Evangelism with Dr. Ed Romine and Justin Peters

Technical Setup and Show Introduction

Dr. Anthony Silvestro and Pastor Justin Pierce.

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your challenging questions. Whatever you have that you want answers to about God and the Bible, we're here to answer your questions. So, you just go to ApologeticsLive .com, ApologeticsLive .com, Thursday nights, 8 o 'clock Eastern time.

Just go there, go scroll down until you see the StreamYard icon, which is a duck. Click on that and make sure you allow your browser to use your mic and camera, and then join us with any questions you have about God and the 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, Mr. Justin Pierce.

Is that really you?

That's him. That's him. I'm the uglier version of Justin Peters.

Clearing Up the James White Clip

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.

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. Well, I'm going to give the evidence I said I would do, so let me first share this.

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. 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. Let me just set this up, and, oh, stop for a second. I got, 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.

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.

Now, later, later in the show, I will admit he does say that it was that he said his tone. Yeah, he said tone.

After the, after making the assertion at first. Correct, and so I'm gonna, so there's a couple.

Things we can do. One, we can get to listen to see if he actually said tone or not. That might be good. A second thing we'll get to see is whether or not he, James raised his voice. The only thing I'm having trouble with here is I get to add, ah, there it is, music, so that you guys can hear it and not just me.

So, I'm going to play this clip, and I want you to listen to see if James White raised his voice. 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 I would do this.

I keep my word. So, here is the audio of the video clip you're seeing that's highlighted there. Let's listen to see if James.

White raised his voice, right? Like, do you think the infancy gospel of Thomas is why, which is why they are universally rejected, right? Okay, so you can, you can sarcastically raise your voice.

If you want, but that. Hmm, well, first he said raise your voice there, but point out something because I, I stress doing this a lot, and you guys know me well enough to know that's how 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.

It was, it was, he wasn't being all jumping and jumping. I got to get this out. He was, he slowed down, and he was becoming very clear now, and, you know, good debate is, is that's how you do it. 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. He said raise your tone. You can clearly hear he said raise your voice, 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. So, but we are going to talk about a topic that you and I thoroughly enjoy, Justin. I'm just trying to see if we, I thought I had something in the, I thought I had something else we had to do in the in the news section or something.

Let me just check on if there was, 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. It's funny, but we're living in socialist land USA.

Ministry Funding and Platform Restrictions

It's, I know what it was. I knew the announcement. Yes, and, and you mentioning socialist place that, that is kind of fitting for this. So the reason the, the, some folks who are members in YouTube, 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. All of the videos we had on YouTube, you couldn't do anything with the monetize monetarily wise.

And that is because, well, they decided to remove our ability to monetize videos. Isn't that nice of them? So they, they, Google had decided that we somehow, I guess, broke some unspoken rules that I don't know about.

Maybe, maybe, but so yeah, so we were not able to, and someone contacted us right away and said, Hey, not able to monetize or not able to get my membership. And so I had been fighting all week with YouTube to get that back in as well.

We were fighting all week at the same time. What's kind of strange Amazon, cause we're an Amazon affiliate. They shut us down the same time Google did. Hmm. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy here. I'm just saying it's interesting.

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, is more known on this show, but let's bring in a doctor.

And now, okay. Let me put his name up here. Here folks, you can see how he typed his name. If you're watching on video and I'm going to ask everyone how that should be pronounced. Should it be, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't you give it away. Should it be pronounced Romaine or Romaine? It's mine. Romaine. Oh, it's yours. It's not his.

It's Romaine. And by the way, if you don't use Ed Romaine, it's going to confuse people with Ed Romaine and we know Ed Romaine as well. So it's going to confuse people there. Well, he, he, he,.

He just, you know, there was one time where Dr. Ed Romaine basically called me out on a phone call one time telling me it's Romaine, not Romaine. I'm not a lettuce is I think how he actually, I think actually that's what he did.

He called up and said, I'm not lettuce. And let me also bring in Justin Peters. Welcome. So for folks who don't know Ed and most people know you, Justin here, you've been a somewhat regular guest. Ed, I keep calling you Dr. Ed because you just recently finished your doctorate.

And so why don't you let folks know what the topic.

Spurgeon, Open-Air Preaching, and the Joy of Pastoral Ministry

Is and where you're a pastor? Yeah. So first and foremost, I get the joy and honor of being a pastor of the first Baptist church of Provo, Utah. If any of you know the Brigham Young University, the church is located about 10 to 15 minutes away from Brigham Young.

And as you might expect, it's very highly LDS out here. LDS stands for Latter-day Saints. Correct. Correct. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons amongst the wider world, but they prefer to be called members of the 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 U .S.'s most unreached metro area. There's not very many 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 PhD dissertation on Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the 19th century Victorian Baptist preacher.

