Matt Slick Live: July 8, 2024

The following program is recorded content created by The Truth Network. It's Matt Slick Live!

Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, found online at karm .org.

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

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

I hope you all had a great day, or a great weekend, I should say, with the Fourth of July. Today's date is

July 8th, 2024. So I hope you all had a good time.

I had a good time, went to some friends' house and watched fireworks. It's kind of an annual thing we do and it was great, a lot of good time, a lot of good fun.

It was good. Anyway, so if you want to give me a call, as usual, all you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276 and you can give me a call there.

You can also, if you want, you can email me, info at karm .org, info at karm .org,

and just put in a subject line, radio comment or radio question, and we can get to those.

We like to do those. A lot of fun. All right. Hey. Oh, let's get to Juanita from Michigan.

Juanita, welcome. You're on the air. Welcome. Hey there, Matt. Hi. Good afternoon, or evening, actually.

So I'm a non -trinitarian, just to remind you. I wanted to make sure

I understood this correctly. I kind of took it off your website to understand.

I'm writing something. So the Trinity proposes that Christ had two natures, one human and one divine.

In his human nature, it was the role he played as a man. He was able to be tempted.

He was able to die, unlike God. So Jesus had a human role he played. In his divine nature, he was the same essence as God, divine.

He was God simultaneously. Although acting as a man, he was not separate, but one in nature and relationship with God.

So it's the word simultaneously that kind of has me perplexed. My question, actually, is what you feel the nature of God is, or what is

God's essence? That's actually my question. Well, I can't answer that.

No one can. God's essence is simply what his essence is. He's completely other.

In theology, we have a phrase, he is wholly other, W -H -O -L -L -Y.

He's completely different than what we are. We can only get an idea of him based on his self -revelation in Scripture and through the person of Jesus.

And just so you know, the wording of your statement wasn't very good. I can offer a correction.

If you want to send it to me, I can polish it up for you if you want. I believe

I took it right off your website, but I'll go back and recheck that. But it says, in Christ's divine nature, he was the same essence as God.

But we don't know what essence or nature God was, but Christ was that.

What about the words omnipotent or all -knowing, all -powerful?

What would you term those if not God's essence or nature? What would you term those terms?

Those are attributes. But I was referring to, you said the Trinity... Attributes. Yeah, attributes. You said the

Trinity proposes that Jesus has two natures. That's not accurate. The Trinity says there are three persons and one

God. And the hypostatic union says that Jesus has two natures. They're related, but the

Trinity doesn't state that. That's what I was referring to. Right, okay. I'll go back and check the website.

So the omnipotent and the all -knowing and everything are attributes of God. But what his essence or nature is, we don't really know.

It's just the God nature, whatever it is. He's just God. Okay. Okay. All right.

Well, you cleared that up for me. Thank you. The other two things, the simultaneous, does it ring a bell?

Or I have that wrong? Okay, go ahead. The three persons are simultaneous and distinct.

Mm -hmm. So could you then, would a correct statement be that the

Trinity claims that the three persons are separate but equal? Let's put it this way.

And I modified the article, What is a Trinity, today, as a matter of fact. But the

Trinity is one being, one essence, one substance, who exists as three distinct simultaneous persons.

But each person shares all the attributes of divinity because that's what divinity is.

The question then becomes, how do they have distinction? Because if all the attributes are identical to the divine nature and each possesses a divine nature, how then can there be distinction?

If the identity and the predication or the essence and the attributes are identical.

And the answer is found in the doctrine of relationship or the economic trinity.

In that they show distinction between, for example, the father begets, the son is begotten, and the

Holy Spirit proceeds. So the distinction is understood through the relationship between the persons.

And that's how we see distinction. So we can have simultaneous essence, simultaneous natures, simultaneous persons, yet also retaining distinction.

Okay? So then would you say that you could say that they were separate but equal?

Well, we say they're distinct. We don't want to say separate. We say distinct. That's the best way to say it, really.

They are three distinct simultaneous persons. We don't want to say separate. I hope

I didn't put that on the website anyplace. But if I did, I'll change it. But it should be just distinct.

