Matt Slick Live: August 27, 2024

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It's Matt Slick Live! Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at karm .org.

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When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick Live for answers. Taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877 -207 -2276.

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Here's Matt Slick. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. You are listening to Matt Slick Live.

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What a nice coincidence that is because it's my name and if you are a new listener, it's my real name.

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It's not a radio name. Matt Slick. I'm an ex -pastor, so Reverend Slick never does sound good, but that's just what it is.

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Hey look, if you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276 and we can get to you.

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Also, you can email me at info at karm .org.

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You can do that really nice and easy and just put in the subject line, radio comment, radio question, and we can get to your stuff.

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All right. Let's see, we've got a caller coming in and I guess

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I had great conversations last night on some social media. I do a lot of voice stuff when

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I'm walking around the block and things like that. So maybe we'll get to some of that later.

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All right. Let's get to Luke from Washington, D .C. Luke, welcome.

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You're on the air. Hi, Matt. How are you? I'm doing all right. I'm hanging in there. So what's up?

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My question is, what does you shall not judge mean? Well context is everything.

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Do not judge lest you be judged. So what he's doing, Jesus is talking, this is Matthew 7 -1, he's talking in the context of the

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Beatitudes. And so he's saying, be very careful because he says, notice the next verse, do not judge so that you'll not be judged for in the way you judge, you will be judged and by your standard of measure, it will be measured out.

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Now people say, well, you can't judge anybody. Well, that's not correct because it says in, oh man, oh man,

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I've got all these verses in my head, sometimes I get mixed up. It says 1 Corinthians 2 -15, he who is spiritual appraises or judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one.

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So what we're to do is judge between good and bad, and that's why we correct people for their bad doctrines and their bad behaviors.

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So in the Beatitudes, these are basic wisdom statements. So we're not to be judgeable.

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We don't go just judging people, hey, you know, you're bad, you're bad, just judge them all the time. Don't do that.

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You'll be judged that way by God. If you're going to make a judgment, do it with sound judgment according to the revelation of Scripture.

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So that's basically what is going on, okay? All right, why, did you talk to some people who said, who used that verse against you or something?

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Yes, yes, you know, yeah, you shall not judge, you know, there's homosexuality or something, you know, you cannot judge homosexuality, it's a sin.

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Of course you say, no, it's a sin. When people say that to me, something like that, I'll say to them, let me ask you a question.

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If someone were to murder somebody else, would you say that it was wrong for them to do that? Welcome back to the

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Surround Sound podcast. Okay, there you go. The third segment. Baseball, one.

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Don't make any judgments because you make judgments all the time. You judge how fast to drive, what to eat, who to marry, who to have friends over.

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You judge various things all the time. When it comes to other people, you got to be careful about judging their motives unless they tell you what the motives are.

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Like last night, I was talking to some Catholics and I told them they have idols in their hearts and I'm trying to push those idols over, just as Jesus judged the false teachers for their false teaching,

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I'm judging their false teaching as well. So we're able to make spiritual judgments, 1

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Corinthians 2 .15, that's what we're able to do. All right? Now, I've written an article on this, and it's what does you shall not judge mean?

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All right? And it's on Karma and you can look it up and there's more information on it. Okay? Yeah. When they ask you what moral you have to judge other people, you know, you are also a sinner, so how come you can judge other people?

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What moral standard do you have? I said I have a Bible. Yeah, the standard of scripture.

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That's right. You can say the Bible condemns certain things and calls them wrong, like murder. You shall not murder.

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Are you saying I shouldn't say someone shouldn't murder or that they're wrong for murdering? Is that what you're saying? Okay. All right?

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That's how you handle it. All right. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. All right.

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Well, that was Luke from Washington. We have nobody waiting right now. If you want to give me a call, it's easy.

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All you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276.

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I want to hear from you so I can know what it is that, uh, well, that's interesting.

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Why that, that, that's interesting. Um, hmm. Okay. Research that later. I got all kinds of stuff happening all the time.

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What I have to learn how to do is, uh, is, is appropriate my time so set so that I'm not doing too many things at once.