And I wrote on Spurgeon's pedagogy and practice of open air preaching. Pedagogy, if you don't know that word, that's a fancy $5 word for the art of teaching. And then practice just means what it sounds like, that he actually did it.

So my work on Spurgeon examined his teaching of open air preaching to others and also his practice of it. So that's just in a nutshell what my dissertation is about. 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. So. Yeah. So you are now an expert on both Spurgeon and.

Open air preaching. So there you go. One could say that. I don't feel like one, but yeah, sure.

Evangelism Through Weakness, Disability, and Encouragement

Well, can I share the evangelism story about you and I in New York? That I don't remember. You don't remember, but it's my favorite. Okay. So let me set the scene up. So folks, because we're going to talk evangelism.

So I want you to know who Ed, the type of character 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 two speakers that were set up 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. Amen. Which by the way, if you have some handicap and you think somehow you can't serve in ministry, you're wrong.

There's men that are great examples of it. So, um, but here he, Ed is, and Ed's cerebral palsy is worse than Justin's. So he's in a wheelchair in the center. And I was sitting on the side, talking on the phone with a pastor and someone decided he was upset with Ed.

Ed is sitting there and preaching the gospel and the guy can't figure out who's preaching. He sees the speakers and he yells, shut up. And, 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, I'm like realizing, I said to the pastor, I'm talking to her like, ah, I may get, have to get off the phone. This, this may get bad. And the guy screams right into the speaker and he yells, whoever you are, when I find you, I'm going to punch you in the face.

Oh, and Ed just turns and goes, it just says through the speaker, we hear you're going to punch a handicapped man in the face. And the guy just looks and sees Ed and sees the headphones and starts walking toward him.

Something like rushing to try to cut him off. 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. And I'm like, what was that?

And I said to Ed, I'm like, what was that? He goes, when, when you're, when you're in a wheelchair and handicapped, you can get away with things that you just can't when you're not. I, I was blown away, but you handled it so well.

You weren't even scared.

Ed, you say you don't remember that story? I really don't. No. Oh, it was great. Really? Yeah. But I mean, I've had similar things happen, but I don't remember it happening in New York.

City. 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. Right. Cause you didn't go to the California event,.

Did you? No, no. Yeah. So we, we, we assume it's New York. We'll be clear. We assume it's New York.

Yeah. Well, I think I could speak for Ed. I'm sure he would affirm this, that, that our, our disabilities, having CP opens up a lot of opportunities to share the gospel with people, to evangelize. I mean, it's pretty, I mean, it, it, it happens to all the time.

And so for, in that sense, I'm, I don't mean to, I don't want this to sound hyper-spiritual cause I don't mean it that way, but I'm thankful for my handicap, at least in that regard. Now I think Ed would affirm with me, I don't particularly enjoy being crippled.

I mean, there's some days, you know, I had my druthers, I kind of wish I wasn't, but, but in the grand scheme of things man, it's just open. It's just such a natural conversation starter and so easy to move right into the gospel.

And, and so I'm grateful for it in that sense. Yes. Yeah. My,.

My nephew has he has a lot of health issues and he's in a wheelchair. He's, I can't remember what was titled exactly that he has, but, but he has he has a heart for evangelism, sharing the gospel and whatnot, but he has to use a Down syndrome.

Okay. So he has, he has to use a chin remote to drive his, his wheelchair. And he speaks through it. 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?

How can he do more to, you know, to share the gospel or write or things like that? And, and, and what should he do, you know, when it comes to that? So that's something I'd like to explore with you guys, if you don't mind.

You know, what can he, and people that are, that are handicapped, that, that just, you know, they're terrified already and they don't know, well, what can, how can I serve God in any way and in any meaningful way?

And maybe you guys can speak more than I know anybody could. So, I mean, if you don't mind.

Serving Christ Through Encouragement and the Internet

Yeah. I have a question. How, how mobile is he? Is he pretty bound at home?

Well, he's actually at a, he's actually, he's actually at a facility, a nurse care facility where he lives in Iowa, but he he's, he's constantly on social media. He is very active in his community. Amazingly enough, he, he interacts with everybody.

He has, he has outreaches to, to the police officers and everything. He's very active and, and he just wants to, to know.

How can he be of service, you know, to, to what, so. Yeah. Well, one of my biggest ministries, I would say, is, 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. 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.

And I've found that to be one of the sweetest ministries is having a ministry of.

Encouragement. But more. Before we get to the next point, I'll, I'll just, I'm a recipient of that. You call me every couple of months just to encourage and see how things are going. You know, you'll call up, say, Hey, what are you preaching?