Okay. I can see that there would be a distinction between separate and distinct,

I think. I'm not quite sure. I'll have to meditate on that. Did you say that the attributes and the essence were the same?

Back a couple of sentences ago, you said something about attributes and essence. So any object, whether it's concrete or abstract, has a nature.

A concrete object is something you can hold in your hand, you can touch, occupies space and time.

An abstract object does not. So an abstract object would be like the laws of logic or the concept of roundness or things like that.

And so in philosophy, they're called concrete and abstract objects. When something has an essence, it has an ontos.

Ontology is a study, it's a metaphysical category dealing with the nature of things.

Of being, correct. The being, ontos. Whatever exists has properties related to the existence.

So you can't transfer the properties of an ontos to something else, a different ontos. It doesn't make any sense.

This is why transubstantiation doesn't work. So the attributes of the divine being are, he has omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnisapience, holiness, aseity, etc.

And by logical necessity, each person of the trinity possesses all those attributes because those are necessary attributes related to the ontos.

Okay, so I just want to make a mistake here. So you're saying that each of the three persons of the trinity have those attributes.

Yes. I think you just said that. Yes, they have to. Okay, so each person of the trinity has, are all -powerful, all -knowing, blah, blah, blah, the attributes.

Each person, okay, because I thought before you said that they didn't.

Okay, I want to make sure that I have this right. So each person of the trinity has the attributes, which are those things that we were talking about.

Now, how is an attribute different from an essence? Attributes emanate from the essence.

So let's take a bowling ball. So a bowling ball, a typical bowling ball, let's say a black one.

A black bowling ball has mass, and mass relates to weight, that relates to gravity, but mass, it has density, it has spherosity.

And so we can measure the volume. Could you say, excuse me, could you say that it exists in time and space then?

Yes, it's a concrete object. Okay. So a concrete object would be bowling ball, but an abstract object would be bowling ball -ness.

Because you could be in a bowling alley, there could be 100 bowling balls around you, and you're seeing the manifestation of the concept or the abstract object called bowling ball -ness.

And there's particular manifestations of it we call bowling balls. But each bowling ball has to share characteristics common to them.

Some that are necessary and some that are accidental. So a necessary quality of a bowling ball is being a sphere.

But a non -necessary attribute would be color. One could be black, one could be pink, one could be yellow, one could be colored.

So those are an accidental property. So a required property or an essential property is something that, if taken away, it doesn't make any sense because it's necessary with the essence.

You can't have a square or a pyramid bowling ball, it doesn't make any sense.

It's not a bowling ball, it's a pyramid at that point. So you can't transfer the properties of a bowling ball, and you can't transfer it to the tree outside.

Because each nature has properties related to the nature that are necessary and essential to it.

So basically, to restate that again, so the shared essence of the three persons of the

Trinity, the shared essence are the attributes that we were talking about. Could that be a correct statement?

Yes, they all are divine by nature, and since the divine nature has necessary characteristics to it or properties, then they all share in those properties necessarily.

Okay, thank you very much. I'll have to kind of think this over and try to understand our scribbled notes here.

Thank you, Matt. Take care. You also need to study something else, though, okay? A doctrine called inseparable operations.

Inseparable operations. Are you there still? Yeah. Okay, so if this is the case, that the

Trinity is true, and I know you didn't have the Trinity, but I'm glad that you want to at least understand it. If the

Trinity is true, and each person shares all the attributes of the divine nature, then when

Christ, who is who He is, He's divine and human, then all the attributes of divinity are also

His. And this is called the communication of the properties, or the communicatio idiomatum, that He has the properties of the divine nature communicated to Him.

Now, the access to them is another topic. We won't get into that right now. So, sorry about that, cut my throat.

So this would necessitate, then, that all members of the Trinity, which is one being, as one works, that's all who are working.

As one thinks, it's all who are thinking. And so, inseparable operations says that in the one essence of God, and the three persons, which are the one essence, we have, then, the issue of Jesus saying, for example,

I can only do what I see the Father do. Present tense. This is inseparable because the nature is not divided into parts.

