Evangelism with Dr. Ed Romine and Justin Peters

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December 29, 2022

Dr. Ed Romine and Justin Peters join Andrew Rappaport to discuss evangelism. Ed did his doctoral work on Spurgeon and evangelism.

00:00: Dr. Anthony Silvestro and Pastor Justin Pierce. We are live,
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00:44: Bible. We can answer any of them. Today, we're going to have a topic of evangelism, and I'm going to bring in two friends of mine, some that you have seen here regularly, but I'm first going to bring in my co -host,
01:00: Mr. Justin Pierce. Is that really you? That's him. That's him.
01:06: I'm the uglier version of Justin Peters. Well, you know, we got some, there's some things we got to, before we get to evangelism, there are some things we need to just set up because we had some questions on the last episode, and so I made a promise on the last episode.
01:27: I'm going to play a clip, but just, if you remember the discussion with James White, James White was accused of raising his voice.
01:38: Well, I'm going to give the evidence I said I would do, so let me first share this.
01:46: Now, let me explain what this is because most people are not. This is the timestamp that we had of that video clip, and I'm going to actually play that video clip for us, but I'm, so you can hear.
01:59: You could tell me whether it's me thinking that there's something. I think that it was pretty clear that he wasn't raising his voice.
02:09: Let me just set this up, and oh, stop for a second. I got,
02:15: I'm going to back this up. So, what you can see in this, in this clip, though, is that right off the bat, you can see the levels are pretty much exactly the same.
02:26: What you see in the first part of that clip is James White speaking, and then the end clip that I'm going to play for you, that is where you have our guest speaking, and he's going to claim that James is raising his voice.
02:46: Now, later, later in the show, I will admit he does say that it was, that he said his tone.
02:54: Yeah, he said tone after, after making the assertion at first. Correct, and so I'm gonna, so there's a couple things we can do.
03:03: One, we can get to listen to see if he actually said tone or not. That might be good.
03:10: A second thing we'll get to see is whether or not he, James raised his voice.
03:17: The only thing I'm having trouble with here is, I got to add, ah, there it is, music, so that you guys can hear it and not just me.
03:25: So, I'm going to play this clip, and I want you to listen to see if James White raised his voice.
03:30: So, first off, you can see, if you're watching the video, you can clearly see the levels are the same throughout, but I said
03:40: I would do this. I keep my word. So, here is the audio of the video clip you're seeing that's highlighted there.
03:47: Let's listen to see if James White raised his voice. Right? Like, do you think the gospel of Thomas is why, which is why they are universally rejected, right?
03:59: Okay. So, you can sarcastically raise your voice if you want, but that. Well, first he said raise your voice there, but point out something, because I stress doing this a lot, and you guys know me well enough to know that's how
04:13: I do it. James White did exactly what I do, and that is he slowed down because, for clarity, and he actually brought his pitch down because he wanted to be clear.
04:25: It was, he wasn't being all jumpy and jumpy, and I got to get this out. He was, he slowed down, and he was becoming very clear.
04:33: Now, and, you know, good debate is that's how you do it.
04:39: You slow down to make sure that you're heard, understood, and you're clear. Yeah. So, I just, for the record, because there was challenge, he said that he didn't say raise your voice.
04:49: He said raise your tone. You can clearly hear he said raise your voice.
04:56: So, that was what he said. Now, if he meant raise your tone, we give, we'll give credit there and say, okay, we're going to assume that.
05:03: So, but we are going to talk about a topic that you and I thoroughly enjoy.
05:09: Justin, I'm just trying to see if we, I thought I had something in the, I thought
05:14: I had something else we had to do in the, in the news section or something. Let me just check on if there was,
05:22: I'd be, you think I'd be better prepared as a, as a professional. I'm sure there's in the news all over the place.
05:28: It's funny, but we're living in socialist land USA. I know what it was. I knew the announcement.
05:34: Yes. And, and you mentioning socialist place, that, that is kind of fitting for this. So, the reason, the, there's some folks who are members in YouTube.
05:45: They use Google to support us. They sometimes give super chats on videos. There are people that were members and suddenly found out that their membership was stopped.
05:57: All of the videos we had on YouTube, you couldn't do anything with them monetize monetarily wise.
06:05: And that is because, well, they decided to remove our ability to monetize videos.
06:12: Isn't that nice of them? So they, they, Google had decided that we somehow,
06:18: I guess, broke some unspoken rules that I don't know about. It's called been a
06:24: Christian. Maybe, maybe, but so yeah, so we were not able to, and someone contacted us right away and said,
06:33: Hey, not able to monitor or not able to get my membership. And so I had been fighting all week with YouTube to get that back in as well.
06:44: We were fighting all week at the same time. What's kind of strange Amazon, because we're an Amazon affiliate. They shut us down the same time
06:51: Google did. Hmm. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy here. I'm just saying it's interesting.
06:57: All right. So let's get to the topic of evangelism. I think, I think we need to bring in the doctor first, even though the other person in the background is more known on this show, but let's bring in a doctor.
07:13: And now, okay, let me put his name up here, here, folks, you can see how he typed his name.
07:20: If you're watching on video, and I'm going to ask everyone how that should be pronounced. Should it be put in?
07:26: No, no, no, don't you give it away? Should it be pronounced Romaine or Romaine?
07:33: It's mine, Romaine. Oh, it's yours? It's not his? It's Romaine. And by the way, if you don't use
07:42: Ed Romaine, it's going to confuse people with Ed Romaine. And we know Ed Romaine as well.
07:47: So it's going to confuse people there. Well, he, he, he just, you know, there was one time where Dr.
07:53: Ed Romaine basically called me out on a phone call one time telling me it's Romaine, not
07:59: Romaine. I'm not a lettuce is I think how he actually, I think actually that's what he did.
08:05: He called up, said, I'm not lettuce. And let me also bring in Justin Peters.
08:13: Welcome. So for folks who don't know Ed, and most people know you, Justin, here, you've been a somewhat regular guest.
08:22: Ed, I keep calling you Dr. Ed because you just recently finished your doctorate.
08:29: And so why don't you let folks know what the topic is and where you're a pastor?
08:35: Yeah. So first and foremost, I get the joy and honor of being a pastor of the
08:42: First Baptist Church of Provo, Utah. If any of you know the
08:48: Brigham Young University, the church is located about 10 to 15 minutes away from Brigham Young.
08:59: And as you might expect, it's very highly LDS out here.
09:05: LDS stands for Latter -day Saints. Correct. Correct. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
09:10: Saints, commonly known as Mormons amongst the wider world, but they prefer to be called members of the
09:20: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. And I get the joy of being one of three pastors here, and it is just an absolute joy to be here, to be in full -time ministry, and to be in the
09:39: U .S.'s most unreached metro area. There's not very many
09:45: Christians here, so it's an absolute joy to be here. And God in his providence allowed me to do some theological education, and that culminated in a
09:59: PhD dissertation on Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the 19th century
10:06: Victorian Baptist preacher. And I wrote on Spurgeon's pedagogy and practice of open -air preaching.
10:17: Pedagogy, if you don't know that word, that's a fancy $5 word for the art of teaching.
10:24: And then practice just means what it sounds like, but he actually did it.
10:31: So my work on Spurgeon examined his teaching of open -air preaching to others, and also his practice of it.
10:43: So that's just in a nutshell what my dissertation is about.
10:49: And by God's grace, it's, I believe, a true contribution to the academy and to Spurgeonic studies, and God's just been really good to me.
11:02: Yeah, so you are now an expert on both Spurgeon and open -air preaching, so there you go.
11:08: One could say that. I don't feel like one, but yeah, sure. Well, can I share the evangelism story about you and I in New York?
11:17: That I don't remember. You don't remember, but it's my favorite. Okay. So let me set the scene up.
11:25: So folks, because we're going to talk evangelism, so I want you to know who the type of character
11:30: Ed is. So just picture the scene, we're in New York. There's like a round circular area, and Ed has a wireless headphone on to speakers that were set up.
11:41: And he's sitting in the center in his wheelchair. For folks who don't know, Ed, like Justin Peters, both these men have cerebral palsy, and neither one of them let their cerebral palsy stop them from ministry.
11:53: Amen. Which, by the way, if you have some handicap and you think somehow you can't serve in ministry, you're wrong.
12:02: There's men that are great examples of it. But here Ed is, and Ed's cerebral palsy is worse than Justin's, so he's in a wheelchair in the center.
12:11: And I was sitting on the side talking on the phone with a pastor, and someone decided he was upset with Ed.
12:18: Ed is sitting there preaching the gospel, and the guy can't figure out who's preaching. He sees the speakers, and he yells, shut up!
12:25: And Ed was like, I'm just trying to share with you some good news, sir. And the guy's looking all around, and I'm realizing,
12:32: I said to the pastor I'm talking to, like, I may have to get off the phone, this may get bad. And the guy screams right into the speaker, and he yells, whoever you are, when
12:43: I find you, I'm gonna punch you in the face. Oh. And Ed just turns and goes, it just says through the speaker, we hear, you're gonna punch a handicapped man in the face?
12:56: And the guy just suddenly looks and sees Ed, and sees the headphones, and starts walking toward him, something like rushing to try to cut him off.
13:04: And the guy walks up to Ed, and gives him, like, a fist bump, a high five, whatever it was, and goes, keep up the good work, man, and walks off.
13:11: And I'm like, what was that? Oh, man. And I said to Ed, I'm like, what was that?
13:17: He goes, man, when you're in a wheelchair and handicapped, you can get away with things that you just can't when you're not.
13:26: I was blown away, but you handled it so well. You weren't even scared. You say you don't remember that story?
13:34: I really don't. No. Oh, it was great. Really? Yeah. But I mean,
13:41: I've had similar things happen, but I don't remember it happening in New York City.
13:48: Well, we figured it had to have been in New York, because I can't remember too many other places you and I were preaching together.
13:54: Right. Because you didn't go to the California event, did you? No. No. Okay. Yeah. So we assume it's
14:01: New York. We'll be clear. We assume it's New York. Yeah. Well, I think
14:07: I could speak for Ed. I'm sure he would affirm this, that our disabilities, having
14:14: CP, opens up a lot of opportunities to share the gospel with people, to evangelize.
14:21: I mean, it happens to me all the time. In that sense,
14:29: I don't want this to sound hyper -spiritual, because I don't mean it that way, but I'm thankful for my handicap, at least in that regard.
14:39: Now, I think Ed would affirm with me, I don't particularly enjoy being crippled.
14:44: I mean, there's some days, if I had my druthers, I kind of wish I wasn't. But in the grand scheme of things, man, it's just open.
14:54: It's just such a natural conversation starter, and so easy to move right into the gospel. And so I'm grateful for it in that sense.
15:03: Yes. Yeah. My nephew has a lot of health issues, and he's in a wheelchair.
15:12: I can't remember what it's titled exactly that he has, but he has a heart for evangelism, sharing the gospel, and whatnot.
15:21: He has to use a chin remote to drive his wheelchair, and he speaks through it.
15:34: He uses a computer to help him. He's on Facebook and whatnot all the time, and he's always asking, how can he do more?
15:43: How can he do more to share the gospel, or write, or things like that?
15:49: And what should he do when it comes to that? So that's something I'd like to explore with you guys, if you don't mind.
15:57: What can he, and people that are handicapped, they're terrified already, and they don't know, well, how can
16:05: I serve God in any meaningful way? And maybe you guys can speak to it more than I know anybody could.
16:12: So, I mean, if you don't mind. Yeah. I have a question. How mobile is he?
16:19: Is he pretty bound at home? Well, he's actually at a - He gets to get out and about. He's actually at a facility, a nurse care facility, where he lives in Iowa, but he's constantly on social media.
16:34: He is very active in his community. Amazingly enough, he interacts with everybody.
16:41: He has outreaches to the police officers and everything. He's very active, and he just wants to know, how can he be of service?
16:53: Well, one of my biggest ministries,
16:59: I would say, is just calling and encouraging other members of the body, especially other pastors, and evangelists, and missionaries, and all that takes is a simple phone call if he has good ability to speak.
17:21: And even though it's not evangelism proper in the sense of witnessing to the lost, we're still called to be a witness to our brothers and sisters in the faith through encouragement.
17:36: And I've found that to be one of the sweetest ministries is having a ministry of encouragement.
17:45: But more to the point of - Before you get to the next point, I'll just confirm. I'm a recipient of that.
17:53: You call me every couple of months just to encourage and see how things are going. You'll call up, say, hey, what are you preaching, and how's things going with church and ministry?
18:02: So I can attest to what you just said as a recipient of your encouragement.
18:08: Well, thank you, brother. I try, and I have a rotation of preachers, and ministers, and pastors that I go through.
18:20: And so somebody may go a month or two without me talking to them, but that doesn't mean that I'm not praying for them or thinking about them, all that stuff.
18:34: But the second thing I would say is that, and I think he's already doing a bit of this, like the internet, at least for right now, is still a viable option for proclaiming the gospel.
18:52: Back in the day, I used to use a program called
18:57: Pow Talk, and I would get on the Pow Talk and talk to atheists and things and other cult members.
19:07: Nowadays, about once a week, I get on a more updated program called
19:14: Clubhouse, Club Deck, something like that. It's Clubhouse. We're also, and I should have announced this,
19:20: I didn't announce this earlier, but we are currently on Wisdom as well. That's another app. And I said this on this show, the
19:28: Wisdom app is like doing open air evangelism on an app. I can do it right from here, and sometimes
19:35: I'll just get on there and just share the gospel and see if anyone comes in, because there's a way for people to come in,
19:43: I think like Clubhouse, and join the discussion. And so, you don't have to go anywhere to share the gospel.
19:50: You could do it right from your phone if you have a smartphone with some of these apps. Yep, yep.
19:57: And that's the point that I'm getting at. With the virtual world that we have nowadays, there's no excuse to sit on your laurels and not be a witness.
20:12: And even though that may sound harsh, it's very true.
20:19: So, even bedridden Christians, if they really have the desire and they have an internet connection, they can be a voice for the gospel.
20:32: And I'll give a shout out to Peter the Missionary Gamer. Maybe he wants to come in and share some testimony, but he has a platform where he actually had in his church, one of his elders who had surgery and was not able to do anything.
20:50: He was bedridden, and Peter was able to set him up.
20:55: And if you go back to previous episodes here on Apologetics Live, when Peter was on here, we talked evangelism in the game world.
21:02: And that's what the guy was able to go into a video game and share the gospel from the bed.
21:09: And you can even order, and I say order kind of tongue in cheek,
21:16: LDS to come to your door. I try that, but they don't come in.
21:25: I was going to grab my book of Mormon when you mentioned it, but I found a way for it to, you know,
21:30: I just found a way for it to give me a burning in the bosom in a different sense. And no, no.
21:39: I know where that's going. No, you can call, if you contact the
21:50: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, they will usually send a missionary. If you request the book of Mormon, they just don't do it for me because they know my name and they don't send them anymore.
22:06: Drew says that burning in the bosom, that's called heartburn. I've never heard of it.