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In fact, uh, I sometimes write articles while I'm on break. I'll jump in and write articles.

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And what I was doing today was doing various video lighting tests with different cameras trying to get the right one so I can use it on some

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AI generated avatar stuff and, um, just working it, working it, working it.

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So it's all kinds of things that I have to do. All right. Uh, since we have nobody waiting, if you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

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What I'm going to do right now is I'm going to just, uh, do some hate, I mean, not hate mail. I'm going to do some, um, questions that people have sent in.

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And that reminds me, we will not be on the radio on September 2nd and won't be live. That is because it's a

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Memorial Day or was it, is that what it is? And so we'll not be on, on the second on, on Monday next week.

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All right. So here's an email. Here's an email. Uh, good afternoon. This is Alberto.

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The question is, why do preachers, when they quote Romans 8, 1, always stop at the first part of the verse and don't read the entire verse?

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Uh, so Romans 8, 1, we'll go to that and I'll read it to you. It says, uh, therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Well, that's the verse. Uh, always start with the first part of the verse and don't read the entire verse because first part doesn't end with period, but a comma.

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They mislead our listeners. Well, I'm not sure which ones you're talking about or what the context is that people are, are quoting that verse and what the reason is.

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I would have to know what the context is. All right. All right. Let's get another one here. Uh, Romans 2, 15 says that God's law is written on our hearts.

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I read some articles online about this concept. They basically say that this means God's laws manifest to everyone and that this law written on our heart provides sufficient evidence of God's righteous standards of right and wrong.

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That's good. That's very good. What is confusing to me is how does the law written on our hearts provide sufficient evidence of God's righteous demands, uh, or make

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God's law, uh, morally manifested anyway. Okay. So let me back up a little bit and I'll explain something. We're made in the image of God and God has certain attributes.

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There are communicable attributes and they're incommunicable or none. They cannot be communicated to us.

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So for example, God is everywhere. He's all knowing. He cannot communicate those to us in that they cannot become part of us.

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So when you talk about the communicable attributes, this is what it means to be made in the image of God. God loves, we can love.

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God thinks we can think God recognizes others. We could do the same thing, et cetera, et cetera. Now we're made in the image of God in more ways than just the communicable attributes.

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We have life and we, um, have the, we have souls and things like that.

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All right. So in this being made in his image, there's an imprint of the righteousness of God that's communicated to us because he is holy.

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Everybody has this. However, but because of the fall of Adam, the many were made sinners.

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Romans 5 19. It means that we who were in the Adam died with him and were made sinners by what he did.

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You don't have to like it, but that's what the Bible teaches. Romans 5 19. So when we get to the issue of the law, the law written on our heart, the righteousness that is there that comes ultimately from the heart of God is manifested within us.

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Now people will suppress it or people will, uh, listen to it now.

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So now we get this foundation laid. Let's get back into what, uh, what's being said. What is confusing to me is how does the law written written on our hearts provide sufficient evidence of God's righteous demand because he is the source of that righteousness.

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Us being made in his image, since we are made in his image, then that evidence is, is made manifest within us because we know what righteousness is.

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If righteousness was based on my personal preferences, then I can't say my neighbor is right or wrong about anything, but we have this sense of righteousness that we know that transcends just my neighbor and me, but the person across the street, the person in the next town, the person in the next state, because it's always wrong to murder.

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It's always wrong to steal, et cetera, et cetera. And so these universal principles are written on our hearts because ultimately they reflect the universal truth of who

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God is. So to continue with the email is, you know, how does this provide sufficient evidence for God's righteous demands or make

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God's law or morally manifest to everyone because it's written in his law on our hearts and we're all made in the image of God.

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That's why, that's why even people, even Christians have strong disagreements about what is demanded by God and what isn't.

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That's because of the effect of sin upon us. The fact is whether you're a

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Christian or non -Christian, we don't always agree with everything morally because we have different opinions sometimes in debatable issues.

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Now this is allowed in Romans 14, one through 12 and particularly verse five where it says each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.

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So what we're talking about here is the effect of the fall, the effect of sin upon people and because of that people have different opinions in some instances about what ought to be done or ought not be done.

