How to Study the Bible EFFECTIVELY? The Key to Unlocking Its Truth!

Biblically Speaking

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Hello, hello, my name is Cassine Bellino, and I'm your host today for Biblically Speaking. I wanted to start today's episode with a question.

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Have you ever wondered how to truly understand the Bible? Because I sure don't. But that's today why

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I have Andrew Rappaport on today. Andrew, I'm so excited to have you on. You're a seasoned

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Bible teacher. You're the founder of Striving for Eternity Ministries. You're an author of a few well -known books, like What Do We Believe?

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and What Do They Believe? And you've decades of experience of equipping believers with conferences, podcasts.

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You and I have connected offline just through your mentorship program, guidance courses, and you're passionate about IT secrets and other things you can't share with me.

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But most importantly, you are more than willing to come on this podcast today to talk about cutting through the confusion of, we have questions about the

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Bible, so how can we properly study it today? Welcome to the show, Andrew. I'm so glad that you're here.

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And seasoned is a polite way of saying I'm old, just for folks who don't know. And experienced.

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You know, a little tidbit, so I have a background in jiu -jitsu, and I love jiu -jitsu, but I don't compete.

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I don't try. I'm not there to win. I'm there to learn. I like the art of it. But when someone came, would come in the gym and called me old, they were tapping out.

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I didn't care if I was a white belt, and this actually happened to white belt versus a purple belt. The purple belt tapped out, and he was not expecting that.

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And he was like, he just was surprised, and I'm like, yeah, you called me old. He's like, I was at the time,

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I think, I think I was like 48, and he was 26. And he was like, oh, but I got drug years.

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They count for double. I'm like, yeah, no, sorry, it doesn't work that way. You got drug years? Yeah, because he had a background doing drugs, so he said that made his age twice the age because of his drug.

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Right. That's how the math works. Hey, people do anything to make it work. You know, and a lot of people do that with the

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Bible as well. They come to the Bible with a conclusion and then look to see how can I make this fit what

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I want it to teach? Absolutely. And I'm guilty of that. I feel like I did that with my confirmation verse,

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Jeremiah 29, 11. Anytime I had an issue, I could go back to that verse and say, no, no, no, but it'll all work out because God promised me that.

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But did he really? So here's a question for you, Jeremiah 29, 11. Everyone loves that verse.

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Love it. Right. So let's let's read it. It says, For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans of welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and hope.

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And that sounds really good. My question is, why does no one want to just go seven or eight verses later where it says this thus says the

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Lord of hosts, behold, I am sending upon them a the sword famine and pestilence.

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I will make them like split open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness.

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I will pursue them with the sword, with famine and with pestilence.

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I will make them a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth to be a curse and a horror and a hissing and a reproach among all the nations where I've driven them.

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Why is that on no one's refrigerator? Why is that no one's favorite verse? No, because that's

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God doing my bidding. That's not for me. Which comes to the question, then, who is this for?

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And I'm glad you as a listener asked that question because Jeremiah, Jeremiah provided the answer in verse 10.

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Yeah, this is what we call context. Verse 10, he says, for thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been complete for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill my good word to you to bring you back to this place for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the

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Lord, the plans of welfare and not calamity to give you a future and a hope. So who is that verse for?

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Well, anyone who lived through the 70 year Babylonian captivity and that's no one left alive today.

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So the listener, you're asking the question, well, then are you saying this isn't for me at all? Oh, no, not saying that at all.

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There is something we can glean for. It's not a direct promise to us. But what can we learn? Well, what we can learn is

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God was faithful to Israel. Picture yourself in 70 years of captivity. You think of Israel as the land.

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This is the promised land. God removes you from that, takes you to another country where you're going to be in captivity for 70 years.

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After some point you're going, is God really going to bring us back? You're going to question that after 70 years.

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Even though he said it will be 70 years. And here's Jeremiah before the 70 years saying, after 70 years,

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God is going to fulfill that promise. Well, to those who are in Christ, God has made promises to you and I that he has a mansion that he's setting up for us, that we're going to be in heaven in many rooms, that we will be with him.

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Those are promises he made to believers and we can trust that promise. Why? Because we could look at what he did in Israel's life, that after 70 years, he brought them back to Israel.

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We could see he kept that promise to them. He'll keep those promises he makes to us. And that was totally not in your notes.

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That just, you know. I was about to say, did you just have that like up behind your laptop and just that entire chapter?

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Uh, no, actually, uh, that is one of the verses that I go into depth on when

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I go into churches and teach our Bible interpretation made easy seminar. So we go in for church for a weekend, teach them how to interpret the

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Bible. And that, because that has replaced John 3, 16 as people's favorite verse, it is one that I always deal with.

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Absolutely. And I know I just upset some of your listeners. I'm sorry. Okay. Unfortunately, the deeper you get into scripture that at least

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I've experienced, it has not been at all what I expected. I mean, last week I did an episode, it was called divine hiddenness.

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I think it's actually out right now. If you're listening, go listen to it. But it's like, I came into that conversation with this earthly,

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I always call it the Bible study, the Bible school mentality of like, okay, so where's God?

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Like if he really wanted us to know him, shouldn't he be given us those pillars of fire, those clouds, those burning bushes, the partings of the red sea.

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If he really wants us to know it, he'll give us the evidence, right? So the atheists do have a strong argument there. And you know,

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I'm waiting for that, that, I don't know, theological, theological response of like, well, you got to earn it or you got to repent 20 times, like whatever it might be.

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It's like, oh, okay. I'll just follow the steps and get it. But it's not, it's actually a completely different heart posture of like,

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God has us in a place of, God has himself in a place of hiddenness. So we yearn for him.

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God has now presented himself multiple ways as miracles, even to the Israelites who experienced the parting of the red sea.

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And yet they still worshiped a golden calf a few days later. So this place of hiddenness that us think we're entitled to now have

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God reveal himself from, it's actually exactly where God wants us. So we yearn for him and we choose him and that we actually follow him, not just get our 30 seconds of validation and evidence that we're going to forget about in five minutes.

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And there actually is no such thing as an atheist, by the way, because that's what scripture says.

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Scripture says, this is God who knows the hearts of every person. He says in Romans chapter one, for the wrath of this verse, starting in verse 18, but Romans 1 18 says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

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For God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes and his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

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So when people tell me they're an atheist, they go, no, God says you're not. He made it evident.

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I know a lot of people that would not say they believe in God. So what do we do with them? What bucket do they go into?

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They go into a bucket that God declares right here, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

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Are you saying like, whoa, whoa, whoa, it sounds to me like I'm stupid. So you're saying that they know God, they just don't know they know?