22:13: Wisdom. Wisdom. What was it? Wisdom app. Wisdom and clubhouse are two apps.
22:19: Yeah. There are two apps that you can get on your phone and anybody can go into the apps.
22:29: Pastor Justin and I were talking about this before the show went live because as I was getting it started, as soon as you get into wisdom, there's someone talking.
22:36: They put you right into a show and you can ask to be a guest on anyone's show, but you're limited to amount of time.
22:44: And oh, you're bringing it up. Yeah. Oh man, they're already saying hi.
22:51: I'm going to get off here. Yeah. As soon as you pop it up. Yeah.
22:57: And so you can, like we're live right now on wisdom with, I don't know, it looks like a couple dozen people listening and any one of them can join in and they're welcome to join in.
23:09: They'll be brought up on air. And so it's a way though that you can just share a message and anyone can come in and join as a guest and have a dialogue.
23:18: So it's very much like doing open air evangelism. And you don't know how many,
23:23: I mean, I've had times where 50, 100 people are listening at any one time. And so it's kind of like doing open air.
23:32: That's great. That's great. The only difference is you can only get one heckler at a time, unlike open air where you get several hecklers at a time.
23:41: Now to that, let me, let me add to that. Uh, Andrew, the last time we actually had a good long discussion on the show about the wisdom app is
23:49: Andrew said, you know, as soon as I get done, I'm going to, I'm going to jump in and get on the wisdom app. And so I, I had to load it up.
23:55: I'd never been on it. I never heard of it. So I go on and I'm listening and there was a gentleman.
24:00: I, what is it like a, a 10 minute, uh, time session that you have or something?
24:05: I can't remember what it is. You can set it to whatever you want. Okay. All right. Well, here they are. They're, they're talking for some, some amount of time and it resets.
24:15: And so, um, if you, if you want it to, so, uh, and I think it's,
24:20: I think the purpose is you can change topics or you can just continue on. Well, Andrew was talking to the gentleman.
24:26: I mean, just directed straight out. He jumped in. He starts talking to him, sharing the gospel. The guy says he's an atheist and whatnot.
24:32: And they talked for probably an hour and a half or better. Uh, I think it was somewhere in that this kept, it kept recycling, kept going and going.
24:40: I wanted to talk. Yeah, we continued and he actually came on to live and I went on his show and we got to share the gospel through wisdom, got to share the gospel on a projects live, got to share the gospel on his secular show.
24:53: And, and one thing I'll point out is, um, I tell this at the, at the church I'm going to, um, that I'm attending.
25:00: I tell people this because they're nervous because they, they're like most people and haven't done a lot of sharing the gospel and evangelism and stuff.
25:07: And I tell people, and I don't mean this at be insulting, but God made evangelism so stupid, easy that an idiot like me can get up there and share the gospel with people.
25:20: And I get nervous and I stumble around and yet God still uses it.
25:26: I mean, you're not talking about, yes, we're seasoned and we've done this for a long time, but you're still talking about people that are fearful of, of messing up and they don't want to do it not to the glory of God.
25:37: And, and they're still know they're going to mess up. And yet when we're doing it, I mean,
25:42: I've seen videos of Justin Peters coming out here, brother, you know, I love you to death. You're one of my closest brothers.
25:48: I care about you. I haven't talked to you in five months, but, but seriously, it's, it's a seminary.
25:55: Yeah, there you go. But, but think about this. I watched your videos and you're, it's always about the gospel, the humble, the humble heart.
26:05: And you're constantly talking about the gospel and sharing the gospel and why it's so important. I mean, you just did a video with about Jesse Duplantis and you're talking about, you know, he needs to be saved.
26:15: There's nothing more gospel centered than telling somebody that they're not saved, that they're lost and that how they can be saved.
26:22: You know, I, I love it. I love the, the, the, the fact that God made it so easy to share the gospel that anybody can do it.
26:33: Little kids can do it. You know, anybody can. Well, Justin, let me, let me play a video.
26:40: I have a video, you know, Justin, we were talking about how to share the gospel because it's really easy. All you have to do is kind of like, like this guy here that we have, um, all you got to do.
26:52: Well, let's listen to how, how we could share the gospel, how easy it is, um, to share the gospel.
27:00: Let's, let's watch. You're one leg shorter than the other one. It throws you back out.
27:05: Oh no. Like, well, yeah, no matter what. So what I'll do, regardless of what you believe,
27:11: I'm going to pray for you and Jesus is going to grow your leg out and heal your back. You don't even have to believe dude.
27:17: So you'd get into the, the weirdest place of belief that you want. If you don't believe as much as you want and God's going to grow your leg out and heal your back.
27:25: I promise man, you grow right now. Jesus name. And for the audio, uh, folks, what you're seeing is the guy's leg looks like it is lengthening in one.
27:38: It looks, it looks like they're the same size for a brand new back off. I thank you that it's not about religion.
27:45: It's about Jesus. Okay. So unless you look at his left hand, Justin, is that, is that how we, we evangelize like that?
27:54: Is that, yeah, I mean, I'm, I lengthen people's legs all the time.
28:01: It's easy. Everybody apparently has one leg a little bit shorter than the other one. So yeah, it's, it's my bread and butter.
28:07: I mean, how else do you do evangelism other than do it that way? Oh, that's all.
28:15: You want to speak to the next video then? Well, I don't know if people heard it, but, um, you heard
28:24: Todd White there. He said, it doesn't matter what you believe you can. He said, you can get into the weirdest state of unbelief.
28:31: You don't that you want to, it doesn't matter. And the reason he can be so confident that it doesn't matter what this guy believes is because he knows full well that what he's about to do is a trick.
28:46: Well, but also those, those are the same guys that say the reason that you're not healed,
28:53: Justin is because you don't have enough faith, right? I mean, you're talking about both sides of your mouth.
28:59: I mean, you don't have to believe and I can heal you. You can get into the weirdest unbelief and he can still heal you.
29:08: So if, and that's a good point because, and I actually want to do a video on this at some point.
29:14: There's so many videos I want to do on my channel, but yeah, you got to do one called out of both sides of your mouth. That's what you got to do.
29:19: Right. So if, if it doesn't matter what this guy believes, if it doesn't matter, then heal me, heal
29:27: Ed, you know, Ed and I, we're both skeptics when it comes to faith healers, but it doesn't matter what we believe.
29:35: Apparently now Ed and I both believe in Christ, in his eternality, in his deity, in his death, resurrection, we believe all of those things.
29:47: So I, you know, I'd say we got a leg up, pardon the pun, a leg up on that guy. So we're at least halfway to the finish line here.
30:08: So, I mean, you know, we, we, so heal us, you know, heal us.
30:15: If it, you know, it doesn't matter if we're skeptics apparently, at least when it comes to faith healers, but heal, heal
30:20: Ed, heal me, heal Johnny Erickson Tata, you know, do it, man. I mean, let's, let's, let's see it, you know, do your stuff.
30:29: So, yeah. So, so this next video is explaining the trick, isn't it?
30:36: Yes, it should be. Let's, do you want to set this one up at all? Yeah, this is just a short clip from the
30:44: American Gospel Film, and this is going to be Stephen Kozar of the Messed Up Church channel.
30:50: And, and he does really good work. So I commend his channel to folks. But anyway, he's going to show how the, the, the, the leg lengthening was done.
31:00: And he's going to explain it. So, you know, there's still work for audio. Now we're going to see
31:06: Todd White's clip sped up quite a bit and looped back and forth. Now, this is where we can see what's really going on here.
31:14: Yeah. And our right is supposed to be the short leg. And this is the leg which should be miraculously growing, but it's not.
31:21: Look at the leg on our left. That's where all the action is. That's what's actually being manipulated.
31:27: You can see that Todd is actually pivoting or shifting the foot of the so -called long leg so that the heels match.
31:34: Now, he's doing this very slowly over time, but it's painfully obvious when you speed up the clip. So it's kind of like evolution.
31:42: You can't really, you know. See it. Yeah. You got to just change this, the scope of it and, you know, just slow it down long enough.
31:50: And then you can see what's really happening. Nothing. So, so Justin is, is that so, so is that evangelism?
31:58: Cause I mean, Todd White said, this is, I mean, this is what he considers evangelism.
32:04: Yeah, that is his version of evangelism, but Todd White, you know, that's his bread and butter.
32:09: That's what made him famous leg lengthening. But I have watched, I don't even know how many quote unquote, witnessing encounters that Todd White has done, sharing the quote unquote gospel with people.
32:21: I can honestly say I had never a single time heard Todd White share the true gospel.
32:27: In fact, it's like the antithesis to the gospel because he goes up to people, not with law and grace, not with the 10 commandments.
32:38: And he's the opposite of Ray Comfort. He tells everybody how fabulous they are.
32:43: God just thinks you're awesome and you're awesome. You're amazing. God thinks you're amazing. And he, you know, he makes people feel great about themselves.
32:52: And that's his version of the gospel, which is it's a lot of things, but the gospel, it ain't.
32:59: So he has, he has spent, you know, 15 years now or so as a quote unquote evangelist sharing a false
33:08: Jesus and a false gospel. Yeah. So, so I know, by the way,
33:15: I see there's a Dan L backstage, but it says devices not connected. So Dan, if you're backstage, you may need to get your browser to give permission to your microphone and video so that you could join.
33:30: And if you've already moved past that point, you're going to have to search to figure out how to do that on your browser. So real, real quick, you know,
33:39: I want to ask, you know, because you guys already mentioned that anyone can do evangelism.
33:46: So let me ask this of you guys. First, what I'd like to do is have one of you explain what is the gospel message.
33:55: We just saw what it is not from Todd White. But actually
34:01: I'm going to, I'll ask Ed because we've had Justin do that before on this show. So what, what is the gospel message?
34:08: The gospel first starts out with the character and nature of a holy, holy, holy triune
34:18: God. When you look at Isaiah chapter six, and if you look at Revelation, the
34:27: Bible twice proclaims that God is holy, holy, holy.
34:34: And if you know anything about the Hebrew language, you know that that is emphatic.
34:42: It is the most emphatic out of any of God's attributes.
34:49: And so that's the primary thing, at least in my mind, to understand first is that God exists as a
35:00: Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And that holy God named
35:06: Yahweh throughout the scriptures is perfect, beautiful, set apart, and righteous beyond all human description.
35:20: And with that character of who and what God is in place, you really begin to understand that whatever we are, we are not like this
35:34: God. He is completely different. Theologians throughout the centuries describe
35:41: God as a completely different class of being all to himself.
35:49: And in Psalm 50, he rebukes the Israelites because he says, you thought
35:55: I was just like you. And in Psalm 50, it's a grand exposition of the nature of God.
36:04: And as one preacher has been fond of saying over the years, that truth of God's goodness, beauty, and holiness ought to scare us to death because we have fallen.
36:21: Romans 5 teaches us that through the transgression of our father
36:27: Adam, we have all inherited his sin nature.
36:34: So theoretically, this is not possible. But theoretically, if one can live their entire life and commit no sin, they would still die and go to hell because of the inherited sin of Adam.
36:52: Adam disobeyed God in Genesis 3. He and his wife,
36:57: Eve, disobeyed God's command by listening to the old dragon, the serpent.
37:05: And through that, they condemned all of humanity. And because of our sin and our sin nature, we deserve eternal death under God's righteous and holy wrath.
37:25: Now, that being said, God's righteous and holy wrath is an extension of his goodness.
37:35: God, because he must punish all that is evil.
37:41: And part of understanding the gospel is understanding that your sin, both inherited and committed, makes you evil before a holy
37:52: God. And God, in his holiness, must abhor all that is evil and must judge with righteousness all that is evil.
38:07: So that's a pretty bad predicament. Brother Ray Comfort likes to take people through the
38:14: Ten Commandments and show them that God, in his holiness, must judge them because they've broken his holy law.
38:26: And in the breaking of the law, through being sinners in our very being, we deserve to die and burn under the wrath of Almighty God for all of eternity.
38:43: The Book of Romans says the wages of sin is death. Now, if that verse stopped there, there would be no hope in this life and especially no hope in the next.
38:58: But the good news is that while we were yet sinners,
39:05: Christ died for us. And in his living, in his dying, and in his resurrection, and in his ascension,
39:18: Christ lived the life that we should have lived but can't live.
39:24: And he died the death that we deserve to die. He took all of the sin of his people upon himself.
39:36: Bearing the curse of sin, Deuteronomy says, a cursed man hangs upon a tree.
39:43: And in being cursed, he was cursed by his father.
39:49: In his humanity, he died the death that his people should have died.
39:57: But through Christ and his atoning sacrifice, in his resurrection, and in his ascension, we can have hope because Christ taking that penalty, bearing the wrath that his people deserve, it opens the door for repentance and faith for all those who are his.
40:25: And the gospel promise and command is this, that if a sinner repents and believes in this gospel that Christ died and Christ lived and Christ resurrected for sinners, then they will be saved.
40:48: A beautiful doctrine I love to focus on around here is not only did
40:54: Christ die for your sin to expunge your sin away to give you a clean slate, he also died in order that you can have his very righteousness.
41:08: If I could paraphrase 2 Corinthians 521, it would go like this, for God made
41:14: Jesus who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that in Jesus we might become the righteousness of God.
41:25: We not only have our sins forgiven, but through Christ's righteous life and resurrection, we can be declared right before this holy
41:36: God. So what that means is that if you trust in Jesus alone and simply place your faith and your hope and your trust alone in Christ alone, you get all the beautiful righteousness of Jesus credited to your account.
41:57: Not only are your sins wiped away, but you get that righteousness that you can never attain for yourself.
42:09: And that is the beautiful gift of the gospel and that sinners are declared forgiven and then they're given the very righteousness of God himself through the
42:23: God -man Jesus. And we believe in preaching that message of Jesus because he is coming back again one day to make right all the wrongs in the world.
42:36: So many people like to talk about justice today, but when they talk about justice,
42:42: God is oftentimes left out of that picture. And I believe in justice because I believe in a
42:52: God of justice. And on that day when he comes back, if you're not found clothed in the righteousness of Christ, you will be found naked in your sin.
43:04: And the only thing waiting for you will be the wrath of a good God. So I implore anybody, even if you're listening to this podcast and you're realizing
43:17: I've never ever believed in God in the way that this old crippled preacher is telling me to believe, come to him.
43:29: He is willing and ready to forgive you. If you'll but say with the tax collector,
43:36: Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. That is the cry of repentance that only the
43:45: Holy Spirit can bring about. So I would implore you, believe in that gospel, trust in that Jesus, and you'll be what the old saints used to call born from above.
44:00: So if you're not ready, get ready because on that day, the very one who beckons you to come today will one day say depart.
44:13: And I don't want that to happen to anybody. I deserve to depart.
44:19: So do the other brothers on this podcast. We all deserve to depart, but instead we are welcomed at the table.
44:30: And that is all because of Jesus and nothing that I could ever do.
44:38: Well, that was a great show. That's all we have to say. You just look at that.
44:43: Amen. Justin, you had posted this. You're listening to the best five minutes on video, but Drew had a different thing.
