, be saying that I got a word for the

01:28:07

Lord and cut us off and never stick around to Friday. So Justin started doing a thing where, what he started to do was like, he would just, he would give a prediction for next year and just give you scripture.

01:28:20

He said, I got a word from the Lord and read scripture. And it's guaranteed to be right. Why? Because, well, it's scripture.

01:28:26

It is God's word. So yeah, so Melissa is saying, it was a great video by Justin.

01:28:33

I look forward to them every year. So, yeah. So let's do a quick review.

01:28:39

I think Justin may be trying to pop in here. So let's do a review of 2021.

01:28:46

Some of the things that you could think about. 2021 was definitely a different year. As we think about even a year ago today, we had fake riots to go along with fake pandemics.

01:28:58

You know, as everyone is sitting there in America and saying, oh, the day that, you know, Joe Biden referred to it as equal as 9 -11 and Pearl Harbor.

01:29:10

Well, let's just do a quick comparison, folks. Anthony, maybe you can help me. I may not be so good with numbers.

01:29:15

I mean, you're the doctor, maybe you're better at numbers. Let's check. $5 billion of damage by Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

01:29:26

$1 .2 million of damage on January 16th.

01:29:31

6th, 2020. Now, included in that damage, the 1 .2 is cleaning up of water bottles and things like that, not destruction of buildings.

01:29:41

Which one is greater, 5 billion or 1 .2 million? Yeah, I would probably have to go with the 5 billion.

01:29:50

I think that sounds like it's just a little bit bigger. All right, so going into a building to take selfies when you're invited in versus burning, actually burning police cars and Capitol buildings in many states, which would you say would be worse?

01:30:14

Yeah, probably the destruction of billions of dollars worth in our cities and private property.

01:30:22

Hey, I got one for you too. What's worse, a couple people being invited into the Capitol or all the people that stormed into the

01:30:32

Brett Kavanaugh hearings and it was completely welcomed by our liberal Nazis in government? And nothing was shut down at that time either.

01:30:40

They continued to have it. So one other comparison, and maybe you can help me with this one because maybe

01:30:47

I don't have this right. An insurrection. An insurrection is by definition where you want to take over the government and fundamentally change it.

01:30:59

You wanna overthrow it. If you want it to overthrow - I think that's called post mill, right?

01:31:06

Yeah. Well, okay, by force, how's that? Oh, okay. So with an insurrection -

01:31:15

Sorry, Brandon and others, I love you guys, I do. And I'm with you most of the way. You just take the shots at them.

01:31:22

They're not gonna invite you back to their conferences. You keep doing these shots. So here's the thing, an insurrection.

01:31:29

Would an insurrection be where you have 800 ,000 people that are asking for the votes to be counted?

01:31:37

Is that an overthrow of democracy? Or is it when you take over city streets, call it a new country and don't allow the police in because you're a chop or whatever they ended up changing the name to afterwards?

01:31:51

Which one really is the insurrection? Yeah, I think the one where you just went in and you took over a part of town might sound more like an insurrection.

01:32:02

Because you said that the whole system had to be torn down, right? Hmm, amazing.

01:32:08

One year ago today - So you realized you couldn't pay for it. Correct, correct. They realized, hey, wait, no one's picking up the garbage and it's mounting up, yeah.

01:32:17

Yeah, or the bills, right? I mean, the money that it costs, so. Yeah, that's the problem with idealism.

01:32:24

Like someone actually has to pay the bill. So here's the thing you end up seeing. Now, let me ask you this.

01:32:29

This was asked by a friend of mine, Brett Lynn, on Facebook. So let me ask you,

01:32:35

Anthony, you wanna go to an insurrection, okay? You're gonna go for the purpose of an insurrection.

01:32:43

You've been told by your president, we gotta march and cause an insurrection. You're gonna take over the government.

01:32:49

Here's the question. In the most armed country in the world, with the most powerful military in the world, do you go to an insurrection with or without your guns?

