Captian America Discusses the Idol of Theology | Rapp Report Weekly 0014 | Striving for Eternity

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This is the ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Have you made an idol of your theology? That is what we are going to talk about today, and I have with me a very special guest.

In fact, he is a hero. You may know him as Captain America.

We know him by his alias, Chris Honholds of the

Voice of Reason Radio. Welcome Chris. Well, thanks for having me.

Thanks for setting me up. Yeah, now I just, I just, the rest of the show is me face planning because you've just, you know, completely oversold this.

You are known as Captain America, are you not? Only by you. The rest of the, the rest of the internet knows that I do it for fun and I like,

I do it for the kids. All right. So, so we're going to have to introduce that bit because you do dress up as Captain America.

And I've been busting on you for years because this is what you do as a hobby is you actually make your own

Captain America outfit. And you, you silenced me when

I was giving you a hard time about why you do it and thinking it was just a hobby, but you do, there's a little bit more to it than just a hobby and something to pretend to be some superhero, you know,

DC comic. Okay. Now you just, you realize that is a worse debate than Calvinism versus Arminianism.

You could actually explode the internet by doing that, so don't do that. And the irony is

I actually had to learn which one was which so that I could purposely get it wrong. Anyone who knows me knows

I wouldn't have a clue between DC and Marvel comics, but I do know there's a big, I don't know who's in which one.

I just know that they fight. Okay. Simple math. Batman, Superman, DC, Captain America, Avengers, all those guys,

Marvel. That should, for your purposes, that should be enough. Yeah, it didn't help me much. All right.

So talk about why you dress up as Captain America and what you do with it. Actually, the reason that happened is the big comic conventions that go around, well, several years back, they actually planted one in Reno.

You know, they did it for a couple years, didn't make as much money as they'd hoped. But we went as a family, my wife, my two boys and I, and one of the big things to do there, if you're going to be part of the experience is to show up in costume.

Well, we didn't have any costumes. So we slapped some things together, painted up some t -shirts, slapped on some masks, went and had a great time.

And so since then, it's become kind of - To evangelize, right? No, we just went for a family vacation of sorts.

You're really going to get me in trouble. There are people who would probably look down on me, that if I went without gospel tracks in hand, then what did you go for?

I tell you, they're out there. But so we did that. And it just became kind of a fun experience for us as a family to do.

And so the more we would go, the more I would look online for, how do you make this stuff?

Because at the time, a lot of it was very hard to come by. You can't, unless it's Halloween or something, and you want to buy the really cheap costumes at Walmart, sometimes it's hard to find some stuff.

So we started making things. And I had found out that you could make helmets and armor and shields and stuff out of foam.

And so that's how we started doing that. And we got to know some people from these groups that go to these events.

And what ended up happening is I've actually had opportunities to show up where kids would be present and interact with them.

We went and did a hospital visitation one time in the children's ward and had a wonderful time getting to visit the kids.

I've worked at least one birthday party. I visited a boy on his birthday at the school.

Kids went berserk. Now, did they ever ask you, hey, I always thought Captain America was taller?

From their perspective, he is. I have that advantage right now. You know, when they're three foot, five foot, six looks like six foot.

So you're OK. Now, you're also a police officer by day.

So do you ever arrest anyone in your Captain America outfit? I'm just curious. I'd love to get a video of that. No, no.

I can tell you right now, that's never going to happen. There's not enough room to put the stuff

I need on that suit. That belt that I carry would destroy the suit.

Captain America arrests a criminal. I'm telling you, the sad part about it is where I live in a small rural town in northern

Nevada called Fernley, I had opportunity to walk in the 4th of July parade and I discovered something about superheroes and their costumes.

A mask does nothing to hide your identity because some of the people that I've dealt with professionally over years immediately recognized who

I was. So it does nothing. Lesson to those that want to be a superhero, you need a better mask than just something that covers your eyes.

Exactly. I think the mask was actually designed to cover up the

Asian eyes and the green hornet of Bruce Lee. That's what it was because you weren't allowed to have an

Asian as a superhero or a main figure back then. Yeah, that was actually entirely true for his case.

See, I actually know about that superhero, not because I've ever watched any of the shows, I just know about Bruce Lee.

I only ever caught, I think, one or two episodes of the Green Hornet. I didn't even know what it was until much later down the road, but it was just funny to find out that, yeah, he had to be an

Asian character. That was his character in the radio show and yet the TV networks squealed and said, no, what is wrong with you people?

Can't have an Asian. All right, so we should get somewhere to a top.

Let me play a commercial and then we'll try to get more serious. I doubt this highly.

Can you prove that God is a trinity? Can you prove that Jesus is God? Can you defend the

Christian faith? And what is it that Christians truly believe? The new book by Andrew Rappaport, What Do We Believe?

will answer those questions and more. Some people just don't understand what the church is today, but this book will go through the history and meaning of the church and what's more important than to understand man's sinfulness and God's salvation.

Get your copy at WhatDoWeBelieveBook .com or at the StrivingForEternity .org store.

Now, you actually wrote a review or an endorsement of that book.

I did. You're still waiting for the hardcover that you get, and I haven't seen that yet.

Just saying. I think you're hiding it. We did pay for it three months ago. I'm just saying. Personally, I think you've got them stashed away somewhere.

Well, hey, I just got my hardcopy edition of Dr. Silvestro and John Eccles' book

On the Origin of Kinds, and I think that book's been out like two years, and I just got my hardcover this weekend.

I'm just saying they finally got to it. So two years. As long as I beat two years in getting you yours,

I'm golden. I'm golden. Awesome. Talk about a different book.

I'm still convinced. However, I'm blaming you for this, but I think you fixed it because we did a

Preacher's Bible giveaway, and your co -host won it out of all the people, and he didn't have that many entries compared to some of the other people.

And we had, I think it was like 12 ,000 entries. It sounded ridiculous. It was amazing.

Oh, my God. So I said, okay, we got to do this differently because it was way too much work the way we were doing it before.

So we're going to give another Preacher's Bible away. This is a New American Standard Bible, very thick, very, the pages are thick so it doesn't bleed through.

It's great. It's like a $200 Bible. It will last generations, so you could take notes, and your grandchildren, your great -grandchildren could see your notes.

So it's one to be passed on, and we're going to be giving it away, but we are not going to do it where every share counts of the

Wrap Report. We want to encourage you to share the Wrap Report with hashtag WrapReport, R -A -P -P, so it's two

Ps. But the way to enter is to do one of two things. You have to either write a review on iTunes for the

Wrap Report or email us, and when you email us, you either give us a review, give us your thoughts, whether you like or don't like about the show, and the other thing you could do is if you could email us and give us some topics you want us to discuss in the future.

So writing a review on iTunes, sending us an email, that's the entry, but you still have to follow on social media.

You have to follow either Andrew Wrap Report, that's at Andrew Wrap Report on Twitter, or the

Striving Fraternity Ministries page on Facebook. If you're not on either of those two, then email us and let us know.

That you'd like to, but you don't have either of those social medias. So that entry is gonna go. We're gonna draw the winner,

I think, at July 1st. Whatever that Sunday is, we'll announce the winner that first Sunday in July, I think.

And if Richard Story wins again, or Chris Honholds wins, we know they've been influencing the drawing.

I'm just saying. Well, I can claim absolutely no interference.

There was no Russian collusion here. Because I wasn't even entering the contest. Hey, look.

The Russian collusion was based on a forged document. I'm gonna have a document, don't worry.

Hey, listen. You know, you introduced me to a podcast. Why don't we get into the car to discuss the rest of the show?

By all means. So you introduced me to Theology Driven.

And they get into their car, and they just drive around with this noise behind them. And, you know, you're in Nevada, and I'm out here, and it's good that we could both enjoy the noise.

Hey, you know what? It's raining out there by you, though. Which is really interesting, considering we're in a desert.

Yeah, well, yeah. But I'm waiting for it. You know what's gonna eventually happen with those guys at Theology Driven? We're eventually gonna hear this on their show.

I mean, I'm waiting to hear that. I mean, eventually, they're talking theology while driving. And we're gonna hear that sometime.

And then, you know, it's gonna be like, Ah! You know? I mean, these things are gonna happen.

Well, I'm telling you, they set the bar for ADHD -O shiny object on that show.

You know, Rich and I, we can get distracted. We actually had an entire show where we were off on rabbit trails so many times, we never found a topic.

I thought that was every show. Wait a minute. No, no. I thought that was the whole thing behind the, you know,

Voice of Reason radio is just, Squirrel? Squirrel. Squirrel.