But the divine nature has inseparable qualities to it. They belong to the

Son, the Holy Spirit, and to the Father. And so, whatever the

Son says, for example, if you look at my website, I can do only those things I hear or see the

Father do. That's in support of what's called inseparable operations. Okay?

So, this inseparable operations is a way of explaining, and don't take offense to this, explaining in a way that scriptures that say that, that kind of indicate that Jesus was not all -powerful or all -knowing.

Not necessarily. Hold on after the break, and I'll explain. I'll deal with that a little bit, okay? Because it's worth talking about.

All right, hold on. Hey, folks, we've got a... I just read something else.

We've got a break, so please stay tuned. We'll get back to some more, hopefully, some good advanced theology. Be right back.

It's Matt Slick Live! Taking your calls at 877 -207 -2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right. Welcome back to the show. Let's get back on with Juanita.

Are you still there? I am. All right. Could you rephrase what you said before, and then

I can focus on that. I want to make sure we're getting it clear. Oh, my. We went through quite a bit.

You did help me with a couple of things. So I guess right now I'm thinking, so you have these terms or these theories, as far as I'm concerned, from my side, inseparable operations and hapostatic union.

These were created in order to explain the

Trinity theory. But what I'm interested, I guess, right now is, is there any scripture to prove or even indicate that these independent operations or, you know, is there any scripture to back this up?

I see. Okay, go ahead. Go to CARM and just look up inseparable operations.

Look up what is the Trinity. Look up economic

Trinity, ontological Trinity. Okay. Yes. And you'll have scripture there then that proves these theories?

Absolutely. Wonderful. I will do that, Matt. Thank you very much. I will look it up.

And also look up hypostatic union. Okay. Yep. No, I know it was created.

I don't know who came up with the hapostatic union, which explains, you know, the two natures, the union of the divine and human nature.

The combination, the two natures of Jesus. It's not a combination. Yeah. I'm kind of familiar.

That would be monophysitism or eutychianism. But we hold to what's called the hypostatic union.

So you need to, I mean, if you're going to know it, you're going to need to know those terms. So there will be scripture.

And that's all I'm looking for is the scripture that will indicate that Christ had two natures.

Not that that was. Okay. Wonderful. You got it. Thank you very much. All right.

Take care. Bye. Bye. All right.

So she's an anti -trinitarian and she's polite here. And I was answering her question, but I'm really kind of intrigued now.

I want to know what she's going to develop because I would have, I should have asked her. Hey, we ever develop, send it to me.

I'll, I will analyze it and put an article up on CARM. Anyway, so if you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

Let's get to Sean from Japan. Hey, Sean, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt.

It's actually Renzo from Japan. Hey, Renzo. I'm actually in America right now. So I thought I would give you a call and ask a question.

Sure. Where are you in the States now? I'm in Wisconsin. Oh, sorry to hear that.

Okay. I know. We can talk about that another time. Okay. I gave the caller the monitor a different question, but I would actually like to ask you about close communion and what, if you think it's biblical or not.

Yes. Close communion is biblical because it says you must discern the body.

And there's a warning attached. It's in 1 Corinthians 11. Let's see. Let me get to it.

I moved my window over here. 1 Corinthians 11. And what close communion is, for those who don't know, communion is only for those who trusted in Christ.

It's not for everybody. And furthermore, the table is to be guarded against those who claim to be

Christians but are in unrepentant, direct, bad sin. Okay.

So it says in verse 27 of 1 Corinthians 11, whoever eats or drinks the cup of the

Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. So he must examine himself.

And in so doing, he is to eat and drink the cup. Whoever eats and drinks unworthily brings judgment, et cetera.

So from those basic verses, we say that you've got to guard it so people don't come in and eat it unworthily.

So you know that I'm a Presbyterian, and I went to a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church last week that was near this house, and they told me that even though I'm a

Christian but because I'm of a different denomination from in the Westminster, that they would not administer the

Lord's Supper. Do you also believe that that level of close communion is still biblical? No, they're wrong for that.