44:51: Drew said this. Drew said, where's Drew's comment? There it is. Drew says, we should start a petition to replace
44:59: Andrew on the show with Ed. So Ed, you're getting some kudos there.
45:07: Well, brother, you can preach anywhere you want to anytime. Just go ahead. Wow. Well, God is good, but I assure you after about a week, you'll be begging to have
45:18: Andrew back. I don't know about that. That was as fine a gospel presentation as I've ever heard.
45:26: That was excellent. Amen. Amen. Amen, brother. So now we know what the gospel is, clearly, right?
45:38: We know that any of us could do this. We have someone backstage,
45:43: Aaron. I know he came in with some questions, and I think his questions may take us on a different trajectory.
45:50: So I'm going to ask you guys before we bring him in, what tips or ideas that you guys have for folks that may be wanting to share the gospel, wanting to start evangelism, and to get started.
46:10: And so before, I see Darren has posted this, beg to have Andrew back. You are doing so good, brother.
46:18: And then you said that? Pastor Darren Steed is well known here.
46:26: We love him. So, yeah. So for Justin and Ed, what are some ways people can do evangelism?
46:35: I mean, you mentioned some things already with different apps and things like that, but are there any other things?
46:41: People are going to be nervous. They're going to be scared. We have this fear when it comes to evangelism.
46:47: What kind of things are we able to do that some pointers that you guys might have? Because not all of us have a wheelchair to be able to sit in and have that advantage that Justin was talking about.
46:59: Yeah, I really feel sorry for everybody out there that's not a cripple. I didn't say that for the record.
47:10: I love it, man. Brother, just tear it up. No, you know, you'd be surprised.
47:20: I mean, people aren't as closed off as you would think. I mean, I regularly get into conversations with people about the gospel, and I just bring it up.
47:33: Just take any opportunity. I mean, not everybody can or even should be out there open air preaching.
47:41: You don't have to open air preach to be an evangelist. That's right. Yeah, you don't have to do that.
47:48: In fact, if you're a woman, you shouldn't do that, but that's a whole other conversation. But all of us who are
47:59: Christians and dwelt by the Holy Spirit, we can and should share the gospel with people.
48:07: I mean, just when you're on an airplane, when you're wherever, sitting in a restaurant or at Starbucks or a gas station or something, you get into conversations with people and something is said, it's a beautiful day out.
48:24: Speaking of a beautiful day, do you know the one who made this day for us? Well, I believe in God.
48:31: Well, tell me why you say you believe in God. What do you think is going to happen to you one of these days when we die?
48:37: We all die. I mean, death is something that we're all going to face. Everybody knows it. Nobody wants to talk about it, but it's coming for each and every one of us.
48:46: And you'd be surprised at how open people are to talking about death, talking about matters of eternity.
48:54: So just do it. I mean, just jump in and do it.
49:01: The more you do it, the easier it gets. I'm not going to say that it will ever get easy, but the more you do it, certainly the easier it will get.
49:12: And keep in mind, we're talking about people's eternities here. So, you know, there comes a point where you just have to get over your fear.
49:22: We're called to share the gospel. We have a great commission. It's not an option for any of us.
49:30: So anyway, those are just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Yeah. So I would add to that unless you wanted to say something real quick,
49:39: Andrew or Pierce. You got it. Go for it. So one thing that I would say is that I still get nervous when
49:53: I preach or teach in a formal vocational sense and even in the open air, even one -on -one conversations.
50:07: But I have found that once that can is open, it's a lot less awkward.
50:18: So one of the things that I have found for me that's really helpful is like in small talk, like if you're on an airplane or what have you, if the person's willing to talk, one of the things that comes up is like, well, what do you do?
50:36: So for me, I just tell people I'm a Baptist preacher. So it automatically opens the door to that sort of thing.
50:45: But even if you're not in a vocational ministry setting,
50:51: I've never had somebody in the LDS or secular world deny an opportunity to pray for them.
51:04: And I mean, regardless of what you think about the COVID pandemic situation, whether you think it's real or whether you think it's perceived, it's got a lot of people thinking about death and thinking about the next life or lack thereof.
51:28: And so I've used the COVID situation to an evangelistic advantage especially back in 2020 when the height of everything was going on.
51:45: I would use that as a very easy springboard, especially if they've mentioned they've got loved ones in the hospital that died or loved ones that at least they said died from the virus.
52:03: There's a lot of debate going on about how much those were forwards. But in any case, the person that they loved died.
52:12: So that opened up doors and avenues to talk about, so what do you think about the nature of death?
52:21: What does it mean to die? So all people, if you aren't a bull in a china shop and you're gentle with them and you show real pastoral love and concern for the person, nine times out of 10, they will be open to discussing spiritual things.
52:47: And you don't have to make it like this rickety cookie cutter thing of just going down the
52:57: Ten Commandments. Not that that's bad. I've already mentioned my appreciation of Ray.
53:04: But I feel like a lot of folks, they feel like, okay, I've got this template and I've got to force it on this situation.
53:13: And you can be very natural in one -on -one situations and just be in a prayerful spirit.
53:22: And you will be amazed at what doors God opens for you to open up your mouth and proclaim.
53:30: Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I appreciate you said that,
53:36: Ed, about the... I love Ray too. I've been around Ray. He is the real deal.
53:45: Ray is the real deal. When Paul said... In fact, quick story. I was with...
53:54: Oh my goodness. I'm just having a... You're getting to that age, my friend.
53:59: You're getting to that age. Oh, it's not easy.
54:09: Why am I drawing a blank? I know he's a friend of mine. Mark Spence. Mark Spence. Thank you. My goodness. I'm going to tell him you said that.
54:16: Oh, you know, Mark, I've been watching this program. I'm just saying. I mean, I just...
54:24: What's his name? I'm almost 50. So maybe that's what it is.
54:29: But anyway, yes. I was with Mark Spence and Mark and I were talking about Ray and Mark said, he said,
54:35: Justin, you know, when Paul said that I would wish myself accursed, cut off for the sake of my countrymen, he said,
54:45: I always thought Paul was being hyperbolic when he said that. Nobody could literally believe or wish that they themselves would go to hell if it meant the salvation of someone else.
54:57: He said, I always believed that was hyperbolic until I met Ray Comfort. And he said,
55:02: Ray is that guy. Ray is that guy. So I love Ray.
55:08: But to Ed's point, and Ed's right, you don't always have to do it exactly like Ray does.
55:16: It's a great way. I mean, and more often than not, I kind of generally follow Ray's approach.
55:23: But each situation is different and you don't have to do the cookie cutter, make sure you get it just like Ray does.
55:34: Well, and that's one thing. I mean, Ray, the way of the master style is an outline.
55:40: This is a thing that people don't understand. It's not something you do by rote. It's not follow this, this, this.
55:46: It's an outline. And the advantage of an outline is that if the conversation goes somewhere else, wherever the conversation goes, let it go there.
55:56: And with the outline, you can always come back to the next point. You know where you're going in the conversation.
56:03: And you can let the conversation be exactly that, a conversation. It's not,
56:09: I had a guy that I knew that used to say it this way. It's not a presentation.
56:15: It's a conversation. And we have to remember that because I remember going door to door with someone.
56:21: There was a Southern Baptist way of doing evangelism, and it was based on the word faith.
56:27: It was an acronym. And you're supposed to point your finger for each of the fires.
56:34: Forsaking all, I trust him. You got it down. And I used to use that.
56:40: We used to use that at a church we're at. And it's fine. But you know what? I sat, I remember going, we're knocked on someone's door.
56:47: And the woman that we were with, there was three of us. And she literally, someone answers the door.
56:52: This woman answers the door. And this woman that is with us is looking down at her hand going and talking to her hand to make sure she does the whole outline that she was taught to do.
57:04: And she's looking at her hand. And meanwhile, this woman that's at the door just keeps looking behind her at her four -year -old.
57:11: And is not paying attention at all. But this woman is talking to her hand and doesn't notice. And so the conversation was going nowhere.
57:20: And so once she was done with her presentation, I just butted in and said, hey, is that your daughter over there?
57:25: And suddenly she could bring her daughter into the conversation. And her daughter is now standing with her.
57:31: Now we could have a conversation. And that really helped me understand why you don't want it to be a presentation.
57:39: And I understood the heart behind it, but the problem I have with the faith outline was just that you, if you deviated, you were lost.
57:50: I mean, it took, I mean, you, I mean, I tried it many times and it's just, I felt so uncomfortable.
57:56: I was, I was like kind of lost, you know, and when I heard Ray Comfort, you know, the way the master and whatnot, and we started doing this,
58:05: I found so many different ways. I love the fact that Andrew does this, used to do it all the time.
58:12: And then he got bored with it, I guess. But, you know, here on the show, he would do it now. Okay, well, hold on.
58:18: I got to finish what I say. So Andrew used to do this all the time. And that was, give me a scenario and let's see if I can get to the gospel.
58:26: And, and that was so helpful because when we play this role -playing game, it helps us to, you know, do it with your, your wife, your kids, your husband, do it with people, you know, friends and family.
58:38: It helps you to start thinking about ways that you can share the gospel with people. And, and you don't have to do just that rote, you know, go right down this, you know, forsaking all, wait a minute, wait, wait,
58:51: I'm, I'm no here. And then me, you don't have to do that. You can just listen to what they're saying.
58:58: And that's why scripture memory is really good. Um, you know, Romans road, that's a good one too.
59:03: You know, you, you can use kind of go down through that, uh, because it's a Romans outline and you're kind of going down through that.
59:10: Um, but it's, it's, it's different for different people. I kind of like Justin and Andrew.
59:16: Um, I mean, you guys know, I love Ray and I listen, uh, I go through that outline myself, uh, all the time.
59:24: I do it a lot, you know, but, but I'm a big encourager for people that are nervous about it.
59:30: That don't feel like they're, they're competent enough to actually start, you know, a serious conversation is handout gospel tracks.
59:39: I mean, I, uh, today I think I've handed out, uh, I don't know, maybe 10, uh, gospel tracks, you know, going through the different, uh, places
59:46: I've been at today. And, and I've never had anybody. No, I don't want to say that.
59:52: I haven't recently had anybody throw it back at me and say no, but even if they do, I don't, they're not rejecting me.
01:00:01: They're rejecting Christ. And, and, and I'm trying to share the gospel, you know, million dollar bills, all those things.
01:00:07: You just say here, did you get one of these or, or better yet when you go through, go through a
01:00:12: Starbucks, you know, for example, because for some reason, everybody wants to go through Starbucks. You go through, you give one, you say, thank you so much.
01:00:19: You did such a great job. You were a blessing to me. I want to be a blessing to you. I mean, I have never at Starbucks saying that to somebody and genuinely being respectful and thankful.
01:00:31: I've never had one raging LGBTQ across her forehead, you know, wearing the pink justice flag and, and, and all of this stuff.
01:00:40: I've never had one of them say, I hate you get out of here. And they all say, thank you. Yeah. Well, at Starbucks would not be
01:00:48: Christians because no Christian would, would go to Starbucks other than maybe gospel, right?
01:00:53: Not at all. None. No, I don't know. I mean, I just, I think the show inside Joe, Justin loves their fruity drinks that they have there.
01:01:06: If I could make a one qualifier to what Pierce just said there, it would be this hand out good gospel tracks.
01:01:18: Oh yeah. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Not all gospel tracks are created equal.
01:01:25: So let me, I'm going to, I was actually, this is perfect. I got this. Somebody handed, gave this to me at church and they've been trying to tell people about how to do some evangelism.
01:01:36: If I start out by saying God loves you and he wants you to experience life and peace and abundance of each and eternity.
01:01:43: Is that okay? No. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now I can say God created you in his own image for an abundant life.
01:01:53: If you consider hell abundant. Oh, you're just being legalistic, right? I mean, that's by the way,
01:02:00: I got this and I underlined it because I was like, there's some good stuff in it, but it's couched with a lot of this abundant life discussions.
01:02:10: And it comes from Billy Graham's stuff. I'm sorry, you know, guys,
01:02:16: Ed, you just said it. So someone asked earlier and where to get gospel tracks.
01:02:22: I posted some links. Yeah. And so let me, I don't know if I still have that question up, but so here's some places that I get tracks from and you can, you know, that may be helpful for you.
01:02:35: I go to 1milliontracks .com and trackplanet .com. Those are the primary places
01:02:41: I go. Why do I go to those two? Because they will customize my tracks for me. I mean, they'll make tracks that I design, but they have a whole lot of tracks that if you can get them in a large enough quantity, they'll put your email address on there so that you don't have, you have a way of them contact, you hand out the track, you have some way for people to contact you so you can start discipling.
01:03:05: Because, you know, the great commission is not to just evangelize. That's the starting point.
01:03:10: And then you make disciples. And so they need a way to contact you. And so I like having gospel tracks that have our website, strivingwithcarry .org
01:03:20: or, you know, justinpeters .org or something that where they can get to someone that can continue a discipling relationship with them.
01:03:31: And so I'll have tracks that have my contact. And that's why
01:03:36: I go to those. The other place I'll get tracks from is livingwaters .com. That's Ray Comforts, which we've mentioned earlier.
01:03:42: So I'll go there as well. And so, you know, one of the things, thanks for putting that up.
01:03:51: So, you know, one of the things that I'm just trying to see the, you know, that we could do,
01:04:02: I know that Aaron's in the background. I want to do something to the point of what, Justin, you mentioned, you mentioned earlier, which is the whole thing of you can go and just say what a nice day it is.
01:04:18: But how do we get from the natural to the spiritual? The one thing that I have found is that most people seem to feel comfortable once the conversation gets to the spiritual.
01:04:38: And if it gets to the spiritual, people are, they're more comfortable. And so I think that what we have to realize is that there is a way that we can get from the natural to the spiritual.
01:04:54: And with that, what we recognize is that we just have to, again, it's a conversation.
01:05:01: It's not a presentation. If you're trying to focus on a presentation, this doesn't work. And this is what
01:05:07: Pastor Justin referred to earlier, is the fact that I made a game of it, and you can go on this
01:05:13: YouTube channel, go to Striving Fraternities YouTube channel and look, and we have a whole playlist of the spiritual transition game to train people, to teach people ways to go from the natural to spiritual.
01:05:25: Because if you get used to going from the natural to the spiritual and you make a practice of that, it becomes easier to go from any conversation into a gospel presentation.
01:05:36: So we're going to do this right now. Dr. Ed is going to give me something. I have no idea.
01:05:42: By the way, the reason he became a doctor, the real reason, is because he got tired of me calling him Mr. Ed, even though he's not old enough to know that program.
01:05:52: Oh, I know that program. He decided to be a doctor, so now he's
01:06:01: Dr. Ed. Yeah, but now I'm Dr. Ed. I just got to get that.
01:06:08: Speaking of Mr. Ed, a program on Sid Roth's channel not too long ago had a guy and he said he went to heaven.
01:06:16: There's a talking horse in heaven. Well, of course there is. Why isn't there? I mean, you know, why not?