No, usually only for about the first 10 minutes. But these are the guys that in the middle of waxing eloquent on theology will stop and say,

Oh, look, there's deer. Oh, wait, we need to turn around. There's a swan. Oh, look at these guys staring at a statue.

In the middle of a subject. So, the possibility of crunch is entirely possible with these guys.

But, see, my theory is that they're not actually in the car. They're just, you know, they're just doing this.

You know? I mean, I mean, maybe they're really outside in a tent. I mean, you know, we could do this.

We could do a whole show and just put that in the background. You know, I'm not thoroughly convinced they're actually behind the wheel.

Just saying. Just for the record, Anonymou, guys,

Scott, James, this was his idea. Oh, don't try to pass it off on me. You pay me $5 to do it.

I've got kids. Who says I've got $5? Oh, I love it.

But I have been enjoying that podcast. Excellent show, actually. Very excellent. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I thoroughly enjoy it when they give you a hard time.

I don't know why that is that I enjoy people that give you a hard time. I can't imagine why only because you seem to lead the fan club

I can't imagine why you would enjoy that. Yes, yes.

So let's talk, you know, Voice of Reason Radio. You guys started.

You were really kind of started because of some frustration you saw with Christian behavior online and and a little bit about what we we want to talk about tonight with people who make an idol of their theology.

So, I mean, first off, I do want to, you know, explain why you and Richard got together, started this up.

And, you know, and let's talk about the idea of can people make an idol of their theology?

Yeah, absolutely. Rich and I had been recruited by a previous podcast and a good friend of ours,

Tony Miano. And over the years, we developed a good friendship. Okay, now wait, recruited. Is that really the right word?

Well, I think it was more like you liked a Facebook post. He contacted you and said,

I'm glad that you're in. Yeah, it's kind of, it was kind of the army version of where you are required to volunteer.

Next thing I knew, I was buying a new laptop and learning how to run a soundboard and I'd never done any of that. Tony has that way.

He's, I don't know how he's got that, you know, that Jedi mind valve thing going on. I'm going to make you do what

I want you to do and you're going to, but you know, that's the definition of a good leader. Get you, a good leader is someone that can get you to do what you don't want to do and enjoy doing.

Exactly. Yep, absolutely. And Tony is a wonderful brother and love him to death and we did learn a lot.

And what had happened is after, you know, Cross Encounters Radio had, you know, run its course,

Rich and I, we sort of continued to maintain contact and I was studying more and more trying to get my head into why

I was doing what I was doing. One of the things that I had encountered during my time, it was watching what was going on online in general.

And it wasn't necessarily anything podcast related. It was just the people we interacted with, the groups and the connections that you make.

And I began to see things that just were disheartening to me as to how that love for theology could be wielded in ways, in my opinion, that weren't always biblical.

And so I, you know, when we were no longer doing Voice of Reason Radio, I continued to just study this. Why? Why do we need to understand theology?

Why do we want to teach it? Why do we want to grow in it? And it came to a point where Rich and I started bantering back and forth about what if we got back into doing podcasting?

And we decided let's try it. Let's throw our hat in the ring. You know, the worst that can happen is nobody listens.

And we did. You know, we have a small show and we have a small but loyal following which we're grateful for.

Now, I wouldn't call 10 ,000 people smart. Dude, I haven't seen those kind of numbers ever.

don't be feeling it's not good. I like share like almost every episode and I get, you know,

Mitchell LeBron tell me, how come I never heard of you guys? I couldn't believe that. We had been on the air two years when he says, you have a podcast?

And it's like, yeah, I only share them like all the time. But yeah, are you not? And he says he looks at my wall like seriously.

So, but we got together and we decided let's just throw this together and see what happens. And the reason we called it

Voice of Reason Radio is it was just that idea that there is literally one voice of reason and that's

God and his word. So everything we talk about, we try to filter through that biblical lens that we want

Christians to think biblically. We want Christians to look at their lives and the things that are going on, whether it's in the popular culture, whether it's government related, whether it's your workplace or your daily life with your family, rather than thinking in terms of how should

I deal with this? What the view should be? What does the Bible teach me about how

I should do this? So that we always use that filter first. And so we hope that's what we're accomplishing with the program.

It is our desire that we, we say there's always two things we want to do. Number one is glorify

God and number two is edify the body of Christ. Those are our two goals. Anything beyond that is

God's, is to God's glory. If we accomplish anything with the show, we're grateful. If nobody listens to it, then hey, we just tried it.

And so that's what we hope that we do and that's what we got ourselves into and we've been at doing it for a couple years now and we enjoy it.

We have a lot of fun with it. Well, yeah, there's definitely a lot of laughter that goes on. So, so let's,

I mean, theology. I mean, obviously you and I both enjoy studying theology. You know,

I, as you know, came out with the book, What Do We Believe? It is, it is a systematic theology.

It's explaining the basics of Christianity. It's not the size of MacArthur's biblical doctrine or Waden Grudem's book.

You know, it's something you can actually get through. But, but the thing is, is that I think, first off, let's deal with the first extreme, that there are some people who think theology is a bad word.

Yeah. I think the first thing I want to do is say that there is a need to study theology. Some people think that theology is just for the

Ivy Leagues and those who want to, who want to go deeper and some, you know, like people in the universities.

I believe that every Christian is a theologian. Theology means the study of God.

I believe that every Christian is one that studies God, though some of us do it very poorly.

But we still are theologians. We are still reading the Bible to get to know

God better, to understand Him and to learn from Him.

And I think this is something that is one extreme. We're going to go to the other extreme as well, but the one extreme that we do have to address is the fact that there's many people who think and act as if theology is something

I don't have to do. I don't need to know all those details. I think there's some level where it may be too much for some people.

Right. But I think that everyone should be studying. And I believe that everyone can, at least at some level.

We have a, I have a young man in my life who I know and he is, you know, he's challenged.

He doesn't have an ability to understand a great number of things. But he was able to read through my book.

Did he understand everything? No, but he understood the overall. He was able to pick up a deeper understanding of who

God is, that he's holy, that, you know, to understand more about how the Bible was put together and why we would hold to the books we hold to.

And he didn't understand maybe as much on biblical reliability, but as we went through this and he would read it, he would tell me the things he's picking up and things he's learning.

And he's not one that you would look at and say, you know, he's a genius. He's smart. He likes to read.

I think he told me this is like only the third book he's ever read. So it's, you know, but he can study.

That's the point. And because he loves Christ and wants to know him more.

And I think as Christians, that is something we have to do. We have to be studying to know

God. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing is that you put it very succinctly.

Every Christian is a theologian. If you come to me and you say, I don't need to know all those theological terms.

I just love Jesus. You made a theological statement. You talked about Jesus. You talked about the fact that you love him.

Well, why do you love him? Well, he saved me. That's theology. What did he save you from? He saved me from my sins and from the wrath of God.

That's theology. Every Christian is a theologian at some level. Some cases were very shallow in our theological understanding.

And that can be dangerous because if you don't at least have a good operating understanding of what the

Bible teaches, you can be led astray. If you're truly in Christ in time, I believe

God will correct that. But you can have a lot of damage done in the meantime. There are plenty of Christians, brethren, that, excuse me, both of us know.

Were you going to call me rich? Yeah, because it's habit. It's Friday night and I'm supposed to be recording my show and you're going to get me messed up.

I have never been complimented so well. So, thank you. You're welcome.

That's the last compliment you get for a while. But we know people that can come and talk to us about how when they first got saved, they were in a

Unitarian church. They didn't know what the Bible taught. So they were in a Unitarian church or they were in an uber hyper charismatic church.

In a blabbit and grabbit church or NAR style church. And it was over time, as they studied the word, that God drew them into a deeper understanding of himself.

And they came out of that. But how much damage that did in the meantime. And in the same way, a shallow theological understanding of the word, we can compromise where and how we walk and what we're saying and what we're doing as we walk and live in this world.

So, no, we don't all have to be R .C. Sprouls. But if we learn from people like him, if we learn from those who are learned scholars, we read the books, we study the word, we're going to grow in our appreciation of what

God has said. We're going to grow in our walk and make smarter and wiser decisions in accordance with God's word.

And we're going to love the Savior who saved us from those sins. So absolutely, every Christian is a theologian.

You can't just say, well, deeds, not creeds. Well, you just made a doctrinal statement. If you do that, you just made doctrine.

You just made a theological statement. So you are a theologian, really lousy one, but you're still a theologian.