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So I'll give you, I'll tell you in a story, a friend of mine, Cy, he and I were in California evangelizing,

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I think we were in Santa Monica. And a Buddhist guy, we went, got pizza, we were coming back to the pier, and there's this

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Buddhist guy that Cy starts talking to, and the guy, or the guy had a book about Buddhism, that's how the conversation started.

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And so the guy turns to my friend Cy and says, well, I don't believe God exists. And Cy goes, yes, you do.

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And the guy literally just shook his head and goes, you're right, I do. He was being honest. They know

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God exists and they suppress it. How can we prove it? Very simple. Have you ever seen books written about atheism?

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No, I don't entertain that kind of literature. But have you seen books out there on that? I mean, there's lots of them, right?

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And atheists read those books, don't they? I can't tell if you're kidding. No, I'm being serious.

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Atheists will read books about atheism. They will read, they will watch documentaries or YouTube channels arguing for atheism.

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They'll do all that. Now, so what is atheism? The belief that God doesn't exist. So they'll watch all of that.

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And they really spend a lot of time learning about atheism. So the question is, do they believe

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Santa Claus exists? No. So why don't they go to the mall in December and shout out like they do when someone's preaching the gospel?

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Why don't they shout out in the mall, Santa Claus doesn't exist? And the answer I always get is because everybody knows

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Santa Claus doesn't exist. And they go, right. If everyone knew

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God doesn't exist, you wouldn't try to convince anybody because everyone would know it. You only try to convince everybody if everyone doesn't know it.

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So that's the evidence that they know it because they have to try to convince themselves that God doesn't exist.

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Okay. Well, then what about the agnostics that don't believe in anything? Well, they would argue that they just don't know.

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But still, what did God say? God says that his, according to Romans 1, that it has been made evident to them.

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What has been made evident? That which is known about God is evident.

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And God made it evident. So just looking at scripture and reading it through, we see that there are no atheists because what they are, according to scripture, are people who know

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God exists, but they suppress that truth in unrighteousness. It sounds like a lot of people that I know out here and just like throughout my life, because I befriended atheists my whole life because I was a lukewarm

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Christian. I wasn't like around the Bible study girlies for a long time. And a lot of my friends were,

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I know there's a God. I just don't know which one. And your God, Cassie, I just don't agree with because I could never agree with a

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God that doesn't love X, Y, Z, you know, all that type of thing. So to them, it sounds like God's evident and they don't like what they're hearing.

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That's exactly it. And that's why they'll accept any other religion. They'll accept every man -made religion.

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They just won't accept the divine religion because the divine religion is the only one that they don't like.

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It's the only one that says we can't earn our way to heaven. But we could do something to, you know, in their religions, if we do something to earn it in biblical

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Christianity, Christ did it all at the cross. There's nothing we could do. Nothing we could add to it. It almost doesn't make sense why someone wouldn't like that kind of God that basically said, here's

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VIP. You didn't have to buy a ticket. So why do people still come up against that? Even though you don't have to do anything, baby girl, to make your way in.

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God already, he already paid the price. So for my friends, I'm just thinking about conversations that I've had with people that agree.

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I agree with you. They're acknowledging there is a God. They simply don't like what they're hearing. But why wouldn't they?

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Is it because spiritual warfare? Is it the fallen nature of the human world that we like our sin?

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What is still holding people back then? It ultimately comes down to pride. Okay.

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It ultimately comes to that, but it has its way in a couple of different forms. And I'll ask someone, I'll share the gospel and they'll understand it and say, but they still don't want to repent.

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And I'll say, it's probably one of a couple of reasons. You tell me which one. One, there is some sin in your life that you love so much, you are not willing to give up your sin, even if it means you spend eternity in a lake of fire versus having eternal life.

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Because you just won't give up that sin. Second, you don't want, you want to be in control of your life that you don't even want the

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God of the universe who puts breath in your lungs to tell you what to do. Or the third is just, you are so prideful that you want to earn it.

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You want to do it your way. And you don't want to have to submit to what God says is the way to come to Him.

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And it's usually one of those three. I was definitely the third one. Wow. Well, they all come to the third ultimately, because what it ultimately comes down to is our pride.

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If we earn it, or if we love some sin, whichever you want to look at it, that's still a pride issue.

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And so, it's ultimately our pride. And that's why we hate biblical Christianity as an unbeliever, because it says we can't do anything.

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I remember going to a restaurant. Now, the restaurant owner was a believer, so I knew I would have absolutely no problem doing this, though I do it sometimes at other restaurants.

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But we walked through the restaurant, me and a friend of mine, and handed out gospel tracts to every table. Before we sit down at our table.

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And the owner has no problem with me doing it, because he's glad it's happening.

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And me and my friend Mark, walking around, we're handing out tracts to all tables. He was at one table, got into a really good conversation.

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I come back, sit down. Well, the guy he spoke to didn't want to believe the gospel.

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Mark sits down. We're looking at the menu. The guy comes over to talk to us. And we end up having a really good conversation.

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He leaves his wife at the table by herself so he could talk to us. And we talked for like 20 minutes.

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And then he goes to sit down. And Mark decided we had a great conversation, though he didn't repent.

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And Mark decided he was paying for this man's meal. So, he goes over, talks to the waitress, pays for the guy's meal.

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Well, the guy goes to pay when he's done eating. He finds out that it was paid. The guy walks up to where the cashier is, and he gives her the price.

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He pays a second time. Even though his meal was covered, he refused to let someone give him a gift.

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And how do we know that? Because he came to the table and told us. He said, you can ask for your money back. I paid for my meal.

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I am not going to have anybody give me something. I'm going to earn everything

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I get. And I looked at him with all sincerity. And I just said, well, and that is why you'll spend eternity in a lake of fire.

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Because you want to try to earn something you can never pay. And just like he wouldn't accept the gift of a free meal, he won't accept the gift of eternal life.

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But what, yeah, I mean, I'm going to push in on this because this is an amazing evangelism lesson. And you're simplifying it beautifully.

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Is what about the people that are like, yeah, yeah, maybe I am. But I also think that love is love.

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And I don't agree with a God that creates gay people and then punishes them. Like they just fundamentally disagree with the foundational beliefs.

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And they're like, that's just a loving God that I want. So did God create them homosexual?

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And if the person says yes, okay. So we should accept, even if God says homosexuality is wrong, we should accept the homosexual, to which they will say yes.

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Do you have the same philosophy with the person who is created as a serial murderer or a serial rapist?

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Should we just let them go about their business because that's the way God created them? I just want to see if you're consistent with the view.

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You see, no one's going to say that we should leave the serial rapist to go and rape or the serial murderer to go and murder.

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So why should we allow a serial adulterer to commit adultery?