Absolutely wrong. In fact, I went to a

Lutheran college actually, LCMS, Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. You're in the Wisconsin Synod area, so it might have been

Wisconsin. They're a little bit even more uppity than Missouri. So they had, during college, they had a service where the whole, it was a long service anyway, where people came together on campus and they had communion, and they closed it.

They said if you're not Lutheran, you can't take it. And I went and talked to the dean later, whose name was Dean.

So he was Dean, Dean. And I talked to him and I said, doesn't the

Bible say communion is for the believers? Yes. It's not for unbelievers, correct? Okay. Am I a believer?

And he said, well, yes. I said, so what right do you have as a

Christian to say another Christian can't take communion? Unless there's sin, which there's no sin.

What right do you have to say that? And he actually said to me, he goes, you know, that's a good point.

And for real, they changed their communion and they opened it up to non -Lutherans after that.

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to change the, he actually, when I was talking to the pastor of this church, he did say he was

Missouri Synod, not Wisconsin Synod. But they were very emphatic about it.

It's ridiculous. Yeah, and actually on their pamphlet, I'm not going to quote it word for word verbatim, but it does say on the back, and I'm pretty sure

I'm right about this, where it says, we are not judging the faith of the other person, but you are by denying them the

Lord's Supper. We're not judging the faith of the other person, but we are practicing close communion, which we believe to be biblical based on our creedal statements.

And it's something like that. But it actually is a judgment and a condemnation to deny somebody the

Lord's Supper. So even though they think they're not judging, they in fact are. Exactly correct, and I would have pointed it out to them.

And I would have said, Jesus said that this is for those who are in the

New Covenant. So am I in the New Covenant or not as a believer, someone for whom

Christ died? Are you going to deny my right to communion with my Lord and my

Savior because of a catechism? Is it now above or equal to Scripture?

Of course not. You need to stick with Scripture, not the catechism at this point. Now when you say that to an

LCMS guy, even a PCA guy, you can watch what I call, I call it, in the

PCA I call it the reformed butt shuffle. And in the LCMS it would be the Lutheran butt shuffle. I saw it once the first time when

I was preaching at a CRC church, Christian Reformed Church, and I was preaching up there, and 250 people down in the congregation.

And I just had a cough, and I coughed, put my hand over the microphone and I coughed, and it coughed into the mic.

It just echoed really loud. It was like, oops, one of those, you know, just oops. And I said, wow, it sounded like God coughed.

And so I said, you know, it sounded like God coughed. And that's when I first saw the reformed butt shuffle, when every single person in the, this is a very traditional church, every single person shifted from one butt cheek to the other, all simultaneously.

So I called it the reformed butt shuffle. So it exists in the Lutheran church too, the

Lutheran butt shuffle. Slightly upset with that statement. Okay.

Yeah, well, unfortunately, I did like the guy's sermon. It was very nice on the

Ten Commandments, and he did a very good job of what they call divine liturgy. But I'll have to go to a different place.

Hold on, we've got a break. Hold on after if you can't, okay? Hold on, buddy. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages.

That's Sean. We've talked many times. We'll be right back. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick Live!

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

All right, everyone. Welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276.

I want to hear from you. Let's get back on here with Sean. Hey, buddy, are you still there? I'm still here.

How are you doing? Oh, man, busy. During the break, working on an answer to the issue of the is of identity related to the is of predication and why it supposedly refutes the doctrine of the

Trinity, and I'm showing why it doesn't. Yeah. A lot of work ahead.

Well, then I think I'll try to do is I'll try to, you know, bring a couple of scriptural verses.

I'll write him a little email. And I'll word it nicely and kind of a subtle thing.

But any Bible verse recommendations that you would offer as a rebuttal for him doing close community against other

Christians? Yes, actually. There's something I've been working on called.

Let me see if I can find it. It's the New Covenant. And hold on a sec.

Let me see if I can get it going here. The New Covenant. Where is it? I have it over here.

And so within it, oh, man, I got to find this. I know I've got it.