01:06:23: Just throw it out there. I took a clip of Mr. Ed and I put it in a video.
01:06:28: My question is, what purpose does that serve? Seriously, because even the talking donkey had a divine purpose.
01:06:44: That's not really normative. If Mia started talking to Justin, I'm pretty sure
01:06:53: Justin would faint. So you'd see a cripple boy run.
01:06:59: But Mia is not a horse. It's a rat with hair.
01:07:08: He's about the size of a New York City rat. I'm just saying. She's a little, little doggy.
01:07:18: Hey, one thing I'd like to do real quick, Andrew, we're talking about the gospel tracks and where to get them at.
01:07:24: I want to put a shout out here for Loving Waters. For everybody in the audience, everybody's listening.
01:07:33: If you go to your app store, I know for iTunes, I mean, for iPhone, they have
01:07:40: GM28. I have used this probably a dozen or two dozen times with people of different languages.
01:07:49: You know, there's a Chinese family that has this Chinese food restaurant up here. I wanted to share the gospel with them, and I can't understand a word they're saying.
01:07:57: They can't understand anything I'm saying. So I use GM28. You download it for free, and it has something like 28 different translations of their gospel outline.
01:08:12: It helps you to learn how to present the gospel. You don't have to use 100%, but my point is, if you're going to hand out gospel tracks, you hand out a million dollar bill gospel track, make sure you know the back of it.
01:08:26: Study it so you know it, and that will help you present the gospel to other people. You know, if you're going to do a good person test gospel track, the cartoon one,
01:08:35: I love those. Make sure you know it. So on the GM28, you can study that, but you can also use it for any,
01:08:42: I mean, there's so many different languages on there. It's not funny. You can play it in clips or have them listen to it on their own.
01:08:52: And I have used that where I've, with a Spanish guy, sat there and was able to share the gospel with these translations.
01:09:00: So they are helpful. So real quick, I want to do a quick, Ed, if you could give me something, any object, any thought, anything, and my job is to live get to the gospel, and after that, we're going to see if I can transition from there to our sponsors.
01:09:21: Yeah. So I'll see how good I can do. So to be clear, you want me to do what now?
01:09:27: I'm sorry. Give me anything and whatever you give me. Any topic. Any topic. Make it as wild as you can.
01:09:35: Any topic. I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're asking. You could look around your room and just call something out, and whatever you call out,
01:09:45: I have to get from that topic to the gospel. Okay. Wood.
01:09:52: You mean like the wood shells you got there? Yes. And I know that you like those wood shells, not so much for the wood itself, but what
01:10:03: I believe you probably appreciate more than the wood is the books that they hold.
01:10:09: Correct. See, but here's the thing with the wood that is holding those books, because when they hold them for a long enough time, if you have a light wood, a cheaper wood, what's going to end up happening is we're going to be able to tell that because you have heavy books on there, and it's going to start to bow, right?
01:10:32: And we're going to see that it's not good quality, but you get some nice wood like I got behind me here that I made those shells, and I can tell you they're not going to bow because I know the type of wood that's used.
01:10:45: So the quality of that wood makes all the difference because give enough time, and we can see whether that wood is good quality or not, right?
01:10:56: So here's the thing. We can, given enough time in our lives, we can also see something of our quality because our quality reveals something.
01:11:05: If we look at our quality over a long period of time, you know what we're going to see? We're not just going to see a bowing.
01:11:10: We're going to see a breaking because we're actually, if we compare ourselves to other humans, we look good.
01:11:17: But once we compare ourselves to God, we don't look so good. We look warped. But there is one that's perfectly straight and will never bow, and that's
01:11:27: God himself. And he came to earth as a man to pay a price for our sins so that we could be set free.
01:11:35: He paid the price that we owe so that we can be set free.
01:11:41: He's a piece of wood that can never bow, will never break. But all of us, because we're criminals in God's sight, we do break.
01:11:53: So right there, I just took a piece of wood in the conversation, was able to transition to the gospel, and then
01:12:01: I would explain it more and then say, what do you think about that, right? So you could take anything and do it.
01:12:08: Drew is saying here, well, you put it up, so I'll let you. Well, I was just going alongside what you're doing there.
01:12:14: You're talking about taking anything. Drew Vanita, he said that in his job, he has slip tracked in the packages.
01:12:24: And he was told to stop, so he did stop doing that. But I mean, you can do it anywhere. By the way, the beer aisle is not just for reformed folks.
01:12:34: You can go drop those gospel tracts right down in there, and hopefully somebody will get saved out of it. Go ahead.
01:12:43: I was going to say, I think I've done that before, because regardless of your belief on whether it's permissible or not to drink alcohol, there are a lot of drunkards that drink beer, and they're a slave to drunkenness.
01:13:03: And they need to be saved. And those who drink to the glory of God, they're going to rejoice when they find that gospel tract in there and hopefully give it to a sinner that needs it.
01:13:20: So either way, it's a win -win situation. I've done it before. It's great. I love the story.
01:13:26: You can be kind of covert about it. I love the story that, what's that guy's name that Justin knows off the top of his tongue?
01:13:33: Mark Spence. Mark Spence tells a story that he slipped a gospel tract in, and it was a
01:13:41: Living Waters gospel tract, into a case of beer. And a guy called the ministry about it. And so Mark goes, well,
01:13:48: I don't know if it's one of ours. Can you read it to me? The guy reads the whole tract, and Mark goes, you know,
01:13:55: I think that is ours. So what did you think about it? And the guy was like, not sure.
01:14:04: So he said, well, read it again. So he actually had the guy read it twice. That's pretty good.
01:14:10: Yeah. So I know that backstage Aaron said he was here for an hour and had to drop off.
01:14:16: And so I'll try to, I think someone sent me the question he had. And even though I think he said he wanted to talk about evangelism too, but as I said, we'll get to our sponsor real quick.
01:14:30: And I should put up the picture. Wait, where's, we've got to put Cole's picture up here because that's now our picture for my pillow.
01:14:40: Here you go. There's Cole in need of a my pillow right there. And I need my pillow, use promo code
01:14:48: SFE. But if you want to get yourself a great night's sleep, you want to use our promo code, which we would be thrilled with.
01:15:00: Go to mypillow .com and use promo code SFE. That's SFE.
01:15:07: That is the promo code that they have that lets them know that you heard about them from us here.
01:15:13: The other thing that you could do is if you're interested in good Bible software,
01:15:19: Logos, Logos 10 just came out. You can get yourself a Logos 10 offer with Striving for Eternity.
01:15:27: Just go to Logos .com slash SFE. Get yourself a good Bible software and you'll get a discount.
01:15:35: Actually, I think you get not only the discount, but you get five free books on Striving for Eternity. So just so I can say it as we're starting up here,
01:15:45: I know Justin's position on the alcohol issue, but if maybe others don't know, but if you don't mind, if you don't mind saying what your position is, that'd be great.
01:15:56: Because I'll tell you mine is you shouldn't be doing it. So go ahead. Yeah, I agree.
01:16:02: I mean, I tell people I can't go where the Bible doesn't go and I cannot state definitively that it is inherently sinful for alcohol to cross your lips and go down your esophagus.
01:16:18: But that having been said, there are many warnings in the Bible about the dangers of alcohol. A strong drink is a brawler.
01:16:25: It's a mocker. And if you never start, you'll never have a problem with it.
01:16:32: And I don't drink at all for several reasons.
01:16:38: One, not the least of which, well, one thing, I just don't need it. I just I don't need it. I don't crave it.
01:16:43: I don't desire it. Never think about it. But two, I don't want to.
01:16:50: I don't want to do anything to give to present a stumbling block to someone else.
01:16:56: And even if I did like the taste of beer, which I haven't tasted it since I was in my 20s before my conversion.
01:17:03: But I well, anyway, I think it's disgusting, but whatever. But even if I did like it, even if I did,
01:17:11: I'm not going to sit in a restaurant and order a beer or whatever and take the risk of someone across the room seeing me and recognizing me.
01:17:21: It's like, oh, hey, Justin's Justin Peters over there and he's drinking a beer.
01:17:26: He's drinking some wine. So it must be OK. And, you know, it may be that I could handle it.
01:17:34: But that person can't. And that person sees me, an evangelist, a
01:17:41: Christian with a public platform drinking. And so they're going to use that as excuse. Well, he's doing it.
01:17:47: So it must be OK. And I do it. And maybe that person can't handle it. And it becomes a huge issue.
01:17:53: And it destroys that person's marriage. Or maybe maybe that person ends up driving drunk and killing himself or a family out on the road.
01:18:03: You know, there's there's nothing good about it. I mean, there's there's nothing good about it.
01:18:08: And there's a lot and a lot of people, too, we have to remember.
01:18:15: And I feel myself getting on a soapbox here. But one of the one of the things that I really struggle with, with some folks in our reformed camp, our soteriologically reformed camp, is there is this whole wing of it, the young restless reform kind of crowd that maybe aren't so young anymore, but this restless reform.
01:18:36: And they sing to glory. They seem to revel in at least what they perceive to be their
01:18:43: Christian liberties. And they exploit it. They revel in it. They boast about it.
01:18:48: And they have their YouTube channels and they go on YouTube or they, you know, and they boast about drinking and they're there with their scotch or whatever they drink, you know, and talking about let's talk about the
01:19:00: Bible where we booze it while we booze it up at the same time. How dare you? Like, well, what world are you living in?
01:19:08: Do you not realize that a lot of our brothers and sisters in Christ were saved out of that stuff?
01:19:14: They were saved out of it. And you're going to flaunt that in front of them? That's what missionary games are so good to them.
01:19:22: You know, where's the holiness in our camp? There are so many people, whether it's alcohol, whether it's profanity, whether it's the gospel coalition talking about their favorite movies that are loaded, apparently with not that I've seen them, but loaded with profanity and nudity, you know, oh, but they're reformed.
01:19:42: You know, there is a real lack of holiness in large circles, large, large areas of our reformed soteriological camp.
01:19:55: No holiness, no sanctification, no mortification of sin, no mortification of the flesh, a just a coziness and an affinity and a reveling in things that are not holy, that that if not inherently sinful, certainly have the very real potential of quickly becoming sinful and being stumbling blocks and being far too chummy with the world.
01:20:21: And that reflects a lack of wisdom at best, at best.
01:20:29: And left unchecked, I think it's cause for someone to truly examine themselves to see if they're in the faith, because if you have no desire for holiness, you have no desire for Christ.
01:20:42: So Justin, let me ask you a question with what you said. So you're at a restaurant. Someone orders a non -alcoholic beer.
01:20:51: What are your thoughts on that? Because there's no alcohol in it now. Yeah, but the problem is still there because, you know,
01:21:00: I'm sitting across the room and I can't tell if that's non -alcoholic beer. It just looks like a beer to me. So, you know,
01:21:06: I'm not going to go over there and do a chemical analysis of what you're drinking. And then based on that, determine how
01:21:11: I, you know, live my daily life in Christ. There are times where it can be accidental.
01:21:18: I posted a picture many years ago. It was,
01:21:24: I think it was New Year's Eve. And I was out with my wife's family. We all went to a restaurant,
01:21:31: Japanese and Asian restaurant. And so one of the things that we had was, you know, instead of having little tea glasses, because we all had tea, they put it in regular water glasses.
01:21:42: And so we had water glasses. And someone accused me of being a drunkard from the picture.
01:21:52: Now, granted, I was with unsafe family. So, yeah, my, you know, I had a brother -in -law that ordered sake.
01:21:57: So that was on the table, wasn't anywhere near me. But it was interesting. I posted the picture just as I was focused on the big boat of sushi, right?
01:22:06: But someone assumed that what was tea was actually,
01:22:12: I think he accused me of wine or beer. I forget what she accused. And even when I was not saved,
01:22:18: I didn't like beer. So I wouldn't, but, you know, but here was the interesting thing was, even after I corrected the person, and I said it actually was tea.
01:22:29: And if you look close, you can actually see some tea leaves. This brother accused me of lying and covering up my sin.
01:22:36: And it's like, well, you know, this is one of the things I have noticed online is people jump to conclusions, make assumptions.
01:22:44: And then when you correct the assumption, they tell you how wrong you are. Let me tell my story.
01:22:52: Right across the street, they build a big food country. Right across the street. And I go there,
01:22:58: I hand out gospel tracts. Guys, when you're in grocery stores, you want to hand them out. I mean, just look, you can just walk through and be a blessing to people.
01:23:05: I met the mayor, I hand out gospel tracts. Actually witnessed to the mayor down in Johnson city, the big giant city down there.
01:23:12: I witnessed to them. So just that, just aside, you know, but here's the thing about your witness.
01:23:19: Any little thing can break your witness to the point where nobody will ever listen to you again. Okay. And so when, when somebody comes along and they see you drinking or buying alcohol and you have to then tell them,
01:23:34: Hey, let me tell you about my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Oh, wait a minute. I was raised in this, in your, in your
01:23:40: Christian culture. And I know for a fact that you're not supposed to be drinking because it's against, it's against God's word.
01:23:45: Oh no. Now, now let me justify my drinking because I have Christian liberty. You just lost your gospel witness.
01:23:53: You lost your ability to witness because that person will not listen to you. Okay. You've put a stumbling block into this situation.
01:24:00: And let me prove it. I'm over here, uh, handing out gospel tracks and a person who has known me for years, he was in line.
01:24:08: I walk up and I hand out some gospel tracks around him. Hey brother, how you doing? We're getting groceries for taking it in, uh, into the checkout line.
01:24:16: And I want to witness to the cashier and I'm going to handle some tracks to her. And I always use the tracks as just an eye opener, you know, and then
01:24:24: I'm going to get to the gospel. This guy's talking with me and I never thought anything of it.
01:24:30: He's, he's talking with me. Here he, here he goes. He left. He's part of our church, an old church I went to.
01:24:37: Um, I'm, I start witnessing to the lady. Um, I hand her a gospel track and witnessing to her. And she goes, um, sir,
01:24:44: I think the other guy left his beer here. The six pack of beer. I said, I know it's not his.
01:24:49: I know it's not mine. Okay. So it must've been somebody else's. The next week, uh, next, next
01:24:56: Sunday, I come to church and I'm being. Berated by a bunch of people. Uh, there's some people that saw you at this place and you were buying a six pack of beer.
01:25:06: What were you doing? So I went straight to the guy and I said, wait a minute. That was not my six pack.
01:25:12: I had nothing to do with it, but you have tried to tarnish my name and try to tarnish me by.
01:25:18: He was, he was going to other people telling them that I had done something I didn't do.
01:25:24: Right. But it was, if I had allowed that to go, uh, go on and unsaid, it would have hurt my reputation in the community that I live in.
01:25:34: Okay. I care about the reputation that I have online. And so I try my best not to do anything.
01:25:40: I try to be above board, above reproach, but, but here in this community that the people know me.
01:25:46: Okay. And so if I'm having to defend alcohol, I'm not sharing the gospel. I don't have that gospel witness.