01:33:01

Well, you would think you'd go with all your guns ablaze. Exactly, and yet not a single gun was found, huh?

01:33:08

It doesn't seem like they actually, and in fact, not a single person has been charged with insurrection. So as we look about this year and we think about, this is where we were one year ago.

01:33:19

The elections, we had just gotten over hearing all this shenanigans that went on in the elections.

01:33:24

We had the inauguration of Biden. Think about,

01:33:32

I mean, think about even with COVID, it's crazy to think about. We shut down the country, shut down the economy, and yet we were in better shape a year ago financially as an economy than we are today.

01:33:48

Crazy to think about. And Humble Clay is saying,

01:33:55

January 6th is a gaslighting campaign by the Democrats, must stop Trump. And that's the thing, it really was.

01:34:02

It was, when you look at that, it's really interesting that when you take a timeline and you look at, we had

01:34:12

Ted Cruz that provided a timeline of events and you compare it to the actual timestamps of things, do you know that they asked the

01:34:20

Senate to shut down and move the first time before people were actually in the building?

01:34:26

So I'm sorry that you can't say it wasn't a setup. I mean, and what are they doing today? We want more power.

01:34:32

So let's, as we think about 2021, we see all this,

01:34:38

I would have to agree with Justin Peters that what we haven't seen unfortunately in 2021 is a stop of the word of faith profits that all predicted

01:34:48

Trump's reelection. Justin has videos showing all that. And then they doubled down, right?

01:34:56

They were saying that he was gonna get back in somehow. So yeah, so they were wrong on multiple levels with those same predictions.

01:35:05

And they, because they said it would be eight consecutive years. And that didn't happen.

01:35:13

And so as we look at 2021 with some, or 2022 with predictions, let me, first off, this is a friend of ours from the

01:35:24

Philippines. Lorraine is, if you guys check her out, Lorraine Lema, I can give you her website, but she says, hello pastors, blessed 2022.

01:35:34

And yes, the word is the best good news of the year. Ha ha. So let me just give a shout out.

01:35:42

Earlier, Edison had been talking about the typhoon that is going on in the

01:35:47

Philippines that people are trying to recover. One of the things that Lorraine is doing is Lorraine is offering, she does social media, help with promoting social media and marketing and things like that.

01:36:01

If you need help in those areas, graphic arts, things like that, I can get you her website. And she is donating all that she's gonna make,

01:36:10

I think it was for this month, to help out people that were hurt by the typhoon.

01:36:17

So check her out. Contact us if you need to get a hold of her, just to find out how to get a hold of her, just email us info at strivingforeternity .org,

01:36:28

and we'll put you in touch with her. Let me bring in for - Don Jacks, is Don Jacks still on?

01:36:36

No. Oh, there he is. There he is, good. So Don, there you go. Now you have somebody finally as a graphic artist that can make your

01:36:43

Reformed Hillbillies podcast artwork. Yeah. That was the last thing we needed right before you started.

01:36:50

And you - Exactly. You know who would be a very good addition to the

01:36:55

Reformed Hillbillies? Anthony? No, Mr. Justin Peters, sir. How are you?

01:37:01

Oh no, yeah. Hey guys, I'm doing well. How are y 'all? He's got the accent from Hillbilly.

01:37:07

Yes. But he's been gone from the South for a while. Does this still count? Is he still part of that clan?

01:37:13

I don't know. He has the singing voice for it. He's got way more of a Hillbilly sound than Dommy does.

01:37:18

Yeah. You know what they're saying, you can take the boy out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the boy. Yeah.

01:37:26

When I listened to videos of me from a decade ago, though, my accent was way heavier 10 years ago than it is now.

01:37:36

That is true. And you know, we can even, if I go and I look, I bet I can find some pictures from you from 10 years ago or more.

