Questions and Answers with Andrew Rappaport

An eternal day to the glory of God, striving for eternity, striving for eternity.

Welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of...

Hey, what happened? My screen just went blank. Okay, it's still... Alright, let me try that again.

Again, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's... This is a special Q &A session.

Yeah, it threw me off. My screen... I have a screen in front of me. Let's... That one right there. Look at that.

I'm going to get in trouble for promoting Acer there, yeah, that's right. So that just went completely blank on me for a split second.

Alright, so tonight is... Yes, I'm giddy I guess. Alright, so tonight's a special Q &A session.

It's where those of you who are watching live in the chat room at strivingforeternityacademy .org or go right down there, strivingforeternity .org

and you can go to the academy page, go to watch live. There's a chat room there. You can chat with us right there.

In that chat room, I am going to be answering questions. I do already have a series of questions that were provided on email.

So we thank you for those of you who chose to send us some emails already.

We appreciate that. We're going to try to answer some of these and then we are going to try to answer some of the ones that come up in the chat room.

And so if you are watching live, you can chat and chat away and give us some things that you would like us to answer.

Does light have mass came in already? Wow. Let me guess. Let me guess. That was from Christine.

All right. There we go. Christine asking size typical question. It is a trick question.

Does light have mass? Yes and no. Light happens to function as both a wave and a particle.

As a particle, light does have mass. As a wave, light does not have mass.

It is a trick question. Just saying. All right.

So if you have a question in chat, just do a capital Q and colon just so it kind of stands out a little and we can see if there's a question there.

And so let's begin. That's right. I was going to support the new t -shirt. This is our

Spreading the Fire t -shirt. Let's see, Ohio, Jersey, NorCal.

So this is the t -shirt you get if you were to have come to Jersey Fire, which was last weekend.

Great event. If you, I would strongly, strongly, strongly suggest you go on to the email, actually shop at strivingforeternity .org

and say, send me the form to get the USB drive. I think it's, is it $60? You don't know offhand.

Okay. I think it's like $60 and you get all 21 messages on a 64 gig drive.

You can do audio, video, unless we can fit both on one and you, you can reuse the flash drive if you want, but you'll get the video messages on the flash drive, a 64 gig drive that you can then reuse.

But I'll tell you, Dan Phillips, wow, that man can preach.

I was, I was loving it. We had some of the pastors from my church came out.

One of, one of the guys said that he was not expecting, you know, he saw the outline and was like, okay, this is a typical message on, on discipleship.

Wasn't expecting much. And he said to me, wow, did he learn a lot? Sent me a message this morning, said, I'm reviewing my notes. Wow. Was that amazing?

Really, really good messages. Carl Kirby, as usual, man, just jaw dropping.

I mean, when he gets done, people are just like, I didn't know that. I mean, just so much with the, with the games and the media that people are unaware of.

So let's begin. We, do we have, we have some already in the chat room. Let me, let me try to answer some that are in the chat room, which send that over to me because I didn't see it.

Okay, there we go. So have, uh, the first question is, have you had people speaking to you about Jesus calling?

All right. So Jesus calling is a book. Uh, uh, what's her name?

Sarah something. I forget her last name. I'm sorry. I do have the book downstairs. Um, what we have with that is, um, we have a woman who wrote a book and it's really important to understand how she wrote this book, how she claims she wrote this book.

She claims in the introduction, at least the first edition that she was, uh, she really didn't write the book, but that a spirit possessed her and wrote the book.

Now if a spirit is possessing you and it's not the Holy Spirit, it's a demon.

Okay. The fact that she wrote some things, there are some things I can't recall, recall offhand.

I could, I could look it up, but there are some things that she wrote that are, you know, not in line with scripture, which means

God didn't write, it wasn't always spirit writing as she claims. And if, if she's claiming that she was possessed by a spirit and it's the

Holy Spirit, then what she's writing is scripture. What's that? Young, Sarah Young.

Okay, there we go. Thank you. Someone's put it in the chat room. Okay. Sarah Young is her name. Uh, and so basically what you have is you have a woman that is claiming that she was inspired to write this by a spirit.

Now it is either going to be scripture or it's not. If it's scripture, that's because it's written by the

Holy Spirit. If she's, as she claims, is not scripture but written by a spirit, that would be demonic and you should avoid it.

Just because it's written in a devotional way doesn't mean it's a good thing to be reading. So we need to be careful with that book.

Another question that just came in. Why did Paul have Timothy circumcised? Do Jewish believers have to do things that are not required of Gentiles?

Alright, good question. What we see in the New Testament, we see that Timothy, Paul felt the need to circumcise

Timothy. Timothy was, had a Jewish mother and grandmother but was, well, had a

Gentile father and so he was not circumcised and Paul felt the need to circumcise him.

Now note, Paul did not feel the need to circumcise Titus. So there's a difference there.

I think the difference is that when Timothy and Paul were ministering, they were ministering specifically to Jewish people and in the temple or the synagogues where they would have had an issue because Timothy was well known being a son of a

Greek man and because of that it could have been an issue. We don't know everything that was going on at the time but we do know that there was a difference that Paul made with Timothy versus Titus.