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Now we'd have to go over particulars in the nuances of people's situations, their context of what time, what culture and all kinds of variables to be able to look at some things because we can't in the minutia, we can't say everything done a certain way is always right or wrong because there are gray areas.

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But anyway, so yeah, people do have disagreements, there are different denominations and traditions for a reason, yes that's why, because they differ on to such things as pre -trib rapture, post -trib rapture, infant baptism, not infant baptism, worship on Sunday or Saturday, things like that, charismatic gifts continuing or not and those things are debatable issues and we are allowed to have differences of opinion in them.

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And the email goes on, this has been on my mind a lot lately, I can't seem to find an answer anywhere, so your help would be greatly appreciated, there you go.

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I hope that helps, I don't know if the person is listening on the radio and got that, but that's one of the questions that is there, and so there you go.

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Let's just jump on the line with Adrian from Greensboro, North Carolina, Adrian welcome, you are on the air.

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Yes, yes sir, thank you, God bless you. I got this, my surprise, yes, thank you, yesterday from one of my friends that says, what were the results of the general conference of the

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United Methodist Church? My question is, well let me tell you what this is, general conference edited the list of offenses for which a clergy could be charged by removing immorality including, but not limited to, not being celibate in a singleness or not faithful in a heterosexual marriage.

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What does that mean? That means you can have lust and follow through with it and it be okay?

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Well, we'll tell you, we've got a break coming up, so I'm going to ask you to do is to re -read that to me, and I'm going to really pay attention so that we can go over it, okay?

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So hold on, because there's a break. Thank you sir, thank you. All right. Hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages, please stay tuned.

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It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

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Here's Matt Slick. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, it is easy.

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All you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276.

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Let's get back on with Adrienne. Are you there? Yes sir, thank you.

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All right. Now, could you please read that to me again? Okay. Okay.

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It says, what were the results of the General Conference of the

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United Methodist Church? And it says, in short, General Conference edited the list of offenses for which a clergy could be charged by removing immorality, including, but not limited to, not being celibate in a singleness or not faithful in a heterosexual marriage,

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B, practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings.

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This is terrible. This is awful. Well, yeah. Removing? So, now

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I found the paragraph, I got what you said, and General Conference edited the list of offenses by which a clergy could be charged by removing,

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A, by removing immorality, including, but not limited to, I hate this kind of language because it's confusing to me.

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I've always had a problem understanding things like this. You know, limited, but not excluded, but then this and that, and it's just, anyway, immorality included, but not limited to.

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What is immorality including, but not limited to? Being celibate in singleness or not faithful in, see,

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I can't, I can't understand those things. I'm sorry. I don't have that. There's a brain glitch.

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I have trouble with those kinds of statements. They're not clear to me. But when I was. Not being celibate.

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It's the, well, United Methodist Church is apostate. It's a false church. Yeah, it is.

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So, what I did during the break is, I went and I found a website from them and I did some research, just really quickly, and it says, quote, as the newly adopted language reads, we will not penalize any clergy for performing or refraining from performing a same sex marriage service.

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So, they're going to say, the UMC says it's okay to perform a same sex marriage.

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This is blasphemy and it's apostasy. Yes, it is. And the United Methodist Church should not be considered a

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Christian church. Okay? Oh. All right.

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Yes, sir. I've got more. Thank you. It also says the desires of all clergy are to be honored and not judged by others.

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The UMC will not require any local church to hold or prohibit a local church from holding a same sex marriage service on property owned by a local church.

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So, in other words, the UMC is saying, we're not going to require it, but we don't say you have to either. You can do it if you want.

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So, the UMC is a bad church. There's a United Methodist Church here in Boise area, where I live, and a few years ago, the woman pastor, and women pastors are not biblical.

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That's bad. Yes. She had a Muslim come in and preach to the congregation one

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Sunday. This is apostasy. And I went out there and I passed out literature in front of the church.

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People coming out. They didn't treat me too well. Only one person did, but most of them didn't. All right.

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Yes, sir. Well, you're saying, do you go to that church or what?

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You know someone who does? It just hurts my soul. I'm 70 years old.

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I was raised in the Methodist Church, and it was not like this. It was not like this.