01:37:46

I'll go do a look and see if I can find something. But while I'm looking - So while you're looking,

01:37:54

I have to ask, Justin, so I texted you yesterday because somebody sent me that prophetic lab stuff from Bethel IG.

01:38:02

Have you had a chance to look at that yet? A cursory look. I haven't done a deep dive yet, but I've kind of got the gist of it.

01:38:09

And I just, I don't know. I never cease to be amazed.

01:38:15

I mean, I just, when you think they've reached peak crazy, they continue to prove you wrong.

01:38:22

They have great imaginations, all I gotta say, right? I mean, no matter what they come up with, they will outdo it a year later.

01:38:29

Oh yeah. But see, that's the thing is they have to, because that's what the whole movement is built on is craziness.

01:38:37

You know, the latest crazy story, the latest vision, dream. And so people aren't satisfied with scripture.

01:38:45

So you've got to keep coming up with more and more stories. And so it just, it's a snowball of crazy.

01:38:53

Well, before we get to Justin's review of 2021, let's take a review of a younger version of Mr.

01:39:01

Peters. Yeah, so that's what you used to look like, sir.

01:39:07

Not too many years ago. Yeah, that is a boy. The fall has taken its toll.

01:39:14

I was way, my hair was way thicker. I was way skinnier. My goodness.

01:39:20

No beard. There was a time I had hair too. Yeah, mine is turning gray and turning loose.

01:39:31

It's distinguished, Justin. There you go. There you go. Sorry, I dropped that. And I've got a lot of that.

01:39:37

Yeah. Yeah, I've got a lot of distinguishing factors on my face now for sure.

01:39:45

Yeah. I would like to see a picture of Anthony with hair. I mean, I can, you know, I don't have that.

01:39:51

You want to send that? Yeah, when I'm like 12 years old, might be the last time. The problem is, honestly,

01:39:58

I think I started losing hair already and started graying when I was about 20 years old. 2021 is when it all started too.

01:40:05

Yeah. So it's been a long time. So Justin, what's your review of 2021?

01:40:12

What highlights, we mentioned some of them. I mentioned some of your videos even, but what do you think is a review of 2021?

01:40:21

What are the highlights or lowlights? Highlights. A lot more lowlights than highlights.

01:40:27

Yeah. Yeah. I imagine Captain Black Eagle grits with sugar or salt and butter.

01:40:33

Grits with butter, that's it. No sugar and grits, just butter. Anyway, I aggress, sorry.

01:40:39

Lowlights. I'd have to say the SBC. The SBC is an absolute dumpster fire.

01:40:48

You have the president, the former president and current presidents of the

01:40:54

SBC who are both liars, who are both plagiarists, who have both said that the

01:41:01

Bible whispers about sexual sin. Started with that one. And they,

01:41:06

Ed Litton, the current president of the SBC, not only did he plagiarize, but he lied about it.

01:41:12

After it was discovered, he lied about it continually, was invited onto the platform of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the seminary from which

01:41:22

I graduated and he graduated, but we were there at different times, by the president of Southwestern Seminary, Adam Greenway.

01:41:32

I went to seminary with Adam Greenway. He and I are about the same age. I know Adam. And Adam invites

01:41:38

Ed Litton up on the platform and does a Q &A and lets Ed Litton, bald -faced lie in front of everybody.

01:41:48

And they give him a round of applause. I mean, just stunning.

01:41:54

And now, as bad as that is, a few weeks ago, you have James Merritt, the president, or excuse me,

01:42:02

SBC pastor and former president of the SBC, fully endorsing a sermon preached by his son,

01:42:10

Jonathan Merritt, who is an open homosexual, open homosexual. And here you have

01:42:17

James Merritt, one of the most prominent names in the SBC, endorsing a sermon by a homosexual, calling it, quote, brilliant and faithful to the gospel.