Where Titus there wasn't the need to circumcise him, Timothy there was. He felt an ouch that hurts as an adult, you feel it.

I don't remember my circumcision, I was 8 days old. I'm glad for that.

But the reality is he was circumcised and Paul felt it necessary for his testimony.

A couple things with that is what would you be willing to do or give up for your testimony for Christ's sake?

Just saying. It's nothing to think about. Okay, I was just asked if I have any resources that I could give for Jesus Calling book.

I would actually say, I don't know if he has anything. Justin Peters, Justin Peters Ministries has a lot of things out there.

I'm sure he has something on that book. He has spoken on that book. He will be speaking, by the way, at NorCal Fire.

Just saying, if you want to come out and attend it, you know, you can come.

NorCalFire .info, NorCalFire .info, second week in September. Justin should be out there.

So, if you get some questions, throw them into the chat room, please.

And if you're logged in as a guest in the chat room, please try to log in as yourself.

Create a ChatWii, I guess is what we're using, ChatWii account.

So that we would be able to know who you are.

Oh, okay, let me look. I was just told there's another book to mention in the chat. Good book, quote, another

Jesus, unquote, calling by Warren B. Smith. I have not read this book, but someone in the chat says that is another book you can use.

So, that would be something. I'm hearing that, I did see though, did you see that?

Mitch is doing a dance. I would like to see a video of that, Mitch doing a dance. What was he dancing at?

The answer to Timothy and Titus, the fact that he wasn't circumcised or, you don't know.

Okay, he was just doing a dance, he just did a dance. All right, Mitchell is dancing. If you don't know who

Mitchell is, that's because you haven't been to one of our Spreading the Fire events. Just saying. All right.

So, let's start with the first. This question actually comes up, I think at any

Q &A almost. But here's the first question. I get asked this a lot.

How could there be a God if there is evil in the world? It's also worded as, if God is all powerful and all good, why is there evil?

The assumption, this is a question actually that's popularized by Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkins asked this question, if God is all powerful and all good, why is there evil?

The assumption he's making is that if God's all powerful and He's good, He must stop evil.

That does not necessarily compute. Just because God is good, and just because God is powerful, doesn't mean

He's going to stop evil. He's going to do what's within His nature. He allowed evil to happen.

So, let me start with the first, the theological answer. Then I'm going to answer how I would answer a person on the street who doesn't believe in God.

The theological answer would be this. That the fact that God allows evil is because God, in His nature, has decided that He's going to allow such things.

And in doing so, it is part of His nature. Why? Because we see evil.

That means it's part of His nature. He allows it. It doesn't mean He causes it.

But, that being said, what you have is people trying to say that one attribute negates another attribute, like God's righteous holiness,

His wrath, His justice. All of those things. In God allowing for evil in the world, it allows for His justice,

His mercy, His grace, His long -suffering, His holiness,

His righteousness to be seen. All these things make no sense if He didn't allow sin, if He didn't allow evil.

So, in allowing evil, it allows Him to put other attributes of His on display. Now, He didn't force the evil.

Satan was the first being to fall. If you remember in our classes on systematic theology, we addressed that.

In the fall of Satan and the fall of man. And so, now, how would

I answer someone on the street? Because I'm not going to give them that theological answer. I'm going to give them a different question.

And I'm going to ask it as a question. If there is no God, how can you, in your worldview, explain evil?

You see, when the professing atheist says that there's evil in the world, what's evil?

I mean, how do you define evil? Evil is the absence of good, but how do you define good without God? You can't.

Ultimately, what you can just say is that this is my preference. Or, you can say might makes right.

I mean, who's ever in power gets to make the decisions. But if you're going to say who's ever in power gets to make the decisions, then can you honestly say that rape is wrong?

No, you can't, because that's a might makes right decision. The person who's mightier gets to win.

If the girl is mightier, she beats the guy up. If the guy is mightier, he beats the girl up and rapes her.

I mean, that's basically the thing. If the victim is stronger, the victim isn't raped.

And if the victim's not stronger, the victim is raped. And when you look at that, does might make right?

No, rape is wrong. In every situation. Therefore, when someone says rape is always wrong, then might doesn't make right.

Well, what about society? So if society says rape is right, then is it okay? You're going to hear people that will say some crazy things to that.

They'll be, oh yeah, it's okay. Because they don't want to give up what they know to be true.

I remember open -air preaching on a college campus in New Jersey. I think it was City of New Jersey. And I had a gentleman named

Kevin. And he was trying to argue there was no absolute morality. Because if there's an absolute morality, there's got to be an absolute moral law giver.

And so he was struggling with this. And so I asked him a question. I said, Kevin, was

Hitler wrong? And he said, Hitler was crazy. I said, I didn't ask if he was crazy.

Was Hitler wrong? He didn't want to answer that. Why didn't he want to answer it? Well, because if Hitler was wrong, then there's an absolute standard.

And what happened, what I didn't know at the time was his sociology class was out there. And they all had come out.