So you're saying that when we as Baptists say, no creed but the Bible, we just made a creed. Exactly. So someone comes up to you and says, look,

I don't need to know theology. I don't need to study all that. I just love God because God is love.

Did they just make a theological statement? Yeah, absolutely. Scripture says God is love.

Now, what does he mean by that? And what do I mean by it? Well, he's likely saying

God just loves me. He's okay with me. And that's a very poor theological statement. It's false.

Especially from the LGTB person that I met this weekend that told me that.

Well, and that's the thing. What does love mean? Because his definition of love is letting a person do whatever they want.

God's definition of love is God is love. And this is how he demonstrated his love in that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. That's how his love is demonstrated. So the person who says – that supports the

LGBTQRSTV movement – sorry, I'm losing track of the letters. When they say that, and I don't mean to be insulting, but it is getting kind of monotonous, folks.

When they do that, they're taking a man -centered thinking that love, which has now been redefined to be an emotional, erotic feeling that you can be drawn to, and therefore, love is just you would do anything for that person to be happy.

That's how they've redefined it. But God has said, no, his love is that he who has a righteous wrath for our sin sent his son to die for us while we were still sinning.

So when that person says God is love, that person has no idea what he actually said because he's confessed truth but without any biblical basis for it, and so he's corrupted it.

So even a statement like God is love, we need to break that down theologically. And this is the thing of that we are theologians because that statement, being a theological statement, needs to be understood biblically to know the meaning of what we, because I argue there is a false gospel of God is love.

And just as you explained it, it's the idea that no matter how much I sin, God's not really holy.

He's not really just. He's just merciful, and he's going to love me, and he's basically going to be that horrible parent that spoils a child and lets the child get away with anything that they want because that's what

I want. And we sound like a spoiled child, not like someone who is looking for truth.

Exactly, exactly. If we don't have a biblical basis for our theology, then it's based on our own sinful proclivities and inclinations.

And so if I'm going to make a statement about who God is, I have to do it from how he's revealed himself to us, and that's in his word.

We just had the Equip Ohio conference, and afterwards we went and did some outreach, and they had a gay pride parade.

So it ended, and we came out after it was over, but there were still a bunch of them mulling around.

I have never heard two things over and over, ever, as much as I did this past weekend, and that is

God is love and don't judge. Those two things, and they're both theological statements.

In fact, over and over again, I kept having to point out that Jesus, you know,

God said in John 7, 24, he gave a command to judge with a righteous judgment.

He said, don't judge by appearance, but judge with a righteous judgment. We're to judge according to God's work.

Our daily rap report just dealt with that, the claim you should not judge. It was perfect timing in the sense that I didn't realize preparing for that podcast, that two -minute daily podcast,

I was prepping, actually, for what I was going to deal with that last weekend. But the thing is is that it's amazing that they make these statements, and they try to say, as some of them were, that they're

Christian, and they don't need to study theology, and yet the very things they're saying are theological statements.

And so I think we've addressed the fact that as Christians, we must be, and we are theologians, even though we're either going to do a good job of it or a bad job of it.

And a good job doesn't mean that I understand. You mentioned R .C. Sproul. I don't have to understand everything

R .C. Sproul understood. I don't have the mind of an R .C. Sproul. I have a mind of an

Andrew Rappaport, and I can only understand to the level that Andrew Rappaport can understand, and I should excel to the most of my ability to understand

God at the ability he has given me, not to the ability of someone else.

There's a Puritan work by Christopher Love, and it's called Grace, and he talks about the different degrees of grace.

And he basically talks about the fact that faithfulness is not me comparing myself to Charles Spurgeon or Chris Hanholds or someone that's up at that level.

It's the idea, really, of being faithful to what God has given me, to the amount of grace that God's given me in my life, hit the max.

So as a theologian, I can only be the theologian that at the greatest ability

I can be. I can study and push myself beyond what I think I could do, but I'm never called to be a

John MacArthur or an R .C. Sproul, a Steve Lawson, or anyone like that. God has gifted me to be able to understand a certain level.

I want to get to that point and try to keep pushing it. But the goal is not head knowledge.

In fact, I think Paul says that knowledge can puff up. The goal is to know and love my

Savior. That's the goal of theology, and I think if people are studying theology without that in mind, it can become, as we should now talk about, an idol.

So let's play a quick commercial and get to discussing the other side of it where it can become an idol.

Ding dong, Jehovah's Witnesses. Ding dong, Mormons.

Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?

Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book,

What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe.

And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. And so, let's get into this.

We can have people who can make an idol of their theology.

In other words, they put theology at a different level. I have seen this with people that put doctrinal creeds even.

There was an individual who was going into churches and trying to influence people to accept the

London Confession of Faith, to go into churches and convince people that the

London Confession of Faith was equal in authority to scripture. And he actually was calling me out.

And he actually secretly recorded the conversation.

He called me up, recorded it without my knowledge, something I think that, and then aired it publicly.

And I called him out on that. But he put it out there as, how Calvinistic is Andrew Rappaport of striving for eternity?

I think he's taking it down now. But the reason I'm not Calvinistic enough is because I don't recognize that this

London Confession of Faith is equal in authority to scripture. And so,

I was a heretic. Now, that is someone who, and this is the way, you and I have seen this, you and I have talked privately about the frustration on this.

There are people who, it's like if you don't agree with my theology, you're a heretic. I mean, it's just, in every point, you need to agree with me, or at least in points that I hold as more important, you must hold to this or I am going to question your salvation.

Yeah. Yeah, that's, Rich and I have talked about this on the show many times.

And as you said, you and I have talked offline on more than one occasion. And it's one of those things where, as Christians, when you have transitioned out of a shallow theological system and you begin to build upon the word of God and you begin to realize there is such rich, deep understanding of scripture, it can be like somebody lighting a match in a deep, dark cave.

You suddenly can see and you realize there's so much around you. But you can only see so much.

And what happens is you see that bright light and you glom to it and you think, how amazing is this?

And yet there's still so much more to be illuminated. But because you suddenly see this and you suddenly come to this knowledge,

I've heard Dr. James White and others talk about that cage stage, that period of time where you have to be locked up for a year so you're no longer a danger to yourself or anyone else.

And it's that 1 Corinthians 8 where it talks about you were saying knowledge puffs up but love builds up.

We get that knowledge and it's like taking a drink from a fire hose and we just can't get enough of it.

But then we turn around and we realize there's an entire Christian world out there that we were once part of.

Somehow we forgot that. And we go, how do you not get this? Well, because in the same way that you didn't get it 5 minutes ago, they don't understand.

God was gracious to you, He did not strike you with a bolt from the blue for not understanding this theological doctrine.

And He was patient and brought you along and brought people into your life and brought scripture into your life and brought teaching into your life that brought you to this point.

And He was patient with you but now you expect everyone else to know it too. And that's where the danger is is that we become so excited and we want everybody to embrace what the

Bible really teaches and that's commendable. But what happens is we forget where we came from, we forget who we once were and we become very impatient.

And we expect everybody to, if I understand this, then you better accept it. And that's where you hit that cage, that cage stage that you can now become a danger to the body of Christ because you are not showing grace where grace was once shown to you.

Yeah, I think that, and this is important, the fact that you see this, I believe, in every group is really, it's an issue of pride.

There's no other way to say it. This is a thing that you see, whatever denomination you may be in, whatever church you're in, let's go through some.

If you are a charismatic, you have people that are charismatic, they might say they're saved, but at some point, the argument is they become, they get the second blessing.

And now they've reached some higher spiritual level. If you're reformed, you got saved and then you understood the doctrines of grace and now you're

Calvinistic, you're reformed. It's as if it's a higher level of spirituality.

Right. If you are, if you're a Fundamentals Baptist, you're a Fundamentals Baptist and then you discover the

King James Bible and now you have the truth. I don't care what it is that what group you're in.

If you are in the Hebrew roots, you realize that all these festivals are really important and now you understand all the festivals and you're now

Hebrew roots. If you're in the, you're Flat Earthers, you were saved, but then you learned that the earth was flat.

I mean, it's an issue of pride. Okay, I don't understand the Flat Earth thing. All right. I actually had some people suggest these are atheists that are pulling one massive prank and that might be true.

I jokingly said when this Flat Earth stuff started, I jokingly said that it is probably some atheist that is just trying to show that Christians are gullible and I was sent an article that showed that the,

I guess the founder of the Flat Earth Society is an agnostic and so I was joking, but I guess there was some truth behind it.