01:42:29

Ay -yi -yi. I didn't hear that. Absolutely stunning. That fits into one of my predictions for 2022, is on January 16th, myself along with hundreds of other pastors are gonna be taking to our pulpits to preach a message on a stand of biblical sexuality and morality, okay?

01:42:51

My prediction is that Ed Litton will deliver a message on January 23rd because he needs to know what everyone else said to preach it.

01:43:00

Oh, wait, no, no, sorry. We won't be preaching any message on biblical sexual morality,

01:43:06

I'm sorry. Yeah, my prediction is Ed Litton will not be preaching.

01:43:13

And most of these SBC elites will not be preaching on January 16th on a biblical view of sexual morality.

01:43:23

But there will be many that will. And that's a prediction I have. I will see if I'm right.

01:43:29

You guys disagree. You think that I'm wrong on that one? No idea.

01:43:37

In their head, no. You know what? I'm just thankful that John MacArthur has taken the steps ahead of time and had the statement put out there for Christians to sign and put it out there for pastors to go out on the 16th and preach messages on this.

01:43:54

Well, let's be fair. It actually didn't start with Dr. MacArthur. It actually started up in Canada where the law was put into place.

01:44:02

And a bunch of Canadians decided we're gonna do this. And it kind of rippled through.

01:44:07

And guys, James White was speaking about it before this came out from John MacArthur. There were a lot of people talking about it and looking to do that.

01:44:15

I was looking to do that. We have podcasters that are from Canada, pastors.

01:44:22

And I'm gonna be interviewing on the Rapp Report. I'm gonna be interviewing one of those pastors.

01:44:28

And we're gonna talk about the law that got passed. I can't believe how in Canada that basically makes it illegal for you to share, basically to convince anybody or discuss with anybody coming out of homosexuality.

01:44:44

But this thing is so broad that a parent who is telling their child, you're a boy and not a girl can be under criminal charges.

01:44:53

Just think about that. This isn't pastors. And yet, if you can try to convince someone to be a homosexual, there's no law against that.

01:45:04

And so my prediction is that that will not just affect Canada. I believe you're gonna see that coming closer and closer in America within this next year.

01:45:14

Well, absolutely. And this is why, I've been very disappointed. This is where I do agree with my

01:45:20

Post Mill brothers in some things is that a lot of Christians tend to be reactive rather than proactive when it comes to these social issues.

01:45:28

And as time as Christians, we become more proactive. And so I'm glad we're doing this with homosexuality right now and trying to get ahead of the curve and prepare our congregations for it, prepare

01:45:38

Christians for it, because it is coming. There's no doubt about it. It's just a matter of when. Oh yeah, the

01:45:45

United States always, it always lags behind Canada in its social liberalism and progressivism, but it catches up, right?

01:45:52

And so we're rapidly catching up and yeah. Unfortunately, we used to lead the world in good things.

01:46:03

Now, unfortunately, we're leading the world in perversion. I would not at all be surprised.

01:46:09

I mean, I have no way of knowing this, but if the Lord allows me to live long enough, I would not at all be surprised if I spend my last days in prison.

01:46:20

So - Not because I'm gonna rob a bank, because I'm gonna just preach the gospel.

01:46:25

And I would not be surprised if that ends up happening. So let me ask this as a prediction.

01:46:32

What do you see for 2022 in light of Christian persecution?

01:46:40

Both of you. Do you think it's gonna get better? Or do you think there's gonna be persecution? You think it's gonna be more rampant?

01:46:46

Oh yeah, it'll be more rampant, yeah. Things are not gonna get better. You know, here's what I see is that the, this whole insurrection garbage from last year has caused government officials, police officers, to have less tolerance, so to speak, for free speech and for other things.

01:47:04

So I think they're gonna use that as an excuse going forward and be able to shut down preachers on streets, preachers on college campuses and different areas.

01:47:12

And so I do think it's coming and it's gonna be coming real fast here over the next couple of years.