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Because whether you like it or not, homosexuality is always going to end up being adultery because God defines marriage as a man and a woman.

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And therefore, because he's the one that creates us, he's the one that gets to define it. In fact, here where I lived in New Jersey, when they were voting on same -sex marriage,

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I asked all the legislators a couple of simple questions. Do you believe in a separation of church and state?

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Every one of them said yes. I said, okay, then you have only one choice.

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You must vote no on the same -sex marriage bill because it is a church issue and not a state issue.

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So if you believe in a separation of church and state, you have to stay out of that issue and not redefine what the church defines as marriage, to which they all voted for it.

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So the... It sounds like people are just debating truth. When you put these statutes of like, well, this is what the

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Bible says, and this is what obedience is, people start, like you said, with Jeremiah fitting in.

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No, no, no, no, no. God said he accepted me. So I'm going to take out that part that his is the ultimate truth.

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I'm going to fit that love outside of sin still applies to me.

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So they fit it around and they're like, well, that's what I think it is. So you saying something else,

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I disagree with that. Well, let me say it this way, and this may shock some people. The reason that the world...

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Yeah, she's like, what? You've already done that. I think we shocked them. I think that the reason that the world has a misdefinition of love, and that's what it is.

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When they say love is love, what they mean is, I should be the one to define what love is.

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I get to define it, not God. And what they define as love is, spoil me, give me everything

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I want, right? That is so good.

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And where did that come from in our society? Unfortunately, the church, because the church spent a lot of time with one of the most well -known gospel tracts, teaches

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God has a wonderful plan for your life. He loves you. I call it the false gospel of God is love.

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Now, is God love? Yes. But when you define love as God should spoil me and give me everything

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I want, what you want may not be best for you. I mean, your children will want to eat nothing but ice cream all day long.

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Is that good for them? Would you be a good parent if you let them eat all the junk food they ever want? No, you wouldn't be good because they're going to have nothing but health problems the rest of their life.

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Just to back up what you said, you said it came from the church. Are you talking about a specific church? It's really from the idea of the gospel track, which then furthered this whole idea that God is love.

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And he is love. But when we say God is love and has a wonderful plan for your life, what that has taught people, because I hear it from people when

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I evangelize, is they'll say, well, God loves me. He's got a wonderful plan for my life. And they use that as a justification to live any way they want.

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So they could say, hey, God made me as practicing homosexuality. So love is love and I could do what

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I want. In fact, tonight when we're recording this on my Apologetics Live podcast, we're going to talk about a debate that someone else had.

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So it's going to be a post -debate discussion on Christian nationalism. Now, that's not the really interesting thing with it.

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It was a reformed Christian versus a progressive Christian. And the progressive

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Christian may come on to the show tonight. I hope he does. But he argues that homosexuality should be allowed.

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He doesn't see a problem with that. And so what does he do? He reinterprets all the scripture.

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Because what did we talk about in the beginning? He starts with a conclusion and then he looks to support it with scripture.

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And any scripture he doesn't like, he just finds a way to throw it out. It's called confirmation bias. It's a logical fallacy.

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And so this is what people have done. They've taken this idea, well, God is love. God loves me.

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God has a wonderful plan for my life. That is what the church has taught for several decades. And now that the world has heard that, they say, well, love is love.

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So we should be able to love whoever we want. But do we get to make the rules for how we as human beings live?

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Or does our creator get to do that? Well, unfortunately for you and I, we don't always like the rules, but God gets to make them.

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That is a rough truth. Okay. Well, I think that that was a beautiful way on how to evangelize.

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So logical and uncomplicated. I often find myself with a both and type of answer. So I feel like that was like pretty cut and dry.

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So thank you, Andrew. And you clearly know what you're doing. I think that I usually like to spend the beginning part of these podcasts saying like, hey, why do you qualify?

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But I think you've like more than proven yourself. But I think my next question is like, how did you get here? Like, how did you get to such a point?

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Because, I mean, I don't know your success rates, but everything you're saying is really fitting for me.

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And I think that all of us want to get to the level that you're at, of being able to talk so openly and confidently about the word of God.

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But for me, at least, it's really hard still to just open up the Bible and study it because it's like, do

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I need to Google every word? Like, how do I know that I'm doing it well? Let me encourage two different ways for the audience.

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One, I come off like it's really easy. So I had an evangelism team.

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We'd go every Friday night to Seaside Heights, New Jersey to evangelize. And I did not know that for two years that we'd go out, my evangelism team,

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I was kind of the leader, but they would always make me start doing, I would do open air evangelism. So I'd get up on a box,

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I'd open a Bible, I'd just proclaim the gospel to people walking by. I didn't realize for two years that the reason they always made,

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I thought they made me get up first because I was the team leader. No, no, no, that wasn't why. I found out afterwards what they would do is they were kind of placing bets, not real bets, but they were just all like, you know, deciding numbers.

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They were deciding how long it would take before I would actually open my mouth or how many times

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I'd get up on the box and down and up and down. So I think they said that my max was,

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I got on the box seven times once before actually saying anything.

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And I think they said that I was about, I think it was three and a half minutes or four minutes of just getting up, down, up, down, just because I get nervous doing it.

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Now, how do I get to be so good? It's nothing special with me. It's very simple.

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I made a commitment many, many years ago to try to evangelize to one person a day. Now, I don't need to be a legalist.

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I mean, I was a little bit legalistic with it because I used to like go to like a 7 -Eleven or Wawa if you have those, you know, but any convenience store where it's 24 hours,

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I'd go there to talk to the person at like 11 at night. I'd get in my car, I didn't evangelize anyone. I'd go there because there's always someone there.

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Or you go to a hotel where there's someone at the front desk. I would always do that. And so I didn't have to be so legalistic about it.

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You don't have to go out at 11 o 'clock at night, but I make it a mission to try to talk to one person a day. And I will be challenged with something

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I don't know. I may get challenged with several things I don't know. But what

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I try to do is whatever is the last challenge, either the last challenge or the one that I had the most curiosity for an answer, that's the one that I said,

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I don't try to study all five or six, just one. And I go and I study that out till I have an answer.

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What do you mean study? Well, I'm going to look into the word of God and see what it says about whatever was claimed.

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And so what I'm doing is I'm basically building a tool chest of different skills and different answers.

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I mean, this is a study we call apologetics. It's the defense of the faith. What I'm trying to do is build that apologetic one argument at a time, one question at a time.

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So instead of trying to learn everything, I mean, I can be on the streets and I can talk if someone wants to argue for evolution.

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Sure, let's talk about that. I could talk about DNA, how DNA shows that evolution can't be possible.