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And I'm just sad. I'm sad. My feelings are hurt. I pray for these people.

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They're wrong. Why don't they see? These are the powers that be. Why don't they see that they're wrong?

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There's so much stuff out of the Bible. Sorry. That's okay.

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I like that. It's fine. It's because they're not Christians. They're false converts.

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They're in a place of power in a church, and they are ultimately serving the devil. They are not serving

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God. That's why. Uh -huh. Okay. Well, I'm glad my mom and dad aren't here to see this.

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Here's another statement. The annual conference and general church monies are no longer prohibited from being used to promote and accept homosexuality.

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Diane, you can use church monies. I'm sorry. To promote and accept what? I'm sorry. Annual conference and general church monies are no longer prohibited from being used to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.

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Isn't that sad? It's apostasy. That is awful. It is awful.

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Doesn't it just hurt your soul? It hurts my soul. Yes, it does. But you know what? Adrienne, I live in this all the time.

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I live in it. What I mean is I'm always sticking my nose into heresies and denials and problems.

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I talk to Catholics. Thank you. The Catholic Church is apostate. The Eastern Orthodox Church is apostate.

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The UMC is apostate. The Baptists are going that way.

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Some of the Presbyterian churches, non -Presbyterian, some of them are going bad. The Nazarenes are going bad.

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And the reason is because they're not submitting to God's word. And the men who are supposed to be in charge, women aren't supposed to be pastors and teachers according to the scriptures.

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The men who are supposed to be in charge are mamby -pamby wimps who don't stand on the truth of God's word.

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They hold their finger up in the air to see which way the doctrinal heresy is blowing and then they just follow it.

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And they bow down before the false idols of DEI, of wokeness, of homosexuality, of abortion, of all kinds of stuff because they don't have the guts and what it takes to be true men of God.

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They're weaklings. They're whitewashed supplicants. And they need to be dealt with. And true

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Christians need to get them out of office and need to cleanse the church. It needs to happen all over the place.

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Exactly. Exactly. And I pray for somebody to stand up for that. And I'm going to look for a new church.

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And I go into church and I look at their what? What they're about?

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What you do is you go on the web and you look at their website and you go to two places you go to first.

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Go to their staff and see if they have any women elders or women pastors. If they do, don't bother.

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Eighty percent of churches and denominations that adopt women pastors within two generations, eighty percent adopt pro -homosexual stuff.

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Eighty percent. Yes. Okay. Now that's one thing. Women pastors and women elders is wrong.

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It's unbiblical. And I'll just say this again like I've been doing for 21 years. I offer anybody if you want to have a formal debate in a church recorded on video.

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Does the Bible support women pastors and elders? That's the debate challenge I've been offering for over 20 years.

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Well, maybe about 19. And no one's taken me up on it. Not once. Okay. So there's that.

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The other thing you want to look for on a website is the statement of faith. You want to look at the statement of faith.

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And see what they're teaching. And if it's mamby -pamby.

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We believe God is a trinity. We believe Jesus is God. He died on the cross. He rose from the dead.

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And that's their whole statement of faith? Stay away from them. Because those things are technically correct, but they're not sufficient.

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Which tells me that the eldership does not know its theology and doesn't know how to write a statement of faith because they don't know what to defend.

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Okay? There you go. Thank you, sir. God bless you. You're welcome. God bless you.

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Okay. God bless. Bye. Yeah. I step on toes. Break them. And I'll step on them.

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Hey, we'll be right back after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick Live!

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Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

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Hello, Robert. Welcome back to the show. Okay. I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call.

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I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call.

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I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call. I'm going to get to the call. What happened at United Methodist General Conference PeopleNeedJesus .net

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Info Sheet? I'm going to verify this. That's what it says from PeopleNeedJesus .net.

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What happened at it? The main governing body has been as long as it's been. Marriage is redefined.

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Okay. It says this. Ordination standards are changed to allow sex outside of marriage for clergy.

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Can we say apostasy? Yes, we can. I'm not going to read everything because oh my goodness.

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But boy, let's get to Jim from Raleigh, North Carolina. Jim, welcome. You're on the air.