And they were watching him in this open air. And one of the students, because he's like,

Hitler was crazy. Hitler was nuts. Hitler was just wacko. He's saying all these things. One of his classmates says,

Kevin, just say Hitler was wrong. And Kevin let slip out of his mouth what he knew to be true.

He said, I can't. He turns to his friend, I can't say that he's wrong. Because if I say that he's wrong, then there's an absolute morality.

And that proves God exists. And I said, thank you very much, Kevin. You see, people will say crazy things.

But the reality is that if atheism is true, there is no such thing as morality.

We are just chemical reactions. Chemical reactions don't produce right and wrong.

They just produce chemical reactions. So if I'm on the street and someone asks me that,

I argue that you are already accepting my worldview. When you accept evil.

Because evil is not something you can explain from your worldview. You can only explain it from the

Christian worldview. From a God who is good and is the definition of good.

Therefore, anything opposing to him is evil. That would be the answer to that one.

We have another one in the chat. Alright. How often... So, Brother Ricky Gantz from G220 Radio asked this question.

How often should a church take communion? Good question. There is actually no real good answer to that.

Some churches... The first church I was in, we used to take communion every fifth

Sunday of the month. We would have a special lunch service with lunch.

And during the lunch, we'd take communion. The church that I'm in now, we do it the first Sunday of every month.

Actually, many of the churches I've been in do it the first Sunday of every month. I did attend a church that used to do it every

Sunday. Is there anything wrong with doing it every Sunday? No. Is there anything sinful not doing it every Sunday?

No. How often did the first century church do it? Acts 2 42 -46 seems to indicate that the church did it every week maybe.

Maybe even more often. As much as they gathered, they broke bread.

Now, there's two senses of breaking bread. And if you read that passage I gave you in Acts 2, the breaking of bread is mentioned twice.

Now, once I think it's the breaking of bread meaning a fellowship, and another time I think it's the breaking of bread meaning the

Lord's Supper. And so, I think that they actually met in the early days weekly.

And I believe in the Didache. The Didache is an early, early writing.

It's basically an instructional book to the church, kind of a how -to guide for the church. And it seems to indicate that they would take of communion on a regular basis almost weekly.

So, there's not a hard, fast thing. Now, let me get into some other interesting things.

Can you have communion if you're a shut -in? The communion is supposed to represent the body of Christ, the unity of the body of Christ, and what

Christ did for us. And so, a shut -in, you go to a shut -in, can they partake in communion?

Because the whole church isn't there. I think that you can have communion. Some people,

Presbyterians would be against what's called private communion. I think you could do that in some cases. I don't think it's wrong to have a dinner and have a time of reflection, self -reflection on what

Christ did on the cross. I think that's perfectly fine. Presbyterians probably would not take it that way.

And they would say that you have to have an elder that's presiding over it and should be part of the church service. But I really wouldn't see an issue with it.

Here's a question that came in. Another one. Is there any other? No, okay. No more in the chat, so you guys in the chat get active here.

Here's one that came in from Jersey Fire that was given to me. I was speaking at Jersey Fire on characteristics and traits of a disciple and discipler.

Out of Matthew 18, which people go, wait, what kind of passage is that to be preaching out of for discipleship?

Well, actually, it's good. It covers being a childlike, having a childlike faith, being humble and honest and teachable.

It talks about being protective, another characteristic. And I looked at Jersey Fire.

I looked at the fact that disciples should be encouraging and not belittling.

We looked at discipline. And then we looked at being forgiving as a mark of a disciple and discipler.

So here's a question when I was talking about discipline. The question is, in context of discipline, do you feel it acceptable to have the step of witnesses to be separate visits rather than a group meeting?

Otherwise, how literal do you apply this? Or is there room for flexibility based on circumstances, timing, and availability, etc.?

Let me first start with giving the background. Do I have it? Thank you. All right.

I have this chart that you can get on our website. I think it's like $2, $2 .50.

Process of Reconciliation. It's a nice little flow chart. It looks really cool. Actually, this is the old one. You want to get the new one.

This is the old one. The newer one's a little better. It looks a little better. But in this, what you have is an explanation of how we should be going about the reconciliation process.

When it comes to confronting someone and you have to go to them...

What was it? The banging was too loud? I'm sorry. I blew your... I blew the engineer's headphones off.

All right. Well, I'm glad. You know what? Just for that...

No, I won't do it again. All right. But what we have in church discipline, when it comes to disciplining...

One of the things I taught is that the first step, step number one, is you go to the person that sinned against you alone.

You don't go to other people first. You go to them directly. You go to them alone. The idea is to keep this as private as you possibly can.

If the person agrees, if there's agreement on the sin... This is not that I come to you and I say, hey,

I don't like the way you comb your hair. That's not a sin. I've got to be able to identify it in Scripture.

And we've got to agree that this is a sin, a sin issue. Look, you're committing adultery.

You're cheating on your wife. You're having sex with someone outside of marriage. That's a clear sin.

So in a case like that, we're going to address that. Now, if the person refuses to repent, that's when we go to step two.

What's step two? Step two is that we go to them with two or three witnesses. Now, let me explain some of the witnesses.