But within it, I discovered some stuff. And I want to open it up. It might take me 30 seconds here to find it.

But working on it. It might be a good idea. Just for the current website to do is denominational closed communion biblical.

That might be a really good article. I don't think that would be a good article. Let me let me write that down.

You got to be going here different directions. So hold on. Let me see. I give a list of a list of articles.

Let's see. If you hear that, it'll be a rough hour after this. I got him going. That's right.

It's cross. How do you word that? It is cross denominational.

Sorry. Is a denominational closed communion biblical? Denominational closed communion.

I think part of the answer could be yes. We're not going to share communion with Mormons or Catholic Roman Catholic Eastern or right or the

Eastern Orthodox or Coptic Orthodox necessarily. So I think part of the answer would be correct.

But then at the same time, we would not consider some of those other denominations Christian at all. So it could be a really nice detailed article,

I believe. Oh, yes. And that's why I changed it to his

Christian denominational closed communion biblical. So, you know, so what

I was doing was working on I can't believe I can't find it. That's so strange. I got it someplace is working on the issue of the

New Covenant. And I've got so many things going.

And so I just have a real simple paragraph. Where's the

New Covenant? New Covenant. New Covenant. Let me go over here. I think I might put it over here, too, because I summarize something.

So let me go to Jeremiah 31, 31, my Bible program. Don't have it there.

Hebrews 8, 13. You slimeball. Do I talk to my computer? Doesn't do what

I want. Okay. Anyway, I have a whole bunch of stuff I've discovered. Not discovered, but, you know,

I mean, it's already been known. But the issue of the New Covenant and what's going on with it. There's a lot there.

And so it is for everybody. Okay. It's for those who have trusted in Christ.

And that's the symbol of the New Covenant is the Lord's Supper. So the question, then, is are we in the

New Covenant as Christians, even across denominations? And the answer, of course, is yes. And the New Covenant is for the elect who have been chosen of God.

That's what the Bible says in the New Covenant. So I can write an article on this.

It would be real helpful. I can just find my information, which I spent hours getting that information together.

Now I've just got to find out where it is. I think there's a lot, even in just the

Last Supper, that I think with the words of Christ that are very clear and powerful, as well as the words in Corinthians from Apostle Paul.

And so I think maybe four or five Bible verses just solidify the case.

I think it would be fantastic. So I'll do some research as well before I write to him. Yeah. In fact, I found a paragraph that I summarized.

See, the New Covenant was prophesied in the Old Testament. I got all these references. It was fulfilled in the New when Jesus instituted the

Lord's Supper. It was ratified with His death. The New Covenant replaced the Old Covenant and included both

Jews and Gentiles. Jesus said the blood of the New Covenant is poured out for many. The New Covenant sign is the cup of the

Lord's Supper, which represented the shedding of His blood on the cross. Jesus is the mediator of that New Covenant.

He's the priest of the New Covenant, which is better than the Old Covenant. And those in the New Covenant will have

God's law written on their hearts. Their sins will be forgiven. And those who are called will receive the promise of eternal life, and the

Lord will be their God. Those last ones mean that we're in the New Covenant, and the symbol of the

New Covenant is the communion supper, and the elements, that is. And so, therefore, all who are in that covenant should be able to take it.

And what the Lutherans have done, in my opinion, has sinned against you.

Okay. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time. God bless you, and I'll keep you in their prayers.

All right. God bless. Okay. Appreciate that. All right. Now let's get to Alberto from Georgia.

Alberto, welcome. You're on the air. It's good to be here. My question is, did you ever contact

Dr. Michael Brown and Craig Keener about their pre -trip teachings?

No. You've got a lot of wind in your phones. I know. So, no,

I haven't. It's not a big deal. I mean, I would do a debate with him. He wrote a book called

Not to be Afraid of the Antichrist. Not to be Afraid of the Antichrist? Well, I wouldn't be afraid of the

Antichrist. Man. Well, he wrote a book. Well, I don't know.

Why should you? You should, because he can kill you, torture you, hurt your family.