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And I can get into all the science there. Did I know, you know, I can look at the, I can look at the fact that the earth can't be that old because you have too much salt in the water.

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You have a moon that's too close to us. You have blue stars. I could get into all those things, but did I learn them all at once?

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No, I learned all of this one at a time. And then I put it into my toolbox.

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And sometimes someone's going to ask me something. And even if I've forgotten something, it's like, oh, that's right, I studied that.

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Let me bring that up now. Now, some people I know what they'll do is they will take little card, like note cards or notes.

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And nowadays, everyone has this thing called a phone, right? They always have with them.

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In my phone, unfortunately, I used an app that shut down and I lost it all. But I used to have, you could use like an

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Evernote or something like that now. But I had something that categorized all these questions. So if I had a

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Muslim come up, I could pull up the questions I'd ask Muslims, Jehovah Witness, you know,

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Mormon, whoever. Or challenges that I'd have. And so I could quickly find what

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I studied on that. So I don't have to remember everything. I got tools that can help me, but I would study it, put the notes in there.

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And so it shouldn't be intimidating. Just learn one thing at a time. No, I mean, your journey makes sense for you.

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I think for someone that is like a mother or retired, like somebody that isn't evangelizing once a day, my biggest thing that like comes to the forefront is like, there's a lot of fake news out there.

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There's a lot of misrepresent, you know, like I don't think a lot of people know that there is a difference between young earth and old earth creationists.

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So even the, I want to call it the rabbit hole that you went down that has led you to find the proof of a young earth.

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I think that someone could equally have done the same for an old earth. Do you agree? Well, I sort of agree.

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Let me just do one thing. See, I'm going to point something out to, so I do debate, right?

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So I do formal debates. So this is a thing I pick up. The words even that you use, it's actually misleading.

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Young earth versus old earth. Really the argument is over old earth or older earth. 6 ,000 years is a really old earth.

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I mean, that's a long time, right? But compared to 6 billion, it's not that long. You see, so it's old and older, right?

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So what am I doing there? And I will do that when I talk to, you know, someone that professes to be an atheist.

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What did I just do? As a listener, did you laugh? Like, I mean, you just laughed.

28:42

As a listener, did you laugh? Why? I just use humor to make a point.

28:48

And what that does is that helps in the conversation that could get tense because we're debating. I'm not debating.

28:54

I'm enjoying the conversation. I just use a little bit of humor that now got them to enjoy the conversation, but still made the point.

29:04

Yes, yes. I made this joke with my friend. She's like, we were talking about religion and I have amazing friends that support what

29:11

I do. Even if they are agnostic atheists, they still support me and they're amazing. But one of my girlfriends here is like, you know, every night

29:18

I pray to God, mother earth and the universe. I'm like, well, at some point it'll get to them. You know, at least you're covering all your bases.

29:24

And I completely agree. I think that it should be funny, but serious. And once you get into the egotistical, you're not agreeing with me.

29:32

That's just when it's not fun. And I think that this is why I've spent so much. Like, this is why this podcast I'll do the rest of my life, because it's genuinely fun.

29:40

But I really like your approach in those tenser conversations. I think my question more so is, how do you know you're not wasting your time?

29:47

You know, like, how do you know you're not studying the wrong thing? And obviously everybody would love a Rolodex of information to pull out.

29:54

And that's what I'm trying to do within my ministry is every time I have a great conversation, how can I summarize this into a one page guide?

30:00

Like, I just did this for somebody that I interviewed about the reliability of the New Testament. It was like, okay, well, someone asks about archaeology.

30:07

This is what you say. And I think that, you know, we just need to circulate that a bit more. However, what if I spend 10 hours on a flat earth?

30:16

And it's not flat. Yeah. So, okay, a couple of things. First off, for your friend, here's a way to answer, which still gets that across without making it sound like you're agreeing with her views.

30:27

You could just turn to her and say, you're praying to all three of these, but only one can hear you. Mother Earth can't hear you.

30:34

The others, only God can hear you. So you could do that as well and reinforce that these others are false.

30:39

This one's true. And I'll just, I'll give you a good resource. You mentioned textual criticism. If you want something on how to trust the

30:46

Bible is reliable, I have a book called, What Do We Believe? Chapter two covers what's called textual criticism.

30:52

How do we know the Bible we have today is actually reliable? How do we know it wasn't changed? Things like that.

30:58

But you see the number one thing in studying the Bible is just reading it. This will sound really bad,

31:04

Kassadin, but I don't want you to ever read a Bible verse. Okay?

31:11

In fact, I don't even want you to read the Bible. I want you to meditate upon it.

31:19

So you don't want you to read a verse, read the chapter, but don't just read the

31:24

Bible. I want you to do, and this is so graphic and I'm sorry, but this is what the word meditate means in the

31:30

Greek. If I don't know how much you or those listening might know about cows, and I'm just going to say,

31:38

I'm sorry, it's graphic, but you're never going to forget what the word meditate means, okay?

31:43

I'm scared. I'm scared. So a cow, when it eats, it chews up the grass and it puts that grass into its first stomach.

31:51

It has five stomachs. And what it does is it regurgitates up from stomach number one into its mouth and then puts it back down into stomach number two, then regurgitates it up into stomach three and four and five.

32:09

Do you realize that the Greek word for meditate is the same word used for a cow to regurgitate up the cud and put it into the next chamber?

32:19

How did you know that? How did you know that? Well, that took understanding some Greek, but there's tools out there that can help you with that.

32:29

And so that's what we're to do with the word of God, not just read the Bible, but regurgitate it and put it back in and bring it back up and put it back down and bring it back.

32:38

So throughout the day, as a believer, if you start your day reading scripture, which is a good thing to do, don't let that be the only time you're thinking of that passage.

32:50

But the reason to read daily is that throughout the day, you can sit and regurgitate it and bring it back.

32:57

That's meditating on it. You know, one of the things I would do, I'm a runner, long distance runner, so I spend many hours running.

33:04

And so I would read scripture before running. And what would I do while running?

33:09

Well, there's nothing else to do when you're running alone, but to think, meditate. So what am I doing? I would read a

33:15

Psalm and then go for a run and just think through that Psalm, think through that Psalm. And then when I got done with the run, I take a shower and as quickly as I can, try to write down everything that I can remember from what

33:24

I was thinking about. And why do I write it down? Because that's part of regurgitating. It's part of helping me remember things.

33:30

And then throughout the day, I would just try to look at those notes that I took in the morning to keep bringing it to memory.

33:37

So it's as simple thing as just reading context. I would be challenged in New York City, someone would come up and ask, you know, about a verse.

33:47

And no matter what verse, usually what they do is bring up something of the Old Testament that I had never really studied, hadn't known, hadn't looked at.