I wouldn't be surprised. I really wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, so the thing is there is pride behind all this.

I mean, the issue that's underlying this is the fact that I want to feel that I know something you don't know or I know more than you and that makes me more spiritual so I can feel better about my spirituality because I'm more spiritual than you because I know something you don't know.

And then there's that next level where is more dangerous is if you don't believe what

I believe. I question your salvation. Yeah, and we do see that more and more,

I think, especially within probably more the conservative Christianity and especially in online circles because the online community,

I think it's just, communication online is great but it is such a stunted form of communication and it turns us all into knuckleheads that we think we can answer everything with a 140 character tweet.

Yeah, okay. Twitter is not the place for theological discussions. Yeah, exactly.

Unless, look, I am very much against meme theology. Thinking that I can answer everything theologically in a meme.

No. You can't. Theology takes study, it takes investigation, it takes research, and it takes explanation.

And however many characters you can do in a tweet now or in a picture, it just doesn't do it.

No. In fact, in most cases, what we're doing is we're reducing it to bullet points and we're using it more as a bludgeon to crack someone across the skull, virtually speaking, and defeat them.

So, in my opinion, it's one of the worst forms of trying to communicate sound theology. It has its benefits, like things being able to do what we're doing now with podcasting.

It has its benefits to be able to share things, but for deep theological discussion, it's virtually useless.

But what happens is within the, in my opinion, what I've seen, looking at the conservative

Christian theological movement where we recognize the word of God is sufficient, it's inerrant, it is everything that we need for life and godliness, it fully equips us, and then we turn around and we look at what

American evangelicalism, broadly speaking, has to offer. And we, I think, rightly recoil when we realize how rich the scriptures are and then what dunderheads are leading the theological movement, people like Andy Stanley, who now wants to unhitch the

Old Testament from Christianity. Okay. I may actually do a podcast.

I'm seriously thinking about doing this. I'm thinking about doing a podcast where I share what

Andy Stanley said about unhitching the Old Testament and just going through the New Testament and see what we have to unhitch because here's the reality, folks.

If you want to believe in what Andy Stanley said of unhitching the Old Testament from the New Testament and just focus on the

New, every book of the New Testament except one refers to the

Old Testament. So the only one you're going to be left with is Philemon, and Andy Stanley probably doesn't like that because that's

Paul writing about an escaped slave. Well, it's just so funny. Andy Stanley wants to unhitch it, but what did

Jesus repeatedly say? Have you not read? Read what? There was no New Testament yet. Yes.

He's referring to scriptures, the Old Testament. So this is a great example, though, what we were saying earlier.

The reason Andy Stanley can say these things and get away with it is because people don't know the theology. The reason you and I pick up on it immediately and recognize a problem is because we know enough theology to say, wait, excuse me, stop.

Much of our theology is based in the Old Testament. How would we understand the things that Jesus is saying,

Paul is saying, John is saying, Peter is saying? If we don't have the Old Testament, we don't understand it. Exactly.

The problem then lies with as we were talking about, we get that pride monster that starts to creep up and we look at what's going on in the broader evangelical movement and we begin to discern that this is because, as you said, people don't know theology and they're flocking to this.

So we need to put an end to bad theology. Okay, noble in its intent, but what happens is it's not easily received.

It takes time, as you said, study, research, prayer, the work of the

Holy Spirit and sanctification to bring people to where even where we are now.

And we're barely scratching the surface of what the scriptures have to say. So we get impatient.

And so what happens is we just start lobbing those memes and those bullet point theological statements and just attacking anybody that has not yet come to where we are.

And so you get somebody who doesn't quite understand why Beth Moore is a false teacher. Yay. You didn't say that.

Yes, I did. And boy, am I going to get in trouble with some SBCers. Heaven help the

SBC. And I say that as a genuine prayer. Oh, man, they want to make her the president.

There are people that want to, yes. And heaven help them if that ever happens. Well, I think that'll be the escape route for all the conservatives then.

They're going to have to. Yeah, I don't think there's any options at that point. You'll see the

SBC split. But the SBC has embraced for a very long time a more shallow theological stance because they want more bodies in the pews.

And so that's what's... Let's broaden it though. That's more than just the

SBC. I think a bigger problem that we've had in American churches and we've exported it around the world is the church growth movement.

Oh, absolutely. What happened with Bill Hybels when he and John Ankren did that survey and figured out what people in the community, the lost people in the community want in church.

They did a survey and they said, let's create that for church. And they created a church around entertainment, not about spirituality.

They did that on Wednesday nights and they have since left that and said, this is a problem and we kind of need to return to moving the main service on Sundays, not on Wednesdays.

They eventually learned. But the problem is that they grew and everyone wanted to be that big church and it became...

Well, doctrine separates. Doctrine divides. And it does, but it also unifies. Yes. Doctrine unifies error from truth.

So those that believe the truth are unified. So as much as it divides, it unifies.

And people didn't want that doctrine. They didn't want that because they want warm bodies, paying bodies in the church.

That's exactly it. And we see that. You and I, as you say, we see that. The problem is that it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

In fact, that's the history of false religion since they left the

Garden of Eden. Every generation has had those who take a little bit of what the

Bible says and tweaks it, and tweaks it some more, and tweaks it some more, and you've got false religion. False religion will always be with us until Christ returns.

The problem is that we see in America the broad acceptance of false teaching, the broad acceptance of false teachers, and we want to be the heroes, there's that pride again, of putting an end to that.

That's what I often see. And what ends up happening, as you pointed out earlier, you've got a lot of people who don't get it.

They've been spoon -fed pablum over the years, and they don't understand the deep and the richness of theology.

And so they're responding with what they know, they're defending their limited understanding of the

Bible, and we become angry. And what ends up happening is we start seeing anyone who disagrees with any aspect of what we believe to be theologically true, even if it is true, as a reason to go to war.

Because everywhere we look, false teaching, false teaching, false teaching, well yeah, it's everywhere, we know that. Scripture tells us it's going to be.

It says in the last days that there are going to be people who have itching ears, that want them scratched, and they're going to heap up false teachers.

So it shouldn't be a surprise to us, but we see it and we get angry, and then we begin to attack anything that even hints at false teaching, and then you get people who say, well the

London Baptist Confection is on par with Scripture, and you're a heretic if you don't believe it. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so let's take a break, and then after that what I want to talk about is the idea of what we see, why it is you and I have such a concern with some people who make an idol of their theology, who set it up as a standard of salvation even.

But let's talk through what it looks like and how to recognize when people have done that.

The good news is, striving for eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks teaching them

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Jeremiah 29 -11 your favorite verse, Chris? No, I'm not Israel.

You're not Israel, wow, okay. So I actually think this is really, you know, part of the problem, right?

I think that part of the problem we have is we have a generation of people who don't know how to interpret the

Bible. I think this is why it is so important, why we focus at Striving for Eternity on that.

Because I think if people rightly knew how to interpret Scripture, I believe, in my opinion, theology would humble us.

You kind of alluded to this earlier. Theology should humble us, not bring out pride.

And if our theology, if our study of God is getting us to think highly of ourselves in any way, we're not doing proper theology.

We're doing a bad job at it. I think proper theology should get us to realize how holy

God is and how wicked we are. And we are immensely grateful that God would have anything to do with us.

Amen, amen. So you and I have seen this online. It's where we see it a lot.

Let's describe some ways of, how can we recognize someone who has made an idol of their theology?

What does it look like? And how can, I want to get into how can we avoid those things? Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen, and I'll give example from my own walk.

For example, evangelism. When I first kind of began to understand what biblical evangelism looked like, thanks to people like Ray Comfort.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. But you went to the Comic -Con and didn't evangelize you heathen?

Yeah, exactly. But it was one of those moments where it was that light bulb moment.

That there, I knew that the gospel was something we needed to get out there. I didn't have the slightest clue how.

And having heard... Well, the back of a paroled car is a really good place that you have a captive audience.

That's the problem. They kind of frown on that when you work for the state. Yeah, I have a friend of mine.

He's now, I guess, retired. But for 20 years, he's always said his fishing hole is his paroled car, patrol car.

And he says he always has a captive audience. And, you know, they already know they've done something wrong and they're trying to get out of that.

Yeah, it's a tricky place to do it. It has been done on occasion.

But it was one of those light bulb moments for me. Now, I'm a believer in doctrines of grace, but it took me a long time to get there.

And I didn't go around beating everybody upside the head with a club when I understood because I was amongst a lot of people who didn't believe it.