He'll control much of the world. He's a servant of the devil. Now, we should fear him in that sense, but we shouldn't fear him in another sense.

So I don't know what sense that he's talking about in there. Okay. I've got a quick question.

You know, the Bible talks about the last trumpet. I was confused by that verse. Okay, the last trumpet.

It's referring to what is the last trumpet when it talks about it. Some people say it's, like, during the future or before the trip.

Yes. You know, when it comes about, it says about, you know, the apostasy and all that stuff. Yes. In 1

Corinthians 15, 52, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised.

That's the first basic, basically, that's the first resurrection. And then we have the dead who have died in Christ, or the believers who died ahead of the time of the rapture.

The last trumpet is when the dead are raised. The last trumpet also, I can show it to you.

Hold on, I've got my notes from something else. I've got so many things open. Hold on. Let's see. Okay, hold on.

Because when the last trumpet occurs, I have it all in a chart.

I think I did. And it's, the last trumpet is when the resurrection occurs.

It's also when the rapture occurs. Okay, so I have the scriptures on there.

Okay. All right. But the problem here is, when the last trumpet occurs, it's the same time as the rapture and the resurrection.

But the resurrection is on the last day, which is called the day of the Lord. So therefore, on the last day, which is called the day of the

Lord, is when the rapture occurs, which happens at the last trumpet. And also, this is at the resurrection, the last trumpet, let's see, which also is when the rapture occurs.

So the last trumpet is when the rapture and the resurrection occur, but also is with the return of Christ.

So the return of Christ isn't a double return, and then seven years later, he comes back again.

They all happen at the same time. Okay. Right, except that the last trumpet is when the resurrection occurs.

And that's the day of the Lord. But the day of the Lord is when the new heavens and new earth are made. So the day of the

Lord is when the new heavens and new earth are made, which also occurs at the time of the last trumpet. Then the rapture occurs at the last trumpet, which is also the day of the

Lord when the new heavens and new earth are made. There's no literal thousand years. It just doesn't work. Okay.

Right. I have a study that I've done that I think is pretty solid.

It's called an examination of this age and the age to come. And you can go to Carmen. And what

I've done, what I've taught it is have the people who are sitting there.

I say, where does this go? We have two ages, this age and the age to come. And just have them put things where it goes, make a chart of their own.

And it comes up with something they're not used to. Let me just say that. Okay, buddy? Check it out.

Okay. All right. All right. Thank you. All right. Talk to you later. Hey, folks. We have one person waiting.

If you want to give me a call, 877 -207 -2276. Be right back.

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

Here's Matt Slick. Everybody, welcome back to the show. If you want to give me a call, all you have to do is dial 877 -207 -2276.

Let's get to James from Lexington, North Carolina. Welcome. You're on the air. Thank you,

Matt, for taking my call. I have a question. I hear preachers preach all the time.

And they say that you have to ask God to come into your heart to be saved. And I cannot find that scripture in the

Bible. I cannot find it. You're right. Because it doesn't say any place in order to be saved but to ask him into our heart.

That is ridiculous theology that is taught from pulpits all across the country. And it is false.

I'm glad that you caught on to it. Yes. Okay. Well. Now. Well, yeah.

Okay. But with but. They'll go to Romans 10 through 9, and they'll read that.

And I understand it. It's believe in your heart. Yes. But believe.

When I get to verse 13, they say, for whosoever shall call upon the Lord, he'll be saved.

Then they do not tell them what the rest of the chapter says there.

You know, how can you how can you believe in something you haven't heard? And how can you hear?

You know, if if if a preacher has a priest, how can you preach unless he's be saved?

Right. Let's put some of this together. Okay. Because in John 1 of 12, it says as many as received him to them, it gave the right to be called the children of God.

So we are to receive Christ. We are to believe in Christ. Jesus says, believe in God.

Believe also in me. John 14 one. We're to confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord. Now, if you're mute and you can't speak, you know, this is not a legalistic thing, but it's a confession that goes for the idea.

But then what if you have someone who, you know, doesn't have the ability to confess and you're in and out of time or whatever?