01:47:18

Yeah, I think my prediction is you're gonna see a political maneuvering where they're going to try to secure their, that's what today was all about, a theater to try to grab more control, to pass this bill that they, where they wanna, basically they stole one election and now they wanna be able to keep that forever.

01:47:36

You look at the people that have been prisoners and that's really what they are, they're prisoners in jail for a year now.

01:47:45

One year, they haven't had due process. I think that that is being allowed and they're gonna do more of it, okay?

01:47:55

They've gotten away with this for a year, no one has, unfortunately, there hasn't been any uprising to the fact that we have 700 people that have not had due process, that haven't been able to see family, they've been in isolation, they've only been out for half an hour to two hours a day for a year, they're not being fed.

01:48:16

There's a guy who his lawyer is saying he's gonna die in prison because he's got celiac disease and they're not giving him meals that would, that care for him, they're not giving him proper care.

01:48:25

They're putting these people in a position where they'll do anything, even plead guilty just to get out and that's, this is against the

01:48:32

Geneva Convention but now that they've been able to do that and the media has been willing to cover it up,

01:48:39

I think you're gonna see more of it, okay? But here's the, but here, yeah, go on.

01:48:45

Go ahead, Ant. I guess my question is, is what do you do about it? I mean, you have government officials don't care,

01:48:52

Republicans don't care, right? Democrats obviously don't care. So other than an uprising by militia groups in this country, what can possibly stop this from happening?

01:49:03

God. Well, right, and that's it. I agree with you but that's it, right?

01:49:10

Yeah, I mean, look, here's one thing. Let me do this and say this for everyone listening and share this with everybody.

01:49:17

Every time you hear someone talk about insurrection or January 6th, bring up Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

01:49:24

Do not let them get away with it. Just keep pointing out that the real insurrection was what happened for a year and a half, a year and a half of riding in streets and looting versus two hours, you know?

01:49:38

It's just, you know, and to hear these Republicans who are going, oh, well, this was the worst day ever.

01:49:45

No, it wasn't. You know, it's silent during a year and a half of riots.

01:49:53

I mean, what they're doing now is, it's so interesting in Los Angeles. They've basically like, and as with other places, like in Philadelphia here, they allow, if you break into a place and steal under $1 ,000, they're not gonna prosecute it.

01:50:10

They're gonna just let you go, which means everyone's breaking into stores and going, okay, as long as it's under $1 ,000, we can just take it.

01:50:16

And of course, now the IRS, they did come up with something. The IRS says if you've stolen something and you haven't returned it within the year, you have to report it on your taxes income.

01:50:28

Really, you really think people are gonna do that? Yeah, I stole a $999 TV. I'm gonna report that,

01:50:35

I don't think so. So now you know what happened in LA? There's gun stores in LA that are selling out, cannot sell quick enough because in LA, they've moved from stealing $1 ,000 in stores to thousands of dollars in people's homes.

01:50:50

Police won't do anything. So people, I saw a store owner, he's like, all of a sudden all these social elites who are against guns, they're coming in there.

01:51:01

They know who they are. They were offered gun control, but since the police aren't gonna come to their house, they want guns in their house.

01:51:10

So Justin, what do you have for predictions for 2022? Gosh, I think we're gonna see more churches leave the

01:51:24

SBC. I don't know that the SBC will split because I'm not sure there's enough churches that will actually leave to constitute a split.

01:51:37

I predict to see, if not this year, definitely before this administration is out the door.

01:51:46

In the next couple of three years, I would be surprised if we did not see a concerted effort and push to make it so that if a church preaches against homosexuality, they lose their 501c3.

01:52:03

And that will be kind of an intermediate step before making it illegal, but an intermediate step to try to tamp down on that freedom.

01:52:12

So I would not at all be surprised to see that in this country, that churches would lose their nonprofit status if they teach against homosexuality or transgenderism or fill in the blank.

01:52:22

Yeah, I predict that that'll be the year after next. I think that, my prediction is that they have to do something to solidify the

01:52:29

Democrats in Congress this year. And once that's solidified, then they can do that.