I want to give some background before I answer that question. Witnesses does not mean that I go to my best friends and say, hey, come on, let's approach this person and confront them.

No, I'm going to get two impartial people. I'm going to try to get someone that is completely impartial, that has no favoritism toward the other person or me.

All right? And I'm going to try to get them to be a witness. Now, what that means is I'm not going to go to them and gossip and tell them the situation ahead of time.

All right? Because that's going to cause not only both of us to be in the sin of gossip, me giving it and them receiving it, but it's going to cause them to prejudge the situation.

Now, what you do is you go to someone and say, hey, look, would you come meet with me and another brother? Well, hey,

Andrew, what's the situation here? You'll find out when we get together. I want you to hear both our sides at the same time so that you can see whether this person is refusing to repent or maybe you're going to tell me that I'm the one that's in sin.

So come listen. And so I would go a second time. Now, I think the first one, when you go one -on -one and the one with witnesses, are clearly separate events.

Okay? Now, if the person, you go with two or three witnesses and they refuse to repent still.

Now, those witnesses have witnessed the unrepentance. So there's no restored relationship.

Then the third step is you go back to the church and you send the whole church after this person. You say, look, we had two or three witnesses that witnessed the unrepentance.

There is an issue here that needs to be dealt with. This is the issue. We're calling the church to go to this brother, go to this sister, and call them to repentance to be restored in the fellowship.

And so the whole church starts calling them on the phone, you know, visiting them, Facebook messaging them privately.

So that's where you want to do. Now, when you do that, if they still refuse to repent, then what you want to do is assume they're not a believer.

Now, the steps between two or three witnesses and the going to the church, again, they're separate.

The last step is that the church actually votes to put the person out of the church. And treat them like they're an unbeliever.

Again, the whole goal in all this is restoration. So it doesn't mean you excommunicate them and you put them at a farm, you never talk to them.

No, you share the gospel with them is what you do. And you hope that they'll repent and see their need for Christ.

Because you've got to assume that they're unsaved. Maybe they're just extremely, extremely disobedient.

And in that case, then again, you share the gospel and hope that they come to repentance of their sin. And that they would be restored to the fellowship.

That's something you want to focus on. So I would say each one of these are separate events. How quickly do you do each one of these?

Well, it's going to depend on the sin and the situation. Paul seems to say that we should be a little bit quicker when someone sins publicly in such a way that it's an offense to the church.

1 Corinthians 5. A man is sleeping with his father's wife. I think it's his stepmother.

And basically, Paul's saying, no, you confront this and you do it public. Because what he's doing is well known by the

Gentiles and it's a stain on the purity of the church. And that's the goal. It's restoration to protect the purity of the church.

So that's how I would answer. And there is a lot that goes into the when do you do it, the timing and all that stuff.

And that's where this thing that I have that you can get at strivingforeternity .org.

Go to the store. You can get the card, the process of reconciliation card. That flow chart will help you to know when should you go to someone, when should you not.

All right. So, all right. I'm just trying to look to see if there's anything else in the chat.

You guys are kind of quiet in chat. Usually when we do these Q &A sessions, you guys come with all kinds of questions. And usually

I have a tough time answering them. All right. This question came in and you can tell this, again, this is from Jersey Fire when the topic was discipleship.

Is there a good way to do discipleship? Small group, one -on -one, classroom style at church, in homes.

What's the best way to do it? Well, it's going to depend. I mean, truthfully, discipleship should be one -on -one.

And so, you want to do it one -on -one if you can. And if you can't, then you want to, you know,

I mean, there's times where some people, they're just so busy, Sunday school and church is the best they're going to get.

Well, that's not really the best. But the closer you can get to a one -on -one, the better. And so, you want to have a one -on -one relationship because there you're going to have the most intimate relationship.

With this, you could take our class on an introduction to discipling. It's what, like 24 classes, I think.

We go through the book Growing in Grace, which, again, you can get at the store, strivingforeturning .org. And you could pick up Growing in Grace book, which is only like $6 or $7, $7 .50,

$7 .50, plus shipping. And you could pick that up. And that's a book you can go through with a newer believer.

But even in that book and when you go through the class on that, you see that we dealt with the issue of trying to say that we need to be doing this one -on -one as best we can.

And we need to really be doing that because that's where some counseling -type things are going to come in. What we call counseling is really discipleship.

It's one -on -one living. So, one -on -one is going to be the best. But maybe some people that still can be done in small groups, maybe not as effective, but you're still going to do some discipling there.

You're going to do some discipling in church in small church settings, small group settings. And these are fine, but the best,

I would say, would be one -on -one. And by the way, I would say you can't do discipleship if you're outside of the church.

I mean, if you're just, you know, if church is listening to the radio every Sunday, and that's your fellowship, that's not fellowship.

I'm just saying. Um, alright.

So, yeah. This one is another one that always comes up. Alright, so this one comes up on the street often.

How could you trust the Bible? Wasn't the Bible written by men? The argument that the

Bible was written by men, again, I'm going to answer this one both theologically, and then how I would answer it to someone on the street.

So, theologically, was the Bible written by men? Yes. Was it written only by men?