These are just normative things. So what we need to do to be saved is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, going to trust in who he is.

He's God in flesh. He died on the cross, rose from the dead. He bore our sins in his body. First Peter 2 24.

And we trust in what he did. We received that sin offering at sin sacrifice. We put our faith and our hope in him.

That's what it means to be to become a Christian. Okay.

Yes. And also, when I go back to John 3 16, he said,

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth, not ask him into your heart, but to believe it on him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

Amen. I just don't understand how the preachers are leaders and they're supposed to teach this.

I don't, I just, I've heard that all my life. Yeah. It's because in America, the preaching of the gospel is pretty watered down.

Okay. It is. Yeah. It's pretty watered down. And people are teaching bad theology all over the place.

So when I preach the gospel to people, okay, um, let's see,

I'm going to find a certain verse. I should know this, but you know, I don't know all my, all the verses. Um, we're supposed to count the cost.

I believe it's, uh, Luke nine. Actually, there's a little parallel. It says, well,

I'll explain what I'm going to. When you preach the gospel, it has to be law gospel cost law.

You don't, God says, don't lie. You've lied. You're a sinner. You're under his judgment. The gospel is that Jesus is the one who fulfilled the law.

And if you trust in what he did, he's got in flesh, died in the cross, rose from the dead, all of that. Okay.

And the cost for which of you and intending to build a tower, sit down first, it counts the cost.

Do you have enough to finish it? You better know what you're getting into. So they say to people, just ask Jesus into your heart.

I remember the Jesus you're talking about is the blonde hair, blue eyed Caucasian surfer dude dressed on a woman's nightgown asking for permission to come into your heart and save you.

And this is the crap that's being taught across the country by all kinds of people.

And it's false doctrine. And they need to repent of it. You don't have Jesus in your heart. You confess him as Lord. You believe and trust in what he has done, knowing who he is, what he's done on that cross.

And you better know what you're getting into. You better count the cost because it may cost you your life. It will definitely cost you your pride and a lot of other things in your life.

Maybe some friends. You better know what you're getting into. That's what needs to be preached across the American pulpits.

Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. I've heard, like I said, I've heard this all my life.

And I searched and I cannot find it. And there's other verses in the Bible.

But to be saved, I think Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross of Calvary, the

Bible says that he died for the sins of the world, for the whole world.

He died for our sins then. Do we have to ask him to forgive us of our sins?

Well, we accept him as believers. Yeah, we should. Yeah. Confession. And it's good.

We we ask him to forgive because Jesus says in John 14, 14, ask me anything in my name and I will do it.

So we ask him to forgive our sins. Yep. My question is, he did that on Calvary.

He paid the sin debt on Calvary and he canceled the sin debt at the cross.

Colossians 2, 14. Yeah. I got you. I got you. Got you. Okay. Well, it's been nice talking to you.

And I just wanted your opinion on that. And it's hard for me to I'm a member of a missionary

Baptist church and they want me to be a deacon. And I don't know if I can, if I can do that or not, because I hear the pastor say these words practically every

Sunday. Just ask him this, just ask him, can you please show me in scripture where it says to ask

Jesus into your heart? Let's leave it at that for now. And you won't be able to find it.

Yeah. And if you can't find it, you ask him, why are you saying that if it's not in the

Bible? Yeah. You have to believe in faith.

You have to have the faith. That's right. After you hear the word. Am I correct? Yes. And also, just so you know, in Philippians 1, 29, it's

God who grants that we have faith. Yes. Yes. Because without faith, it's impossible to please him.

Hebrews 11 says that's right. Yep. Okay. Well, it's been good talking to you.

Nice talking to you. And God bless you. And I love your ministry. I listen to you a lot. Well, good.

Thanks. I'd love to go down here to Ohio sometime and meet people. But praise

God. Yeah. Okay. God bless. Okay. All right.

Now, let's go to Andrew from Dayton, Ohio. Andrew, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Brother Schlick.

How you doing? Oh, hanging in there, man. Hanging in there. What do you got, buddy? Well, I heard that guy talk about closed communion.