01:25:54: And that's what we're doing here. We're talking about evangelism. If you do things, if you, if you're a blasphemer, you know, you, you love to take
01:26:01: God's name in vain. And I hear Christians. Oh my gosh. I'll say it. I hear
01:26:06: Christians say it all the time. It drives me crazy. And then people defend it. Well, it's not that big of a deal.
01:26:12: I'm substituting. No, no. What you're doing is you're hurting your witness. You're, you're, you're exactly.
01:26:18: You're my goodnesses and Lord and, and all this stuff. God knows what it means. You know what it means.
01:26:23: And it's hurting your witness. Yeah. Is your Christian liberty so important to you that you're, you're willing to keep it at the expense of being a stumbling block to someone else?
01:26:37: Amen, brother. And that's, that's that. And let me just say, this is what,
01:26:43: I mean, look, people are going to make the argument, but the scripture is clear. You could drink. You just can't get drunk.
01:26:49: Okay. But the question is why? And the second question is, as really is we're seeing, we're focusing on is the, the testimony.
01:27:00: So I remember my first pastor. I've told this story before on this show, but there's new people that listen all the time.
01:27:06: He was moving into his house. He, you know, the, the people that sold the house thought they were just as a gift.
01:27:13: They left him a bottle of champagne and it was in the refrigerator. Well, we were, you know, we had moved him in and, you know, in between ministry and everything else,
01:27:23: I helped him move in. We, I remember we brought all the food over and he just, we shoved it in that bottle of champagne, went to the back of his refrigerator and stayed there for three years.
01:27:33: He never drank it. He didn't even see it there. It was just in the back of the refrigerator. Well, one day we have a
01:27:40: Bible study at his house and a guy sees that he goes in the refrigerator to get milk for coffee, sees the bottle of champagne in his mind.
01:27:52: Well, let me first tell you how we found out about this. I got a call from the pastor. We had to go pick this guy up from jail.
01:27:59: He had been arrested. He got drunk and was chasing a train naked.
01:28:07: And he was chasing a train naked and when they arrested him, the only number he thought the call was the church number.
01:28:16: So pastor called me up and said, let's go pick Lou up. And so, yeah,
01:28:22: I don't know why you chase a train and definitely don't know why you would do it. Well, he was late and he's trying to get there on time.
01:28:30: And when pastor picked him up, he's just like, what were you doing?
01:28:39: And he goes, well, it's OK for you to drink. It's OK for me to drink. What makes you think it's
01:28:44: OK that I drink? He's like, well, I saw a bottle of champagne in your refrigerator.
01:28:50: You see now, here is a person who wanted an excuse to drink. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. The bottle of champagne in the refrigerator just gave him the excuse.
01:29:02: My pastor took that bottle. He emptied it in the sink. He put it in a brown paper bag.
01:29:07: He didn't want to leave it in his own garbage can. He drove to the dump in a brown paper bag. So no one saw what was in it and threw it away.
01:29:14: And it was a valuable lesson that I learned very early on of how some people make excuses for what sin they want to do, and they'll use your behavior.
01:29:27: Like Justin said, maybe you can control yourself. You can have alcohol and it's not a problem, but the guy next to you can't.
01:29:34: And in fact, I remember a church that was praising the fact they actually taught that you should drink alcohol as believers to show you have dominion over it.
01:29:43: They would tell people they should prove that they have dominion over it. And they had a, not really a commercial, but they had a video with a guy who came out of addiction.
01:29:53: And here he is. And he's sober. And he can have your real wine with the
01:29:59: Lord's Supper as they do every week in his church. And a couple months later, he's in a rehab because that wine led back into the drugs, which led back into other things and back into it.
01:30:14: And so the question becomes, why? You know, but even if you're going to argue,
01:30:21: OK, hey, we have the liberty. Can you do it in public?
01:30:28: And I know Aaron dropped out. Dan is in. We're going to bring him in next. We're going to bring him in right after this story that I'm going to ask
01:30:34: Justin to tell. Justin, you had once went into a hotel and you wanted to get a soda, but there was no one at the front desk to pay.
01:30:48: Can you explain what happened? Yeah, this was a kind of a good lesson for me.
01:30:54: Just how you never know when someone is watching you. So I was staying at a hotel.
01:30:59: This was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama about a year ago.
01:31:05: And so I was at the hotel and I was thirsty. I wanted something to drink. And they had a little, you know, a lot of hotels do the little store there attached.
01:31:16: Yeah, a little mini mart. And so I really wanted to get something to drink, but there was nobody at the desk.
01:31:22: I got my drink and I waited around at the desk for a while. Nobody showed up. I rang the little bell.
01:31:27: Nobody showed up. It was getting late. And I was like, well, I'll just I'll go ahead and take this to my room and I'll come back and I'll pay for it in the morning.
01:31:37: And so I did that. And I got up the next morning and I went to the front desk and I was standing in line and there was this guy behind me, had no idea who he was.
01:31:50: And I went up to the desk and I said, hey, I was here last night. I wanted something, but I couldn't find anybody.
01:31:56: And so I took this and it was a Diet Mountain Dew bottle and I showed it to her. I said, I took this, but I want to pay for it.
01:32:04: And she said, wow. She said, I can't I can't believe you're actually coming back to pay for this.
01:32:10: And I was like, well, yeah, I said, I'm I'm a Christian and that's what I should do.
01:32:16: I can't imagine not doing that. And so I even took that opportunity to share the gospel quickly with the lady.
01:32:23: And and as I was, I saw I paid for it and I'm turning around leaving. And the guy behind me, he said, he said, are you
01:32:31: Justin Peters? And I said, yeah, I am.
01:32:36: I said, who are you? And he told me his name. And he said, I recognize you from your YouTube channel. And he said that that really means a lot to me that you what
01:32:46: I just heard you say and what I what I just saw you do. He said, that means a lot to me.
01:32:51: And he said that that tells me that that you're the real deal. And so, yeah,
01:32:58: I mean, that's not a pat on my back. I mean, any of us would do the same thing. But it was a it was a good example for me, a kind of a sobering reminder.
01:33:07: You never know who's watching. You never know who's watching, for good or bad. And you're you're the thing is, is you're going to meet people.
01:33:16: I mean, you don't have to have a YouTube or you don't have to have any kind of social media presence, per se, that is, you know, so magnificent or outstanding or whatever else.
01:33:26: You can just because when we're on Facebook and social media and everything else, your name and your face goes all over the place and you don't even know it.
01:33:34: I mean, I get algorithms from from some of the stuff that we do.
01:33:40: And, you know, I've got sermons that have reached north, you know, like North Vietnam.
01:33:47: I didn't know that you could ever get anything in there. And I'm getting stuff from North Vietnam. I'm going, what?
01:33:53: You know, praise God. Hallelujah. But you never know. You never know. I mean, I was on a cruise with my wife and my son and I went up, you know, just to get a soda.
01:34:03: They have the places you can get sodas. So I just go up. I'm standing there to get a soda and I have someone that's just sitting there.
01:34:11: They have like this bar area where you can get the drinks. And so person just sitting there having having a son, you know, with the non -alcoholic.
01:34:21: So I know it's, you know, it was it was a soda or whatever they were drinking. And as as I asked, the person looked at me and just was like,
01:34:29: Andrew Rappaport. Now, do we expect that on a cruise? No, I don't expect that to be recognized, you know, but so you never know who's watching.
01:34:40: Let me I think I know Dan Llewellyn is in the backstage. I want to bring him in.
01:34:46: Yeah, if I could just say something to Justin's point, regardless of where one stands on the issue of alcohol or any other liberty subject.
01:35:04: We need to make sure that whatever it is, we do not allow liberty to become an idol and emphasize liberty over the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:35:23: So so like, for example, where I live, coffee is seen as just as much against God's rules as alcohol.
01:35:39: And for the LDS, it's black print on white paper. Alcohol is not to be done.
01:35:47: You will not be exalted and become like Heavenly Father if you partake.
01:35:54: So so for them, there is no gray issue at all.
01:36:01: Like there's debates in the Christian realm. Well, well, well, there was no debate over caffeine until they bought stock in Coca -Cola.
01:36:09: Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, there's inconsistencies there.
01:36:17: But like, for example, I mean, if witnessing to a
01:36:25: Mormon missionary at seven o 'clock in the morning means that the
01:36:31: Baptist, the staunch Baptist forgoes his coffee as to not being a distraction to the
01:36:40: LDS boy, it's worth it. And I really think that we ought not be mastered by anything, whether that's whether that's diet or drink.
01:36:59: Amen. So let me bring in, I know
01:37:05: Aaron left, but here's Dan Llewellyn. Dan, you've been on this show before, if you remember, on the topic of prayer.
01:37:12: And so I know you had some questions that you put in backstage. So welcome again to the show. Hey, guys.
01:37:18: Greetings. Excellent questions, by the way. I was looking at him wanting to get into him. So curious, the one that I submitted,
01:37:29: Paul, one of the things that characterized Paul, one of the greatest soul winners was he had unceasing anguish and great sorrow for the souls of men.
01:37:39: He woke up in the morning. He went to bed at night and he had angst.
01:37:46: And we don't see that today. Very, very few people have unceasing anguish and great sorrow over the souls of men and truly love them enough where they're willing to be accursed.
01:38:01: Why is it that we don't see it pervasively within the body of Christ?
01:38:07: That's one question. Second one is, how do we get it? Well, I'll answer it this way and then
01:38:17: I'll let everyone else correct me. I will actually say
01:38:23: I think some of the reason we don't see the angst for the lost souls is because we have so many programs.
01:38:34: We have evangelism explosion or name it, you know, lifestyle evangelism, whatever you want.
01:38:43: There's a program for how to do evangelism. And very few of them are anything more than follow what we do.
01:38:54: Do exactly this. What we talked about earlier of an outline versus wrote. Most of them are just wrote.
01:39:00: This is what you say. This is what you do. It's a presentation. And, you know, one of the things you'll hear
01:39:08: Ray Comfort say all the time is if, you know, let them hear in your voice the passion.
01:39:14: I mean, there should be some compassion for the person. And that's, you know, that's the thing that's missing.
01:39:21: I mean, that's why it's striving for eternity. Our evangelism style is what we call ambassador evangelism.
01:39:27: It's not just what you say. It's how you say it. It's what you're thinking.
01:39:34: You're an ambassador for Christ. And when you're evangelizing, the most important thing is not winning a debate.
01:39:41: It's the lost soul in front of you. And if, you know,
01:39:47: I think that what and I know this is sounds bad because so many of the programs are good and helpful and so many of the programs are designed to help people overcome the fear.
01:39:58: But what I think, Dan, what it does as well, unfortunately, the negative to all of these is
01:40:04: I think what it does is it trains people to just here's what
01:40:10: I need to say and have no care or concern for the soul that's actually standing in front of them.
01:40:16: And if we know the gospel message, we don't need a program. I mean, we heard
01:40:22: Ed at the beginning of the program explain the gospel. And you're hearing the compassion in his voice.
01:40:27: Why? Because when you understand the gospel and you're talking to someone, you know where they're going.
01:40:34: And that's the great concern. That's why when Justin Peters does his videos about these false teachers and why is he concerned about their soul?
01:40:43: Because he knows the gospel. So that'd be my answer is I just I think that the the negative, the positive has been.
01:40:53: You know, it helps people to get out of their comfort zone, helps people to overcome their fear. But I think the negative has become that it's it's just something you do.
01:41:03: And and people, it's not something you do because, you know, what Scripture Paul says that, you know, the love of Christ compels us.
01:41:13: Well, do we really understand that love of Christ and what he did for us, that it compels us to share the gospel? That becomes the question.
01:41:21: And I think all these programs actually, you know, get in the way. And so I guess my answer to the second one would then be know the gospel message, like inside and out.
01:41:33: Know what Christ did for us. Be sure for me, it helps the more often I share the gospel, the more
01:41:39: I'm thinking about what Christ did for me, not just what he needs to do for them. But when
01:41:44: I think about what he did for me, it's it's quite humbling. And I realize
01:41:49: I don't deserve it. And that's what gets me to to have a compassion for them. And I'll let these others respond.
01:41:57: Justin, we got well, you know, I give a hearty amen to that.
01:42:04: And something that I've said from the pulpit several times is, you know, sometimes
01:42:10: I wonder if we really believe what we say we believe as in regards to what happens to someone when they die without Christ.
01:42:20: Do we really believe that they will join the rich man in Luke 16 in the lake of fire?
01:42:26: Do we really believe there will be wailing, weeping, gnashing of teeth? Do we really believe that God's fury will be poured out on them for day and night?
01:42:33: Smoke will rise up, torment of their suffering rise up day and night and it will never end.
01:42:40: And if we do believe that, if we do, why are we not out there telling people how to escape this place?
01:42:51: We have the answer. We have the gospel and it is the power of God and the salvation.
01:42:56: I mean, we're you know, we're we have the big guns of the gospel. And sadly, tragically, for many professing believers, our guns are silent.
01:43:09: There's no, we're not using them. And it makes me wonder sometimes, do we really believe this?
01:43:16: And how much, how callous do you have to be to never share the gospel with people, believing that if they die, they'll spend all of eternity in the lake of fire?
01:43:28: I mean, to know how, to know the answer, to have the rescue plan and not tell people ever, it really makes me wonder.
01:43:39: So there should be an urgency. And I'm not saying that we should never, you know, that the
01:43:45: Christian never misses an opportunity. I'm an evangelist. I mean, that's what I do.
01:43:50: And I miss opportunities to share the gospel, but my goodness, I mean, I mean,
01:43:56: I'm not perfect in it, but I take opportunities too. I mean, I have to, my conscience wouldn't allow anything less.
01:44:03: I can't imagine not sharing the gospel with people. I can't even fathom that. I mean,
01:44:08: I may as well. Yeah, I mean, I should, I shouldn't even call myself a Christian if there's never, if there's not any concern for the lost.
01:44:19: So yeah. Spurgeon said, if you have no concern for those who are going to hell, you can be sure that you're not a
01:44:33: Christian yourself. Amen. That's right. So at least Spurgeon agreed with Justin.
01:44:40: What's that? You had to throw a Spurgeon quote in there, right? Oh, yeah. This isn't the
01:44:46: Spurgeon show, but at least one. Yeah, I agree with that completely.
01:44:54: One of the things I would say as well, this is very much related to Justin's, is if you're in the ministry of any stripe, missionary, evangelist, preacher, pastor, you need to think upon heaven and hell more often than you do.
01:45:26: You need the glory and the joys of heaven, and you need to remind yourselves of the horrors of hell, and part of that is also stemming from the fact of who and what
01:45:44: God is. He is the holy uncreated creator, and if he is the uncreated creator and you've sinned against him and you have, only an infinite punishment can satisfy the uncreated creator.
01:46:10: There's a lack of, I think, good biblical preaching in this area.
01:46:18: For example, even amongst the more Calvinistic and reformed type, you'll hear, well, sin separates you from God.
01:46:28: Well, that doesn't sound that bad to a sinner. They like that idea, but biblically, you can't be separated from an omnipresent being.