No. It was also written by God. So, God wrote the

Bible through men. So, even though the men chose of their own accord, their own style of writing, and they chose the words

God superintended, meaning that God wrote His word through them. So, everything that they wrote,

God intended to be written. And in such case, we can therefore say that the

Bible is God's word, because He wrote it through men.

So, theologically, we'd answer that the fact is God wrote it. That's why we could trust it, because God cannot lie.

God's an absolute authority, and He can't be wrong. Therefore, we can absolutely trust the

Bible because of its author. Now, would I answer that way to someone on the street?

Well, not really, because what are they asking in the question? When they say the Bible's written by men, they're really saying that men can't be trusted.

And really what they're bringing up is the trustworthiness of the Bible. And so, in that case, can you trust the

Bible if it's written by men? That's the argument, so here's how I answer it. I ask them, are you saying that the

Bible can't be trusted because it's written by men? They say yes. I like to ask it a couple times to force them to be committed to the position.

So, you're saying we can't trust the Bible because it's written by men. That's right. So, because men wrote it, it has errors.

Is that what you're saying? Yes, I am. Do you believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution? Yes, I do.

Wasn't that written by a man? Uh, yeah. You see, everything that we know has been written by men.

There's nothing that we learn, like in school, that wasn't written down by men. Everything we know is written by men.

And they're suddenly going to go, well, but by trustworthy men. Well, is that the issue? So, it's by trustworthy men.

That becomes the question, well, what do trustworthy men say? And so, is the

Bible trustworthy? Now, I can get into what's called textual criticism, higher criticism. And I have some background in that, so I'll get into that.

We do, if you take our classes on systematic theology, we just got done with those classes on the doctrine of the

Bible. And you can go through that when we dealt with the issue of textual criticism. But the reality is then

I can get into the thing of the fact that since God wrote it, it can be trusted. Alright?

So, that's how I would... Oh, there's another question in the chat room. From Brother Ricky Gantz from G220 Radio.

Do you guys listen to G220 Radio? We're just curious. You should. It's actually a really good program.

It's one of the podcasts I download regularly. G220 Radio, Bible Thumping Wingnut, Alpha and Omega Ministries, Wretched.

These are some regular things that I listen to. CARM .org, CARM Radio. So, listen to G220.

A lot of good stuff out there. But the question he asks is, should you be sent by your church if you open air preach?

So, let me explain for some people what open air preaching is. I call it open air evangelism. It's when you basically stand on a street corner and you share the gospel.

I mean, that's really what it is. You raise your voice so that the gospel can be heard. And so, the question there is, should someone be sent by their church when they do this?

I think it's better if they're in line with their church and their church is sending them out to do this.

My church does. My church fully encourages me. In fact, my church supports it and backs it up.

The pastors of the church have come out with me. Even when I didn't attend the church I'm currently at, the church

I currently attend, I've been going to on and off for many, many years. It's a church

I was in the leadership of many years ago. I was married in this church. So, I'm back at that church.

I always seem to come back as there's need. So, as I go to that church, there are many people there that have come out with me when

I do open air preaching. Actually, I think every one of the pastors has been out with me,

I believe, in my church when I have done open air evangelism. So, that's something that they fully support it.

They encourage it. Even the previous church where I was helping out a man who was planting a church and starting a church, he would come out with me.

He's now moved from that church, but he's still out there.

Because of him coming out with me, he's now out there on his own. Well, I don't think completely on his own.

He's got another guy from church that he's out there doing that with. And so, I think it should be done through the church.

Now, if you're not a member of a church, if you're in between churches, does that mean you can't open air preach? I don't think so, but I think if you're going to come to my evangelism team,

I'm going to take that into consideration and ask you, Why are you not in church? What are the issues?

That becomes a concern. I do have a concern with people that are rushed into open air preaching, because open air preaching can feed pride, just like someone that gets behind a pulpit too soon can feed pride.

You can feel like you really are knowledgeable, and you can nail those people on the street. I got the answers.

And knowledge can puff someone up. And so, because of that, we want to be careful. I don't rush people into open air preach.

I want to see them being humble. That's the number one thing. I was asked by a pastor, a youth pastor, who was training his people, and they wanted to do some open air preaching.

He said, How would you train people? We started open air preaching. I said, Teach them humility.

Teach them about what it means to be humble. And if they can be humble, then you put them up.

If you see a guy that's struggling with humility, and he's being prideful up there, don't put him back up on the box.

That's kind of a thing that I would do. I don't want to have guys that are prideful up on the box. So, I don't think it's a necessary rule.

I do not think that the street is the church. So, I don't think the rules that apply for church apply for the street.

I don't think that the street preaching is a pulpit.

I understand in England when the church was outlawed, when biblical preaching was outlawed, they went to the streets with biblical preaching.

If you're in a country where biblical Christianity is outlawed, then maybe we make an exception.

But if you're here in America, or a country where the Christianity is not outlawed, I don't think that argument holds.

Just because people in history have done it, doesn't mean it's biblical. And I don't see anything in the Bible that defines the street as the church.