33:56

And I would do the exact same thing as we looked at in Jeremiah 29, 11. Where did

34:02

I start? I started one verse, but usually I would start in verse one. And I would just read,

34:08

I just read the context. And it's amazing how many people would go, oh, I see what that's about.

34:16

We added chapter breaks and verses in the scriptures. And that was several hundred years, about 700 years after the

34:23

Bible was completed. For ease of being able to identify things, so that you can know where to find something.

34:33

It's why you'll see people at the early church fathers would say, John said, or Paul said, or in his letter to Ephesians, he said, but they don't give you a chapter or verse because there wasn't such a thing.

34:47

And so what ends up happening is, we end up, because of those verses, we just read one verse.

34:54

We don't read the context. So this is a great thing to do if folks want to,

35:00

I mean, there's so much false teaching out there in Christianity. And there are people that preach and it preaches well and it sounds good.

35:09

But if someone mentions a verse, my challenge to you, and this is what

35:15

I've done, is if someone mentions a verse, I read the chapter. I don't just read the verse.

35:21

I look up what they say and compare it to the whole chapter. Because a lot of times you're going to realize, oh, wait, that's out of context.

35:27

That's not actually what the author is saying. And you pick that up when you read the context.

35:33

And so Isaiah six, what did I do? I read the, well, I didn't read here the whole verse, the whole chapter.

35:39

I mean, but what I'm doing, I'm reading the whole chapter to understand what is he saying?

35:45

What is it real? So when I look at most people just stop at verse eight, because it sounds so good.

35:50

Where, you know, who's going to go for God? Here I am, send me. And man, that preaches so well, especially at, you know, missions conferences.

35:58

Oh, that's great. Who's God going to send here? What's he sending them to?

36:04

When you go and look at that, it's like, ooh, ooh, yeah. Ouch. Like, I don't want that message. I don't want to be the one to have to preach where they keep on listening, but do not perceive, keep on looking, but do not understand to render their hearts as insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, right?

36:20

It doesn't sound so positive. So I would ask the very same question Jeremiah did, or Isaiah did. How long do

36:26

I have to do this, Lord? Oh, until the cities are all desolate. I have something else, right?

36:35

But then, okay. So interpreting that verse, because like, again, like, I think you're much smarter than me, Andrew. I think this is the problem.

36:41

It's like, I'm like, how do I ensure? Because I would have read that verse. I'm like, oh, God just gave Isaiah a task for eternity.

36:49

Yeah. So let me give a resource for folks that's free.

36:57

That's how we make our money at Striving for Eternity. We give our products away for free. Very sound.

37:04

Yeah, yeah. So what we do have, if you go to strivingforeturning .org, we have an academy, and in there is a class on biblical hermeneutics.

37:14

And you can take the class for free if you want to buy the syllabus. That costs because we print them.

37:20

But that course is maybe 20 lessons.

37:26

And I walk you through step -by -step how to interpret simple things like that a lot of people don't think of, but I'll teach you how to outline.

37:36

I mean, every sentence has three simple things, a noun, a verb, and a complete thought.

37:43

So as you go through a scripture, just start putting that together. What is the, what's the noun? What's the verb? What's the complete thought?

37:49

I teach people how to do what's called block diagramming, which is looking at what is the main thought and what's the supporting, what's an adverb or a prepositional phrase, something that supports the main thought.

38:03

Because a lot of people make, they major on the minors rather than majoring on the majors.

38:09

And they get the scriptures wrong because they start to read something that is, they'll take something that's an illustration and then take that as if it's a literal or they take something that what we'd call descriptive and make it prescriptive.

38:26

Descriptive means it's describing something. Prescriptive is something that's instructional. So just because Solomon had a lot of wives doesn't mean you should have a lot of wives.

38:36

That's descriptive, right? Prescriptive would be

38:42

God says one man and one woman. That's prescriptive. So prescriptive is what we look at when we want to understand what the

38:51

Bible says and it's supported by the descriptive. So those things are very easy to understand.

38:58

And I use a lot of examples to walk through how to do all that. Got it. Okay, got it.

39:03

I'll definitely check that out and link it below. This is amazing. That sounds like exactly what I need. And you built that from all of your years evangelizing or is that part of a larger organization?

39:13

No, it's what we do at Striving Fraternity is discipleship.

39:19

So it's one of the ways that we disciple people is to teach them how to interpret the Bible. It's the first thing.

39:25

So we produce materials and that's what the syllabus is, is for churches to grab the materials and they could teach it in their local church.

39:33

They don't need my videos, but the teachers usually will watch the videos so they know how to fill in the blanks.

39:39

And I teach more than is in the syllabus and that way they have that. But there's a lot of churches.

39:44

What they do is they just buy a stack of syllabuses for a Sunday school or whatnot and they use that material.

39:50

So that's what we do is produce materials like that. And then we come into churches and train people up in that.

39:57

So it's something where it's really, what's called hermeneutics, which is the art and science of interpretation.

40:08

And there's lots of books on the subject. There's lots of different views on it, but that's what we're talking about when we say how to study the

40:15

Bible, how to interpret the Bible, really. In fact, you had in your show notes a passage

40:22

I would love for us to talk about that would be a great example of this.

40:27

You have in here 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. And I was glad that you included in your show notes verse 17.

40:39

Let me show you why. If I was to look at this, here's what it says.

40:45

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

41:00

Now, looking at this, just looking at the English. Now, if you know Greek, there's more you can gleam of things, but just knowing the

41:08

English. If I'm going to look at this, what a lot of people, they read verse 16 and they say, well, the purpose of scripture is for teaching, for proof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

41:25

And that might seem like what it should be, except for one subtle thing that we notice in that it's there in the

41:32

Greek, but it's also even in our English. In the English, the word for is a prepositional phrase.

41:38

And for those who are long past English, look, English was my worst subject.

41:43

That's why I went to computer languages, because those I can understand. I don't know

41:49

English, okay? So, I had to learn English to know the Bible. And so, as I look at this, a prepositional phrase is something that's supporting.

41:58

In other words, for teaching, for proof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, all four of those is supporting the idea of profitable.

42:08

That is how it's profitable. That's supporting that it's profitable. But what does it do?

42:17

If we take out all of the prepositional phrases, we have this, all scripture is inspired and profitable so that the man may be adequate and equipped.

42:34

That's the purpose of scripture. The main thing is that scripture makes us adequate and equipped.

42:43

So, now let's go back to a question you asked earlier. How do we do this? How do we get to learn?

42:50

Well, we have the answer right there in the verse you provided in your show notes, scripture. That's what makes us adequate.