And I grew up in that as a Christian. I began to realize, okay, I can't do that to these people. It took me a long time to get here.

But with evangelism, there was something that didn't click like that. And I, like a lot of people that I met, began to filter my

Christian lens that I examined you with, why aren't you concerned for the lost?

And it was this idea that we would hear things like Spurgeon saying, have you no concern for the lost, then be assured you're not saved yourself.

Now, there's a broader context to Spurgeon's statement there, but we would hear that, and we would take that little nugget, and we would put that into our lens.

And we began to look at people with, well, why wouldn't you be concerned for the lost? I mean, these people are dying and going to hell.

That's a legitimate concern, and it is a legitimate question. But it's not that every person who hasn't, you know, given out 500 gospel tracts today isn't concerned for the lost.

You're not looking at their context. Maybe they're the single mom whose husband died overseas, you know, fighting in a war.

She's barely making ends meet, but she's reading the Bible to her children every night. Yeah, you know, I have a friend of mine,

Greg Coco, who said his argument is he wants to put a stone in people's shoe. He doesn't always want to get to the gospel in every conversation, and some evangelists frown on that.

Yeah. They think you should, every conversation should get to the gospel. Which is funny because Ray Comfort himself says sometimes you don't give them the gospel.

You give them the law and let them stew on it. But it was just one of those things that we didn't – when you don't examine how, number one, you got to that place of your understanding of theology, and number two, don't consider that this is a person that God is working on and is bringing him up in sanctification, is bringing him up in knowledge.

And you have this built -in assumption, if I believe this, you should believe it too.

You need to check your walk. And that's where I began to notice it was as people became more adept at understanding the scriptures and they had their favorite theologians and their favorite podcasts and their favorite preachers, they stopped thinking in terms of local church, these are people

I'm supposed to grow up with, and started thinking in terms of why don't you want to know this or why wouldn't you want to accept this?

And I think that's one of the ways that we do it is that we just do not think in a broader context of how we got there and how

God is bringing others there. Now your favorite podcast is The Rap Report, right? I'm just checking.

Look, you don't have to listen to The Rap Report to get to heaven, but why take the chance?

No, look, I think you hit the nail on the head and this is a thing many people forget.

I've talked about this in the past at times where people forget where they've come from and you really hit it on the head is that it humbles us when we study theology properly to realize, wow,

I didn't notice this before. I need to lovingly, caringly bring others along.

That's called, what's that word? Discipleship. Yeah, that's a thing that we're supposed to be doing as Christians.

Discipling others. What is it Jesus said? Teaching them everything I've taught you. That's right.

You didn't know it at one point and now God used someone to teach it to you, so teach it to someone else, but you do it not with a bat.

Right? I mean, I really think this is the problem is that I think that for many people, in all honesty,

I think that for many people, they don't understand their systematic theology well enough to know why they believe what they believe.

Yeah. And because of that, they want to force everyone to believe what they claim without knowing the why.

Because I think if you know the why, you can reason through it when people ask questions or disagree with you.

When you don't know the why, it's, let me beat you up to an agreement.

Let me bully you into agreeing with me. And as Christians, we are to love the brothers, brothers and sisters.

We are to disciple one another, to teach one another everything that we know, and we need to be humble about it.

Look, you know, I know you've heard me say this. I've said this many times. All of us, every one of us in our theology are wrong.

Every one of us in some area are wrong. We don't know where it is. If I knew where I was wrong theologically,

I would change it. I don't know where those areas are. I will never be so happy to be corrected when

I sit at the feet of Christ the second after I die, and he corrects my theology, and I know for sure, 100%, it's now corrected and it's finalized.

I will look forward to that day because I don't want to be wrong theologically. There are some people who can be corrected theologically and they'll change.

There are some who will not. There are some who prefer to be intellectually dishonest because they'll recognize there's a problem in their theology, but they won't change it because of pride.

And we need to put down our pride. When we have made an idol of our theology, we are no longer serving

God. We are serving self. Absolutely. And here's another way that we've seen this done.

Where pride takes that theological knowledge and uses it as a broadsword.

How many conversations have we seen where it's not, you can tell the person is not concerned about discipling the person who has an incorrect understanding.

They are concerned about winning an argument. Oh, yes. We see this, especially online.

And I firmly believe many of the conversations that we have online would not likely happen in the same manner if you were sitting down at a lunch table and having a face -to -face conversation.

Definitely. There's something about the internet that even with, you use your real name, and yes, Chris Honholtz is my name,

I couldn't make that up. Yeah, but Matt Slick, I mean, would you? I gotta tell you, some days

I wonder about him. Wait, no. There's the keyboard warriors.

I mean, there are. It's even worse when people use fake names. Oh, yeah. Going under a fake name so that they could, they know.

There was a guy, when we did Slick Answers, Matt and I used to do that, and you're aware of that, right? We used to do a weekly show.

We'd have people come in. We had a person come in and he would not give his real name, and his argument was that he didn't want people at his worksite knowing what he does online.

And that should be a huge concern for you if you're doing that. The internet provides so much anonymity, real name or fake name, and if you have to hide your name so you can act in that manner so that you don't get fired at work, well, no,

I can't. I can't even consider what you're doing. But when your main concern is winning the theological argument, you're not concerned about the theology.

You're concerned about being right. And then that, where is the focus? Is it to draw that person in a closer relationship, in a closer walk with Christ?

Or is it to prove your theological prowess and how much better you are? As you said earlier, that I know something you don't.

And that's one of the problems that I see. And it's easy to do. Even when we start off with a good intention, we can get upset because of what somebody said or how somebody's not getting it.

And we step from that line of trying to educate and go into that line of, you're going to bow to my wisdom.

And that's another problem where we've taken theology and we've set it up on a pedestal and said,

I'm worshiping that, and that's what I'm going to use to beat everybody into submission.

Yeah. And I think, look, I think that the internet has created some of this, not all of it.

Pride's always been an issue. Oh, yeah. But I do believe that when you look at the internet, it allows people who, if they were just within church, there would be no opportunity to do ministry the way they do it online.

I think that the internet allows for some people to be able to seem like they are something that they're not.

They get to seem like they have a ministry, that they have some group of followers that are following them.

And it gives some people a false persona to think that they're, you know, it feeds their pride where they're bigger than they are.

They think they're someone to be listened to. You know,

I want to listen to a person who, when corrected, and I did this just today, someone said they had a podcast, and he said something in the podcast, and I said, listen, hey, and I did privately, by the way.

I didn't go out. I mean, there's other things I've said to him on his podcast where I'm like, hey, you did this, and like with things that weren't a big deal, you know.

Right. This was a big deal. He said something that was actually very, very wrong. It was a slip of the tongue from what he says.

I'm going to take him at his word. He was like, oh, I was trying to explain this, but it didn't come out right, and the way it came out was really wrong.

So what did he do? This podcaster went and edited his own podcast that he just put out that, you know, today.

He edited it and put a new one up to correct it. Now, that's someone that I'll be more likely to listen to.

Yeah, and that shows evidence of humility because as you said, we all say and do things incorrectly.

You know, we're still in this flesh. We're still going to mess it up, and as Christians, we ought to be willing to go back to the

Word of God and receive correction on anything. All of us should be good Bereans, even those of us that are sitting here trying to say something from a scriptural perspective need to be good

Bereans to make sure what we're saying is right. Okay, so let's get into that because we take for granted that people understand what you refer to with the

Bereans. Okay, so these were the Bereans. Berea was a place where Paul had come and was preaching the gospel.

Here's Paul, someone who trained under Gamaliel, very well educated.

Some would say he could have been one of the world's great philosophers, that he would have had the equivalent of two

PhDs by the age of 25. I mean, brilliant man from what we understand. Someone who was a

Pharisee, someone who was a rabbi, had the teaching credentials and could have argued, hey,

I'm the teacher, you listen to me. I've written most of the New Testament. And instead what you see is a man who says, he goes in, he preaches, and he is greatly encouraged when he gets to Berea.

Why? Because they were studying, they were listening to what he's saying.

And as he's preaching and proclaiming God's word, they're comparing it to, oh, that Old Testament.

They're comparing it to scripture to see if these things were so. And Paul doesn't turn to them and say, how dare you question me?

Don't you know who I am? I am an apostle. I've written much of the New Testament.

No, he praised them for challenging him with scripture and studying them every day to see if the things he said were so.

That's a commendable thing. And any man, any pastor, who thinks he's above correction is in sin.

Absolutely. They've made an idol of their position. If you think your theology can't be questioned, you've made an idol of your theology.