01:46:40: God in his essence, he is omnipresent. That's right. So I think the more biblical picture of heaven and hell is that God is present in both places, if you will, and something that I've said to people is heaven is heaven because God is there and hell is hell because God is there.
01:47:11: That's right. But in hell, he is there in all of his wrath and fury.
01:47:18: There's no love for those that are in hell. That's right. And in heaven, all we will experience is the love of God poured out upon us.
01:47:32: You know, Ephesians says he's ravished love upon us. And a lot of people use
01:47:40: Ephesians to always talk about election. But I don't think that's the main point of Ephesians.
01:47:47: Ephesians is, in my mind, at least talking about all the spiritual blessings of which election is one of those.
01:47:57: And those spiritual blessings are realized most fully in a state of glory in heaven.
01:48:06: And when you think about just the joys of heaven and the horrors of hell and really look at these things biblically, and I would add historically, look at how the early church viewed heaven and hell.
01:48:27: Look at the medieval, the Puritans and the reformers. They all had a stronger view of the places of heaven and hell in the modern 21st century church.
01:48:41: Well, I guess I should really say postmodern. And I think our culture has influenced our views of both of those places more than we would like to admit.
01:48:55: So I would just like to add to that. I have to say this, and this is from personal experience.
01:49:05: I've since, I don't know, I don't know, 2005 or six.
01:49:12: God set me on fire to share the gospel and free evangelism. And I agree with you,
01:49:19: Dan. We see such a lack of that desire to proclaim
01:49:25: Christ in so many churches. And so many Christians have that, they would rather argue and fight with other
01:49:35: Christians and try to talk about their social media stuff.
01:49:43: But for me, what really, really set me on overdrive is when
01:49:49: I went to the hospital the first time. When my appendix ruptured,
01:49:55: I honestly thought I was about to die. Okay. It was the most pain
01:50:01: I've ever been in my life. And I can't describe the amount of pain that I was in. And for the better part of nine months, eight months,
01:50:10: I was in excruciating pain because of what I went through with my ruptured appendix.
01:50:17: And I went from thinking I was going to die to wanting to die. But I'll never forget it.
01:50:24: When I went into the hospital, they rushed me in.
01:50:31: They were taking me back to get me into the surgery. It was emergency surgery. But I begged them to let's stop for a minute and let's pray.
01:50:41: And I got to pray with the nurses and the staff and everything else. But it was so fast that I couldn't do more than that.
01:50:48: But when it was over, I woke up and the first thing I asked them to do was to pray with me. And we prayed together with the nurses and whatnot.
01:50:57: And then the Lord allowed me to have another surgery to fix the massive hole that was in my stomach.
01:51:06: And it was it was to repair all the damage that had been done from the first emergency surgery.
01:51:14: And when I went in, the doctor told me there's a chance that as bad as this surgery is going to be, there's a chance you could die.
01:51:21: Of course, there always is when you're doing surgeries. And so I sat and I asked the doctor, I said, can
01:51:26: I pray with everybody in the room or whoever can with that's going to be staff here?
01:51:32: Well, I didn't realize it, but I was in the pre -surgery room and there's about 100 people in there ready for surgery or preparing people for surgeries.
01:51:44: Nurses, doctors and everybody. It's a huge room. This is down in Knoxville. And this my doctor, he just announced to everybody, he said, this is five thirty in the morning, he said,
01:51:59: Pastor Justin wants to pray for us. And can everybody, if you're not busy, just would you would you be willing to pray for with us?
01:52:08: And it went dead quiet in the entire place. And I thought to myself,
01:52:14: I could die. I'm sorry. I said I could die and I don't want to die without glorifying
01:52:20: God and to share the gospel. And he let me share the gospel with everyone in that room.
01:52:28: And I told the people that are going to have surgery that one of you are going to die today. Do you know that it's well with your soul?
01:52:37: And I don't say it to pat myself on the back, but what I'm saying is when
01:52:42: God saved me, he didn't get much. He got a broken, wretched, vile man who used to be the guy that nobody wanted to know.
01:52:54: I was a police officer and I was pretty I was really good at it.
01:53:01: And if you crossed me, you didn't like me. But God saved me and he changed me.
01:53:07: And now all I want to do is tell people about Christ and share with people how they can.
01:53:13: If you're a believer, I want you to know how you can easily share the gospel with others. And God will give you every single opportunity.
01:53:22: He will overwhelm you with chances to share the gospel of people. And it's just it's such a blessing and we don't deserve a second of it.
01:53:32: That's right. We don't deserve it. So that's just what I wanted to add in there. It's amazing to me how much
01:53:40: I don't deserve to even speak the name of Christ. And he let me he's let me see so many it's saved.
01:53:49: He's some pain. I get the privilege of seeing others saved.
01:53:55: I tell people this all the time. God is more than happy to let Justin Peters and Justin Pierce, Ed Romine and others go through physical pain in order to put you in a situation where somebody else can be saved.
01:54:10: God's not sitting there saying, oh, Justin Peters, I'm so sorry that you have this this thing. He says, no, you're going to walk in glory.
01:54:17: But today you're going to live in glory by sharing the gospel with others. That's the greatest blessing
01:54:24: I know. Two things. When you look at that anguish and the great sorrow that that Paul had, literally it was his filter in everyday life.
01:54:37: When he walked through when he walked through Athens, all through his missionary journey.
01:54:43: I mean, he think of what he willingly subjected himself to for the souls of men.
01:54:49: He put it out there. Everything. How many times was he whooped, stoned, get on the list, right?
01:54:57: That he says, is I is I just take that in over these last weeks.
01:55:03: I've really been meditating. And how do how do I get it? Two things. Number one, you have to ask for it.
01:55:12: And I go back to James. James says, you have not because you ask not. And I know that that's a wide panacea.
01:55:20: But prayer connected to evangelism is absolutely inseparable.
01:55:27: Absolutely inseparable. And when we're down on our knees for the souls of men, and we are before God and confessing to sin, our lack of passion for lost people.
01:55:40: And really, do I really care that do
01:55:45: I really care that they're going to be burning in hell? Yeah, amen. Christless eternity, prayer, and then crying out to God for an outpouring of his
01:55:58: Holy Spirit and us individually and us in our churches, that the Holy Spirit does that work in us.
01:56:04: Because that's a supernatural work. It's not something that you can just work up. The Holy Spirit comes inside of us.
01:56:11: And he literally gives us that anguish and that passion for the souls of men. Because his primary fire in the
01:56:18: Holy Spirit's belly is to glorify Jesus Christ. Why? Why did Jesus Christ came? Why did he come?
01:56:25: He came to die for sinners. And in crying out to God, God, I can't please you.
01:56:33: I can't glorify. I can't glorify the name of your son.
01:56:39: People can't see who you are, God. Unless you give me this supernatural, unceasing anguish and great sorrow for the souls of men.
01:56:53: When we ask that, it's my head goes back to First John.
01:57:00: And in First John, I think it is chapter five. And I can't get the verse exactly.
01:57:08: But basically, if we ask anything according to the will of the
01:57:13: Father, he hears us. And we have what we ask for. Not we're going to get it.
01:57:18: We have what we ask for. And is it God's will that we have the unceasing anguish and great sorrow for the souls of men like Christ had, like the
01:57:29: Father had? Think about the unceasing anguish and great sorrow that the
01:57:34: Father had when he sent Christ. Knew that he was going to be crushed.
01:57:41: Knew that what Christ went through and having to humble himself, become a man.
01:57:51: And there was angst. There was holy angst that God the Father had.
01:57:56: And there was anguish and sorrow. No ifs, ands, or buts. Anguish and sorrow to be restored to men.
01:58:03: Enough that he sent his son. Justin, I think you were, or Andrew, you were talking about programs.
01:58:11: But I also think of preaching too. Let me tell you something. When our pastors and the elders in our church don't have a passion for lost people, they're not out there personally soul winning.
01:58:24: And it's go. It's go. And what I mean by go is when it's uncomfortable, when it's unnatural,
01:58:31: I really don't want to. There's just too much coming at me. You just be obedient and go.
01:58:38: God blesses not in the status quo. God blesses in the go.
01:58:45: And that's where the power of the Holy Spirit comes in. And it gives us the motivation, gives us the words, gives us the boldness to be able to take and to do that.
01:58:55: And when you look at the great revivals, what's interesting is where really the real soul winners and the great revivals, like in the late 1800s with Lamphere and New York City that broke out, others that the
01:59:10: Welsh revival, the real soul winners were just average everyday people.
01:59:16: You look in the book of Acts and Acts 17, the accusation against those early questions is that everyday men, they are the ones that turn the world upside down.
01:59:27: They're the ones that... But they were praying. Yeah. And they turned the world upside down, literally.
01:59:34: And so is the Holy Spirit any less now than he was in the book of Acts in empowering everyday believers to turn their worlds upside down?
01:59:45: No. Well, I think you bring up a really good point. You know, like, look, so I have been around a lot of open air preachers.
01:59:53: And what I've noticed is a lot of the guys will sit and pray just before someone gets up on the box.
02:00:03: And it's like they make a big production of it. Like, oh, can you pray for me before I get on? Like, everyone has to have prayer just before getting on.
02:00:09: And I'm the type, I don't like praying on the streets. I just feel like, you know, it's something where everyone's watching and I don't want to be doing it just because people are watching.
02:00:22: But they are. And my concern is the people, you know, are they praying before they even get out?
02:00:31: Are they praying for the souls? You know, that's one of the things I like about going to the repentant witness. I mean, they have a whole week before the event where they encourage everyone to do fasting and prayer before the event so that they're praying for the souls that they're going to speak to.
02:00:48: Amen. Amen. And I think that's why that event probably has such, kind of the response it does with people, because people have been praying for those opportunities to share the gospel.
02:01:02: And I think what we have is a lot of people that go out and evangelize and the prayer they do is just for show for those who are watching or for their own brothers and sisters to know that they want prayer.
02:01:14: But I think, like you said earlier, Dan, the angst that's missing is, you know, they're not they're not praying.
02:01:22: But isn't that true for such of the vast majority of the ministry efforts that of churches nationwide?
02:01:30: I mean, you think I've talked to many pastors that that, well, we don't have a prayer ministry.
02:01:36: We don't have a time when I mean, guys, I've studied the Spurgeon's Boiler Room and the reason that he said, you know, everybody's talking about, all the things he's doing.
02:01:48: He's got six thousand people in his church and whatnot. And he has these conferences.
02:01:54: He brings a group of pastors downstairs, walks them downstairs, and he's showing them all around and they're looking at everything.
02:02:01: They're in awe because they're seeing all the big stuff and they're just all excited. He takes them down to the basement, walks them into this room, and he goes, hey, guys, you want to see my boiler room?
02:02:11: And they're like, yeah, whatever. I mean, it was the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. And he walks in, opens the door.
02:02:17: There's 500 people on the ground all at one time. And they're praying over that church, over those people.
02:02:24: They're praying over the souls of the people in their community. And he goes, without prayer, without prayer, this church dies.
02:02:35: It's the lifeblood of this church. Go ahead.
02:02:43: No, it's the lifeblood of evangelism. It's the lifeblood of witnessing. We're supposed to be praying for the lost and praying for the wicked, praying for this world that God gets praised.
02:02:54: Yeah, if I could just say that is a common thing that's attributed to Spurgeon.
02:03:05: As far as I could tell, and I've asked Phil Johnson and other
02:03:11: Spurgeon scholars about this, nobody can actually find where that story is true in his life.
02:03:20: So that is common. I've seen it in the Spurgeon archives. That's just where I'm looked at.
02:03:26: Yeah, nobody actually knows in the
02:03:31: Spurgeon world whether or not that actually, like whether or not there was a boiling room.
02:03:37: But the spirit of the story, I think, is what's really most important, is that churches that God blesses are praying churches.
02:03:52: And I want to put a caveat that when we say that God blesses, we're not talking about a word of faith type sense of blessing, like just because I believe it's going to happen,
02:04:11: I inherently in and of myself have the power to make it happen through my belief.
02:04:19: That's not what we're saying, but in some mysterious way,
02:04:25: God in his sovereignty allows us to participate in the privilege of prayer.
02:04:33: Yeah. And I think that when we think about prayer, we don't think about it as a privilege.
02:04:46: You think of it in Old Testament terms. The Old Testament people of God under the older covenants, they could not get close to God's holy presence.
02:05:00: They had to have a mediator. If you go back to Exodus 19, they're told, don't you go near that mountain unless you want to die.
02:05:09: But through Christ and his mediating work, he is praying for us, interceding for us, and then being clothed in his righteousness, being justified.
02:05:24: We have the privilege of going before our Father and asking anything within reason, of course.
02:05:33: Some of the stuff that the word faith joy -voiced asked for, it's like, well, that's not a real good faith request, ironically.
02:05:47: I grew up in an era where in my home that I grew up in, we literally saw my brother, my sister can attribute to this.
02:06:00: My parents are gone now. We saw hundreds of people come to Christ, hundreds. My father was a soul winner.
02:06:09: He, guys would come to Christ and part of discipling them would teach them how to pray for the souls of men.
02:06:20: These guys would be in the closet in tears, weeping over lost people.
02:06:26: They would go and they would take and share. Our churches are dry.
02:06:32: When is the last time that we have seen in a short period of time, 10, 20, 30 people from a body of Christ born again, either directly through the church or indirectly by butts in the pews and their personal testimony that comes back in and say, wow, man,
02:06:53: I can't believe two or three people in the workplace have come to Christ within the last 30 days.
02:07:01: We don't even hear it within the body of Christ to be able to take and hear the testimony of God working, the
02:07:09: Holy Spirit convicting of sin and of judgment and of righteousness. Those are the core three things that he does connected to soul winning.
02:07:18: And in my heart, my heart is that we as churches need to be marked in our communities.
02:07:26: We need to be marked within our association, whatever that is that we're with, that our number one passion is the number one passion of Jesus Christ, the souls of men, and that our churches are marked by that, that we love the souls of men.
02:07:44: We love people in our communities. We love people that are unlovely.
02:07:50: And we're willing to do what it takes, even to the point of laying it down, laying it down, our convenience, our dollars, whatever it is.
02:08:02: And you know what? That's the way that the church in the book of Acts was marked.
02:08:08: If I may push back on you, Dan, there a little bit, I would disagree that Jesus' number one passion was the souls of men.
02:08:21: Jesus' number one passion, I think, scripturally speaking, is the glory of God.
02:08:28: And then out of that flows a love for men. And we could do a whole podcast on that.
02:08:38: I think the American church has inverted that. And they've made
02:08:43: Christianity all about the salvation of souls, when really it's about God's glory in redeeming a people for himself through his son.
02:08:58: I don't disagree, but I'll tell you what, I look far and wide.
02:09:04: In fact, I absolutely agree with what you said. What I see is the absence of a passion for lost people.
02:09:11: I look for brothers in Christ to be able to lock arms with, to be able to be encouraged by, to encourage them.
02:09:21: And in my walk of knowing people across the country and churches, etc.,
02:09:28: it is not unceasing passion and great sorrow for the souls of men. And that's my question tonight.