42:57

That's what equips us. We dig into the scriptures. Now, the more you dig into it, the more you can glean from it.

43:07

So, let me give you something really neat about this passage that you may or may not know. So, if we look at this passage and we examine this, we have four words that are supporting.

43:19

Teaching, reproof, correction, training, and righteousness. Okay. So, teaching would be a right thinking.

43:29

Reproof is when you're correcting something. Someone's thinking. Where correction is when you're correcting behavior.

43:37

And training and righteousness is where you're training someone to do things that are good. So, it's behavior.

43:42

So, what you have is good and bad thought and action. Or behavior, thought and behavior.

43:51

So, what he's saying is, it's a Jewish way of arguing where he's basically saying he's giving both ends.

43:58

So, he's saying whether it's good teaching or bad teaching. Whether it's bad behavior or good behavior.

44:06

And it's a Jewish way of poetry of bookending them so that you have this parallelism.

44:13

And so, when you're looking and Paul's using this way of arguing to emphasize that it's every area of life.

44:20

Scripture is profitable to equip you and make you adequate. So, if you're listening to this as a believer in Christ and you're saying,

44:29

I agree with Cass. I want to know, how do I become adequate to do what you do?

44:36

Scripture. There's nothing special about me, folks. I'm a numbskull. If I can do this, you could do this.

44:43

So, it's studying Scripture. It's digging in, reading Scripture on a regular basis and meditating on it and digging into it.

44:51

And I'll give you five questions you can ask in every passage that you study. Who, what, when, where, and why?

45:01

Basic journalism. Every passage you come to, see if you can figure out who's it talking about?

45:07

Who's mentioned? When is it happening? Where is it happening? Why is it happening?

45:14

Right? So, you're asking these questions. Then, you know, I have a sheet that we actually give to people that just ask those questions and you put a verse and you fill that all out.

45:25

And then you go get yourself a Bible dictionary or Bible encyclopedia and start looking up the things you just thought about.

45:33

You know? So, when you're dealing with a passage, you're dealing with Jonah. Okay, well, who's

45:38

Jonah? Go figure out who Jonah is. He's talking to the Ninevites. Well, who are the

45:43

Ninevites? Well, they were kind of bad people. In fact, if you look historically, they used to take their enemies and put them in plaster paris, forcing their mouth open.

45:53

So, they'd be stuck in like a plaster paris with their mouth open. And they have parties where they pour hot liquids down someone's throat of their enemies.

46:01

Could that have been why Jonah did not want to go to the Ninevites? And this is what a lot of people argue.

46:07

Yes, he was afraid of what they would do to him. I don't think that's the case. You know why? I read the end of the book.

46:15

And Jonah tells us why he didn't want to go to Nineveh. In chapter four, he says,

46:23

Israel and the Ninevites didn't get along. And he is like, if you want to talk about a bad evangelist, he so hated these people that he tried to get as far away from them as possible.

46:35

Because he says in chapter four, he knew that God would save them. What kind of evangelist runs when he knows that God's going to save people?

46:45

No, God, I know you're going to show them grace and mercy. So I want to run the other way. He really hates those people.

46:51

I mean, he got up on a mountain to watch God's judgment. And then when God doesn't judge them, but gives them grace, he's like,

46:57

I knew you were going to show them mercy. And he's upset over it, right? So it wasn't that they were wicked people.

47:05

It was that he, if you just read the context, Jonah did not want them to be saved.

47:11

And he knew God would save them. You are just too smart. I mean, at the end of the day,

47:16

I love that structure of who, what, when, where, why. And I want to believe that the first time I would read Jonah, I would have picked up on those things.

47:23

But to be honest, I don't. And I think a lot of other people do. I think that you made a great point of like, some people have been like, yeah, the

47:29

Ninevites were scary, bad people. So of course, you don't want to save them. Of course, you don't want to be tortured, whatever it might be. So even if they do go through the who, what, when, where, why, they still bring in their own interpretation.

47:40

They personalize it, which we've already discussed at the very beginning of the call is that what we have to avoid, because then we read the word into what we want it to be.

47:49

Any tips on how to avoid that? I mean, how do we really like, where are the guardrails?

47:54

So we know we're not outside the lines. So the first thing that I teach when

48:00

I teach a more extended class on how to interpret the Bible, more than I do in our course that we have online, is you got to question your own presuppositions.

48:12

We could be wrong, but Scripture can't be. God can't be wrong. So when we come to Scripture, whatever you're, as a listener, if you're, let's give an example.

48:24

If you're Presbyterian, you believe in infant baptism. If you're Baptist, you're not going to believe in infant baptism.

48:31

By the way, anyone listening, here's a trick question for you. And I'm telling you a trick question up front.

48:37

Do Presbyterians believe in believers baptism? Oh, so many Baptists go, no. Yes, they do.

48:43

They believe when an adult gets saved, they believe that they should get baptized, right? They also believe in infants getting baptism, but not in, is a sign of salvation.

48:53

So there you go. Fun tip for you. But let's take that as an example. If I'm Presbyterian, and I'm not, but if I'm Presbyterian, I'm going to come to a passage that talks about the household being saved in Acts when

49:09

Paul is with the Philippian jailer and say, well, that's going to have infants in the household.

49:16

And so when everyone's being baptized, it's the infants being baptized there because I'm reading that into that.

49:22

And when I see baptism, I'm reading into it a view of a covenant view because that's how

49:28

I'm going to interpret. So the baptism is a sign of the covenant, which if you're

49:36

Presbyterian, you're going to say, baptism is like circumcision. Circumcision was a sign of the covenant for the

49:42

Jewish people. Baptism is a sign of the covenant. So the whole household would get baptized because that's the sign of the covenant.

49:49

Whereas a Baptist, I'm going to read those very differently, right? I'm going to look at those passages and say, well, the household doesn't mean that there has to be infants.

50:00

He would probably be, because if he's got servants, he must be old enough to have made some money to have servants.

50:06

So he's probably older. Notice what I did there, by the way, folks, does the scripture tell me his age?

50:12

No, but we can meditate on it and ask these kinds of questions. What type of person has servants in that day and age?

50:19

Someone who's got some money. Do we have money when we're in our 30s? When we have young children?

50:26

No, we get the money later in life, you know, right? So we accumulate it later.

50:32

And so you end up seeing that he probably is older and probably doesn't have infants.

50:38

Now, some of that is inductive. I'm reading that in and I'm recognizing that. But I'm going to read that very different than a

50:45

Presbyterian would. Okay, because, and so what do I have to do? When I come to this passage, especially ones where there's different views,

50:54

I have to question my own beliefs, my systematic theology. And that's just a system that we have of what the

51:03

Bible teaches about different things. And there's a lot of it. Presbyterians have a systematic theology. Baptists have one. Within each of those groups, there's different breakdowns.