And this is how to recognize it. If someone comes to you to correct you or your theology, and you act as if your theology or your personhood is beyond criticism, then you're acting in a position of pride.

Pride is deceptive. Pride always covers itself so that it says, no, it's the other person, it's never me.

And that's why it's so hard to detect within the self. It is self -deceiving. You have to notice it in others.

So if someone tells you that you're being prideful, you should give it serious consideration. If you are acting in a way as if your theology cannot be questioned, then you're acting from a position of pride.

I believe what I believe is true because I have studied it and I've come to the conclusions.

Is everything I believe true? No. It's not.

There's areas that I'm in error. I just don't know where they are. Now, any area where I disagree with Matt Slick from Karm, I'm right.

I'm just saying for the record. Any area we disagree, infant baptism, gifts, covenant theology,

I'm right. He's wrong. I'm just saying for the record, okay? Fortunately, I know

Matt's not going to listen. So someone's probably going to send it to Matt and be like, you know, that's okay.

Matt does FaceTime live videos calling me ugly just so that people will send it to me. Be like,

Matt called you ugly. My response is, have you looked at him? That's like the pot calling the kettle black.

See, I don't understand the problem between you two because every time Matt mentions my name,

I'm his hero because somehow I rescued him in the middle of the desert. Both of us view you as our hero for different reasons.

You actually acted as a hero and I just say that you're Captain America. But I argue actually, honestly, you're a hero.

And you know I've said this. I honestly say you're a hero because of what you do and your day job.

I have a lot of respect for all people who act as first responders, especially those who put their life on the line to protect those of us who don't have to.

And that's why, you know, my son knows this. My son now does this, which I'm glad.

It's one of the things I like. My son knows he's grown up watching me do this and when

I see a police officer or military go into a coffee shop or any place, you know, they're buying coffee or whatever,

I will buy them their coffee. They're protecting me. I will do that as a citizen of this country to show my appreciation to them, especially to those who police, military, we've seen more so the police lately have come under constant criticism.

For doing their job. And I believe that that's going to make them, and we could do a whole podcast on this,

I believe that what ends up happening is that the pressure put on police officers is going to make them under greater stress, greater tension, they're going to be more likely to make a split second mistake.

And then everyone's going to jump on that and it's only going to cycle and be even worse. You know,

I enjoyed watching the guy, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter, who they went out with the police and they put him on, you know, a thing where they'd have civilians and criminals jumping out from cars and stuff, you know, pop -ups, and this guy had to make a decision and more often than not, he shot civilians.

And he ended up walking away realizing that in a split second decision, it is hard to process what you can process after the fact.

Okay, I'll get off that soapbox, sorry. Let's play a commercial and then try to wrap this up and play a game.

And I want to, you know, play a commercial for a new book that's just come out this month, actually this week.

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You can also get that book at strivingforeternity .org If you're listening here, I encourage you to get it there because, well, that helps us at Striving for Green.

And so I'm one of the contributors, I'm one of the 24, along with Matt Slick, Sean McDowell has written,

Bill McKeever, Eric Johnson, Sandra Tanner has contributed to it. Many names that, especially if you study anything with Mormonism, you know.

It's a great book, even for people that don't look to reach out to Mormons, just because of the fact that you have 24 different tactics that people are using to reach lost people.

And it may give you some ideas on what to do. And my, I would have loved to have done

Matt's chapter on textual criticism, biblical reliability. But I was only allowed to write one chapter.

He was only allowed to write one chapter. So I, my chapter is on open air evangelism, something that I do more than Matt does.

So, and Bill McKeever, sorry, Eric Johnson really thought that I'm one of the better ones at that, that he's seen.

So he had me do that. This was a book that was going to be self -published and it just grew and it kept growing.

And when I invited guys like, you know, Jim Wallace to be part of it, and Jim knew

Eric and they kicked it off. And then Sean McDowell jumped in and we realized it could get a broader audience.

It's actually, and this is an important thing. It is number one on Amazon in the category of Mormonism.

That is huge. In other words, people that are looking for books on Mormonism on Amazon, this comes up as number one.

And so I encourage you, if you've read that book, write a review on Amazon.

I should encourage you to also do that for What Do They Believe and What Do We Believe, my two books. But let's keep that at number one in Mormonism.

But I encourage you to get that book and read that. The nice thing is each chapter is short.

You don't have to read every chapter. You could read, every chapter is completely independent and written by a different person.

So you'll get a lot of different ideas and different ways to evangelize people.

Very practical book. And I think it's one that everyone should get along with What Do They Believe and What Do We Believe, just saying.

Hint, hint, hint. Hint, hint, hint. But I do, look, I'm not going to write a book that I don't think people should read.

So I have a book on evangelism and I'm sure you haven't read it because I never went to print.

Why? There's plenty of other books out there. If you want to learn how to evangelize, here's the books to get.

Get Way of the Master by Ray Comfort or you get the smaller one, what was it called?

God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life. Yes. Short book. But read anything really from Ray Comfort.

Greg Kokel's Tactics and The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle.

If you read those three, you have everything that would have been in my book. So why write it?

I'm only going to write a book if I think it has some value. What do they believe I thought had some value because of the fact that most people don't study these religions from their sources to systematize them.

It is, as far as I know, the only systematic theology for Islam, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses.

So for that sake, the what do we believe is because most people write theology books at a very thick, very detailed and I didn't find people that were doing it as really an entry level that would still be something that someone who studies theology can gain information and use it as a quick reference.

So, I mean, it's a great book to use in Sunday school in churches. What do we believe? To help people understand theology because when you go through a, you know,

MacArthur's Bible doctrine, that's too thick. It's going to take too long. It can be too overwhelming for people.

And that's why I wrote what do we believe. So, all right, I'll get off that soapbox too.

Are you ready to play a little bit of a game? I think you have a fallacy for me.

So let's play a game. Now it's time for name that fallacy.

Now, we should be, you know, maybe out on the street for this, right?

You're just saying to those guys driving their theology away. All right.

So you had a fallacy earlier for me. Well, the fallacy would be this.

If you claim to be a Christian, but you do not desire to know and understand and love systematic theology,

I doubt that your profession of faith is genuine. And this is one that as we've talked about in this podcast, what we've heard from people, we've seen people argue this.

I think this closest would be what's called the no true Scotsman fallacy. It's also called the appeal to purity.

It is an informal fallacy, which attempts to protect the universal generalization of counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.

So rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric without reference to any specific object or rule.

Now this originated actually by the British philosopher Anthony Flew, who though he was known as a well -known atheist before he died, rejected atheism for theism, but still died and went to hell because he didn't believe in Christianity.

He just believed that in the end of his life, he realized God must exist. But in his 1971 book,

An Introduction to Western Philosophy, he's the one that created this no true Scotsman fallacy.

Previously, it was just an appeal to purity, but sometimes names are easier to remember and no true

Scotsman is easier. But he had given, the history of this with him was he gives it from his book.

He says, imagine Hamish McDowell, a Scotsman sitting down with his

Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the Brighton sex mechanic sex strikes again.

And Hamish is shocked and declares that no true, no Scotsman would do such a thing.

The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds the article about an

Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the

Brighton sex mechanic seem almost gentlemanly.

This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion, but is he going to admit this?

Not likely. This time he says no true

Scotsman would do such a thing. So that's where this comes from. And it is the idea, and the way you end up seeing it is someone will say no true whatever would believe.

So in this case, no true Christian wouldn't study their theology or have my position of theology.

Now this, I will say this with this fallacy. This is a fallacy that gets used against Christians often.

Christians often get charged with this fallacy when we say, when someone claims, well

I used to be a Christian and we say, no, according to scripture you never were a

Christian. You can go back and listen to the Rap Report Dailies, the two minute edition,

I think a week or two ago, where we dealt with the argument that atheists make when they say

I used to be a Christian. They use it as a claim in a different fallacy. They use it as an appeal to authority.

Having never been a Christian and claiming that because they used to be, they have some authority.

Now we hear this when we say to them, well they were never a Christian. But there is a definition of a true

Scotsman. Someone who is born in Scotland. And so if you have a definition that fits the membership of that group, saying someone is not a

Christian when they don't fit the biblical definition of what a Christian is, is not the true

Scotsman fallacy. Okay? The true Scotsman fallacy is one of these fallacies that is often misused.

Okay? And I want people to recognize that. It is properly, when you try to argue, to reject or deny counter examples given.