02:09:36: And in these last weeks and in these last months, just really thinking it through, crying out to God, God, give me this, give it to my church, give it to my pastor, give it to my elders, give it to my family.
02:09:50: That we see through your eyes, men, women, children, peers, friends.
02:09:59: And that we, it is, Justin, just as you said, that man, we filter it, that these people are headed toward a
02:10:06: Christless eternity. Do we really know what that means? And God has used us in this world to be able to take in, he's the one that told us to go, go, share the gospel.
02:10:21: And we're not going. I can't remember the last time within a block of churches that I've been a part of in the last years that we have sent out missionaries, that there have been pastors.
02:10:37: I used to see missionaries going into Wycliffe, others, etc.
02:10:43: And people that were saved and born again. And it's just, we don't see it in our churches.
02:10:48: And we need to ask why. And not to dig just for the sake of being a contrarian, but really ask, why aren't we seeing more men, women, children, peers, friends, and family members coming to Christ?
02:11:01: Why? And getting down on our knees and crying, God, give me more souls. When's the last time you prayed with a brother in Christ, brothers in Christ, sisters in Christ, down on your knees,
02:11:14: God, give us souls. Let us see people born again. When's the last time you've done it? Well, what you end up seeing mostly at prayer meetings is praying for health.
02:11:26: Yeah. I mean, one of the things you don't see, you may hear someone pray for my neighbor, but you're not hearing regularly testimonies of someone, hey,
02:11:39: I got to share the gospel. It's one of the things I do if I go to a prayer meeting, I'll try to focus on giving prayer requests or praises that are all about sharing the gospel.
02:11:49: For that reason, because all it is is, well, Aunt Millie has an ingrown toenail, pray for her.
02:11:57: In one sense, who cares about Aunt Millie's toenail? It's not going to matter 10 ,000 years from now.
02:12:03: But that person you had an opportunity to share the gospel with, that matters for eternity. There was a quote by Adrian Rogers, and I would differ with Adrian.
02:12:19: He was much more Arminian than any of us would be, but nonetheless, if this isn't a direct quote, it's really, really close, but he said,
02:12:29: Christians spend far more time praying to keep the saints out of heaven than they do to keep the lost out of hell.
02:12:38: Think about that. I think I've heard that before. Yeah, so to wrap up the show tonight, we got a number of comments.
02:12:48: So Dan, thanks for coming in. We always like having you in. Always good to focus on prayer.
02:12:55: So we got a bunch of questions that came in or comments, and so I want to try and get through these a little bit more rapid fire.
02:13:05: All right, so first off, let me keep on the topic. Frank says, sharing your lifestyle with someone is not the gospel, as some people think.
02:13:18: Any comments? Yeah, I would say that I'm not against relational relationship evangelism.
02:13:29: I am against lifestyle evangelism. There's a difference. So relational evangelism can be done biblically, as long as the relationship includes the gospel early and often, and like they know without a doubt that you are a
02:13:51: Christian. You're not ashamed of that, and they still want to be your friend anyway.
02:13:58: You know, I love that sort of evangelism, and that's the kind of evangelism that most working
02:14:07: Christians should be practicing. I think there's a dichotomy between street evangelism and relational evangelism, and I tell brothers that are called to open their preach, like, look, if you're willing to get out on the street, but your co -workers in your everyday job don't know you're a
02:14:31: Christian, there's a problem. So I think we ought to be willing to do both.
02:14:39: Like, where I go to get my hair cut, you know, my barber, or what do you call female barber, whatever, they know that I'm a
02:14:50: Christian, and you know, I take the opportunity or the risk of them, you know, making my hair look worse than James White, you know, but I'm still willing to do that, and I try to direct that to spiritual things, because that's an ongoing relationship in my life.
02:15:17: What I don't like with the lifestyle evangelism is, oh, I'm never going to talk about the gospel.
02:15:25: I'm just going to let my life preach. Well, the issue with that is that a holy life ought to be accompanied with spoken word or written word, preferably both.
02:15:43: Yes, this would be the thing with it, is you think about what scripture says. Can we know something about God and his attributes from the stars and general revelation?
02:15:55: Yes. Can we know the gospel that way? No. That's what scripture is for, and so our lifestyle isn't going to lead anybody to Christ.
02:16:04: Now, I know the argument, but it's supposed to lead them to ask you questions. Well, you know what? The first thing
02:16:09: I'm going to do, I'm going to have a lifestyle where the very first thing I'm going to do is bring up Christ, and now that that's out of the gate, we can now have a friendship based upon who we are, but you're going to know that I'm a
02:16:22: Christian, and you're going to hear the gospel, right? So let's get to that, because we want to get to a number of these.
02:16:30: So Drew said this earlier, and this is a great quote, by the way.
02:16:37: The spectrum of evangelism from Ray, referring to Ray Comfort, to Todd White is like Bible translations, the
02:16:44: NASB 95 to the message. Solid to, quote, what in the world, unquote.
02:16:55: Justin Peters, any comment you have on that? Yeah, I saw that too, and I thought that was great.
02:17:01: It's absolutely right. NASB 95 to the message.
02:17:07: The message, you get better theology out of reading green eggs and ham than you would the message.
02:17:13: Green eggs and ham is more inspired and authoritative than the message. So, but I thought that was a great observation.
02:17:21: Okay, so here's a question. I work in an elementary school.
02:17:26: I'm curious how you would share the gospel with children. Justin Pierce. You got to be careful with this one.
02:17:33: You actually have the freedom if they talk to you, if they come to you, you have the right to do it, but then you also have to consider, as you're sharing the gospel, be direct.
02:17:46: When they ask questions, you need to be direct. You're talking to little kids. So you kind of, you have to be gracious, gentle, but direct.
02:17:57: And I would make sure that they're talking to you about those questions first.
02:18:03: You could get fired. And I mean, if you're willing to do that, then go for it.
02:18:09: I don't have any problem with it myself. But that would be a hard situation to be in when you're talking about your employment.
02:18:16: You don't want to dishonor your employee, your employer. I mean, the Bible makes it clear that we're supposed to respect those that are authorities over us, contrary to what some people think.
02:18:26: We're supposed to respect our authorities. And when an employee says, hey, I have you here to do a job.
02:18:32: You don't want to dishonor that, right? But when you have an opportunity and they're asking you, it's okay for you to talk to them.
02:18:41: That's where I would go with it. Yeah. That's assuming it's public or private school. So that's either way.
02:18:48: Yeah. Either way. You'd be careful. Yeah. You might have more freedom in public school. But, you know, let me ask.
02:18:54: Let me direct this one over to you, Ed. Can I tag on something with that?
02:19:03: Yeah. When sharing the gospel with kids and I wrote a book entitled. Excellent book.
02:19:08: Yeah. Oh, well, thank you. Do not hinder them. A biblical examination of childhood conversion.
02:19:15: You may have to explain things a little bit more to kids, depending upon their age. But I would encourage you not to dumb it down, not to water it down.
02:19:23: Don't dilute it. Give the full gospel. Talk about sin. Talk about the cross.
02:19:29: Talk about repentance. But there's a lot of reason to be very, very, very, very, very careful when it comes to accepting at face value a child's profession of faith.
02:19:43: You know, oh, I've asked Jesus into my heart. Oh, OK, great. Let's get you baptized. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
02:19:50: Yeah. A lot of times they just follow. They're going with the flow. They want to make mom and dad happy. Things like that.
02:19:57: And in school today, you're going to find, too, that the vast majority of these kids have no clue who
02:20:02: God is or who Jesus is, even if they profess to be Christians. Most of them have no clue who
02:20:08: Jesus is. They're OK with the Mormon Jesus or anybody else, you know, so be careful. And kids can understand the gospel.
02:20:16: They understand more than people let them credit for. So let me throw this one over to you, this kind of follow -up.
02:20:22: Is there a way we could share the gospel in the workplace without getting fired? Yes. So I'll give a tangible example.
02:20:34: Um, there may be an opportunity, Lord willing. I'm praying about it and I'm hoping it'll work out for me to possibly teach an
02:20:45: American religions class at Brigham Young University. So so that may be an avenue there.
02:20:59: And when you are able to teach in a place that's hostile to the gospel, like BYU would be, in my own situation,
02:21:14: I've thought about how I can actually use the history of American religion to share the gospel through that history.
02:21:27: So it's not me preaching at them directly, but I can say this is what
02:21:34: Jonathan Edwards believed. This is what the Puritans believed that came over on the
02:21:42: Mayflower or what have you. So there are definitely ways in which you can indirectly share the gospel without dumbing things down.
02:21:55: I would have to know more information to know what kind of workplace it is to specifically answer that question.
02:22:06: But let's say you're in a workplace where you work for atheists and it is very, very hard to live out the gospel.
02:22:17: You need to have a heart that is willing and ready to proclaim the gospel when you are given that opportunity.
02:22:29: Pray to receive that opportunity and to not let it pass you up.
02:22:35: So in that way, I think living a holy lifestyle can actually open up places to where if your boss asks you, like, why in the world do you work so hard?
02:22:52: I mean, I know in my own congregation, church members have gotten that opportunity with Mormon bosses.
02:23:01: So not to disparage a holy lifestyle, it can lead to those things, but we shouldn't lean upon that as a crutch for cowardness.
02:23:14: So I hope you see the distinction there. Go ahead.
02:23:22: Okay. Well, I'll just say to Kevin and for everybody else, Anthony Sylvester made a good point.
02:23:29: You know, you're not doing it on the clock. You're doing it while, you know, on these breaks. And what I would encourage you is, you know, during your lunch break, have a time of Bible study on your own.
02:23:40: And if you're talking to somebody and, hey, let's have, you know,
02:23:45: I'm doing a Bible study right now. Do you want to come and join me? You know, on your own time, look, your boss can't stop you from doing, you know, worshiping
02:23:53: God on your own time. Invite them to come in, you know, invite them to come in and share the gospel right then.
02:24:00: You know, you have that opportunity as, you know, God opens that door up. And I'll say this too, invite them to your church.
02:24:10: If you go to a biblically solid church, I mean, people say all the time, inviting people to church is not evangelism.
02:24:20: And that's technically true, but there's nothing wrong with doing that as well.
02:24:29: So here's the thing. I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to sign off. Okay, so we'll direct all the next questions to you.
02:24:38: All right. Thanks for coming in, Justin. Thanks, guys.
02:24:44: All right, brother. Hey, I'm glad to see you again. You guys have to not make it be so long next time.
02:24:52: So Anthony has said during breaks, need to be careful while on the clock, as that time's owned by the employer.
02:24:59: And so this is what I'd say to this, and what I was, you know, going to say to answer the question is, what
02:25:06: I would do when I work a secular job, I would take people out to lunch. Yes.
02:25:11: And I would let them know I'm buying. By the fact that I'm buying lunch, it gives me the right to say whatever
02:25:17: I want, because they're getting a free lunch. Okay. You get a free lunch and a discussion.
02:25:23: There's no such thing as a free lunch. Okay. That lunch is coming with a gospel. But I will buy them lunch for that opportunity.
02:25:33: So, so that's the thing, you know, and like, and I will be, I'll be careful during breaks. Like if the break is on the way, like if we're driving out to go to Dunkin' Donuts, one of the reasons, so I once worked at a place where coffee, they had a coffee place and you could walk downstairs and get coffee.
02:25:50: I would go out with people to get Dunkin' Donuts because we got in the car and got off the, the work premises.
02:25:58: And so once we're in that car, I can share the gospel because now we're,
02:26:04: I'm not going to be accused of doing something at work. We're clearly not at work.
02:26:11: Anthony said, use Andrew's spiritual transitions while at the workplace. Yeah. They're a great non -confrontational way to share the gospel.
02:26:17: And that's the whole idea of them is to be able to just take those cards.
02:26:22: I remember, look, we talked about Ray's, you know, the good person test. I was evangelizing so often that if someone says they're a good person,
02:26:32: I just jumped right into sharing the gospel. Oh, you're a good person. Well, I worked with a guy, his name was
02:26:38: Art Goodman. And so he said he used his first initial and last name because that way people think he's a good man.
02:26:50: And he said that to me. And without hesitation, not because I was looking to share the gospel, but just because I was so used to doing it, he says a good man.
02:27:01: I said, oh, so you can yourself be a good person. And before I knew it, even at work, even though we were in the halls,
02:27:08: I just got into sharing the gospel and it wasn't offensive. It was based right off of something he said, but it was just because I was so used to saying what
02:27:16: I hear a good person that I got into discussing it. So, all right.
02:27:22: So let's get to this question real quick. I'll take this one. Answering spam phone calls is a good way to share the gospel with a stranger.
02:27:32: They called you on your phone. And so she's saying, I listened to you.
02:27:38: Will you listen to me? I actually, because they called me, I will usually say it in reverse.
02:27:45: They've called me. I say, well, look, you called because you had a divine message you needed to hear. That's why you called this number.
02:27:51: And I'll listen to what you have to say, but I need to explain something to you. First, a message you need to hear.
02:27:58: Make sure it's first. Make sure that you make sure it's first. And what you want to do with it is, okay, here's what
02:28:05: I used to do. And it doesn't work. They call up and say, are you, you know, do you consider yourself to be a good person?
02:28:11: They hang up because they're planning to scam you. They know they're not a good person.
02:28:17: You could say, do you think you're good enough to go to heaven? That kind of helps it.
02:28:23: But what I've always said is let, you know, you called me this. So it's my time.
02:28:29: I would like to speak with you first. Now, if they listen to the full gospel presentation, which they don't always do, then you need to listen to what they have to say.
02:28:38: You got to give them the time. Are they on the clock?
02:28:43: Yes, but they're calling you. So it's not the same thing. You're not like if I'm in a restaurant,
02:28:48: I'm careful how I share the gospel with waiters or waitresses because they have a job to do.
02:28:55: Scammers call you. Their job is to scam you. So my thinking is the more time I can take from scamming someone that may actually be scammed is better.
02:29:03: Let me add to that too, real quick. Okay, real quick. All right, real fast.
02:29:09: You can mess up and do the scam. And when the scam calls call you, you can mess up.
02:29:15: You can, you can practice on them and whatnot, and they're going to hang up on you. You haven't lost anything.
02:29:21: This is the greatest way to practice your evangelism is to when they call in, because everybody gets them when they call in.
02:29:29: If you have time, practice on them. Yeah. Yeah. Oftentimes they've hung up on me, but I think that distinction that's important to note.
02:29:40: A waiter or a waitress or a server, their job is ethical. The scammers, not so much.
02:29:48: Not at all, really. Yeah. But so there is a distinction there.
02:29:54: Sometimes they're doing a legitimate call, right? They're trying to, you know, and there are things that, you know, so you have to recognize that.
02:30:03: All right. So we got some others here that one that I was thinking of too, that it'd be good for Justin to have been here.
02:30:10: I'll stay on topic and we'll tackle this one quickly. But Melissa says strive of turning.
02:30:17: It would be much appreciated if you guys could speak on women and open air preaching. My understanding is that it would be unbiblical.