51:11

So within that, a systematic theology is good to ask just to kind of be like guardrails for us.

51:18

And I think you use that word and it's a good word. They act as guardrails so we don't go too far astray.

51:25

But we have to remember those systematic theologies were written by men. Even my book, What Do We Believe?

51:30

is a systematic theology. It's a very easy to read one, but it's a systematic theology. And it could be wrong.

51:38

I don't believe it is, otherwise I'd change it. I'd give you another edition, but it could be wrong. And so when we look at this, we have to recognize that these things can end up happening.

51:50

So we have to come to the scripture, not going, oh, this means such and such.

51:57

But saying, let me see what it actually says, because it may correct what I believe. Wow, that is some good stuff.

52:07

Closing thoughts as far as best way to start integrating this regurgitation of the word and meditation.

52:15

Any best practices for the busy person? You know, somebody that's working 40 hours, somebody that has kids, you know, is it like a 10 a .m.,

52:23

noon, 2 p .m. type of schedule or any, you know, just where to begin? Yeah. Who works 40 hours nowadays?

52:29

Just curious. I'd love to meet that person. So, yeah, we are in a culture that is so distracted.

52:40

And so we really struggle with this. So I'm going to think about a

52:46

Jewish boy by the age of 13, which is when you'd be bar mitzvahed, would have had to memorize word for word the first five books of Moses.

52:57

Just read through that and think how you would do having that memorized, because that was something you'd have to do before you're bar mitzvahed, before you show that you're a man.

53:05

You would have to recite all five books verbatim, no mistake. So people used to be able to do things like that.

53:15

We just have these phones and devices now that we don't think about it. We're just like, oh, yeah, you know,

53:21

I could just look that up. A hard thing to do, and I'll, as a listener, just here's a challenge for you.

53:32

Take a fast from electronics, even for a weekend. Try sitting for like 30 minutes with absolute silence.

53:40

That's so hard. I mean, I'm not like just sitting. So many people can't, that what they do is, if you try sitting in silence, your mind is going to start going somewhere.

53:53

And people are like, oh, yeah, I got to go do this now. No, this is why prayer is so hard for the Christian. Because so much of what we do in prayer is we sit there, and then we want to shoot off in this direction, because we start thinking other things.

54:08

So, you know, we have to recognize the fact that the Word of God is exactly that.

54:17

It is God speaking to us. In fact, in the passage that we just looked at in 2

54:24

Timothy 3 .16, that word inspired is a word that Paul created.

54:30

We don't see it anywhere else in Greek literature. It's the first time in Greek literature that we have.

54:36

Now, maybe it existed before and we've lost those documents, but this is the first time historically we see the word.

54:42

And it is God breathed. God spoken. How do you hear my voice?

54:48

It's because you're hearing the vibration of air. And that's what you're hearing.

54:55

It's breathing. You're breathing out the words. So, Paul is saying that the

55:02

Bible, the Scripture is God breathed. God's speaking it. Do you actually believe that?

55:08

Because if you did, that the almighty God of the universe, the creator of all things, the

55:14

King of kings and Lord of lords, who came to earth and died on a cross and paid the punishment that you and I owe, that God spoke this.

55:25

If you were invited to the White House, I don't care which president, choose the president you like, you probably tell all your friends about that.

55:33

You probably read over, if you get a letter from the president, you probably read it over and over. Hey, this is really cool. Hey, friends, look at what

55:38

I got. You have a letter or the words of someone far greater than the greatest president and the greatest

55:47

King. You have the word of God. And when we recognize that, if we truly understand that you and I deserved eternity in a lake of fire and God paid the fine so we could be set free, well, when we think about eternity of punishment that we rightly deserve, we should want to do anything to get to know this

56:12

God better. Any of you who are married, you understand this illustration.

56:20

You know that when you were dating, oh, everything was great. You enjoyed that time with your future spouse.

56:28

And it was just that early period. Oh, you just, there was, let's put it this way. For me,

56:33

I would drive an hour to go be with my now bride. And it was nothing to drive an hour to see her for just a few minutes.

56:43

Not a thought in the world, right? And then they get to people that's like, you want me to drive five minutes to see you for an hour?

56:50

Well, that's too far, right? The reality is, is we should never get out of that, whether you want to call it honeymoon phase, infatuation phase, whatever.

57:00

We should never get out of that, by the way, with our spouses either, but we shouldn't get out of it with God. We should always be wanting to know

57:08

God better. We should always be wanting to be studying what it is

57:15

He said so that we can know Him better, love Him better, be more in awe of who

57:21

He is. And I know we didn't get to all the great stuff that you had in your show notes about tools and grammars for interpretation.

57:29

There's a lot there, the purpose of diligence and study. I do think we got to, we at least hopefully made the point that this is not for professionals.

57:39

Okay. Yes. Do I have a degree in these things? Yes, I do. Does that mean you have to have a degree in this?

57:45

No, you don't. Read the scripture in context. That's the number one thing.

57:51

Just learn how to recognize the difference between the prescriptive and descriptive. What's instructional and what's supporting?

57:59

And use the prescriptive, the instructional to explain the descriptive.

58:05

Things like that. If you have some passage that's hard to understand, dealing with something, find a passage that's easy to understand because the easy to understand will often explain the hard.

58:15

So very simple rules that we can follow. So now, does having a degree help?

58:22

Does having a understanding of Greek help? It could, it is helpful, but do you need it?

58:30

No. Now there's going to be some things and it's just unfortunate that sometimes when we translate, we lose things in translation.

58:39

And that becomes a problem. And, you know, but that doesn't mean, there's things where it could be, we understand better if we know languages.

58:53

But guess what? You don't need to know the languages so much anymore because there's tools you could use.

58:58

I have Lagos Bible Software and we're actually a sponsor. So if you go to lagos .com

59:05

slash SFE, that stands for Striving for Eternity, you can get a discount for Lagos.

59:11

And also, I think they still give, well, they used to give five free books from Striving for Eternity, but now that they're subscription -based and make it much cheaper,

59:19

I don't know if they still give you the free five books because now everything's just part of the subscription. But I think you get extra books with the subscription that way.

59:26

But I use Lagos and the advantage of it, if I don't know the Greek, guess what? I read the

59:31

English, I right click on a word, it pulls up a menu and I just click on the

59:37

Bible word study. And now it pulls up the Greek word and gives me all of these different things so that I can understand what the

59:45

Greek means. And then I just start reading that. Okay, I'll have to check that out. Yeah, and a free resource that you could go to, because I'm Jewish, I love free.