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Yes. Hey, thanks for taking my call, Matt. I was calling in reference to two different subjects.

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One had two verses associated with it. And the second subject had one verse about it.

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But I got so involved in thinking about the last caller and what was going on there. I think I've called you about this before.

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But this thing about, you know, it's a sin for same -sex marriages to occur in church.

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But it's also a sin, according to what I read in Luke 16, 18, and also in Mark 10, 11, and 12.

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Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

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And no exception is mentioned for the remarriage. So why would you allow a divorced couple to marry in a church?

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Are you against that, too, like I am? Jesus says, Matthew 19, 9, except for the issue of pornea in Greek, sexual immorality.

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So if one of the... Well, that's for the divorce. That's for the divorce, not the remarriage. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You asked me. I was giving you the answer.

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Okay? Okay. That's what Jesus said. And I'll read it to you. Matthew 19, 9, all right?

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Okay. I'll go over it again. Whoever divorces his wife except for immorality and marries another woman commits adultery.

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So you can be divorced if your spouse is sexually immoral and breaks your covenant, the covenant of marriage.

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Okay? Oh, I fully agree with that. I fully agree with that. Okay. But that verse would not be in there if it didn't apply to some people that it wasn't saying no immorality or anything.

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Maybe it just got too old and he wanted to divorce her and get a younger wife or something. Okay. That's the kind of person

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I'm talking about. Oh, okay. Okay. So you're talking... Yeah. Then that's wrong. It's just because you don't like each other.

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You know, so what? You got to learn how to work it out. Yeah, I'm with you. Okay. So what's your... That shouldn't be allowed to happen in the church either.

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That's what I'm saying. Right? You shouldn't. Well, no, you shouldn't. You should not be sanctified in church when the guy simply divorced his wife because she was getting older or something.

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And then he decided to get a younger wife or whatever, and it had nothing to do with anything else except the guy wants to divorce, divorces her, and wants to get married to somebody else.

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That, according to Mark 10, 11, and 12, is committing adultery.

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Yes. Right? And the Republican Party went over that because, except for the reason of sexual immorality, all other reasons are not difficult.

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But that's okay. I understand that part. I'm understanding that. I'm only talking about... Do you have a question though? Do you have a question? Yes. I'm asking you, should you allow these people to get married in church?

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Would you go to a wedding in a church where they didn't have anything, but it's just simply a guy decides he wants to trade his wife for him because she's gotten older?

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Let me explain. Yeah. Let me explain something. Okay. Let's just say that you become friends with a couple, or with a guy, let's call him a guy, and he just got saved, say, four or five years ago.

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And let's say he's 50 years old. And when he was 30, he and his wife divorced because they weren't happy with each other, whatever.

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And it wasn't a biblical divorce, and they got divorced. Then he gets saved. And his wife married, his ex -wife married somebody else.

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Now, he's confessed everything as sin, and he would reconcile with his wife, but he can't now because he's married to somebody else.

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Now, here's a question. Is he forbidden from remarrying? Absolutely. According to the scripture, the way

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I read it. Well, I would disagree. Because he... Why would you disagree? Would you...

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I'm trying to explain it to you, if you'd let me get to it. All right. Go ahead. It doesn't sound to me like you really want to dialogue.

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It sounds to me like you just want to tell me what to believe. No. I'm not trying to tell you that at all.

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I'm just saying that I'm just... Okay, we can move along. So let me just say,

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I like to err on the side of grace. If someone has sinned in that before that they were a

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Christian, and then they've come to full repentance, and their spouse has married someone else, then in my opinion, they're free to remarry because it was before they were

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Christians, and it's all taken care of. It's all removed. And it's all done. And they cannot reconcile with the wife because she's now married to someone else, and that's just the way it is.

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And I don't have any problem with that at that point. Let's get to... Let's get to Jock. Winston Salem.

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Welcome. You're on the air. Are you there?

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Hello. Hello. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So what do you got?

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Are you there? Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you.

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Uh -huh. What do you got? Okay, just wanted to make sure... My question to you is this. I read that Paul tells me what the gospel is.