01:52:37

But I think the way they're gonna solidify it is they're going to break the filibuster and push through this bill that will allow them to do mass mail -in ballots.

01:52:46

And in doing mass mail -in ballots, they will be able to then do as they did in the last election, just make sure that they get the votes that they need everywhere.

01:52:54

But I will give this as my prediction, the result of today is gonna, we're gonna have to see.

01:53:03

If in the next couple of weeks, they do not, if they cannot break the filibuster and cannot get this thing passed, if Manchin doesn't vote with them, then my guess is, if they can't get this, what they call election integrity bill passed, which is really a stealing of elections, which is really kind of funny,

01:53:23

I think Daily Wire worded it really well. They're accusing the

01:53:29

Republicans of wanting to overturn an election or steal an election by jerry -rigging the election.

01:53:41

So what they wanna do is basically jerry -rig all the elections, right?

01:53:47

So it's like, we're gonna say the Republicans are doing this, but it's really what we did and we wanna make sure we can keep doing it.

01:53:52

If they can't do it, you're already seeing a switch. COVID is now being pushed down from a federal level to a state level.

01:54:00

Masks don't work anymore. They're admitting that cloth masks are useless, that the

01:54:05

PCR tests don't, they're not reliable. They're now outing all these things.

01:54:12

My prediction is that if they cannot get this election bill passed, then you're gonna see a shift to the blaming of conservatives for basically everything with COVID.

01:54:25

They're gonna get blamed for masks. You're already starting to see it, I believe, where if anyone gets COVID, someone on The View, I forget who it was on The View that got

01:54:34

COVID. She's fully vaccinated. She got COVID. Who is it? Whoopi Goldberg. And the blame got put on the unvaccinated, that there's just too many unvaccinated people and because of that, she got

01:54:48

COVID. Well, if your COVID would have protected you, you wouldn't have gotten it, right?

01:54:53

So I think what you're seeing is you're gonna see a shift, a blaming on the unvaccinated and many of the unvaccinated, they're saying are

01:55:04

Christians. And so I don't know if that's true. I don't know where they get those numbers, but I think what you're gonna start to see, my argument's gonna be,

01:55:13

Justin, is they're first gonna argue for the unvaccination and start putting pressure on churches and start shutting them down first.

01:55:22

I think they're gonna take away 501c3 status if they're not promoting vaccinations, if they don't have some rules to vaccinate.

01:55:31

So we'll have to see which one of us is right, but unfortunately, we both see the same thing, don't we?

01:55:38

In game, yeah, I see the same thing. The efficacy of the vaccines is, oh, you've, oh.

01:55:49

I was trying to mute Anthony. I accidentally muted you, sorry. Okay, the efficacy of the quote -unquote vaccines,

01:55:58

I think that's kind of unraveling. I think you're seeing now even some liberal newscasters asking, saying some of the things that we've been saying for two years now.

01:56:10

But anyway, we'll see what that, oh, I got on a lighter note, I gotta tell you guys this.

01:56:16

This lady called me a few months ago and she thanked me for exposing

01:56:21

Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen, dah, dah, dah. And she said, but I know two real prophets and they're the real deal.

01:56:28

I said, oh, who's that? She said, Robin Bullock and Cat Kerr. Cat Kerr, the pink haired lady with the magic

01:56:39

Gandalf staff that rebukes hurricanes in Florida and yet they shockingly barrel on anyway.

01:56:49

But I talked to her on the phone the other day because she says she goes to heaven regularly.

01:56:55

And she told me a couple of months ago that by Christmas, this past Christmas, that Donald Trump would be back in the

01:57:01

White House. Well, he wasn't obviously. And so I still had her number in my phone because she called me.

01:57:09

And so I called her back. Her name's Regina. Regina, what happened? Oh, he's getting in there.