I think that's a redefinition of the church. So, let's see, we have another question.

How do you respond to someone who claims to be a Christian, but they don't believe in biblical inerrancy?

Okay, that's a good question. Do you have to believe the Bible is without error to be saved?

I don't think so. When I became a believer in Jesus Christ, remember, I came from a Jewish background.

I never had a teaching on the Trinity. I knew nothing of the Trinity. I knew Jesus was God. And I remember a friend of mine asked me,

How could you have believed that Jesus was God, and yet He was walking on earth? And my answer was,

I don't know, I mean, Jesus is God. He could do whatever He wants. He could be walking on earth as a man and still control the universe.

He could be dying on the cross and still control the universe, because He's God. I don't know how that happens. Later on,

I came to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. So can I not have a clear understanding of the doctrine of inerrancy, and still be a believer in Jesus Christ?

I think the answer to that is yes. Now, that may not be a yes for everyone.

If someone is claiming they are a Christian, they've been taught the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and they still refuse it, now

I have some questions. What I find is anybody who denies the biblical inerrancy, inerrancy means that without error, if there's anyone who believes that the

Bible has errors, often what you find is you keep probing that they have other problems in theology.

You see, they deny the inerrancy of the scripture because they want to say homosexuality is okay, or women can be preaching at a church.

I mean, they get into these things. Really what it is, is they want to say the Bible contains errors so that they can fit in with the culture.

But stop right there and think about that. Should we be getting along with the world?

Should we be taking our cues from the world? No, we shouldn't. That's the reality.

When we look at this, we have to realize that when we examine this, this is something where we must trust the

Bible. A Christian trusts God's word as God's word. That's one of the arguments I always make to people that say,

I used to be a Christian. Hold it right there. A Christian is someone that puts God as his ultimate authority.

And you're saying that God was your ultimate authority and somehow you stopped believing in God? Then God wasn't your ultimate authority.

Your ability to reason was. You have a God of reason. Your reasoning is your

God. That's what you're trusting. Not God's word and not God himself. And so we have to, as professing believers,

I think that if you do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, either you're immature and you need to be taught, or you're an error and probably not a believer.

And as we look into other areas of doctrine, we're going to come up with other things.

Oh, that's right. So I mentioned homosexuality. There's a question on that.

Let's see, where's that one? Okay, here we go. There are many pastors and well -known speakers in Christianity today that are now starting to endorse homosexuality.

Is this right? Should the church be encouraging homosexuality? Is it hatred to deny homosexuality or call it a sin?

Good question. Homosexuality is a sin. Why? Because God says so.

Culture doesn't define it. God does. And therefore, whether you and I like it or not, it's a sin.

I don't like a lot of the things. I mean, I lie. I may steal.

I may gossip. These things are sins. And I don't like that because that means

I'm wrong. And so the reality is that we have to accept what

God says. And so homosexuality is a sin because God says it's a sin.

And God makes the rules. Is it unloving to say that? No, it's the most loving thing you can say to tell someone that they're in error so that they can be corrected and do what's right.

Is it hateful? No. I understand that those who practice homosexuality are very aggressive, many of them, in political ways because they want to argue that we must accept this or we hate.

The reality is, and the way to answer that is to ask them, do you hate Christianity? Yes, they do.

Okay? They disagree with Christianity. Is that hate? Well, that in itself is not hate.

But the way they talk about Christianity, that sure is, they want it silenced in the public square.

And that's really what it's about. You know, when you look at this issue of homosexuality, homosexuality is a sin like lying, adultery, gossip, stealing, coveting.

These things are all sins. So why does homosexuality get so much focus?

That's very simple. It's because those who practice homosexuality, they don't want tolerance.

They're actually some of the most intolerant people. They not only want to demand that you accept their lifestyle, they want you to encourage it.

That's the issue. Look at what happened in this baker in Oregon. Not only does the bakery have to pay $134 ,000, but now they're not even allowed to go on media or to raise funds to pay for it.

Okay? There's a gag order put on them. That is intolerant. That's just trying to shut down thought.

That's censorship. Why would they be censoring? Because in the atheistic, humanistic worldview, they can't answer for the things of God.

They have no answers. And because of that, they just want it out of the public square so that they don't have to deal with it.

All right? Oh, there's another question on homosexuality that came in the chat.

Okay, let me read it. All right. What would you say to someone who says they are a homosexual

Christian but celibate? Is that like saying

I'm a covetous Christian to identify with a sin? All right, so good, good question.

TN Hills, that's a good question. Can you desire people of the same sex and still be a

Christian? I know this is going to shock some people, but I think the answer is yes, you can. Just like lusting for a heterosexual person, you can still be a

Christian and have lust for a heterosexual person. It's forgiven by Christ. Can you even fall as a

Christian in heterosexual sin and have an adulterous relationship and repent of it and still be a

Christian? Yes. Same thing with homosexual relationship. Let's not make homosexuality as if it is some unforgivable sin.

That's not blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, okay? So you can be forgiven. Now, if someone is continuing in a homosexual lifestyle, then, like I mentioned with church discipline, you're going to follow those steps.