And you made the comment, it is the church's job or the elder's job, pastor's job to guard the table.

Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So, say they have a church service on a

Sunday morning. And then after service, they're going to have a communion. Okay. How would you suggest the elders, the pastors, the church to guard the table?

Because at that point, you're going to have a lot of visitors. You're going to have all different types of people in the congregation.

Yes. What you do, there's two levels here. One is you just verbally say, this is not for the unbeliever.

You are not to participate in this. If you do, you're eating judgment to yourself and condemnation. Please don't take.

If you haven't trusted in Christ as Lord and Savior, then it's not for you. Don't do this.

And the other thing is, and this is where you're going to be more careful when you say stuff like this, because you might know of an individual in the congregation who might be in a very bad sin.

Let's say there's a man and a woman, husband and wife, and let's just say there's a pretty bad sin going on.

And one of them is not repentant and they're in church. Well, by that time, the elders have come together and said, you can't take communion because they're in, say, unrepentant state, let's just say, being very generic here.

Then what you could say, what they say is also in the, from there, you know, it's not for the unbelievers. Also, if you are under judgment and the elders of any church that you go to say you're not to have this, then you're not to take it here either.

And so you guard it verbally. You can't look into people's hearts and you can't know everything about everybody.

So aside from that, there's really not a whole bunch to do, except that the elders see a couple who goes up that they knows under discipline and they do this anyway, then they're to be disciplined all the more.

And if they continue in such rebellion, then the elders need to take a more stern action like going to publicly to the church and then telling the church members what's going on about this couple or whatever.

So it just depends. Okay? I was just wondering, because of church discipline, if we discipline someone as a church body and they're unrepentant and it says they should not eat anymore with them and they're dismissed from even congregation because they're in open sin, they're in rebellion, then that same person that's in open sin, rebellion of one church goes to another church and eats of that table because it's the prerequisites is only you must be a believer.

It kind of goes against church discipline and causes a schism in it, it seems to me.

Yes, that's one of the problems. I think there could be a danger as far as, you know, like the other guy was saying, he wouldn't allow another person from a different denomination.

Well, he doesn't know you. He doesn't know, really, your walk with God. You could be under discipline.

You could be a Satanist that just lies out of his teeth and says he's a believer. And so I was just curious how you thought.

Yeah, that's why a verbal guarding is basically what you're responsible to do.

And so, like you said, you can't know the hearts of individuals. And so if I'm going to another church, you know, out of state, and I'm going in there and they have a communion service, and I did this recently, there's a communion service.

I'm going to take communion. I'll take communion. They don't know me, but okay, it's between God and myself at that point.

If I was under discipline for some strange reason at a church, I'm going to hold off because I'm under the eldership at that point.

Yeah. So you do believe that the elders say Jimmy is in fornication, and he won't repent, and he's had the terrible pride, and all these things are going on.

You do believe that the elders in the church can discipline him to the fact of, like, you cannot eat at the table, period.

That's correct. I believe that too. And I just think that this idea of close,

I would call it close communion is kind of what you're believing, and that kind of hurts the

Lord's table, in my opinion, because here you are saying I'm going to withhold it from this individual because I know what's going on with him, but then

I open it up to the possibility of others. Yes.

I know you're guarding it verbally, and you don't know men's hearts, but at the same time, you can withhold it from one person, but another person that you don't know that just came off the street, you're just taking their word for it.

That's all you can do? You're making the Lord's table, you're defiling it, in my opinion.

Yeah, the elders are not defiling it. They've done their due diligence by saying this is not for everybody.

They've given the parameters. That's all they can do. And that's it. I mean, no system is perfect because we're people, but God knows, and God will deal with it.

Okay? We've got to go because there's music. Okay. Well, God bless you. Thank you. Call back tomorrow.

We can talk some more about it. It's an important topic. All right. Appreciate you. All right, man. God bless. Hey, folks, sorry about that.

We're out of time. It was a fast hour. And I hope, by God's grace, I'm back on air tomorrow. May the Lord bless you.