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Yes. In his letters. Where does Jesus say what the gospel is?

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The gospel is a death, a burial, resurrection of Jesus. He had not yet been crucified. So he didn't tell us what that gospel was, as Paul relates it, because he came to fulfill it.

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But Jesus did teach in Luke 18, 9 -14.

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He taught that justification was by faith alone. He taught that.

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Would you say that the parable of the prodigal son is a picture of the gospel?

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It can be. You can stretch that in. So it's Luke 15, but the prodigal son is mainly about the

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Jews and the Gentiles. Because in that, the sons...

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The pig and all that. I'm sorry, what? Well, no, there's the pig and all that.

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Yes, I'm very familiar with that. That's right. Do you want me to explain the parable to you, or not?

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I can, but if you don't... Well, no, I understand the parable, but basically he was talking to Pharisees, and sinners were with him also.

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So he goes into a series of parables, the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son, to explain the relationship between people of that ethnicity with him, as far as, you know, allowing people who are not

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Pharisees to be saved. Do you have a question?

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Well, yeah, I mean, again, I'm trying to explain to someone that what

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Jesus taught is not different than what Paul taught. And so the challenge to me was, well, we're in the

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Gospels. Does Jesus even say what the road of salvation is?

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He says, ask me anything in my name, and I will do it, John 14, 14. He says that he forgives sins,

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Luke 5, 27, 48. He says, ask me anything in my name, and I will do it, John, Matthew 10, 28.

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So he says these things. He says to put your faith in the Son of Man, and he said in John 3, 16,

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God's love for the world that gave his only begotten Son, whoever would believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. So the elements of what he had said are there, and Paul simply expanded on them.

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Okay. So basically, Jesus said it, and then in Paul's letters, he codified what

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Jesus said. Is that what you're saying? Yes. So I have an article on CARM, did

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Jesus and Paul teach the same thing? So Jesus and Paul both taught access to God the

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Father through Jesus, that the all are given to Christ, that authority,

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Jesus has all authority, that Jesus bears witness of himself. Both taught that, they both said beware of false teachers, and that the chosen people are of God.

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People are chosen by God for salvation. They both taught on the communion supper, on eternal destruction, eternal life is through Jesus, false teachers will arise.

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Both taught to follow Christ, that God the Father is not seen. Both taught about humility and dwelling in the believer, dwelling in the believer by the

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Holy Spirit. Okay, I can go on. I wrote an article a long time ago, it's got all these similarities in there.

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All right? Okay, well, I'll look up the article. I appreciate you helping me out. Okay. They both taught salvation by faith, not by words.

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Okay? All right. You can go in that article and check it out. All right. God bless. Thanks. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages.

33:37

Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick Live!

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Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276. Here's Matt Slick.

34:07

Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Welcome back. If you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

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I just want to let you know that we stay on the air by your support. If you want to support us, it's easy to do.

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Just go to karm .org, C -A -R -M dot O -R -G. Easy to do.

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All you have to do is go to forward slash donate. Forward slash donate. That will help us out a great deal.

34:33

All right. All right. Let's get to Caroline from Dayton, Ohio. Caroline, welcome.

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You're on the air. Isn't Matt the Slick man? Yes, it is.

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Matt the Slick man. Yes, it is. That's me. Matt, I've been wrestling with this for just a few weeks, and I shouldn't be because I trust the

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Bible. I know it's absolutely true. But does God change his mind?

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Yes and no. From the eternal perspective, no, because he decrees all things that will come into being.

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He knows all things eternally, and so he does not increase or decrease in knowledge. That's critical.

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So, when we go, for example, to Genesis 3 .9, Adam and Eve are in the garden. Now, notice right away what's happening.

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It's called an anthropomorphism. God is communicating to us on our level.

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Adam and Eve are in the garden. The Lord walked with them. They sinned. They hid themselves, and then

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God says, where are you? Where are you? What, you didn't know?

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God didn't know where they were? Of course they did. So, right away, we see that God communicates to us in a way that makes sense to us, that's clear to us.

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So, we go to Exodus 32 .14. The Lord changed his mind about the harm he's going to do to them.

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What? On the human perspective, he changed his mind.