If you get that last step that you put them out of the church, they're probably not a believer, all right?

Another question in the chat room. Among different laws given in the Bible, is the moral law the only law that still applies today?

Interesting question. And the question has, shall I say, a false premise.

You are suffering, Brother Ricky, from a false premise.

You go, wait a minute, Andrew, what do you mean I'm suffering from a false premise? I know, hold on. Here's what I mean.

I think you're falling for the premise of assuming that the Westminster Catechism or that different creeds are authorities, not

Scripture. What do I mean by that? You do not see anywhere in Scripture it talks about a moral law, a civil law, and a ceremonial law.

Those are things that you read like in Westminster Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith and things like that.

That is a man -made separation. Breaking the Sabbath is that moral, ceremonial, civil.

Yes, all three. All three of them. It was a civil law that was ceremonial and moral.

Every law is moral. Every single law is moral. And so I don't make this separation between ceremonial, civil, and moral because you can't make that separation.

If you believe in New Covenant theology, you're going to believe in the law for Israel and the law of Christ, and you're going to see that that which is commanded in the

New Testament is a law that you obey. If you're a dispensationalist like me, you're going to see a different separation.

I am not all dispensationalists. I actually see a separation the way I do. I make a separation between universal laws, national laws to Israel, and the law of Christ.

So, seventh day of creation. We see a Sabbath that we have.

That Sabbath is given. That Sabbath is given because of the seventh day of creation.

It's because of creation. So the seventh day rest is universal. However, in Moses, we see that there was some specific laws given to Israel that were very specific for Israel, and those laws given to Israel had some extensions to the

Sabbath that we don't see repeated in the New Testament. Things like not being able to have a fire and where you can walk and these different things that were true for Israel as a nation, and as a nation they had that.

So as a nation, Israel had more things for the

Sabbath than prior to Moses. I would say that we as the church are back under that universal

Sabbath and not the Sabbath for Israel. Why? Because we don't see those laws repeated by Christ.

Here you're seeing where I'm a little bit fuzzy between New Covenant theology and dispensationalism, but I may not fit those doctrines, that theological system perfectly, but I'm going to give you what

I think the Scripture says. So we've got time for one more question if there's any in the chat room.

Do I have another here? Let me see. All right,

I can answer this one. If it's quick then maybe we can get one more question from the chat room before we close out, but this is a question on evangelism.

Do you know anyone who has gotten saved hearing an open air evangelist or through a gospel track?

Yes. A friend of mine, Mark Spence, a friend of mine, Mark Cahill, both got saved through gospel tracks.

Mark Cahill was drunk the night he got a gospel track. He picked it up and someone gave it to him,

I think, and he shoved it in his pocket. When he got home he emptied his pockets and in the morning he read the track and he had gotten saved.

Mark Spence, I think, picked it up off the ground, a track, and it explained some things about Harvest Fest.

He went to the Harvest Fest and got saved there. Actually, in fact, I think he says he went forward before there was even an altar call and Greg Laurie said,

I'm going to ask some of you to come forward like this young man has done. But, yeah, people get saved through gospel tracks.

Do anyone get saved through open air preaching? Yes. It's a little bit harder to see unless you stay in an area over time, but I have seen some people in Union Square where I preach regularly, some of the regulars there have become believers, have become regular members in churches.

And so because of that, yeah, I would say there is some fruit in that. In open air you don't see it as much. I remember being at a pastor's conference and meeting a guy named

Matthew. Matthew was, he had gotten saved listening to an open air preacher.

He was angry with the open air preacher, yelled at the guy, screamed at the guy, and then went home and was convicted by what the guy said and got out a

Bible and read it and was saved and became a pastor. And he was at a pastor's conference, he shared his testimony with me, and I actually remember saying, hey, do you know where it was?

Let me see if I can find the guy. And I said, hey, 17 years ago, I put it on Facebook, different places, 17 years ago was there anyone preaching at University of Pennsylvania that could have been there 17 years ago, looking for someone that could have been preaching when this one guy got saved?

And the answer came back as someone contacted me and said, my husband goes out with a guy who has been preaching at University of Penn for 20 years.

And here is his number. So I called him up, I said, 17 years ago, where would you have been open air preaching on a

Saturday night? He said, well, I would have been at the Hub. I said, now, was anyone else preaching at the Hub at that time?

He said, no. I was the only one there. Afterwards, I moved to a different area, but 17 years ago, 20 years ago,

I started at the Hub and I was preaching there for five years. And so I was the only one there on Saturday nights.

I said, Jeff, I would like to send you an email of another man, a Pastor Matthew, who

I think got saved under your preaching. And in fact, he did. The two of them emailed one another.

And I don't know if they ever got to meet. I hope they did. But what's it?

OK, one last question from Ricky. Ricky Gantz, man, G220 Radio is asking the questions here.

He's got this with a third or fourth question. He's active. He's got some good questions, too. All right. The last question is, he says, do you know any good books that tell someone.

All right. This is a set up question. Ricky's asking, do you know any good books to tell someone of any major religions actually believe?