01:57:16

He's gonna, within the next two weeks. And she said, and I got to tell you, Justin, she said, Biden's in the freezer. And I said, what?

01:57:25

Biden's in the freezer? And she said, yes, Biden's in the freezer. He's dead. And she said, he's been dead for weeks and everything you see from him, that's old footage.

01:57:39

And sometimes, she says, sometimes Barack Obama comes out, but he's disguised as Biden.

01:57:46

And I was like, I said, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're saying Barack Obama comes out and he's wearing

01:57:52

Joe Biden suit? You know, like silence of the lamb kind of suit? But anyway, just wanted y 'all to know that Biden is dead and he's in the freezer.

01:58:02

Yeah, well, we call him the living dead. Anthony, I just unmuted you.

01:58:10

Oh, thanks, yeah. I often look at Biden and think the movie,

01:58:16

Weekend at Bernie's, when they're propping up. I have to go watch that movie.

01:58:21

I've heard that so often in the past year or so. Oh, yeah, it's hilarious. I mean, some predictions we have for this year.

01:58:29

I think that, I think I'll tell you one prediction. You know, I think we're, we're gonna continue doing

01:58:36

Apologetics Live and having some good content for you guys. So I think that's something we'll keep doing.

01:58:42

It's, you know, since Anthony's on here, I guess I'll use the last minute. You know, I started off the show saying that, you know, as many of you know,

01:58:50

Anthony gives me a hard time because he's Dr. Silvestro and he used to introduce, and Justin, you and I witnessed this, that he would introduce himself as doctor and he'd introduce

01:59:01

Frank as soon to be doctor and introduce me as not a doctor, okay?

01:59:07

So, Anthony said this thing about the titles. Well, I haven't - Okay, hold on, hold on.

01:59:12

It's an inside joke. I don't do that to you publicly. It's just, it's kind of a funny thing for us, but yeah, okay.

01:59:18

So here's the thing. For Christmas, I got a new title. I became a landowner in Scotland and I'm officially

01:59:27

Lord Andrew Rappaport. So, sir, you're going to have to refer to me as Lord.

01:59:37

I am not calling you Lord. I would have named a planet after you and just pretended you were a

01:59:45

Mormon if you really needed a title. You can do that. You could buy a planet for me.

01:59:51

You can buy planets, you can buy stars, you can buy constellations. Well, you can buy, okay. My kids have a planet named after them,

01:59:57

I believe. So does my brother, yeah. So I just figured that would be a fun way of, Anthony's big on having his wife call him

02:00:05

Lord, but now that I have that title, we'll see if Anthony's gonna. You got one square foot in Scotland, right?

02:00:17

Yeah, it's like one square foot, no, it's actually, I think it's one foot by 10 foot and they plant a tree.

02:00:23

It actually has the location of the plot number and everything. Wow. So can you be like buried on your property one day or?

02:00:31

I wondered that. Well, here's the thing I was wondering. I was wondering if I can get, by virtue that I'm now a landowner in Scotland, can

02:00:42

I get Scottish citizenship? Ah, see, it was an interesting thought.

02:00:49

Well, hopefully you don't get a tax bill in the mail for property tax coming back to your house.

02:00:56

This might just be a big ruse. Yeah. Hey, Merry Christmas.

02:01:02

Oops, they didn't know that was gonna happen. Well, with that, we're gonna end the show.

02:01:10

We thank everyone for coming in. Justin, Anthony, thanks for giving us your predictions and whatnot. It was good to have, and we'll be back next week.

02:01:20

I don't know what we got planned for next week, but I'm sure we're gonna have a show and maybe Anthony will be back home and we could do a show with, you know, a regular show.

02:01:30

It'd be interesting to have a regular show. So Humble Clay, we'll just put this because Anthony will appreciate it.

02:01:36

2022 is already better, hashtag Anthony time. Yes. We're about two minutes into Anthony time, but we'll be back next week.