So someone makes a claim, you give a counter example. The object of the no true

Scotsman fallacy is to reject the counter examples or reject the original claim by modifying what defines truth for this person.

So no Scotsman would do this. Well no true Scotsman would do this. So now the thing is to say, well the person must not be a true

Scotsman if he would do this. As in your example, he wouldn't be a

Christian, a true Christian, if he believed this or didn't believe this.

Right. So that would be that fallacy. Yeah. And I agree. We see it way too often.

It's become something of a, just a way to dismiss what somebody has to say and not have to work through it.

And unfortunately fallacies like this are far too common, even within the Christian circles. Yeah. And there was, you know,

I may have to do another, several episodes on the Daily Rap Report because I did do some where I dealt with the fallacies that people deal with most often ad hominem, things like that, red herrings.

But there's a whole lot that, you know, we may continue those just for quick, being able to recognize some of these other fallacies.

It is important to understand and spot them so you know when someone is misusing logic, you can point it out and correct them and know that they've given you a failed argument.

I often say when people use an ad hominem, my response is to thank them. You're an idiot.

Thank you. And they look at me like, why are you thanking me? Because you just conceded the argument.

The fact that you had to use and appeal to a logical fallacy means you can't defend your argument on your own.

So thank you. All right, let us play one more game. And this game puts all the pressure on me so you can enjoy this.

And if you listen to the rap report, Chris Honholz, then you know what game is coming up.

But we'll see. We'll see. Striving for Eternity is a Christ -centered ministry focused on equipping people for eternity.

And they provide speakers and seminars that come to your church with expertise in theology, hermeneutics, world religions, creation science, evangelism, presupposition of apologetics, church history, and expertise in sexual abuse in the church.

For details on their seminars and to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Striving to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. Yeah, and we do have speakers who are unfortunately experts in the issue of sexual abuse even within the church.

I leave that to Pastor Mullis to deal with. Hey, you want to have, to warn your church on how to be warned against sexual predators?

Have a, contact us and we'll send Frank. I prefer not doing that topic.

It's like, it's so needed. It's so needed. But who wants to talk about that?

I agree. It's especially in this day and age, it's very needed. But that's a, that's a live wire subject to have to deal with.

You know, he's doing my respect. And, you know, he may call on you. He's doing his doctorate work and his dissertation,

I believe, is going to be on dealing with the, with parole officers who have to deal with parolees that have sexual crimes versus parolees that have non -sexual crimes.

His belief is that people who deal with sexual crimes are more, what would be the best word?

Be more jaded. Yeah. And, but he wants to study this out and see if that's the case.

All right. So let's play a game that puts all the pressure on me and none on you. It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

Oh boy. All right. So you are going to give me something anything from the natural and I have to transition to spiritual.

And the reason we play this game, while you think of something, hopefully not too hard, but the reason we play this game is because most people think that once a conversation gets into the spiritual realm, they are comfortable sharing the gospel.

They're comfortable in that conversation. We want to encourage people to evangelize and many people have struggles evangelizing and I have noticed that most of the people that struggle in evangelizing is because they don't know how to make this transition from the natural to spiritual.

And because of that, we turned it into a game. The more you play, the more you practice, the easier it is.

People say that I make this look easy. That's only because I've been doing it for 30 years.

Now mind you, I'm only 25 years old. My wife is only 25 and I must be older than her.

So I will let you figure out the math of how I can only be 25 years old and yet doing this for 30 years.

I'm just saying I'm a happily married man. I'm not an idiot. Maybe in other areas.

Yeah, happy wife, happy life. All right. So I have to give you a natural conversation.

Let's see here. You're sitting you're standing in line at Walmart and Captain America shows up.

There's going to be no Captain America involved in this. Now stop it. See, I was preparing for Captain America.

See, no, I got to give you the less obvious one. I should give you that one. That should make you have to transition from Captain America to the gospel.

Okay, so you're standing in the line at Walmart. There's the newsstand with little magazines and Time Magazine has an article about President Trump and the

North Korean talks and the person in front of you with whom you wish to speak looks at that magazine and said, that man is the cause of all the evils in America right now and he's going to plunge us into a nuclear war.

Go. It sounds like this happened to you. No, but it happens on the internet every day. Okay, so I'm in the line and now in line,

I don't have a lot of time to talk with someone. The reality is I would end up saying, okay, well, you know, you bring up some interesting points.

Do you believe that we have a standard that we would be able to call someone or call something evil?

Now, I don't know where that conversation could go, but it could go several different ways, but I think I would address it that way because either way, if they say yes or no,

I think that where I would end up going in that is to say, you know, I believe there's a standard to say that, you know,

Trump is an evil individual. I can agree with that because he violates the ultimate standard of morality, but guess what?

I do too and I bet that if I was to ask you a couple of questions, I might be able to convince you that you also violate that standard.

Can I ask you a couple of questions? They always say yes to that, by the way. And I just,

I go through and I would ask, have you considered yourself to be good enough to go to heaven? They'll almost always say yes and I say, well, have you ever lied?

Have you ever stolen? Have you ever used God's name in vain? Have you ever committed murder?

They usually say no. I will let them know that God says that he considers being angry with someone a murder of the heart and your anger at President Trump would be anger.

So I could go that way. I think my knee jerk reaction is that's probably in the short amount of time that I have at a grocery store, that's probably how

I would approach it because it would jump right into it. But I think there's another way that I could approach this and that would be to say, the fact is that what you end up seeing is

North Korea and America are having tension. They've had tension. But what you see is that they both respond to a showing of strength.

And what many people would see as evil and wicked and causing problems, as we saw with President Reagan, was actually someone displaying strength so that they could bring someone to the bargaining table.

Things are not always what they seem. In fact, many of us think that we're really, really good people but we compare ourselves to Hitler, to Mao, to Stalin, to someone worse than us.

But if we compare ourselves to a perfect standard like God, shall we say, then all of us fail short.

In fact, if we compare ourselves to God that we have to be perfect in word, thought, and deed, all of us fail and all of us would be guilty in His sight and we would need

His grace. And you know, God provided that grace. God Himself came to earth, became a man, died on a cross as a payment of sin that though you and I violate

God's law, He paid the price and we could be set free. That if we turn from trusting ourselves as a good person or trusting our good nature and trust what

Jesus Christ did on that cross, we can have the forgiveness of sin. So that's two ways that I'd end up doing it.

I would probably in the grocery store do it the first way because it would be quicker, less discussion or a need for dialogue.

But if I continued that conversation, I'd do it the second way. Knee -jerk reaction.

Now, maybe I'd do it a third way when that actually happens. You know, but here's the reality.

I'll tell you this. I play this game over and over again but when these things actually happen, and I'm in these situations,

I actually tend to remember some of these things that come up and then

I end up using some of these. So, that does become a thing you know, that as we're going through it, we end up discovering these things come back in our memory.

Absolutely. And wonderful transitions because most of us,

I think, in a situation like that would want to, okay, how do I get through this political mess because they're angry at Christians for voting for Trump and you don't even have to do any of that.

You can just go right to the heart of the issue which is, as you said, in the short -term one when you've only got moments, okay, you got a standard of evil.

Okay, what is the standard? How do we equate what is evil? And that's such a wonderful way of taking it out of a highly charged discussion and taking it right to the heart of the matter.

And that person is not even going to expect that kind of conversation. They're wanting to argue about a president that they don't like and you're taking it and you're going right to the issue of their conscience which

I think is the best way to avoid what can become just a mess and entanglement and you never get to the gospel.

This says, okay, I get what you're saying but here, let me come around this way and let's talk about this issue. And you know, the thing is is that the more you play this and they play it with other people, you end up realizing that there's multiple ways of hearing different ways that different people are going to address it and you know what?

I may like you better and I may remember your way when that actually comes up.

All right, so let's wrap up. Is there anything from the podcast that you want to share?

Anything that, either on this topic or what's going on with Voice of Reason Radio?

You guys have a blog site you haven't mentioned yet. So maybe mention that and then we'll close out.

Just first off, thank you for having myself on here. I would have loved to have had my brother

Rich on tonight. His back's bugging him so he wasn't able to join us. He's a sinner. He's a sinner.

You know, look, the guy gets a preacher's Bible and doesn't want to come on with us?

Really? Really? Come on, Richard. And I know that all I got to do is stay far enough away that he doesn't get out of that wheelchair and beat me up.

You know what? He wouldn't have to. All he's got to do is send his little granddaughter tater buggy after you and she'd thrash him.

So... And you know what? I say this much about Rich. There isn't a

Voice of Reason radio without Rich. I love to get on the program. I love to speak.