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From the eternal decree, no, he did not. Okay? Okay. Does that make sense?

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Yes, it does make sense, but I guess it's hard sometimes for me to get in my head.

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I just am getting too old to think too much, but anyway, it's like when we're praying, we're praying for something, you know, for example, the election, you know, every night and I'm praying,

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I say, Lord, I want your will in this, whatever it is, your will. My will would be that so -and -so would win, but I don't want that.

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I want what you want, because I know that you have the best answer for everything. Am I able to change

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God's mind about that? Yes and no. Okay.

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So, sorry, but yes and no. So, this is a really tough one to deal with.

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All right? It's a tough one, because what we're saying is that we have a mystery.

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God knows everything from all eternity, but yet in James 5, he says, the prayers of a righteous man avail much with God.

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How's that possible? Right. How do we influence God who knows all things? I don't have a great answer for you.

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What I say is, if I can word it the right way, God from eternity ordained that you and I would pray through Christ to influence

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God, and from eternity, that's what he ordained for us to do, so that he'd do what he wanted to do and have us want him to do.

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Okay. Yeah. That helps a lot. Okay. Okay.

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You always have the best answers for me, and I thank you. Did you tell my wife that? Could you just close her up?

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I talked to her several times and told her how nice and wonderful you are. What did she say? Not really.

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I'm kidding. Oh, okay, because people do call. I knew it. Of course she does. She knows how great

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I am. That's right. No, you have some of the greatest answers, and I called earlier this month or so ago about a lesbian that I'd met at my church, and she still goes there, and she's still active.

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My Nazarene church has not done anything to seem to help me to understand, so I'm looking for another church.

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Well, she can go. Anyway. And she should be there. Have her go there and hear the gospel, and then they need to ultimately move her towards repentance from that great sin, but yeah.

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But she's the one that says the Holy Spirit has not told her that she's doing wrong. She believes the Holy Spirit fills her heart, and I just can't handle that.

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You say, well, the Holy Spirit won't contradict the Word of God, so your feeling is not trumping

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God's Word. Okay. Good for you. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. All right.

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God bless. You have a wonderful week. You too. Okay. All right.

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Let's get to Elijah from Philly. Hey, Elijah. Welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt.

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I have a question about the rapture. So I got your email when you said that you couldn't watch the video because it was too long.

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But I sent you yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. 21 minutes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll just give you some of his arguments.

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I'll try to give you his strongest argument. So that verse in Revelation, I think it's

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Revelation 3, but I don't remember the exact verse. You know, the usual verse that they say that Jesus says that he'll keep us from the hour of temptation.

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No, he doesn't say that. He does not say that there. They get that wrong all the time.

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Because he's talking to the church of Sardis, not the Christians 2 ,000 years ago or 2 ,000 years later.

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He says to the angel of the church of Sardis, remember what you've received and heard and keep it and repent.

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Therefore, if you do not wake up, I'll come like a thief and you'll not know what the hour has come. I'd ask him, how does that mean that it's for us today when it was to the church of Sardis specifically?

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It's basic hermeneutics, basic address. Okay, go ahead. What's the next one? Yeah. Yeah.

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So regarding that same verse, his argument was, when you look at the

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Greek word, I don't know how to say this, but I'm going to try parosmos.

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What's the English word? It says testing.

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But when you go on to Phares and others, it says trial.

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And so he believes that that's referring to trial as in great tribulation.

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And then he cross -referenced this with Matthew 6 .13,

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the Lord's Prayer. And he said when the Lord was saying, and lead us not into temptation, he said that that's the same

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Greek word that's in Revelation 3 .10, which means the same thing, trials.

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So he believes that even in the Lord's Prayer, he believes that the

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Lord's Prayer is us praying to be not led into the great tribulation because the

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Greek word means trial. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty bad, pretty bad exegesis.

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It is. It is. Sorry. So the Greek word there is parosmos, and it occurs 21 times in the

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New Testament. And it's rendered as temptation, trials, testing in the NESB. So what he could do is go to one place where it occurs and find a similarity and say, over here is what it means there.