02:30:25: Is this correct? I would say, yes, it is unbiblical because the act of preaching in the open air is an extension of the pastoral office, in my opinion.
02:30:40: So only God called qualified men, and that's important because it isn't just any
02:30:48: Joe Smoe, but God called qualified men who ideally could step into a pastorate without any qualification problems should be the ones open air preaching.
02:31:02: Now, that's not to say that a woman shouldn't evangelize, which in and of itself, evangelism is a form of preaching.
02:31:12: But my issue is the complementarian one of open air preaching in a formal manner, in a formal way is an extension of the pastoral office, which is biblically reserved for men.
02:31:33: Does that make sense? Yeah, it's just wrong. So I don't,
02:31:38: I have to say, I agree. Let me disagree with it in this sense, and this is why
02:31:43: I call it, and before I knew of Ray Comfort or any of that, I put a position paper at our church, which we had to do for every ministry, and I was out doing what we call open air preaching, but I called it open air evangelism.
02:31:59: And I think that distinction changes it because people think of preaching as a pulpit, and I think that open air evangelism is an extension of evangelism.
02:32:10: And so I don't think that it's limited to men or qualified men.
02:32:17: However, so the question is, is it unbiblical? I can't say it's unbiblical because I can't find a text of scripture that would clearly delineate and say that women shouldn't do open air evangelism, shouldn't be preaching in the church.
02:32:33: Yes, clearly. Okay, but we get into the question of 1
02:32:38: Timothy 2, 12 and following, is that to the church or is that everywhere? Now here becomes an important distinction.
02:32:46: I do believe, based on the text of 1 Timothy, that is limited to the church. However, if it's not,
02:32:53: I'm okay with that, but if it's not limited to church, here's some things you have to consider.
02:32:59: Can you work a secular job for a woman boss? The answer would be no, because she would be in an unbiblical position.
02:33:06: She has authority over men. Can you as a woman be a manager over men in a secular job?
02:33:12: Well, no. If that text is not limited within the instructions within the church, then if that's universal, then these things have to be considered.
02:33:25: And so, now I'm not, be careful because what we don't want to do is interpret a text of scripture based on things we like or don't like from the implications of them.
02:33:36: That's a wrong way to interpret scripture. I do think based on the text of 1
02:33:42: Timothy, I think it is instruction within the church. We don't have time to get into that, and that might be a good show to do, a whole show on that.
02:33:49: But, and so I appreciate where it is coming from.
02:33:54: I know many men that hold to that position. I don't. I cannot say it's unbiblical, but I also can't say it's biblical, because there's no text in scripture where we have people doing, where we have, there's nowhere where you see a woman doing open air evangelism.
02:34:12: You do have men doing it. Just because no woman does it in the Bible doesn't make it unbiblical.
02:34:19: Yeah, now what I would say in support of your position, and we could do a whole episode on this, is that you do have, after the resurrection, you have the women enjoy proclaiming excitedly,
02:34:38: Jesus has been raised from the dead. And, you know,
02:34:43: I've gone back and forth on this issue, so my brain could be persuaded otherwise.
02:34:50: And I just want to say, too, I appreciate the kind, genuine disagreement on this.
02:35:00: You know, Christians can disagree and still love each other, right? Correct. Well, I mean, we love you to death.
02:35:05: I mean, even though you're wrong, it's okay. Here's the thing. Look, I mean, yeah, when we look, okay, so there's a book that's out on it by Tony Miano, Should She Preach?
02:35:18: We've spoken about who Tony Miano is. You can go look at Dangerous Doctrines. We did a whole series on his church.
02:35:26: But when he wrote that book, one of the things, he takes a position, no, he changes the position from yes, they can, to no, they never should.
02:35:34: His argument, in my opinion, was faulty. He made what happens on the street an extension of church.
02:35:42: He called it church because there's two or three gathered. That's a quotation out of context.
02:35:48: That is out of context. He says that there's singing, there's prayer. So these are all church activities.
02:35:54: And my argument was, well, you know, I remember working a job. And before people, you know, like we would get to work early so that we could have a
02:36:03: Bible study. And we read the Bible. There was more than two or three. We prayed.
02:36:08: Everything that he's arguing makes evangelism on the street a church. We did it work.
02:36:14: So is that now church? The other thing that I said to him was his argument was that First Timothy two is universal.
02:36:25: And I said, OK, if that's universal, what I decided to do is and this was some of as I was going through it was to say, do we have anywhere where Jesus encouraged a woman to give instruction to a man?
02:36:37: Because the issue that you see in First Timothy is a woman cannot give a general instruction to a man.
02:36:45: Everyone focused on the forceful authority. But if she can't give a general instruction, general, that's anything.
02:36:53: It means if you have, you know, you have contractors, I had contractors here in my house today because our water heater broke.
02:37:00: If my wife was to if I said, hey, look, I'm not going to be able to be available, tell them to do this.
02:37:06: That's a general instruction. Well, Jesus did that. Jesus can't sin.
02:37:12: He told women to go instruct the men after he died.
02:37:19: So if Jesus tells women they can give a general instruction. Then that says that First Timothy cannot be a universal instruction.
02:37:31: OK, that applies within the church. The reason that applies within the reasoning given is the creation order and sin order.
02:37:40: But he's saying that but clearly because because of the fact that Jesus can't lie and he's telling women to instruct men.
02:37:48: That is the argument that I end up using for that is to say, you see, Jesus can't sin.
02:37:54: That's the issue. So if he says a woman can give instruction to men, then they can in some circumstances.
02:38:00: Right. So Tony said he would put that in the book. He said he'd write a chapter called Answering the
02:38:06: Absurd. That is a logical fallacy of not dealing with the issue is what that was.
02:38:13: That was just ignoring the issue. And so so, yeah, so, I mean,
02:38:18: Ed and I disagree. But but I would say this. Would I let a woman do open air?
02:38:24: No. Now, do I go to so when I go to Living Waters, we go to Living Waters and I do there.
02:38:31: You know, so does Anthony. We both get a team of people. We train up people to do their Ambassador Academy.
02:38:37: Yeah. So when we go, both Anthony and I have the position and we
02:38:42: Living Waters honors this. We say we don't want a team of women. So there's some teams that have men and women.
02:38:49: We have just men. Why? Because if I'm working with Living Waters, Living Waters policy would be that a woman can get up and do open air.
02:38:59: Now, I'm I'm actually I'll go out with a repentant witness and women will do open air.
02:39:06: Now you say, well, what's the difference, Andrew? Because with repentant witness, they limit women to doing the good person test.
02:39:14: Sharing their testimony, reading scripture, but not exegeting passages of scripture.
02:39:21: See, and that for me is where the difference is. I don't want a woman getting on.
02:39:26: This is where Ed's at, because much of what we see in open air evangelism is really open air preaching.
02:39:32: It's guys who think they're pastors and they get up there and they because that's what ends up happening. They think they're preaching.
02:39:38: They're like a pastor and they're just doing a sermon. Again, they're doing a presentation, not a conversation.
02:39:47: They have a sermon prepared and they get up there and do it. Well, that's the difference that I view with it.
02:39:52: I don't think you should be giving sermons on the street. I think you should be giving evangelism on the street.
02:39:58: I remember Tony, he had a pulpit that he started and he asked me about it one time.
02:40:04: This is a long time ago. I told him, I said, you shouldn't be doing that. And I did tell him, I don't think you should do that.
02:40:10: This is not church. The scripture makes it clear that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
02:40:17: So lifestyle evangelism, I don't put much talk in it. You need to be sharing the gospel. You need to be proclaiming the truth, the word of God.
02:40:25: You need to be calling out sin, righteousness, and judgment to come. That's what the Holy Spirit came to do. And I think that Andrew, I think he's right.
02:40:34: You know? So let's, because I know there's a topic coming that's going to, you know.
02:40:40: Yeah. Go ahead. So if I could say real quick,
02:40:46: I don't have a ton of time left. And I was wondering if I could share about my ministry.
02:40:55: Yeah, I want to do that. Yeah, I want to do that. And we, yeah, we got, we got some, we got some things.
02:41:01: Yeah, because we, we're never, there's a question here about the chosen. And we're never going to be able to get through that.
02:41:07: Justin's going to go for an hour on that. So I'll just do this one. Darren, Darren put this one.
02:41:13: Here is a topic. Dispensationalism isn't true. So we could deal with that one quickly. There's nothing to talk about on that.
02:41:21: Dispensationalism is true. So there you go, Darren. Topic discussed, answered, over. All right.
02:41:29: So there we go. I'm going to keep my mouth shut. Well, all you got to do is read one of Michael Bloch's books about it.
02:41:36: No, but actually, here'd be a thing. Look, the difference, actually, that I, a big part of what
02:41:43: I see different between dispensationalism and covenant theology is something, Ed, you said earlier. So much of covenant theology is why we have the focus on everything being about Christ and man's salvation.
02:41:55: Dispensationalism is about God's glory. So if you don't disagree, you probably don't disagree as much as you think.
02:42:02: But it's creation realities. Go ahead. Ed, I wanted to, you know, and I really,
02:42:13: I thought about doing this right after you gave the evangelism because there were so many people listening and amening.
02:42:20: So there's folks, if you like what you heard with Ed, he has, he's got a request.
02:42:26: I know that, you know, it's hard to ask for certain things for yourself, but he has a need and a ministry.
02:42:35: And Ed, if you could talk about that so people can get behind you and support you. Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity, dear brother.
02:42:43: So I live currently at the church. This is one of the church buildings.
02:42:51: You can see that way on the camera. The bed that I have, and I would like to raise enough funds to where I can have a forever home out here.
02:43:07: And the greater Salt Lake area, which is where Provo is located, is pretty expensive.
02:43:15: The average house price, the average house price is about $545 ,000.
02:43:23: And I really do feel the
02:43:29: Lord wants me to be out here for the long haul. And I am looking to raise funds in order to eventually within the next year or so get a forever home out here.
02:43:45: And honestly, it'd be cheaper than the average price. I've talked it over with my other pastors.
02:43:53: I would need about, because of the expenses here, $5 ,000 a month to be able to live a modest lifestyle.
02:44:07: I don't want to get into all the politics of it. Well, for folks to also understand, you have cerebral palsy.
02:44:14: So there are other expenses in a home for you that other people don't, they wouldn't even consider to think about because they don't need to have ramps everywhere and have everything on one level or a way to get upstairs.
02:44:31: Once I get a home, it would need to be modified to suit my needs.
02:44:37: Correct. Yes. First off, because I want to be able to put this in, where can we send people while you're talking about it?
02:44:46: I want to put this up on. So where can we send people? Absolutely. If you go to fbcprovo .org
02:44:53: and you click on the giving button, you will see a box for giving and you'll see general fund in that box.
02:45:03: If you click on that menu, there'll be a drop down menu and you'll see
02:45:09: Romine support. That is me. And then if you click that and then also click reoccurring giving on that little button, that would be such a blessing to me to have many people partner with me in my ministry, which includes a lot more than just LDS evangelism.
02:45:35: I've already alluded a lot to it. I have an itinerant ministry all over the country and the world through technology.
02:45:48: And I also seek to encourage other brothers who are in ministry, as I've already said.
02:45:56: Give me that website again, because I. Yeah, fbcprovo .org.
02:46:03: Okay. Yep. Then if you click on giving, you'll see a new page.
02:46:12: Yeah, for you. Yep. Thank you. I see it there. And so I'll try to get the direct link here once I can.
02:46:22: So keep talking about it while I get that link. Yeah. So you're good. No dead air, right?
02:46:28: So with helping me out, you also are a blessing to my church because I believe in giving out of a cheerful heart and the more money
02:46:41: I'm able to make through fundraising, the more
02:46:46: I'm able to bless my own church family. And I am a pastor here, but the church itself directly can't afford to pay all her pastors.
02:47:00: It's just life in Utah. So all of my finances goes through the church and then
02:47:09: I take that out as salary, if that makes sense. So the fundraising I get literally is my salary.
02:47:18: So if that makes sense, I want to be able to do this for the rest of my life.
02:47:26: If God would have me here in Provo. So yeah, so that's up there.
02:47:36: FBCPROVO .org slash giving. So if you go there, that's a way you can help support
02:47:42: Ed on a monthly basis so that he'd be able to get his own place to live.
02:47:51: All right. Thank you, dear brother. Not a problem. Not a problem. Thanks for coming on.
02:47:58: We'll just deal with two real quick things and then we're going to end. Melissa said, striving fraternity is always an encouragement.
02:48:05: I always look forward to Thursdays because of your ministry. Thank you so much for that, Melissa. KT said, transition how you pronounce coffee,
02:48:16: Andrew. Ha. Well, that's very easy. I can do that transition very quickly. There's a right way and a wrong way to things.
02:48:23: There's a right way to say coffee, as I just said it. There's a wrong way, coffee, or however people want to try to coffee, whatever.
02:48:33: Kofi is actually a brother that we know him. So, you know, if you say it that way, but you could say it the right way or the wrong way, like you can have the right gospel message or the wrong gospel message.
02:48:45: So there you go. You need to have the right gospel, just like you need to pronounce coffee correctly. So there you go.
02:48:53: Poor Kofi Adebowale. Yeah. Well, I can't even pronounce his last name right. So I've given up.
02:48:59: So I was going to say that's hard. Yeah. By the way, for those who, you know,
02:49:05: Kofi stands for Thursday because he was born on Thursday. It's an interesting thing.
02:49:15: So Melissa says Andrew sounded like Kermit the Frog there for a moment. So we did have a request.
02:49:23: I'm going to end out by playing a clip that people wanted to hear about. Do babies exist?
02:49:29: We haven't played this one for a long time. So I'll play this and, you know, say,
02:49:38: Ed, thanks for coming in. It was great having you here. Really appreciate it. Appreciate your ministry.
02:49:44: Appreciate your encouragement to me on a regular basis every time you call me. So thank you.
02:49:50: Absolutely, brother. If it's okay, I'm going to go ahead and leave now. I've got something I've got to take care of.
02:49:56: You take care of that. We're going to just play a clip and we'll see you next week. Next week,
02:50:02: I will say, I should come back on screen real quick. If I can find it.
02:50:08: There we go. So next week, what we have planned for you is we have biblical prophecies.
02:50:16: We had someone who heard my salvation testimony, challenged me saying that, you know, biblical prophecies are really not, you know, as I claim that they were, you know, when
02:50:30: I claim that they were something that led me to Christ and that they're, you know, he thinks that they're all made up.
02:50:36: So we'll talk about that next week. So we'll see you next time. Okay. You said statements either true or false.
02:50:44: I gave you a statement and you said it doesn't apply. It's not too bad. Only too bad statements would be either true or false.
02:50:51: So is it true that I'm talking to you? Is it true? That is true statement. I'm talking to you. Is that true?
02:50:56: Yes. Okay. Is it true that babies exist? Um, well,
02:51:03: I mean, how long babies exist, babies exist. Babies exist. Is that true?
02:51:08: Or is it not the case that it's true? I mean, if you want to go down the, you know, if you want to be very strict about it,