Did you put them up to that question? No, you haven't been responding in chat at all. OK. I would say a good book would be the book called

What Do They Believe by Andrew Rappaport. What Do They Believe is a systematic theology of the major Western religions.

It goes over Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah Witness, and Mormonism, all those, and Christianity.

It looks at six doctrines. It looks at what's their authority, what's their view of God, specifically a trinity, what's their view of Jesus Christ, specifically his deity, what's their view of man, specifically their salvation, their sinfulness, what's their view of salvation, and what's their view of eternal state.

You can get that at the website, strivingforreturn .org. You can go to the store and pick that up.

It is $15 plus shipping. That would be my recommendation for a good book on what they believe.

Now, the interesting thing with that book is the feedback I'm getting from it is really positive. Everyone is telling me how they love the way it's laid out and it's formatted.

It's easy to read, able to get to study in small snippets what each religion believes on a specific doctrine.

But the thing that everyone has told me that they love is how many quotes I give from original sources so people can see this is not taken out of context.

I had someone that told me this past weekend at Jersey Fire. They said, Andrew, I got to tell you, I read your book. I just finished it.

And the first time I started reading it, I said, man, why give such a long quote?

I mean, I'm noticing that most of the book is quotations from original sources that these guys believe in.

Why would you do that? I mean, so much of the book and so much of such long quotes. And then he said he realized that what

I was doing was giving it the context so people can't say that you took it out of context.

I assume you haven't read the Talmud, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and these different books.

So I'm trying to give you the context if I can, give you the quotes so you have them there so you can see what they believe.

So Ricky Gantz from G220 Radio, I'll plug you and G220 Ministries since you gave me the opportunity to unabashedly plug my book.

Thank you very much. It wasn't really a shameless plug, but thank you. But yeah,

I hope that that helps. So with that, we do have

NorCal Fire second week in September coming up. You can go to NorCalFire .info

to get more information there. That would be really helpful. If you want us to come to your church and do a

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar, that's a seminar that we do. You would be welcome to invite us out.

You can go to the website strivingforreturn .org, contact us, say you're interested in the seminar, the Bible Interpretation Made Easy.

It is a weekend seminar. We come out in eight hours, six sessions. We give you power sessions of just going through really quick how to interpret the

Bible. We've gotten a lot of good feedback from that. So I encourage you to do that.

Now, I don't think we have a slide, so let me pull this up. The next book that we're doing is this.

This is my copy of The Study of Western Religions.

So that's what we're going to get into. We're going to start our school of religions, of world religions, and in doing that we're going to do an intro class.

We're going to go through, since I shamelessly plugged the book, we're going to be going through material that's in the book plus more.

It's going to kind of be the material from the book plus what we're going to look into is some information from a quick systematic theology.

So it will be kind of a systematic theology primer as well. Now, I will say that I am trying to get the classes done.

I've been under a lot of pressure, a lot of speaking lately. And with that,

I will be, I'll be in Princeton, New Jersey this Sunday if you're watching live. And when would that be?

I'll look up the date, thank you. It would be July, let's see, July 19th. I'll be in Princeton, New Jersey at OCM Canaan Church of Princeton.

On the 22nd of July, I'll be going down for the Frontier Outreach. I fly into Denver, Colorado, but where is that?

That's in Wyoming, right? I forget where in Wyoming, but Brother George Alvaro and Steve Bauer are running that.

And so I'll be out there speaking with them and doing an outreach. I encourage you to do that. You can always look at our website.

Oh, yeah, the cruise, the cruise. I should mention the cruise, the Apologetics Cruise. You can go to www .mrm

.org slash cruise dash 2016. It is an apologetics cruise with MRM, that's

Mormon Research Ministries, but we are not going to be talking just Mormonism. Matt Slick from karm .org and myself will be speaking.

So we have Karm, Mormon Research Ministry, and Striving for Eternity. If you sign up for the cruise, please mention that you're with Striving for Eternity so that they know there is a cruise.

And then you sign up for the conference, so you do both. And the conference is going to have a lot of apologetics, a lot of things that are going to be there.

I strongly encourage you to consider joining that. That's going to be a lot of fun. I think

I still plan, like I said, on baptizing Matt Slick properly, and I'll throw him overboard and make sure he's fully immersed.

Okay, maybe I'll just toss him in the pool. But it will be a lot of fun. That is

April of 2016. It's actually immediately following the Ohio fire.

So if you want to be like me, just go out to Ohio fire, jump on a flight to Florida, and we're going to go cruise the

Western Caribbean and have a good time with some good fellowship. So until next class, which

I hope is next week, stay tuned. Watch live in the Striving for Eternity group.

We always mention on Facebook whether we're going to have class or not. That's the best place to find out, and it's the best place to ask questions if you have questions about the ministry.

But we'll announce there if there's going to be class. I'm going to try to have class. If you have not gone to the website strivingforeternity .org

or store .strivingforeternity .org, order the student copy of the book,

The Study of the Western Religions. That is going to be the book that we're going to be going through, $25 a copy.

Make sure you have your syllabus before next week that we start class. So I encourage you to go and do that today.

And until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.