And how's, how's things going with church and ministry? And so I can, I can attest to what you just said as a recipient of your encouragement.

Well, thank you, brother. I try and, you know, I have a rotation of preachers and ministers and pastors that I go through. And, 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.

But, 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. Back in the day, I used to use a program called Pow Talk, and I would get on the Pow Talk and talk to atheists and things and, and other cult members.

Nowadays, about once a week, I get on a more updated program called Clubhouse,.

Club Deck, something like that. It's Clubhouse. We're also, and I should announce this, I didn't announce this earlier, but we are currently on Wisdom as well. That's another app. Okay. And I, I said this on this show, the Wisdom app is like doing open air evangelism on an app.

I can do it right from here. And we, you know, sometimes I'll just get on there and just share the gospel and see if anyone comes in and, you know, because there's a way for people to come in, you know, I think like Clubhouse and join the discussion.

And so you don't have to go anywhere to share the gospel. You could do it right from your phone if you have a smartphone with some of.

These apps. Yep. Yep. And that, that's the, 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. And even though that may sound harsh.

No, it sounds right on. It's very true. So, so even bedridden Christians, if they really have the desire and they have an internet connection, they, they can be a voice for the gospel. You know, 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, to do anything.

He was bound, you know, bedridden and Peter was able to set him up. And if you go back to previous episodes here on Apologetics Live, when Peter was on here and we talked evangelism in the game world, and that's what the guy was able to go into a video game and share the gospel.

From the bed. And like you can even order, and I say order kind of tongue in cheek, LDS to come to your door. I try, I try that, but they don't come in. You know,.

I was going to grab my, my Book of Mormon when you mentioned it, but I found a way for it to, you know, I, I, I just found a way for it to give me a burning in the bosom in a different sense.

And no, no. Yeah. I know where that's going.

No, you, you can, you can call the, the, if you contact the 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.

Drew says that burning.

In the bosom, that's called heartburn. Yeah. I've never heard of it. Wisdom, wisdom. What was it?

Wisdom and clubhouse are two apps. Yeah. There are two apps that you can get on your phone and anybody can, can go into the apps and, you know, Pastor Jess 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, they put you right into a show and, and you can ask to be a guest on anyone's show, but you're limited to amount of time and, and oh, you're bringing it up.

Yeah. So, so, oh man, they're already saying hi. I'm going to, I'm going to get off here.

Yeah. As soon as you pop it up. Yeah. 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.

They'll be brought up on, 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. So it's very much like doing open air evangelism.

And you don't know how many, I mean, I've had times where 50, a hundred people are listening at any one time. And so it's kind of like doing open air. 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.

From Natural Conversation to Gospel Conversation

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 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. I'd never been on it. I never heard of it. So I go on and I'm listening and there was a gentleman, I, what is it like a, a 10 minute, uh, time session that you have or something?

I can't. Okay. All right. Well, here they are. They're, they're talking for some, some amount of time and it resets. And so, um, if you, if you want it to, so, uh, and I think it's, I think the purpose is you can change topics or you can just continue on.

Well, Andrew was talking to the gentleman. I mean, just directly straight out. He jumped in. He started talking to him, sharing the gospel. The guy says he's an atheist and whatnot. And they talked for probably an hour and a half or better.

Uh, I think it was somewhere in that they just kept, it kept recycling, kept going and going.

The guy 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 project live,.

Got to share the gospel on his secular show. 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. 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.

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. And I get nervous and I stumble around and yet God still uses it.

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 messing up and they don't want to do it, not to the glory of God.

And, and they're still know they're going to mess up. And yet when we're doing it, I mean, I've seen videos of Justin Peters coming out here, brother, you know, I love you to death. Uh, you're one of my closest brothers.

I care about you. I haven't talked to you in five months, but, but seriously, it's, it's a seminary. 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.

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 about Jesse Duplantis and you're talking about, you know, he needs to be saved.

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. You know, 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.

The little kids can do it. You know, anybody.

Can. Well, Justin, let me, let me play a video. 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, well, let's listen to how, how we, we could share the gospel, how easy it is, um, to share the gospel.

Let's, let's watch. You're one leg.

Shorter than the other one. It throws you back out. Oh no. Like, well, yeah, no matter what. So what I'll do, regardless of what you believe, 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. So you'd get into the, the weirdest place of beliefs 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.

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 the one. 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.

It's about Jesus. Okay. So unless you look at his left hand,.

Justin, is that, is that how we, we evangelize like that? Is that,.

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I lengthen people's legs all the time. 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. I mean, how else do you do evangelism other than do it that way?

Oh, that's all. You want to speak to the next video then? Well, I don't know if people heard it, but, um, you heard 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.