But I also am one of the least disciplined people when it comes to prepping.

And Rich is always sending me stuff. Rich is always helping me get back on track.

And he is also the one who keeps all our social media stuff running 99 % of the time.

And he really is the heart and soul of the show. I can chatter but I don't think

I have the kind of passion and love for things that Rich does. And so I don't have a show if it wasn't for him.

So I'm grateful for him. He makes the job so wonderful to do when we get together.

Are you saying he makes you look good? Because that's hard to do. No. Well, I've seen myself in the mirror.

It takes a lot of work to make me look good. But I'm grateful for him.

This show doesn't have what it does without him. I just can't thank

God enough for putting him in that position where we can do this. So please always be in prayer for Rich.

He has health issues. He got injured in a car accident many years ago.

He's for the most part confined to a wheelchair. But you know what? Let me say this before we go on. I find few people that have a better spirit about it than him.

And that's exactly what I was going to say. Okay, I stole your thunder. Great. Well, you're good at that.

I stole the thunder of Captain America. Wait, isn't that like Thor or something? Yeah, so wrong guy.

See, I learned something. And then I learned something about these comic books. Is he

DC Comics or Marvel? Marvel. Anyway, Rich does, as you said, he does not let that define him.

Does he have to go through a lot? Can it beat him up physically, mentally, spiritually? Yes. But it doesn't define him.

His love for Christ is what defines him. And that's what I think makes us work so well together.

And it's what makes the show so wonderful to do. You know, when I first met him, one of the things

I remember is we were at a Super Bowl outreach and he wanted to, as you said, he's confined pretty much to a wheelchair.

He wanted to stand up and do open air. He didn't want to do it from the wheelchair.

He wanted to stand up. And he got two brothers to stand on either side of him to hold him up like under his arms so that he can hold the

Bible and proclaim God's word. And a lot of us were, yeah, look, open air evangelism could be a scary thing.

You don't want to do it. That was such a great encouragement to many of us to be like, we were all sharing the video of him doing that and all the other teams were just like encouraged and energized to be like, you know, if Rich could get up with his situation and stand up in front of people to do that because quite frankly, doing it from a wheelchair is an advantage.

Doing it from a wheelchair, no one's going to, you know, I have a friend of mine, Eric Romain, and we were at,

Eric and I were, I think it was New York. I forget where. Eric, did I say Eric?

Ed, why did I call him Eric? Ed Romain, I don't know why I did that. But he was preaching one time.

He has cerebral palsy. He's confined to a wheelchair. And he was just on a speaker and some guy is just getting really upset with him over the preaching.

And finally, he turns, this guy doesn't, Ed is in the middle of an area. There's no one around him.

He's just preaching. And this guy doesn't even notice Ed. And he just finally just looks up and screams just to whoever is speaking on the speaker.

And he's like, whoever you are, I'm going to punch you in the face. And Ed just looks there and goes, you're going to punch a guy in a wheelchair?

All of a sudden, the guy zooms in on Ed and looks at him and realizes who it is that's been preaching.

And he just walks over to him, fist bumps him and goes, keep up the good work, man. And I was like,

I was like, afterwards, I'm like, what was that? He's going to punch you in the face now. He's fist bumping you and asking you to keep it up.

He goes, he looks at me. Ed has just a great spirit. Like Rich, he looks at me and he goes, you can get away with anything in a wheelchair.

You know? And he just, it doesn't bother me. He uses it for God's glory. That's Rich.

Absolutely. And that's what I love about him. And that's why I'm so grateful for him. So, as I said, always keep up the good work.

Even though he didn't want to join us. Well, and again, that's partly my fault because I got the mix up.

No, no, no. That's all we're keeping with this story. You know, look, this whole thing has been a, it's been a car crash right from the beginning.

But he's just such a... Sorry, we were driving. Just such a wonderful, wonderful brother and such an encouragement.

So, to find the program you were asking about our blog site, the website is slavetotheking .org.

It has all the podcasts, links for Voice of Reason Radio.

It has the RSS feeds and iTunes feeds if you do that. And occasionally when

I discipline myself to do so, we get some occasional articles out there.

It has our social media links. It has the contact us tab so you can email if you wanted to.

And so that's the easiest way to find us is to go to slavetotheking .com and we just ask folks that if they find anything that they have learned from that, that they've benefited from, number one, give glory to God because you got two knuckleheads on two opposite sides of the country trying to put this together.

And if anything of value came out of it, it was definitely of the Lord. And the other thing is, if you're willing to do so, share it with others because we're not looking for high numbers.

Obviously, we don't go around trying to promote it heavily. But we do want to be a blessing in some way.

So if you're blessed by it, if you learn something, maybe share it with someone else and let them be blessed as well.

So that's what we do with that. We try to do it on a weekly basis. I work full time. Rich has health issues, so occasionally we do miss a week here or there.

I have a camping trip with my children coming up in July, so I'll be gone for a week so we might not record then.

I didn't know Captain America goes camping. Are you going to go camping as Captain America? Absolutely not.

That would be really cool. I'm just saying. There's no way on earth that I'm packing that suit and that shield.

Not happening. No way, no how. My boys and I are part of the

Trail Life USA, which is kind of a church -run organization that's akin to what the

Boy Scouts once were. Excuse me. Different school. That's Scouts, not

Boy Scouts. Okay, excuse me, Scouts of BSA. Get that straight. Yeah. Allow girls in now.

Yeah, whole nother subject, whole nother test. So we're going to be doing that.

So we can occasionally be hit and miss, but for the most part, we try to do it every week.

We record on a Friday most often. We will put them out there via our social media feeds.

And all we want to do is to be that tertiary at best tool that God uses to help someone think just a little bit more biblically.

Of course, we always say that your primary source of biblical education should be your local church.

You should be serving there. You should be learning there. You should be growing there. And then anything else like these programs is just something

God uses to help refine the edges a little bit. The rest of it's being done right there in your local church.

And if you're not doing it in the local church, you need to get into a local church first before you have anything to do with any of these podcasts.

Amen. So that's what we're doing. That's what we're going to continue to do as long as the

Lord allows us to continue to do so. And the social media,

Gestapo continues to allow us to share links on the internet. So that's our hope.

I'll say this. We have a conference coming up. You can go to equipjersey .org.

And the reality I've noticed is that Facebook is not sharing, not putting it on other people's news feeds when we share it.

And so we do need help with that. If you could go to equipjersey .org,

even if you're not planning on attending, can you share that to get the word out? Because the reality is that they are limiting the number of folks that will see it from us.

And it is something that we as Christians need to band together, promote one another, cross -promote.

It's a crazy idea. Christians. You know, me having

Chris on, talking a lot about his show. Huh, crazy. I'm not, you know.

But I do want to encourage you, if you're listening to this and you don't subscribe to the

Wrap Report, think about that. We have a two -minute daily, Monday through Friday.

On Saturday, we do a summary. We play them all. So if you want them in one shot, that way you can just get one podcast with all of them kind of together.

But we have this week, a weekly one that we drop on Sundays. We're part of the Christian Podcast Community.

It's a community of Christian podcasters. It has just started and growing.

And you're going to see a lot of, right now it's the Wrap Report, Theology Answers, Theology Gals may be coming.

And the other one that is planning on coming over is Justin Peters, of Justin Peters Ministries.

And we have some others that we're talking to, to get to do. And what we want to do is just promote one another and to encourage one another.

I really think that this is what is lacking a lot within Christianity, is this idea of promoting one another versus promoting ourselves.

The internet has gotten it where everyone needs to promote self. And I think that if you think this has been valuable to you, please share it with others.

Please write us a review on iTunes. It doesn't actually help us to get ratings in any way, though people will say that.

It just helps to encourage us to know and encourage others who may be listening, who may want to listen, to see what you think about us.

So if you could do that, it doesn't help us get any more rankings, ratings, or anything like that.

The misnomer of many podcasts that say, rate us because it gets us better. No, it doesn't.

So iTunes doesn't look so much at it. Unless you're getting tons of them in a short period of time, then it gets in news and noteworthy.

But it's not because of what you're saying. It's because of how many. So I think that's the only difference.

So with that, Chris, I want to thank you. Captain America, hero of the land, at least of Nevada, as you act as a police officer and helping us.

So we thank you for your service. And I thank you and Rich for Voice of Reason Radio.

It has been a voice of reason in many topics that you guys have dealt with.

So I want to thank you for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. It's been a blast. I love it. We usually do have a lot of laughs.