59:55

Free is for me. Blue Letter Bible, I think it's .com or .org,

01:00:01

maybe both, but blueletterbible .org will be something where they have all these materials free for you.

01:00:08

You can go and you can get some things, what's called the inner literary or things that will give you the Greek explanations.

01:00:15

There's a concordance, it's called Strong's Concordance.

01:00:21

It helps you understand the Greek word. That's a good starting point, but it is, he's just trying to give you a really, here's a simple way to explain, here's the word.

01:00:30

He's not giving all the depth of it. Okay, do we have time to give one example of where Greek would help?

01:00:38

Of course we have time. Okay, if not, you just cut it out because you're going to do the editing. As a professional podcaster, you get to do that to people.

01:00:48

So here's the thing, you remember the time when Peter had denied Jesus three times?

01:00:54

Yeah. And Jesus comes to him and they have breakfast and for three times he asked

01:01:00

Peter, do you love me? And three times Peter says that you know I love you.

01:01:06

And on the third time he's grieved, it says in verse, this is John 21, 17.

01:01:12

He says he was grieved because he said, do you love me? So many people preach that the reason he's grieved is because he denied

01:01:21

Jesus three times and now he had to be asked three times, do you love me?

01:01:27

And in the English, we have the word love each time here and that is unfortunate because though this is, you know, it's, you know,

01:01:40

Jesus, I mean, Peter just denied him a few chapters ago. It doesn't take us long to read, but it's actually several days after.

01:01:47

Let me read this differently and I'm going to use the word love for agape and like for phileo.

01:01:55

So agape is a self -sacrificing love where phileo is a brotherly love and when we understand the

01:02:03

Greek, this is just a great illustration of it. It helps us to really understand that Peter was not upset because he denied

01:02:10

Jesus three times because he says this, Jesus says, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

01:02:19

And Peter says, yes, Lord, you know I like you. So he said to him a second time,

01:02:26

Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I like you.

01:02:34

And he said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you like me? And Peter was grieved the third time because he said, do you like me?

01:02:44

And he said, Lord, you know all things, you know that I like you. You see, there's two different Greek words in that passage for what we have one

01:02:55

English word for and we miss some of it sometimes. So Greek can be helpful. Now, is that a major thing?

01:03:02

No, there's not a major doctrine based on that. But this is to encourage you that the deeper you dig into studying the

01:03:09

Bible, even with the original languages, the more things you can gleam. There's nothing special about me that gives me a greater ability than you to study the word of God.

01:03:22

It's just how much time are you going to devote for the thing that you say is the most important thing in your life?

01:03:27

Yikes, I know that just hurt. Yeah, I mean, like I said, people are busy.

01:03:34

People are busy and it's hard to say, oh, the word love. I'm going to go on to Logos.

01:03:40

I'm going to go search it up. You know, people just want their daily devotional five minutes in the morning, say their prayers before bed in each meal, and then they are being a good

01:03:46

Christian. See you on Sunday. And I was that. And I think I still am that to a point because I'm lazy.

01:03:52

I'm a lazy person. And this is a lot of work. And at this point now, it's my full time job. So I spent all my time on this, but I still need to develop my outside time of this.

01:04:02

And in that time, this is great, great guidance for me. But this was incredible.

01:04:09

And if you have a good pastor, this is what your pastor does all week long.

01:04:15

So if this sounds like, well, son, this sounds really hard. He's got to do this every week, week in and week out for whatever passage he's studying that week.

01:04:26

So yeah, it's a lot of work. And but the thing is, let me encourage you. You don't have to have it all today.

01:04:34

You could build a little bit, is much better to build a little bit over a long period of time because you will remember more that way as well.

01:04:42

But you're not going to just get it all right away. I mean, look, I've been saved for 40 years.

01:04:48

I know I'm only 25 because my bride's only 25. But I've been doing this for a very long time.

01:04:57

That's how I have gotten where I'm at. It's that I am persistent and don't give up and keep learning.

01:05:03

Never stop learning. Never stop studying. Be in awe of the God who created you. Yes. Amen.

01:05:10

I think you might owe me a second episode just because you touched like two of my five questions, but we'll circle back on that and email.

01:05:19

OK, quick plug. Tell me everything people can do now that they love Striving for Eternity. How do they get connected?

01:05:24

What events are coming up? You already talked about your books. Where can they buy them? Well, all of it would be at strivingforeternity .org.

01:05:31

And if someone is in their car, they're driving, they're like, oh, that is way too much for me to remember how to type. Just if you remember

01:05:38

Striving for Eternity, it's SFE. So SFE .bible will get you to the same place. So either way, if you want the shorter way.

01:05:45

But there, what you'd find is in our store, that there's my books, What Do We Believe?, which is about Christian systematic theology.

01:05:52

What Do They Believe?, which is a systematic theology of major Western religions. They can find my podcasts.

01:05:58

We actually have the Christian podcast community, which has, oh, I think about 50 vetted podcasts.

01:06:04

We heavily vet the podcast. So we have something for everyone. We have things for homeschoolers. We've got things for women.

01:06:10

We have things, well, I don't know if we have any men's podcasts anymore because we had one and he stopped. But we have sermons.

01:06:16

We have podcasts on evangelism. We have my podcast, which is Apologetics Live, is about apologetics, how to defend the faith.

01:06:24

I have my Andrew Rapport's rap report. It's rap with two P's. So if you just do rap with two P's, rap report.

01:06:30

That podcast is about biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life. So we do a very wide variety of topics there.

01:06:37

So all that could be found at strivingforeternity .org. Amazing. And if someone wants to have us come as a speaker, we actually have four, right now, four speakers.

01:06:46

So I'm not the only speaker for the ministry. So we have speakers that deal with different topics. So if you want to invite us out to your church, hey, we'd love to come.

01:06:53

And I'll just say this. We don't care about the size of the church. We actually target churches that are smaller and our monthly donors support us so that we can fly to different places around the world to teach the

01:07:09

Bible to people that can't afford it. You know, I flew to the

01:07:14

Philippines with the agreement that they'll take care of the housing when we get there. But there was no guarantee we were going to be covered in flights.

01:07:22

But our monthly supporters provided that so we could just say, yes, we'll go. Not, are you paying the flight?

01:07:29

And they can't afford that. So, you know, we do that.

01:07:34

So you got church 25, we'll come. And we'll try to give you that small church, a big conference feeling so that they're encouraged in the word of God and, you know, wanting to get spurred on to doing the work of God.

01:07:50

It's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Anybody that just listened to Andrew speak wisdom, follow him.

01:07:56

I'll be on his show in a few weeks and we'll just continue this conversation. I'm so excited for this. Thank you so much for your time today,