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. So, well, but also those, those are the.

Same guys that say the reason that you're not healed, Justin is because you don't have enough faith, right? I mean, you're talking about both sides of your mouth. I mean, you don't have to.

And I can heal you. You can get into the weirdest unbelief and he can still heal you.

So if, and that's a good point because, and I actually want to do a video on this at some point. 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.

Right. So if, if it doesn't matter what this guy believes, if it doesn't matter, then heal me, heal Ed, you know, Ed and I, we're both skeptics when it comes to faith healers, but it doesn't matter what we believe.

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. So I, you know, I'd say we got a leg up, pardon the pun, a leg up on that guy.

So, you know, we're at least halfway to the finish line here. So, I mean, you know, we, we, so heal us, you know, heal us. If it, you know, it doesn't matter if we're skeptics apparently, at least when it comes to faith healers, but heal, heal 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.

So, yeah. So, so this next video is explaining the trick, isn't it? 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 American Gospel Film, and this is going to be Stephen Kozar of the Messed Up Church channel. 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.

And he's going to explain it. So, you know, there's still work for audio.

Now we're going to see 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. 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.

Look at the leg on our left. That's where all the action is. That's what's actually being manipulated. You can see that Todd is actually pivoting or shifting the foot of the so-called long leg so that the heels match.

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. You can't really, you know, yeah, you got to just change this, the scope of it and, you know, just slow it down long enough. And then you can see what's really happening. Nothing. So, so Justin is, is that so, so is that evangelism?

Cause I mean, Todd White said,.

False Signs and the Real Gospel

This is, I mean, this is what he considers evangelism. Yeah, that is his version of evangelism, but Todd White, you know, that's his bread and butter. That's what made him famous, leg lengthening. But I have watched, I don't even know how many, uh, quote unquote witnessing encounters that Todd White has done, uh, sharing the quote unquote gospel with people.

I can honestly say I had never a single time heard Todd White share the true gospel. In fact, it's like the, um, antithesis to the gospel because he goes up to people, not with law and grace, not with, um, the 10 commandments and he's the opposite of Ray Comfort.

He tells everybody how fabulous they are. 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. And that's his version of the gospel, which is, um, it's, it's a lot of things, but the gospel, it ain't.

So, uh, he has, he has spent, you know, 15 years now or so as a quote unquote evangelist sharing a false Jesus.

And a false gospel. Yeah. So, so I know, by the way, I see, uh, 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.

Um, 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, uh, real, real quick, you know, I want to ask, you know, cause you guys already mentioned that anyone can do evangelism.

So let me ask this of, of you guys. First, what I'd like to do is have one of you explain what is the gospel message. We just saw what it is not from Todd White. Um, but actually I'm going to, I'll ask Ed because we've had Justin do that before on.

The show. So Ed, what, what is the gospel message? The gospel first starts out with the character and nature of a holy, holy, holy triune God. Uh, when you look at Isaiah chapter six, and if you look at revelation, the Bible twice proclaims that God is holy, holy, holy.

And if you know anything about the Hebrew language, you know that that is emphatic. It is the most emphatic out of any of God's attributes. And so that's the primary thing, at least in my mind, to understand first is that God exists as a Trinity, father, son, holy spirit.

And that holy God named Yahweh throughout the scriptures is perfect, beautiful, set apart and righteous beyond all human description. And, 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 God.

He is completely different. Uh, theologians throughout the centuries describe God as a completely different class of being all to himself. And in Psalm 50, he rebukes the Israelites because he says, you thought I was just like you.

And in Psalm 50, it's a grand exposition of the nature of God. 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.

Uh, Romans five teaches us that through the transgression of our father, Adam, we have all inherited his sin nature. 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.

Adam disobeyed God in Genesis three, he and his wife, Eve, disobeyed God's command by listening to the old dragon, the serpent. 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.

Now that being said, God's righteous and holy wrath is an extension of his goodness. God, because we must punish all that is evil. And part of understanding the gospel is understanding that your sin, both inherited and committed makes you evil before a holy God and God in his holiness must abhor all that is evil and must judge with righteousness, all that is evil.

So that's a pretty bad predicament. Brother Ray Comfort likes to take people through the 10 commandments and show them that God in his holiness must judge them because they've broken his holy law. 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.

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. But the good news is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

And in his living, in his dying, and in his resurrection, and in his ascension, Christ lived the life that we should have lived, but can't live. And he died the death that we deserve to die. He took all of the sin of his people upon himself, bearing the curse of sin.

Deuteronomy says a cursed man hangs upon a tree. And in being cursed, he was cursed by his father. In his humanity, he died the death that his people should have died. But through Christ and his atoning sacrifice, and 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.