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That's why it means this also in Revelation. It's weak. Also in Revelation, it's a very symbolic book.

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Now, I'm not saying you can't understand things, and I'm not saying don't go to it, but if someone has to go to Revelation primarily to demonstrate the pre -trib rapture, the position to begin with is weak, particularly when we have very solid stuff that Jesus specifically says will happen in a certain order.

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And he does that in Matthew 24, Luke 17 and Mark 13. So it is a weak exegesis, okay?

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And as it says in Matthew 6 .13, do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Don't lead us into tribulations?

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Well, wait a minute. What about the disciples? Were they not led into that by the Lord Jesus Christ when he said, go out and buy a sword?

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Luke 22 .36, he sent them out into the world. He says, you're going to have tribulations. You're going to have these things.

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And when you see this stuff, you've got to run. So the prayer is a general prayer of God, deliver us.

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You can't take that general prayer and say, that's why pre -trib rapture won't happen, or that's why we won't go through the tribulation period.

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It's just, it's really bad exegesis, okay? Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation.

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The Spirit's willing and the flesh is weak. That's the same word, okay? So now all of a sudden, it means, in that context, it means just being tempted.

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So it means tribulation? No, it does not work. This is what happens when, I was going to say, this is what happens when a weak position is attempted to be justified in Scripture.

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I see the Catholics do it. I see the East and Orthodox do it. I'm just going to just say,

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I see the pre -tribulation rapturists do it as well, a lot. He's not your usual pre -trib, because most pre -tribbers believe that the pre -trib is in,

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I think, Revelation 4. But he doesn't believe that. He believes it's in Revelation 6, 12 through 17.

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And I also believe that as well. But this is the problem for him, is that that entire chapter of Revelation 6, that's the same events that Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24.

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And I don't know how he doesn't see that, because when Jesus said, immediately after the tribulation, he said,

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The sun, the moon is going to go dark. The star is going to fall to earth. And that's what it says in Revelation 6, 12.

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And then after that, a few verses later, it says the kings of the earth went to go hide themselves from God and from the

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Lamb. Why? Because they see him coming on the clouds in those verses. So the rapture is right there.

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And that's after the tribulation. But I don't know how he doesn't see that. Because he's a pre -trib rapturist.

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Yeah. You know, years and years and years ago, we don't have time for the next caller.

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Can trans hold office? That's interesting. Jamal, get the call back tomorrow. Years ago, back when

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I was in Orange County, California, a friend of mine, Dave, and I were asked by a pastor to do a friendly debate with two other members of the church and give both positions on pre -trib rapture or post -trib rapture.

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And my friend and I, Dave and I were post -trib. And these two other guys were pre -trib. Okay, that's great.

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You know, it's not really a debate. It's going to be in a debate format. But we're all friends. And let's just do this to educate and stuff like that, you know.

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That's all it was. So all four of us met. And we were going through this stuff. And they kept giving us arguments.

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And we kept saying to them, you shouldn't use that argument because of this. And they would abandon that argument.

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You shouldn't use that one because of this. And it wasn't, you know, we were trying to stop them. But every time they came to something, we just put it in context and didn't say what they were saying.

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And so we had to really, he and I had to lower our, not attack, but our presentation so that they didn't get obliterated.

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You know, it's just not there. Sorry, pre -trib rapture is not there. And people will go to Noah's Ark.

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Noah's Ark, they see they're taken up above the floodwaters. See, that's pre -trib rapture.

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What? The destruction of people was right there. They were in it, preserved through it.

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Or they'll go to, not appointed to wrath, but salvation. Right? Not destined to wrath.

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Let's see, where is that? First Peter, I think it is. Well, some people, some people like the guy that I just told you about.

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Oh, there's a break. He doesn't. Darn, there's a break. Hold on, man. Darn, darn, darn. I love talking about this.

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You're going to have to call back tomorrow. Okay, buddy? Come back tomorrow. I'm going to continue talking about it. I'm out of time.

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Sorry about that. God bless. All right? Okay. All right. Hey, everybody. I know,

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I step on toes. I know. I know. But that's just what it is. Hey, God bless everybody.

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By His grace, back on there tomorrow. All good?